“And with that, putting his own hand in mine, With smiling face, just to encourage me, He led me to things hidden from the world.”

Maundy Thursday The Annual Marathon Reading of the Inferno by Dante Alighieri INFERNO 2

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS AND APPROACH TO THE READING OF THE INFERNO Michael Palma

Having strayed into a dark wood, Dante tries to recover the straight path, only to find his way blocked by three ferocious beasts; as he cries out, the shade of the Roman poet Virgil appears to guide him out of the wilderness and to show him the fates that await us after death (Canto I). Dante fears the journey through the afterlife offered by Virgil, who explains that Dante’s great love, Beatrice, has interceded for him in heaven (II).

In the vestibule of hell, Dante and Virgil see those who remained neutral in the battle of good and evil (III). In Limbo, the first of five outer circles, they encounter virtuous pagans and unbaptized children, whose only punishment is to be denied the sight of God (IV). In the upper hell are those who transgressed through excess of passion and are punished for their sins of incontinence: lust in Circle 2 (V); gluttony in Circle 3 (VI); greed and its opposite, wastefulness, in Circle 4 (VII); wrath and sullenness in Circle 5 (VIII).

Crossing into the lower hell (IX)—which, as Virgil explains (XI), holds those who sinned through malice— they find the heretics in Circle 6 (X). In three concentric rings of Circle 7 appear those condemned for violence: first, against others: tyrants, murderers, and plunderers (XII); second, against self: suicides and squanderers of their fortunes (XIII); third, against God: blasphemers (XIV), nature: sexual deviants (XV-XVI), and art: usurers (XVII).

Circles 8 and 9 contain the worst sinners, those whose crimes involve the misuse of God-given reason. The ten concentric ditches of Circle 8 hold those who have committed sins of fraud: first, panderers and seducers,second, flatterers (XVIII); third, simoniacs (traffickers in holy things) (XIX); fourth, soothsayers and fortune tellers (XX); fifth, grafters and swindlers (XXI–XXII); sixth, hypocrites (XXIII); seventh, thieves (XXIV–XXV); eighth, evil counselors (XXVI-XXVII); nineth, those who caused schisms and created sects (XXVIII); tenth, falsifiers, including alchemists, identity thieves, liars, and counterfeiters (XXIX-XXX).

In the four concentric zones of the icy pit of hell (XXXI) are those condemned for treachery: first, against family members; second, against their country or cause; third, against guests (XXXII–XXXIII); and fourth, against masters and benefactors (XXXIV). From here, the earth’s core, Dante and Virgil return to the surface of the earth. INFERNO 3

CANTOS

I XIX The Right Reverend Clifton Daniel III Daniel Barnum Alfred Corn XX II Victoria Redel Marie Howe XXI III John Simko Terrill Shepard Soules XXII IV Doug Anderson Pierre Joris XXIII V Keith O’Shaughnessy Charles Martin Joanna Keller XXIV Isadora Wilkenfeld VI Michael Bergmann XXV Meredith Bergmann Kimiko Hahn

VII XXVI Margaret Klenck Moira Egan Damiano Abeni VIII Bob Holman XXVIII Amy Lemon Olson IX Matthew Salyer XXIX Marilyn Nelson X Michael Palma XXX Zakiya Harris XI Ryan Wilson XXXI George Green XII William Singer XXXII Eileen Myles XIII Frank Messina XXXIII Ronald Jenkins XIV Joshua Mehigan Ellen Rachlin XXXIV XV Nick Flynn Joseph Portanova Anthony Viscusi

