2016 Archives - Page 3 of 19

The Pineapple Gin Smash by Naren Young of Dante

September 5, 2020 By lsanchez

“Smashes are super refreshing, and thus perfect for summer drinkin’; the key is to use ingredients that are in-season for maximum fresh flavor. When Naren Young of Dante recently came by the MUNCHIES garden, he had the bright idea to combine juicy hunks of just-cut pineapple with pineapple sage leaves plucked from the plant. Add a dash of pineapple vinegar, too, to go all Inception on it. Factor in the spirits of choice—gin and green Chartreuse—and the result is a drink that’s sweet, tart, fruity, potent, and certainly pineapple-y.” –Munchies Staff, Vice, August 25, 2016

Learn more about the New York City bar Dante here.

Per le rime: Beatrice risponde a Dante by Enrico Bernard

August 13, 2020 By lsanchez

“Una nuova forma di saggio sperimentale presentato come monologo lirico-drammatico sul più grande rapporto d’amore della letteratura mondiale. Fu vero amore? Oppure Dante si prese qualche licenza poetica e qualche libertà espressiva? Un divertente cavalcata al femminile nei canti del Paradiso che vengono smontati e ridefiniti dalla protagonista stessa, Beatrice, che finalmente fa sentire la sua non più flebile, ma dura e contestatrice voce.” –Enrico Bernard, Amazon, December 1, 2016

Ocean Vuong, “Seventh Circle of Earth” (2016)

May 30, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“I wrote ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’ [from Vuong’s 2016 collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds] shortly after hearing the news of two gay men being murdered by immolation in Dallas, TX. I originally wrote the poem in tercets, echoing Dante’s terza rima format. In the Inferno, the stanzas work as a network of rooms the speaker moves through as he descends through the circles of hell. In ‘Seventh Circle of Earth,’ however, this grouping felt off, even fraudulent, to me. A persona poem at its core, it takes on the voice of one of the men speaking to his partner. And in the midst of that fraught position, a poem in tercets, or, in other words, a ‘traditional’ poem, felt like a diluted, forced recasting of a horrific event. I ultimately abandoned the poem.

“It was not until three years later, while reading a critical work on violence and scholarship, did I see, more clearly, the footnotes on the bottom of the page. I found myself slipping right to the notes as I progressed, reading them first. They possessed, in that reading, an urgency that began to stitch itself into a fabric of broken utterances fused together by parataxis. It was, in a way, found poetry. That gave me the idea to re-work ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’ into a piece written entirely in the footnote. This time, the vast and utter emptiness one confronts on the page felt more faithful to the violent erasure of the two murdered men. It felt right to begin the poem with its own vanishing.” [. . .] — Ocean Vuong on “Seventh Circle of Earth” for Poetry School

Read the rest of Vuong’s comments and the poem at poetryschool.com.

Contributed by Su Ertekin-Taner (The Bolles School ’22)

Richard Kostelanetz, Kosti’s Divine Comedies (2016)

May 28, 2020 By Professor Arielle Saiber

Kosti’s Divine Comedy redoes the Dante text with chapter titles from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translations and RK’s ghost poems.

“The Seven Circles of Dishwashing Hell”

February 1, 2020 By lsanchez

“I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but sometimes, even the most mundane of chores becomes epic to me. Dante Alighieri may have been writing about Hell in his Inferno, but it seems just like dishwashing to me.

Every night after dinner, it goes something like this:

Limbo – Some people think dinner is over. Some people just finally sat down to eat 30 seconds ago. No one is actively clearing the table, but some dishes are in the sink.

[. . .]

Gluttony – So I ate the brownies and ice cream. And it became like the mud Virgil (Dante’s guide in the underworld, you’ll recall) fed to the three mouths of Cerberus.

[. . .]

Violence – A river of blood (how my hands feel right now) is where Dante finds those who are violent to their neighbor. Gnarled thorny trees (how my hands feel) are those who are violent to themselves. The great plain of burning sand (does anyone have any Bag Balm? I think the skin on my hands needs revitalizing!) is what awaits those who are violent toward God.

[. . .]

The absolute center of hell – Like Lucifer, half submerged in the ice lake, one last thing remains in the sink: the soggy, stubborn end of an onion, carelessly tossed in the there and causing a slow drain. I pluck it out and head literally to the TV room, but metaphorically into the River of Lethe, or forgetfulness. Otherwise, why would I do this again tomorrow night?” –Beth McConnell, A Madison Mom, September 10, 2016

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