Dante Books

Tremendous stuff! Another way of viewing Dante is always welcome, but to be able to read what famous poets have to say abount Dante is SPECIAL!!!

Howard Nemerov, in his essay included here, says something to the effect that his essay is unnecessary as there is more than enough commentary on Dante, and what could he say anyway?

Nemerov can say plenty and say it well and I would tend to enjoy anything he wrote on any subject. He is a fine essayist.

But his point is valid. There is little here that is new or even very interesting, though the line-up of contributors is stellar, from the standards whose commentary is now classic--Pound, Eliot, Singleton, Yeats, Auden, etc.--to new essays commissioned for this volume--Heaney, McClatchy, Hirsch, Williamson, Charles Wright, and others.

The problem: Dante truly does defeat us all. His imagination and genius make commentary superfluous. And most disappointing are the new essays--they truly fail to impart their passion for the poet.

It is true that there are good pieces here: by Borges (collected in Seven Nights--go buy that!) and Nemerov in particular.

And my favorite gave me exactly what I was looking for--the sense of a poet involved in poetry and involved in the moment. Robert Fitzgerald discusses the work of a sadly forgotten translator, Laurence Binyon. Fitzgerald reproduces letters between Pound and Binyon about the work that Binyon was doing. Pound's enthusiasm is infectious (as well as Fitzgerald's) and one wants his translation immediately in front of one. I fear one may have to look for it in used bookstores

This seems a good idea, but in the end it is disappointing.

Hawkins and Jacoff have compiled a volume that is crucial to Dante scholarship, which has never and never should be primarily about commentary. It's about the way Dante strikes us on a personal level, the way literature can influence and change our perspective and our thinking. Could you ever ask for a better chorus of voices! From T. S. Eliot to James Merrill, their inspirations will inspire anyone who has felt the power of literature in their lives.

I will confess that I haven't had a chance to read Merwin's entire translation of Dante's _Purgatorio_, though I have read about a third to this point. I will say, though, that I have read his Forward, and I found it to be one of the more moving testaments to the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual impact that the _Commedia_ has had on readers, poets and non-poets alike, through the ages. There isn't much new information for the Dante scholar--Merwin acknowledges that his notes are largely based on Singleton's--but this is a translation written out of love, not necessarily scholarship. This is Merwin's editon for the lover of both poets and poetry

One of the greatest literary tragedies is that so many readers believe that the Divine Comedy, or that even Dante himself, is no more than the Inferno. Such ignorance leads to a vast reading public who have never experienced the most immediately human section of the Comedy: the Purgatorio. Unlike Inferno, which is full of characters whom we either revile or pity, Purgatorio introduces us to spirits who, like most of us, try to do the right thing, but aren't always successful. If we look down upon the shades in Hell, we identify with the shades in Purgatory, and it is in this understanding that the Purgatorio gains its beauty. An absolute must read for anyone with any interest in literature, history, theology, spirituality, philosophy, psychiatry, or beauty.

As for Merwin's translation, he has managed to take a giant step in solving the problem that I mentioned above. His translation does justice to the original not only in its accuracy, but in its poetry, which is so important to Dante's works. I have read two other translations of Purgatorio (Mandelbaum and Ciardi), and this is, by far, the most readable and the most engaging of the three. Merwin captures the hopeful but unfilled tone of the poem with considerable grace while still maintaining the structural and thematic tension that are crucial to an understanding of Dante's works. As for the scholarly aspects of the work, scholastics, clearly, were not Merwin's intent. His explanatory notes are minimal (which is preferable to Mandelbaum's copious, and sometimes condescending glosses) and the foreword is more an exploration of the art of translation than of Dante's work. Not that this is a bad thing. Understanding Merwin's reservations concerning translation, and the difficulties of performing it, makes his version of Purgatorio all the more human and touching. But, any reader seeking critical commentary should look elsewhere (and by elsewhere I mean a supplemental source as passing over this translation just because it lacks scholarly material would be criminal). Whether for readers experiencing Purgatorio for the first time, or for Dante aficionados, I can't recomend this volume highly enough. First, Pinsky's Inferno, then Merwin's Purgatorio, now, if only someone would do Paradiso similar justice!

