A Biography of Dante's "Divine Comedy"

I first read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in 1977. I read the translation by American poet and translator John Ciardi (I still have the book), who had undertaken the work from 1954 to 1970. He used Dante’s terza rimaform, an arrangement of tercets or three-line stanzas that use an interlocking rhyming scheme. Ciardi’s translation is considered defective today (who knew?), but it’s still widely read.  

The Divine Comedy has been translated into English alone scores of times since 1782. Some translators attempt the tera rima form; others choose blank verse, prose, quatrains, six-line stanzas, irregular rhyme, and just about every other imaginable form. The first complete American translation, one still read today, was by none other than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1867, who is credited with a kind of American renaissance of Dante that continues today. (Longfellow employed blank tercets, if you want to know.) In fact, more translations of The Divine Comedy exist in English than in any other language.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Behind Each Number, One Beloved Face – poem by Malcom Guite.

 

“Of Elizabeth Bishop” and “Tribute to Roethke” – poems by Julian Woodruff at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“One Art,” poem by Elizabeth Bishop – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“The Man with the Hoe,” poem by Edwin Markham – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poetry Becomes Theater: “The Last Days of Troy” by Simon Armitage

Britain’s poet laureate Simon Armitage has long been interested in myth and legend. He’s published retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Death of King Arthur, The Odyssey, and The Iliad, and he’s reached into the mists of medieval England to translate two famous poems, The Owl and the Nightingale and Pearl. What all of these works have in common is that they were originally created in poetry, the common language of myth.  

A few years ago, before he became poet laureate, his work with The Iliad led to the creation of a play, The Last Days of Troy. It was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester before moving to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Other productions have followed.

 

It’s a gripping piece of theater. It’s a griping piece of writing in general. Armitage doesn’t “improve upon” Homer; it’s more that he illuminates the great Greek story for a contemporary audience. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Another Day – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Poetry Prompt: I’m in Charge of Celebrations – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

 

A forgotten writer of Pere Lachaise – Anthony Daniels at New Criterion on Enrique Gomez Carillo. 

 

“March,” poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“The Battle of Maldon” by J.R.R Tolkien, Edited by Peter Grybauskas

In 991, Vikings attacked Anglo-Saxons in eastern Essex, not far from the current city of Chelmsford northeast of London. A large stream connected by a bridge separated the two forces. The Anglo-Saxons could have likely held off the Vikings for a considerable period. But the Vikings asked permission to cross the bridge to fight, and it was granted by the Anglo-Saxon leader Beorhtnoth. It’s not known why, except perhaps that Beorhtnoth thought he might find glory in battle. 

And that he did, except it wasn’t what he expected. The hand-to-hand combat was vicious and intense. When the Battle of Maldon ended, Beorhtnoth was dead, along with several members of his family, and the Vikings were victorious.

 

What detail we have of the battle is contained in the fragment of an epic poem probably written shortly after the battle. It’s one of the oldest British historical manuscripts, older than even Beowulf. And J.R.R. Tolkien spent considerable time, particularly in the earlier part of his academic career, studying and translating the poem and researching the period.  He also wrote a verse play himself, a fictional attempt to file in some of the missing texts.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Blackberry Memories – poem by Janice Canerdy at Society of Classical Poets.

 

A Hobbit’s Journey Home: Dreaming of the Shire – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

A list of things lost – poem by Kathleen at The Course of Our Seasons.

Poets and Poems: James Sale and "StairWell"

I’ve never said that I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of a new poetry volume or collection. I have said it about a novel by a favorite author, or a new mystery in an enthralling series. Perhaps it’s because poetry has always been something more cerebral or quietly emotional, perhaps.  

Then came poet James Sale and his contemporary epic structured like (and written in open homage to) Dante and his Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, the three parts of The Divine Comedy. Sale began writing what he called The English Cantos in 2017, and the first volume, HellWard, was published in 2019. Then came the COVID pandemic and Sale’s own health issues. 

 

Four years after HellWard, we now have StairWell, Vol. II of the English Cantos, corresponding to Dante’s Purgatorio. And, yes, I’d heard it was coming. I can now say I eagerly anticipated a work of poetry. I can also say it bully justified my eagerness. StairWell is a marvel of imagination, insight into the human condition, and social commentary. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Marly Youmans and "Seren of the Wildwood"

It begins with a cross word. A father, exasperated by his two young sons, wishes out loud that he had had a daughter instead. What he doesn’t know is that the wildwood, near where the family lives, is listening. Or someone on the wildwood is listening. And the father’s words are about to be accommodated. 

