Essays on the most celebrated Italian poet by eminent poets
of the twentieth century
"Perhaps confessions by poets, of what Dante has meant to them, may even contribute something to the appreciation of Dante himself."
-T. S. Eliot
The great fourteenth-century poet has been an unequaled influence on many writers in the twentieth century, whose "confessions" may well foster a deeper appreciation of Dante. Previously published essays by some of this century's most renowned poets-Pound, Eliot, Mandelstam, Robert Fitzgerald, Borges, Merrill, Montale, Lowell, Duncan, Auden, Yeats, Charles Williams, Nemerov, Heaney-join new essays commissioned by the editors. Contemporary poets Mary Campbell, W. S. Di Piero, J. D. McClatchy, W. S. Merwin, Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, Alan Williamson, and Charles Wright reflect on Dante as well as on their own complex (and often contentious) relationship to his legacy. Their engagement with his work offers a fresh perspective on the Commedia and its author that more academic writing does not provide.
As the editors write, a new consideration of Dante "should generate insights not only about his work but also about poetry written in our own language and time.

Edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff

Preface
Introduction
Part I
Erza Pound from Dante
William Butler Yeats from A Vision
Charles Williams from The Figure of Beatrice
T.S. Eliot, What Dante Means to Me
Osip Mandelstam, Conversation about Dante
Eugenio Montale, Dante, Yesterday and Today
Jorge Luis Borges, The Divine Comedy
W.H. Auden from The Visions of Eros
Robert Fitzgerald, Mirroring the Commedia: An Appreciation of Laurence Binyon's Version
Robert Lowell, Dante's Actuality and Greatness of Dante's Divine Comedy
Howard Nemerov, The Dream of Dante
James Merrill, Divine Poem
Part II
Seamus Heaney, Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet
Charles Wright, Dantino Mio
Jacqueline Osherow, She's Come Undone: An American Jew Looks at Dante
J.D. McClatchy, His Enamel
W.S. Merwin, Poetry Rising from the Dead
Robert Pinsky, The Pageant of Unbeing
Geoffrey Hill, Between Politics and Eternity
Rosanna Warren, Words and Blood
W.S. Di Piero, Our Sweating Selves
Daniel Halpern, Dante is Perpignan
Alan Williamson, The Tears of Cocytus
Mark Doty, Rooting for the Damned
C.K. Williams, Souls
Mary Blaine Campbell, Wrath, Order, Paradise
Edward Hirsch, Summoning Shades