“Vintage steam train to take tourists on a slow journey through the landscapes of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna on the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.” [. . .] —Wanted in Rome, June 7, 2021
K. J. Lamb, “To Hell and Back”
Contributed by Leslie Zarker Morgan
Italian Commuting
“Mr. Parks lives in Milan, where he runs a postgraduate translation program at Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne. Living here saves him from the hellish predawn 100-mile commute from Verona, a Dante-esque daily journey that he writes about at the outset of Italian Ways.” –Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, June 7, 2013
See Tim Parks’ book, Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo (NY: W. W. Norton, 2013)
Mark Lilla, “Filippic” (2011)
A poem for the Brooklyn Book Festival
The F train
Is the brain train.
iPad lasciate,
Voi ch’intrate,
Eve’s backlit apple,
Gold ‘n delicious,
Tempts us not.
We have spines to break,
Penguins to tame.
Thou user!
Thou blue of tooth!
Thou faceless face,
That hath no book!
@ us, towns talk & captions contest
While black-rimmed dandies
Wink at the straphangers
Who grin at the infinite jest.
But banished shalt thou be
Back into space,
No means of return,
No options, commands, or escape,
While we, the Brooklyn d’élite,
Knuckles bared, planted feet,
Bend dead trees at will
And inspect our kill.
Recycle that, battery boy.
I got your charger right here.
— Mark Lilla, The New York Review of Books, September 16, 2011
