Poetry
The Dawn Is Always New
È fatto giorno
Rocco Scotellaro · 1954
Synopsis
The poems of a young man from Lucania, written from 1940 to 1953. They speak of peasants and day labourers, work on the land, strikes and the struggle against the landowners, departures for the north and for the city, prison, and the mother's face by the fireside. The poem that gives the collection its title announces that day has dawned for those whom history had left aside.
Context
The collection appeared from Mondadori, in the Lo Specchio series, in 1954, a few months after the author's death. Carlo Levi wrote the preface, dated April 1954, and saw in these poems the expression of a new peasant culture of the South; Eugenio Montale called the author a peasant poet. All his poems were gathered in a single volume in 2004 from Mondadori. In English, a selection of his poems appeared in 1980 in Princeton under the title “The Dawn Is Always New”.
Who it is for
A collection of rather short poems, in no imposed order, which can be opened at any page.
Prizes and reception
The collection received the Viareggio Prize in 1954, posthumously; Montale counted these poems among the most significant of their time.