"The Poets Down Here..." – Bruce Springsteen, Songwriter, Poet, Singer and Performer in English and in Italian Translation

Iain Andrew Halliday gives attention to the non-literary genre of the song-lyric and its affinities with poetry. Contesting the division of language and music as a western construct, he questions the idea of poetry as exclusively bound to writing. While he emphasizes the sonic element of words, he traces two common elements of song and poetry in performance and voice, which are essential for the transmission of both the former and the latter (in the form of poetry readings). This analogy is also carried forward in the analysis and translation into Italian of Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland": identifying the same density of a poetic text in its use of metaphorical language, he cannot but identify some inevitable loss in the Italian version by Leonardo Colombati. Despite a certain failure of communication observed in a mishearing of the song that is reproduced in the transcript, he nevertheless defends the artist's singing performance for, deprived of any dramatic context and relying on the intimacy of the voice, it closely connects performer and audience to each other.