Living Poetry

I was lucky enough to grow up just a few miles southwest of where Robert Frost did some of his most memorable writing. As a result, I grew up thinking that poems were things that lived right alongside the people and things that inspired them. (In the annals of best-summer-jobs-ever was my stint with the Youth Conservation Corps as a 16 year old where I got to spend three days with my work crew tidying up the paths of the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in Ripton, VT).

Here in Siena I am reminded of the living nature of poetry. Dante's almost 700 year old poem pulses through the very stones of the city. As a Florentine, Dante felt his city's rivalry with Siena and makes some derisory remarks that echo this. But he also mentions Siena in the favorable light of some  prominent politicians, artists and church figures. All around the city are stones with these portions of the Commedia etched into them-I have so far found just three. Below is one of that we touched on in our readings today:

"remember me: I am Pia; Siena made me, Maremma unmade me." The speaker is a woman about whom little is known now but presumably early readers recognized her story even from the brief line above. Early commentators and legend say that she was a woman who died by her husband's hand, possibly for infidelity. Her name suggests compassion and, in her exchange with Dante, she pleads for him to remember her to the living after he has: " returned to the world and are rested from the long journey". I love the shift in language here-she first insists that he rest and then worries about her name being set to right in the land of the living.

I love these subtle touches in Dante's language which speak to me even when the deeper allusions to Ovid, Vergil and Augustine befuddle me (I am working on those!). They are the same subtleties which hum through this city.

Reading in the cool of Fontebranda

On another note-I have scarcely had time to process the trip to Rome. I will make a best effort at this in the near future. Suffice it to say that I have seen the Holy of Holies (Sancta Sanctorum of San Giovanni in Laterano) and many things beyond quick glossing here. Against the backdrop of an overwhelming abundance of history, art and  general beauty, my best friend Linda arrived for a week long visit. Tomorrow we head to Florence to see more of " Danteville".

Though my readings are just now getting me out of the Ante-Purgatory-province of the indolent folks who didn't quite get around to doing what they were supposed to, I am certainly not feeling any slothful tendencies.