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

poetry of Dantean derivation, the

Communist party, the rural world.

“Cassese’s poetry, especially the one in

Italian, is obviously full of stops and starts...

But in the dialect verses, where he

remembers a past filled with bitterness and

misery, which is also Basilicata’s past, the

descriptions become concrete and pure in

the simplicity of exposition...” (Nigro, 1981).

Rolando Muscio (Lavello, 1939, tailor, self-

taught, also a playwright) in 1955 published

La fere d Lavidd [Lavello’s Fair] and in 1960

(Lavidd d semp [Forever Lavello]. Nigro said

of him: “Muscio is motivated by the

rhetorical ideals dear to the agricultural

society and Fascism, the fatherland, the war

dead, the family, at times outdone by the

penchant for local color and melodrama.

Missing is an ideological vision of the world,

and the emigrants themselves are in turn