I think the reason the Inferno is the most popular canzone of Dante's Divine Comedy is just that it's where to start with Dante's amazing incredible eternal epic. Also the Inferno has more shoot-em-up sort of action than the other 2, Purgatorio & Paradiso. Purgatory is of such poetic brilliance; it's full of poetic philosophy from Dante's critical genius, & beautiful scenes, interesting spirits -- a feeling wholly different from the grimness of the Inferno. & W. S. Merwin too is brilliant & masterful enough for a repartee with the medieval guru. Merwin is a poet & translator whose verbal & syntactical decisions you can trust. He renders Purgatorio with great exciting faithfulness to Dante's original language, with mellifluous music, with merit worthy of the high praise this has gotten from Robert Pinsky, Harold Bloom, & others. The Comedy is notoriously difficult to translate, & this is one of the best translations of Purgatorio into English ever, I'm sure.

I guess I got the last copy of this anthology. If you're really interested in a historical and global anthology of the sonnet, try to get this second-hand: there are some big surprises and real gems in this that you won't find elsewhere. EVERYMAN, BRING IT BACK!

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
(Sonnet 26.)

How to do justice to the legacy of literary history's greatest mind -- moreover in such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" and his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles and Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), and that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more wit in a single line of Shakespeare's than in an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying this in ignorance of, or in order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past and present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more -- and that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material and that even the (sole) authorship of the works published under his name isn't established beyond doubt. For ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is the brilliance of those works themselves; and quite honestly, the mysteries continuing to enshroud his person, to me, only enhance his larger-than-life stature.

The precise dating of Shakespeare's sonnets -- like other poets', a response to the 1591 publication of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" -- is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 and #144 (slightly modified) appeared in 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, and written years before their first -- unauthorized, though still authoritative -- 1609 publication; possibly beginning in 1592-1593.

Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolved in a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 -- first quatrain amplified by one line -- #126 -- six couplets & only twelve lines total -- #145 -- written in tetrameter -- and #146 -- omission of the second line's beginning; the subject of a lasting debate.) Their order is thematic rather than chronological, although beyond the fact that the first 126 are addressed to a young man -- maybe the Earl of Pembroke or Southampton, maybe Sir Robert Dudley, the natural son of Queen Elizabeth's "Sweet Robin," the Earl of Leicester -- (the first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage and production of an heir), and ##127-152 (or 127-133 and 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," even in that respect much remains unclear; including the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the two main addressees, regarding which the sonnets' often ambiguous metaphors invoke much speculation. #145 is probably addressed to Shakespeare's wife; the closing couplet plays on her maiden name ("['I hate' from] hate away she threw And saved my life, [saying 'not you']:" "Hathaway -- Anne saved my life"), several others contain puns on the name Will and its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteen in the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" and seven in the similarly mischievous #136), and the last two draw on the then-popular Cupid theme. Sometimes, placement seems linked to contents, e.g., in #8 (music: an octave has eight notes), #12 and #60 (time: twelve hours to both day and night; sixty minutes to an hour); and in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power and as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emerges in a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 -- in turn written in first person singular and thus, denoting its own author as the builder of its "monument more lasting than bronze" ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius") -- as well as through the number "5"'s optical similarity to the letter "S," making the sonnet's number a shorthand reference for "5hake5peare" or "5hakespeare's 5onnets," echoed by numerous words containing an "S" in the text.

Of indescribable linguistic beauty, elegance and complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, and their keen insights into the human heart and soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new and exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrusted in cliche in the late 1500s. Indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnet #130 owes its particular fame to its clever puns on that very style, which went overboard with references to its golden-haired, starry- (beamy-, sparkling, sunny-) eyed, cherry- (strawberry-, vermilion-, coral-) lipped, rosy- (crimson-, purple-, dawn-) cheeked, ivory- (lily-, carnation-, crystal-, silver-, snowy-, swan-white) skinned, pearl-teethed, honey- (nectar-, music-) tongued, goddess-like objects. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;" the Bard countered, proceeded to describe her breasts as "dun," her hair as "black wires," and her breath as "reek[ing]," and denied her any divine or angelic attributes. "And yet," he concluded: "by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."

