Merrill’s collection of poems includes one, “The Book of Ephraim,” which is an account of “conversations held, via the Ouija board, with dead friends and spirits in ‘another world.'” –Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books, December 21, 1978
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Mezzo Cammin” (1842) and “Divina Commedia” (1867)
The title, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes its name from the first line of the Inferno. Longfellow, the first American to translate Dante’s Commedia into English, “was 35 when he wrote this poem, halfway through the scriptural lifespan of 70 years.”
Additionally, Longfellow wrote six sonnets, entitled “Divina Commedia,” which were composed during the grief-filled aftermath of his second wife’s death.
“The six sonnets. . .were written during the progress of Mr. Longfellow’s work in translating the Commedia, and were published as poetical fly-leaves to the three parts. The first was written just after he had put the first two cantos of the Inferno into the hands of the printer. This, with the second, prefaced the Inferno. The third and fourth introduced the Purgatorio, and the fifth and sixth the Paradiso.” —Representative Poetry Online (retrieved on July 7, 2009)
John Agard and Satoshi Kitamura, “The Young Inferno” (2008)
“A funky and powerful book. Agard takes Dante’s famous poem about a visit to Hell and reworks it to appeal to today’s youngsters, mingling 21st Century street cred with ancient mythology. Kitamura’s stylized black and white illustrations draw the reader effortlessly in.” [. . .] —Amazon
Contributed by Virginia Jewiss (Humanities Program, Yale University)
“On Poetry: The Great(ness) Game”
“STILL, however blurry ‘greatness’ may be, it’s clear that segments of the poetry world have been fretting over its potential loss since at least 1983. That’s the year in which an essay by Donald Hall, the United States poet laureate from 2006 to 2007, appeared in The Kenyon Review bearing the title ‘Poetry and Ambition.’ Hall got right to the point: ‘It seems to me that contemporary American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition–a modesty, alas, genuine. . . if sometimes accompanied by vast pretense.’ What poets should be trying to do, according to Hall, was ‘to make words that live forever’ and ‘to be as good as Dante.’ They probably would fail, of course, but even so, ‘the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.’ Pretty strong stuff–and one wonders how many plays Shakespeare would have managed to write had he subjected every line to the merciless scrutiny Hall recommends.” [. . .] –David Orr, The New York Times, February 19, 2009
Richard Wilbur, “Terza Rima”
Found at The New Yorker.
Contributed by Aisha Woodward (Bowdoin, ’08)
