Nearly ninety of Rome’s dialect or Romanesco poets are commemorated in the names of its roads, piazzas, and gardens. No other city in the world celebrates its native poets in such a way and in such numbers.
Rome’s first major road was named after a Latin poet, Appius Claudius Caecus, best known for initiating the construction of the Appian Way in 312 BC, the city''s first aqueduct, and for his dictum faber est suae quisque fortunae—every man is the architect of his own fortune.
By the nineteenth century, inspired by the sonnets of G. G. Belli, the epics of Pascarella, and the fables of Trilussa, thousands of men and women from all walks of life turned to poetry to express their feelings, from the mundane to the philosophical. All proud Romans from Rome.
This bilingual edition is a poetic social history of a pre-internet world, reflecting an enduring, seriocomic Roman spirit that led G.G. Belli to write in Romanesco that if he were to be reborn, it would be in Rome:
Da cristiano! Si mmoro e ppo’ arinasco, Pregh’Iddio d’arinassce a Rroma mia.
