In Italy, with its long tradition of fostering an official literary language, the poet who chose to compose in dialect invited limited diffusion, critical avoidance, and public silence. Such a fate befell Virgilio Giotti, whose extraordinary verse sings only in the idiom of his native city, Trieste. Giotti's dialect is a chosen langage, an instrument of efficient self-expression devoid of the folksy picturesqueness often associated with regional writers. In fact, the poet's language is not the local koine but a somewhat archaic, personalized, and rarified version of the "Triestino" dialect. As noted critic Gianfranco Contini has pointed out: "Giotti è forse il primo dialettale in cui il dialetto non abbia nulla di veramente vernacolo" (Perhaps Giotti is the first regional [writer] whose dialect is not at all vernacular). His verse is restrained, measured, and devoid of the superfluous. Trieste's most celebrated dialect poet also composed in Italian, but...