American Poetry Archives

Kevin Young and Robin Coste Lewis, Poems After Rauschenberg’s Inferno (2017)

October 31, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Robert Rauschenberg: Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, was published in conjunction with the first major retrospective on Rauschenberg’s career since the artist’s death in 2008, this book presents the complete set of 34 drawings, and newly commissioned poetry from Kevin Young and Robin Coste Lewis, each reflecting on a selection of drawings and their corresponding Cantos. Young’s half of the 34 Cantos are titled “The Dark Wood” and Lewis’ are erasures of John Ciardi’s Dante’s translation, titled “Dante Comes to America: 20 January 2017: An Erasure of 17 Cantos from Ciardi’s Inferno, after Robert Rauschenberg.” [. . . ] —Poetry Society of America, (retrieved October 24, 2021)

View the poems and illustrations for Cantos II and XXIII here.

Relatedly, see the post on Robert Rauschenberg’s 34 Illustrations here.

Seth Steinzor, In Dante’s Wake (3 volumes)

July 16, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“In Dante’s Wake is a journey in poetry through the moral universe, from blinkered evil to heaven’s networks by way of the muddled-up places in between.

“Once Was Lost, the third and final volume of the trilogy, finds heaven on a North Atlantic beach, beginning with a breakfast of fried claims at sunrise, moving through encounters with people whose lives have been a blessing to humanity, and ending in a series of visions of psychedelic strangeness and power.” —Seth Steinzor’s Website

Fomite Press published Steinzor’s Once Was Lost on June 18, 2021. Each of the three volumes of In Dante’s Wake revisits one canticle of Dante’s Commedia: To Join the Lost (Hell), Among the Lost (Purgatory), and Once Was Lost (Paradise). See our previous post of Steinzor’s To Join the Lost here.

Contributed by Seth Steinzor

Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Purgatorio

February 24, 2020 By lsanchez

“Heading over waters getting better all the time
My mind’s little skiff now lifts its sails,
Letting go the oh-so-bitter sea behind it.

The next realm, the second I’ll sing,
Is here where the human spirit get purified
And made fir for the stairway to heaven.

Here’s where the kiss of life restores the reign
Of poetry—O true-blue Muses, I’m yours—
And where Calliope jumps up just long enough

To sing backup with the same bold notes
That knocked the poor magpie girls into knowing
Their audacity would never be pardoned.” –Excerpt from Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Purgatorio, The New Yorker, December 23, 2019

Illustration by Berke Yazicioglu.

See more about Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Purgatorio here.
An interview here.
Reviews here and here.

And check out this essay on LitHub, where Bang reflects on the scarcity of women in the Comedy!

What Dante did with Loss by Jan Conn

September 20, 2019 By Alexa Kellenberger FSU '22

“What Dante Did With Loss is Jan Conn’s fourth book of poems. Central to this powerful new collection is a suite of poems charting the explosive emotions surrounding her mother’s suicide. Other poems range from meditations on South American flora and fauna to postmodern encounters with immortality.

“Jan Conn was brought up in Asbestos, Quebec. She now lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and works as a professor of Biomedical Sciences whose research is focused on mosquitoes, their evolution and ecology. She has published seven previous books of poetry.” —Véhicule Press, 1998.

You can purchase Conn’s book of poetry through Véhicule Press or through Amazon.

Seth Steinzor, To Join the Lost (2010)

February 7, 2010 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“Dante’s Divine Comedy — that poetic tour of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise written in the 14th century — never seems to get old. The latest proof is the new video game by Electronic Arts, Dante’s Inferno. As in the poem, the game’s Dante character and his guide, Virgil, travel down through the nine circles of Hell, hearing sinners’ stories and witnessing their horrifying punishments. But — this being a video game — Dante is armored like a Greek warrior and can choose to absolve the shades or slash them to bits.

“If that raises your literary hackles, you’ll appreciate another, rather different, Dante-inspired release: the book-length poem To Join the Lost, by Seth Steinzor of South Burlington. This achingly personal, contemporary version of the Inferno is both truer to its prototype and more daring.

“Preserving Dante’s structure of 34 cantos, Steinzor’s unrhymed but rhythmical poem is spoken by a poet named Seth. (It takes some guts to invite comparisons between the Tuscan bard’s poetic voice and one’s own.) Like Dante’s character-self, the middle-aged Seth finds himself lost in a murky, obstructed landscape at the poem’s opening. All is despair until out of the gloom steps Dante — the Florentine poet, that is — who, 700 years after penning his own tour of Hell, has become a guide.” [. . .] –Amy Lilly, Seven Days, May 19, 2010

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