The two boys die in the woods; the parents mourn. The mother eventually has another child, a girl, whom they name Seren. The wildwood watches her grow up. She begins to hear its almost-siren-like call. One day, she hears its voice, which she’ll name Aidan. And she follows that voice into the woods, beginning a journey marked by terror, violence, kindness, love, affection, learning – all of the things that make up life.

 

Seren of the Wildwood is an epic poem by poet, novelist, and short story writer Marly Youmans. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

James Sale and “HellWard” – Writing an Epic Poem in English

British poet James Sale has a mission. A lifelong poet, he is now turning himself to what is perhaps the most ambitious project of his career. He’s writing an epic poem of heaven and hell that “stands four-square against the meaninglessness of post-modernism.” 

Sale began writing The English Cantos in 2017. The first volume, HellWard, was published in 2019, and his working on the next volume. If “HellWard” sounds something like “The Inferno,” it should. Dante’s The Divine Comedy is the model. In fact, Dante (like Virgil) serves as the guide to the poet embarking on the journey of Hellward. Sales considers Dante’s epic as one of the greatest ever written because of “the profound belief system behind the overt belief system.” The overt belief system is Roman Catholic; the belief system behind it is something broader. It’s no surprise than poet John Milton is an inspiration here.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"The Finale" by Calvin Miller

Calvin Miller’s trilogy The Singer, published in the 1970s, took the basic accounts of the books of the New Testament and turned them into epic myth. The Singer was based on the gospels. The Song was set in the world of the Book of Acts and the epistles. And The Finale is a mythologized account of the Book of Revelation, although it must have been something of a challenge to take a text that already existed in almost-mythic language and extend it.

What Miller did in The Finale was to simplify the story of Revelation to its most basic narrative. The old world of Terra is dying, and a new Terra is being born. Before that can happen, there will be a final battle between the forces of the Singer and the forces of the World-Hater. The story includes horrific battles and destruction, but the Singer overcomes evil and darkness, and New Terra is born.

Miller (1936-2012) was a pastor at Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska for 25 years and then joined the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for seven years and later the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the author of some 40 books on popular theology, writing, and other subjects, but was best known for The Singer Trilogy. 

The trilogy was extremely popular, remaining in print for some two decades and then republished in the first decade of this century. But the cultural context for its first publication was very different from contemporary times. The Jesus movement was at full tide, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were enjoying a huge burst of interest by young Baby Boomers (there was even an animated movie based on The Lord of the Rings), and the first Star Wars movies were released shortly after. 

Politics and the world economy were in broad upheaval as well. OPEC had implemented the first oil embargo in 1973, inflation and interest rates were in double digits for most of the decade, the Watergate scandal had brought a President down, and the decade ended with American hostages being held more than a year by Iranian Islamic radicals. That was the environment Miller’s mythic trilogy was born into and likely somewhat propelled by.

Calvin Miller

It’s also worth noting that the trilogy had both a direct and indirect influence on Christian literature. While most writers of Christian fantasy today will point to Tolkien or the King Arthur stories as primary inspirations, Miller’s epic stories (told in a kind of poetic form) have been an influence as well. I was surprised at how much Miller’s epic reminded me of the stories of C.S. Lakin and similar authors.

The Singer Trilogy is both a period story, very much the child of the decade in which it was born, and a more contemporary story as well. Using the mythic or epic narrative format allowed Miller to escape being forgotten. And it is still a good story, and an interesting story, even if you don’t know the New Testament.

Related:

“The Singer” by Calvin Miller.

“The Song” by Calvin Miller.

“The Fall of Arthur” – A Fragment by J.R.R. Tolkien

Blame it on Geoffrey of Monmouth(c.1095-c.1155). 

About the year 1136, Geoffrey published The History of the Kings of Britain. The account began with the founding of the British nation by the Trojans after the Greek-Trojan War, continuing through the arrival of the Anglo Saxons in the 7^thcentury. The work included the first known account of King Lear and his daughters, and it included an official account of King Arthur, the Knights of the Roundtable, and the prophecies of Merlin.

The work was accepted as history well into the 16^thcentury. It turned out to be mostly but not entirely fiction. But it was Geoffrey who first formalized the legend of King Arthur, which was further elaborated by Thomas Malory(1415-1471) and his Morte d’Arthur. (It was a Frenchman, however, Chretien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story.)

Arthur is a legend that still captivates – the idealist warrior who wanted to govern in a different way but ultimately betrayed by those he loved most, and those who loved him. Arthur has given us some of most enduring literary works, including Idylls of the Kingby Alfred Lord Tennyson. He’s also given us the widely popular versions of the story, including the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone, thenovels by Mary Stewart, and the Broadway musical and movie Camelot.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.