Arguably, Shakespeare's very choice of addressees (a young man -- also the subject of the famously romantic #18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day;" the first of several sonnets promising his immortalization in poetry -- as well as the "Dark Lady," in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful" in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; and compared to his contemporaries' poetry, even the equally-famous #116's on its face rather conventional praise of love's constancy ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"), echoed in the poet's vow to vanquish time in #123, sounds fairly restrained. But ultimately, Shakespeare's sonnets -- like his entire work -- simply defy categorization. They are, as rival Ben Jonson acknowledged, written "for all time," just as the Bard himself immodestly claimed:

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
(Sonnet 55.)

I've been interested in sonnets now for 4 years. I have written about 8 sonnets or attempts since then which I've workshopped on multiple forums. I found this book at a local bookstore, and "SONNETS" just jumped right at me. I searched for one of my favorite sonnets, John Donne's "Batter My Heart Three-Personed God" or alternately "Holy Sonnet XIV." I was disappointed I found neither of those in the table of contents. I did find John Donne though, and subsequently looked up his poem called, "The Soul to Her Rescuer." I found that one, and it was exactly the same poem. It was only later that I read in the forward that Hollander doesn't call the poems what the poet calls the poems.

Other than that, I find this book to be a pleasure to read. It is not written in OldE English, so it is easy to read. All of the poems have something in them to like whether it's theme, rhyme scheme, rhythm, iamb, metrical substitutions, caesurae, assonance, consonance, etc. After reading this, I am now creating sonnets with much more ease.

I wouldn't buy it alone though. I'd buy it with Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing. It's a great introduction to formal verse. Also go to poetry workshops like Sonnet Central.

I have to agree, that there was some very bad editing. I've screamed and yelled, and screamed some more (the best you can in an e-mail), at the publishing company.
I have since got another editor to go back through Therapy, and correct all those stupid mistakes that you can't see when you're the writer.
(It's odd because you can see the story in your head, but this isn't always what is going on the page. And this makes it very hard to edit your own work.)
Now, I hope that Therapy is in a much better state, and much easier to read.
If Bob Lind reads this, and emails me through my website (www.danteharker.com) I'll gladly send him another copy to see if he thinks the improvements make a difference.

Mike is a somewhat conservative gay man in his late 20's, who has a good job as a mental health counselor and "life coach" in a small city in the UK. His own life seems to be in a rut, with a job he doesn't particularly like, and living in a flat he also sublets to two straight roommates, one male and one female. Except for trips to the gym, and outings with his best friend (Jess, a straight woman from work), Mike is very much a homebody, who rarely goes out to the discos and is sees no point in dating someone who is not his "type," which would be someone who is confident, masculine and fit, as he is.

Mike's boring life is shaken up a bit, when he attends a family wedding with Jess and meets James, an attractive, witty physician to whom Mike develops an instant attraction. Unfortunately, so does Jess, and the feeling seems to be mutual, based on the site of them kissing passionately at the coatroom. Mike assumes James is therefore straight, but subsequent encounters reveal the truth, that, although he had never had an ongoing relationship with another guy, James is similarly attracted to Mike and wants to pursue that. The problem: By that time, Jess is in love with James, who finds her attractive as well, and Mike doesn't want to be the "other woman" that breaks up his best friend's romance. It all comes to a head when Mike, James, Jess and assorted friends go to a "Gay Fest" weekend in Manchester, and the nature of James attraction is revealed.

"Therapy" is a funny, captivating and realistic story, with characters that are well-developed and engaging. Unfortunately, this first-time novelist has significant problems with grammar, punctuation, capitalization, syntax and improper use of words, and the self-publishing house he used didn't provide much in the way of proofreading or editing. The result is a book that averages at least one distracting error on every two or three pages, often making the reader pause to consider what the author *meant* to say, as opposed to what words are actually on the page. The book is heavy on dialogue and Mike's secret thoughts, which are rarely marked with proper quotation marks and often worded improperly (such as in cases where Mike calls himself by name in his own thoughts.) The author's overuse of italics to stress certain words in sentences is also distracting. It's a shame, because, with proper proofreading and editing, this could be a considered an excellent first novel. As it stands, I can give it no more than three stars out of five.

