“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.