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

relaxed rhythms, laden with wit and

epigrammatic terseness, in which Sinisgalli

renders the tension between existential

restlessness and the cautious trust in

inquiring reason. Nevertheless, in

translating dialect into italian for Italian

readers, Sinisgalli was attesting that

dichotomy between oral usage and the rarity

of written material. In the Sixties it was

Pierro who constructed a personal language

in the Tursi dialect, while the folklorists (E.

Cervellino, G.B. Bronzini and then N.

Tommasini and E. Spera) produced

collections of songs, proverbs, customs,

prayers, preparing the climate that will lead

to Francesco Galasso and, lastly, to Rocco

Brindisi’s creative outburst. Let’s proceed in

rapid succession.

Michele Cariati’s (Melfi, born in the late

Nineteenth Century) few poems appeared