Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

need to recognize and define the expressive

potentials of the various languages6. In this

line of thought, very significant sound the

following verses of a Calabrian poet who for

a while has been using, without distinction

and with critical awareness, both standard

language and dialect, achieving results that

appear clearly homologous: “Giacinto, now

/ that I write / with my mother's language /

I feel things more deeply, / words have

substance / they're not dead consumed, /

they belong to no one / it's as if they were /

springing from a blaze of water.”^7

The real problem that needs to be

resolved today, it seems, stems from the

progressive loss of substance of local idioms

under the levelling invasion of the media

which nonetheless, as they progressively

despoil dialect lexicons, also lower that of

the standard language, again promoting the