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

ACHILLE SERRAO

He belongs to that small but important

group of neodialect poets who look to Pier

Paolo Pasolini, Andrea Zanzotto, Albino

Pierro, Sandro Zanotto, Angiuli, Riviello,

Mancino, Nigro, Marè, Pandini, and crosses

our Twentieth century without worrying

about the linguistic instrument employed,

aiming exclusively at producing a poetic text

keenly aware of its own means, but above all

of its own legitimacy. Croce’s distinction

between spontaneous dialect literature and

reflected dialect literature does not enter for

a moment into Serrao’s choice of dialect: its

history is the almost automatic affirmation

of an affirmation by Mario Sansone, who in

Relazioni fra letteratura italiana e le letterature

dialettali wrote, in the distant 1948: “On the