Therapy is an interesting and oft-times compelling book. Set in England, the story chronicles the life of Mike, a gay mental health worker/counselor/ therapist, his friend and co-worker Jess, who is straight and has a tendency to fall in and out of lust with men, his straight roommate Scott, and his other straight roommate Sarah (for whom Scott lusts with bridled passion. Enter James, a gynecologist who dates Jess, but...???, Adam, an 18 year old badminton player who plays against Mike every Sunday, and has a penchant to engage Mike in "sex talk" while showering in the gym's shower, and Ben, a gay cyber friend of Mike's who shows some interest in pursuing an intimate encounter/relationship with Mike. Much to Mike's distress, he has been having difficulty meeting men who are able to sexually arouse him. Therein lies the plot line, and therein lies a madcap, stormy, and possibly tragic story. This is fascinating read. Get it and enjoy.

pretty mediocre.. not much information; certainly not a lot of new or surprising information. not worth the cost. you'd be better off searching for trivia via google.

I am a personal friend of the author, so when I ordered the book, I was looking forward to reading and testing myself. Was I in luck!! I loved it!! My b/f and I tested one another all night, and it brought back a whole flood of memories!!

Thank you, Michael!!

I had fun with this little book. Being a child of the 80s, I spent a great deal of time in front of the television as a kid. I did pretty well, even though there were quite a few stumpers in ths book. I've just ordered the author's other title, and can't wait to read it.

This is a tough book; the kind that requires you to work through it rather than simply read it. Ligia Dantes writes that "we live the images of our thinking process and miss the truth of our experience." (p. 127) She takes us through "the truth of our own functioning", the way our minds create images and stories which we then live out, trapped in the fantasy of past or future, unable to see the reality of the moment.

The book suggests that this fantasy-based existence damages us as individuals and as a community. It identifies the popular prevailing fantasies of our culture, and probes their impact on our wellbeing and the health of our society and planet.

But it also offers a solution: "I suggest that a passion for truth and an intense curiousity about existence are most important ingredients in the process of complete human unfolding." (p.25)

Ms. Dantes engages and encourages these qualities in the reader, breaking her text with frequent invitations to question and consider what has just been said. If these are taken up, the book becomes an adventure in self-enquiry, with frequent glimpses of how liberating it can be to become aware of our fantasies and relinquish them for the experience of things just as they are.

This is the kind of book that can change your life-a way to slip behind, so to speak, all the fantasies, acknowledged and hidden, which control your behavior. Ms. Dantes provides a roadmap of the many, subtle everyday fantasies which keep us trapped in our unhappiness and behaving like children. She invites her readers to transcend all their fantasies by understanding the fantasy-making machine itself-the mind. This is a groundbreaking book for the mature reader who is ready for genuine freedom and a clear-eyed, responsible understanding of life.

The insights of this book are real, based on actual human experiences. Ligia Dantes demonstates the many ways our beliefs, individually and collectively, shape the world around us. She shows us how thoughts, beliefs, delusions, dreams, and, yes, even our fantasies are just as solid as matter and energy. In fact, they are even more powerful, because it is from the force of ideas and mental patterns that our health, relationships, and connections to the universe are shaped.

THIS IS A BOOK FOR EVERYONE! We need to know how our unconscious habits of thinking are dangerous in all aspects of life. Read it and you'll start making conscious choices instead of letting past conditioning sabotage your life.

With the release of his debut novel, "Black Butterfly," Dante Feenix has proven that he has a very promising future as an author/writer.

This book was filled with excitement: backstabbing, lying, deceit, scheming and even murder! The explosive ending will leave your mouth hanging, longing for the sequel.

Definitely a must read! I'm looking forward to reading Part II.

If you like a book that will keep you turning the pages to see what going to happen next this is it. I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I can't wait for the sequel!

