Although unknown in North America, Eugenio Cirese is one of Italy's most accomplished dialect poets, and the only dialect poet from the region of Molise to be included in national anthologies, such as the one edited by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Dell'Arco (1954). In the extremely varied landscape of Italian dialect literature Eugenio Cirese finds his place as an authentic poet (an opinion held by critics and writers such as Pasolini, Barberi Squarotti, Betocchi and many others), and is generally considered to have been the first modern writer to use the dialect of Molise as a literary language.