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

stylistic enrichment, an intersecting of

metaphoric-linguistic fragments [...] What at

first stands out in Riviello is the appeal to

Sinisgalli’s modernism in paratactic

structures with very complex patterns that

range from the real to the surreal, in a sort of

compact sleight-of-hand of the verb

(Manescalchi, from Dopo Scotellaro,

supplement to Collettivo r, FI, 1982.

Riviello, ”meek dadaist,” mixes parody

and self-irony, providing texts in which

amusement becomes more and more bitter,

and behind the irreverent forms or lapsus

that create a risible level for the reader, there

looms the obsessive outline of a deep

anguish and a biting sarcasm that envelops

and mixes everything.

Upon sending me this group of dialect

poems (rare and going back a few decades),

Riviello enclosed this explanatory preface