A Chorus Line is what many people (with the exception of this reviewer) considers the best musical ever written. I feel that the best musical ever written wa Chorus Line's original Tony award competitior, Chicago (which alas, won no awards that year.) That isn't to say that I don't like the show. I think it has one of the best musical books ever written and some nice songs.
The show tells the personal stories of dancers auditioning for an unknown musical in 1975. The stories range from hysterical to sad to disturbing. I'm sure that the actor\dancers that told these tales were exceptional. Some of them, like Kelly Bishop and Donna McKechnie, have gone on to great success.
The show's score is nice, but nowhere near the calibur of Chicago's excellent music and lyrics. Marvin Hamlisch supplies nice tunes with a soft rock beat. The most memorable is "One" which is sort of like a Jerry Herman showtune. "Dance: Ten;Looks: Three" is also charming. The montage, which includes two good songs "Hello 12, Hello 13, Hello Love" and "Nothing" also has nice music.
Ed Kleban's lyrics are conversational and blend well with the dialouge. They are sometimes funny and sometimes touching. However, they are sometimes rather predicitable and nowhere near the brillance of Fred Ebb's ironic, cynical lyrics for Chicago.
However, the book is so superb, it makes the okay score nearly perfect for the show.
I do think that A Chorus Line is an important piece. It's extremely well written. However, I doubt if any busy director would take the time to personally talk to eac auditioner about their life. The story is slightly implausable.
However, the great director- Michael Bennet, the great writers and cast made this show a singular sensation that brought tourism and prosperity back to New York.

C'mon! A chorus Line is THE best musical ever written! Now you can have the chance to own a wonderfully published script to this amazing music. I also suggest buying the cd to the musical to go with the script. It's just a pity that this script can not encapsulate the performances of the original cast as well. But I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. But you can buy this script... and for a severely discounted price!...Congratulations. Jump at this deal immediately.

I first heard about this series from someone who compared it to Monty Python and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So, I had to check it out.

The first thing this series has for it is sheer unpredictability. Next is a wit that seems to come at you like a machine gun. I've listened to it three times and I still don't think I've caught every joke and reference in this work... I really don't want to give too much of it away by telling you the plot. Trust me, it is better to go in with very few ideas of what is ahead.

If you like Monty Python, Douglas Adams and that style of humor this is for you... This should be on every radio!

I got "The Dante Experience" as a gift, because I like audiobooks. What I heard on these CDs really surprised me. This story is literate without talking down to the listener. The humor is very rapid-fire but the plot is easy to follow. It's about 3 hours long, in segments of about 20 minutes each, so it's great for commuters who have a CD player in the car. Some people might say it makes fun of religion, and it does, but it's good natured.

I recommend "The Dante Experience" to anyone who likes Monty Python or The Firesign Theatre, or even Dante Alighieri, if you like your comedy more divine!

I found this deck very exciting. It has a high learning curve and the intended spreads are definitely recommended over traditional spreads. I'm a huge "Dante's Inferno" fan already and can understand how some people would shy away from such a deck. It's definitely non-traditional but if you have even a small foundational knowledge of purgatory, heaven and hell, I think you'll find this deck worthwhile.

If you look up Dante Algheri using google.com, you can find translations and images through the Digital Dante projects. I've not come across anything else in this style other than Dali's paintings of Dante's cantos. Other artists such as Botticelli, Dore, Blake and others all reinterpreted Dante in different ways--so I find these images interesting and the cost quite reasonable.
I look at these 78 images as a surrealistic walk inspired by Dante Algheri's collective works. This landscape of images might be nicely accompanied by the short biography of Dante by RWB Lewis. (Some people think the book is a good introduction to the Divine Comedy.)
I actually cut the outside of the box to make two extra cards (cover and back) and also kept the side illustrations as bookmarks. The images on the front and back aren't duplicated in any of the cards.
If you dislike surrealistic art or believe Dante's three books are too dark for your tastes, then this is not for you. If you
like the images, you may find them as I do. Sometimes they are dreamlike, sometimes they are nightmarish---but they are archetypes in a symbolic landscape.
You may like the internet reviews (Tarot Passages or Aecletic Tarot) and images, but not know about Dante Algheri--this might be an interesting starting point.
I don't think of this as a standard tarot, but as art cards. They're a nice addition to my Dante Algheri and Italian literature collection.