Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Kim Addonizio‘s blues poem first appeared in the December 2002 issue of Poetry magazine, and was later included in the collection What is This Thing Called Love (2004):
Listen to Addonizio read and discuss the poem here.
Contributed by Jessica Beasley (Florida State University ’18)
“The Purgatory Home Companion is an album of music based on Dante’s Purgatorio by trash-blues artist Rob K, which I co-wrote and produced. [. . .]
“The Purgatory Home Companion was a collaborative project which worked as follows: Rob and I sent a request to all the musicians and some of the artists that we know to send us music, noise or spoken word recordings. Some of the contributions were from established artists, like Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion. Some were from our less well known but still talented friends. We received over 100 of these audio contributions. Rob and I organized them, built audio collages from them. I wrote the music around the collaged framework, and Rob wove in the lyrics which were based on his take on Purgatorio.” — Mark Abramson of Zen Jam Graphic Design and Art Direction Studios
Photo credit Mark Stalnaker.
“In a telephone interview during the South by Southwest music festival Mr. Ward described music as a puzzle he’d been working on since his youth in a Los Angeles suburb. He spoke about his desire to balance dark moods and joyous elements in his music, about his love for Dante and Marvin Gaye, and about how delving into pop music history has become vital to his songwriting.” [. . .] –James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times (April 1, 2012)
“There may be other singer-songwriters in Nashville who would start their day just so, but then, perhaps not. ‘This morning found me up at 6 to feed the dogs, then back in bed, where I read a little more of Dante’s Inferno,’ begins one blog post by Kevin Gordon, who has a master’s in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a musical sensibility that’s part Muddy Waters and part Carl Perkins. ‘It has a cooling effect. (The further in I get, the more it resembles life here on earth; Virgil leads Dante up Gallatin Road on a hot July evening).'” [. . .] –Peter Applebome, The New York Times, February 21, 2012
See Dante Joseph’s website to hear excerpts from the album.
