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

His masterpiece is undoubtedly Terra d’ore,

considered by everyone “not only an artistic

gem, but above all a jewel of expressive and

phonetic precision,” because the poet in

tandem with the linguist have been able to

penetrate deeply into the natural world of

Abruzzi, portraying it with the inebriation

of a panic adoration that vaguely recalls

D’Annunzio’s “carnal” effusion, but without

falling into the snares of a troubled and arty

sensuality of Decadent origin.

An analogous experience, even if in a

rather discontinuous way, has Luigi

Illuminati (1881-1962), from Atri, also a

talented humanist and an expert in the art of

versifying in Italian, Latin and dialect. In his

style he is able of blending, in Luciani’s

footsteps, a local ingenuosness with an

aristocratic taste for words, as attested by a

few pages preserved and collected in the