XVI Carolyn Hill-Bjerke

XVIII Yvette Christianse INFERNO 4

PARTICIPANTS

Damiano Abeni MD, MPH, is an epidemiologist The Right Reverend Clifton Daniel III was installed who has been translating American poetry into as the tenth Dean of the Cathedral of St. John Italian since 1973. His publications include the Divine in 2018. Dean Daniel moved to translations of works by Bidart, Bishop, New York after serving as Bishop of the Diocese Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Strand, Simic, C.K. of Pennsylvania. He has also served the Episcopal Williams, and many others. With Mark Strand, Church in East Carolina, Ohio, North Carolina, he edited West of your Cities, a bilingual anthology and Rhode Island. of contemporary American poets. He was a Literature Fellow at the Liguria Study Center of Moira Egan’s recent collection, the Bogliasco Foundation, a Director’s Guest at Synæsthesium (2017), won The New Criterion the Civitella Ranieri Center, and a Fellow at the Poetry Prize. Previous books published in the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. U.S. are Hot Flash Sonnets (2013); Spin (2010); Bar Napkin Sonnets (2009), which won the Doug Anderson’s book of poems The Moon 2008 Ledge Poetry Chapbook Competition; Reflected Fire won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Cleave (2004). In Italy, three bilingual and Blues for Unemployed Secret Police a grant collections, with translations by her from the Eric Matthieu King Fund of the Academy husband, Damiano Abeni, have appeared: of American Poets. His most recent book, Olfactorium (2018), Botanica Arcana / Strange a memoir, is Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam Botany (2014), and La Seta della Cravatta / The the Sixties and a Journey of Self Discovery Silk of the Tie (2009). She teaches Creative (W.W. Norton, 2009). Writing at the St. Stephen’s School in Rome.

Daniel Barnum’s chapbook, Names for Animals Nick Flynn’s books of poetry include Some (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), was selected as Ether (2000), Blind Huber (2002), The Captain the winner of the 2019 Robin Becker Prize. Their Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), and My poems, essays, and translations appear in or are Feelings (2015). He has also written several forthcoming from Pleiades, Hayden’s Ferry Review, memoirs, including Another Bullshit Night in Suck Cutthroat, The Cortland Review, The Offing, City (2004), Being Flynn (2005), The Ticking is Muzzle, and elsewhere. the Bomb (2010), and The Reenactments (2013); and the play Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Meredith Bergmann is a sculptor and poet. Always Wins (2008). Her Memorial to September 11th is installed in the Cathedral. She is currently completing the Women’s George Green’s poems have appeared in nine Rights Pioneers Monument for Central Park. anthologies. He has received the Poet’s Prize and an Award in Literature from the American Academy Michael Bergmann is a screenwriter, director and of Arts and Letters. librettist. His most recent feature film, Influence, can be seen on Amazon Prime. Kimiko Hahn’s most recent book is Foreign Bodies, a collection that explores how possessions possess Yvette Christianse is Professor of Africana Studies us. She is a distinguished professor at Queens and English Literature at Barnard College, New York. College, The City University of New York. Her books include Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics; Unconfessed; Imprendehora; and Zakiya Dalila Harris earned an MFA in creative Castaway. She is also the librettist, with Rosalind writing from The New School, and she currently Morris, of Cities of Salt, a new opera in 3 acts. teaches writing to children at Writopia Lab. Her work has appeared in Guernica and The Rumpus. Her Alfred Corn has published ten books of poems, debut novel, The Other Black Girl, will be published including Stake: Selected Poems, 1972- by Atria Books in 2021. 1992 (1999) and, most recently, Unions (2014). He has also published two novels, Part of His Story (1997) and Miranda’s Book (2014), a study of prosody, The Poem’s Heartbeat (1997), and three collections of critical essays, The Metamorphoses of Metaphor (1987), Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989- 2007 (2008), and Arks and Covenants: Essays and Aphorisms (2017). His play, Lowell’s Bedlam, premiered at Pentameters Theatre in London in 2011. INFERNO 5

