Poeta Doctus

Every Easter I read through Dante’s Divine Comedy, and when I’m teaching, the Inferno holds centre spot in a course I try to give every Winter term, “Go to Hell!”.

That love for Dante and the Commedia makes its way into my poetry, too. A reader sensitized to this fact will fill a big basket of easter eggs reading through my books, published and unpublished.

Rarely, my love for his work is expressed outright, like in this short poem, “The book I can’t read closed beside me…”, that you can hear, here:

Of course, you’ll get even greater pleasure reading through the Commedia outloud over Easter week:  the Inferno, Good Friday through to Easter Sunday morning; the Purgatory, from Easter Sunday to Easter Wednesday; then begin the Paradiso Easter Thursday and ascend at your leisure!

You can hear the Commedia in Italian and English translation, at the Princeton Dante Project, here.