In Things I Don’t Want to Talk About, her first Margaret Klenck MDiv, LP, is a Jungian Analyst in collection of poems, the writer Carolyn Hill-Bjerke private practice in New York City. Her most recent explores life, death, and all of the other moments publications include Jung and the Academy and that come in between the worlds. Her poems have Beyond: the Fordham Lectures 100 Years Later, appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Coachella for which she served as co-editor, and two books in Review, the Mississippi Review, and Podium—the which she is a featured interviewee: Visible Mind: latter published by the 92nd Street Y. She lives in Movies, Modernity and the Unconscious by Weston, CT, with her husband, artist Wayne “Braino Christopher Hauke, and There’s a Mystery There: the Bjerke,” and their three children. Carolyn works as Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak by Jonathan Cott. an agent in the film/advertising business. Charles Martin is the author of several books Bob Holman is a central figure in the New York City of poetry and two books of translation, and he spoken-word poetry community. His numerous is a former Poet in Residence at the Cathedral. collections of poetry include Picasso in He is the recipient of the Literature award from Barcelona (2011), Bob Holman’s The Collect Call The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Bess of the Wild (1995), and Tear to Open: This This Hokin Award from Poetry, multiple Pushcart Prizes, This… (1979). and fellowships from the Merrill Ingram Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Three of Marie Howe is the Poet in Residence of the his books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Her books include, including Steal the Bacon (1987), What the most recently, Magdalene (W.W. Norton, 2017). Darkness Proposes (1996), and Starting from Her honors include National Endowment for the Arts Sleep: New and Selected Poems (2002), which and Guggenheim fellowships. In January 2018, was also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award. Howe was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Joshua Mehigan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Ronald Jenkins, a former Guggenheim and His second book, Accepting the Disaster, was Fulbright Fellow, has facilitated theater workshops published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in prisons in Italy, Indonesia, and the United States. in Brooklyn, New York. A Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University, Jenkins specializes in documentary theater focusing Frank Messina is a poet, actor, and artist. He is on themes of social transformation and human the author of four books of poetry including rights. He has directed and/or translated the plays Disorderly Conduct (Published in Heaven Books) of the Italian Nobel Laureate Dario Fo and the Israeli and Full Count: The Book of Mets Poetry (The playwright Joshua Sobol for numerous theaters. Lyons Press). In 2013, his original, handwritten manuscript of 9/11-related poems was accessioned Pierre Joris is a poet, editor, and translator. His into the National September 11 Memorial & publications include many works of translation in Museum. As an actor, Frank has appeared in both French and English, as well as numerous HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Netflix’sDaredevil , volumes of poetry. He is also author of two volumes and in the feature filmToxic Tutu. He serves on of essays, A Nomad Poetics (Wesleyan University the advisory panel for the Jack Kerouac Writer-in- Press, 2003) and Justifying the Margins: Essays Residence Project of Orlando, FL, and lives 1990-2006 (Salt Publishing, 2009). in Jersey City, NJ.

Johanna Keller is a nationally recognized arts Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, MA, journalism advocate noted for her writing about was educated in Catholic schools, graduated music and culture for The New York Times, The from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Chronicle of Higher Education Review, London and moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet. Evening Standard, Los Angeles Times, Opera News, They gave their first reading at CBGB’s and then Symphony, Musical America, Strad and other gravitated to St. Mark’s Church where they studied magazines in the U.S. and the U.K. She is the with Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, and Bill Zavatsky. co-editor of Carolyn Kizer: Perspectives on Her Life They have published more than a dozen volume and Work (CavanKerry Press, 2001), and her work of poetry and fiction, includingNot Me (1991), was included in the anthology Word Carving: The Chelsea Girls (1994), Cool for You (2000), Craft of Literary Journalism (Banff Press, 2003). and Skies (2001). Recent books include Sorry, Tree (2007), The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009), Inferno: A Poet’s Novel (2010), Afterglow: A Dog Memoir (2017), and Evolution (2018). INFERNO 6

Marilyn Nelson is the author of more than a dozen Joseph J. Portanova is a Master Teacher at New books of poetry, including My Seneca Village York University’s Liberal Studies and Global Liberal (namelos, 2015), How I Discovered Poetry (Dial, Studies Program, where he has taught since 1984. 2014), and Faster Than Light: New and Selected He has published poetry in Icarus and the West Poems, 1996-2011 (LSU Press, 2013), as well Fourth Street Review. His connection with the as numerous translations and children’s books. Cathedral began in 1975, when he met Canon The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems Edward N. West. Dr. Portanova read his poem (LSU Press, 1997) was a finalist for the 1998 “Reading Dante at the Cathedral” in Florence, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the 1997 National when he taught at N.Y.U.’s La Pietra campus. Book Award, and the PEN Winship Award; The Homeplace (LSU Press, 1990) won the 1992 Ellen Rachlin is the author of Permeable Divide Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the and Until Crazy Catches Me (Antrim House) 1991 National Book Award. She is the 2012 and two chapbooks, Captive to Residue (Flarestack recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s highest UK) and Waiting for Here (Finishing Line Press). award, The Frost Medal, for “distinguished lifetime Her poems have appeared in various journals achievement in poetry.” Nelson is also the former and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut, and a Granta, Literary Imagination, The Los Angeles former Poet in Residence of the Cathedral of St. Review and Court Green. She received her M.F.A. John the Divine. from Antioch. She serves as Treasurer of the Poetry Society of America and spent her career in finance. Amy Lemon Olsen has acted on stage in New York and Los Angeles in many different roles and theatre Ellen Redel is the author of five books of fiction companies. Her favorites were playing Joanna in and three books of poetry, including Before Lanford Wilson’s “Home Free” Off- Broadway and Everything, The Border of Truth, and Already the Jean in “The Early Girl” by Caroline Kava in LA, for World. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. which she won a Drama-Logue Award. Matthew Carey Salyer is an Associate Professor at Keith O’Shaughnessy is the author of West Point and the author of the chapbook, Lambkin Incommunicado, which won the inaugural Grolier (2019) and a full-length collection of poems, Discovery Award in 2011, and, most recently, Ravage & Snare (2019). His writing has appeared Last Call for Ganymede, a semi-finalist for the in Narrative, Beloit, Hunger Mountain, Poetry New Criterion Poetry Prize. He teaches English Northwest, The Massachusetts Review, Plume, at Camden County College in southern New Jersey, Thrush, The Florida Review, and numerous other to which he commutes from his native Princeton. journals. He lives in the Bronx with his family.

Michael Palma’s most recent books are Faithful John Simko is a Maundy Thursday veteran in My Fashion: Essays on the Translation of Poetry and a volunteer Virgil guiding pilgrims through (2016); Journey Into the Dark (2017), a translation the divine art and architecture of our Cathedral. of the poetry of Ennio Contini; and Enchanted His tours include Saints and Sinners, The Stained Anguish (2017), a translation of the poetry Glass Menagerie, I Love New York, Brilliant Wall of Salvatore Violante. His most recent volume of of Light, Christmas Stories, Medieval 2.0, Mind, poems is Begin in Gladness (2011). His translation Body, Spirit: The Rise of Morningside Heights, of the Inferno was published by Norton in 2002 Within the Walls, and Meet the Donors: Patronage and reissued as a Norton Critical Edition in 2007. and Legacy. He is the only person to have participated in every one of the Maundy Thursday Dante readings since William M. Singer, an architect practicing in NYC, they began in 1994. relishes this annual trip to the underworld. Wallace Fowlie led him through his first informed passage through the Inferno. William enjoys participating in this yearly gathering of Danteazzi.

Terrill Shepard Soules, poet and high-school teacher newly retired, lives in Atlanta. His two books The Selectric Poems and The Book Earth Dreams were published thirty years apart (electric typewriter / iBook). His translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy proceeds at much the same pace. INFERNO 7

Anthony Viscusi is a retired business executive. He joined the corporate world after having lectured on the Divine Comedy at Princeton.

Isadora Wilkenfeld is Manager, Cathedral Programming and Communications. They have worked at the Cathedral since 2012.

Ryan Wilson is a poet, translator, and critic, as well as the editor of Literary Matters, the online literary journal of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW). Wilson is a doctoral candidate at The Catholic University of America, and he serves as Office Manager at the ALSCW). Wilson’s first book of poems the Stranger World won the 2017 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His poems, translations, and criticism appear widely in periodicals such as First Things, Five Points, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, the Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review. INFERNO 8

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