{"product_id":"poems-of-rome-isbn-9781101908013","title":"Poems of Rome","description":"\u003cb\u003eA beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets anthology of poems inspired by the art and architecture of the Eternal City.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoems of Rome\u003c\/i\u003e ranges across the centuries and contains the work of poets from many cultures and times, from ancient Rome to contemporary America.  Designed to accompany readers visiting the city--whether in person or in imagination--the book is divided into sections by place. Its pages lead the reader from the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, from the Vatican to the Villa Sciarra, from the Pantheon to the Palatine Hill, all seen through the eyes of poets who have been dazzled by these glorious sites for centuries. The poets range from Horace and Ovid to Pasolini and Pavese, and from Byron and Keats and Rilke to James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Derek Walcott, and Jorie Graham, in a collection of international talent as scintillating as the great city itself.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e  \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eForeword: A Poets’ Roman Baedeker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e THE ETERNAL AND FALLEN CITY\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJoachim du Bellay\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLes Antiquitez de Rome\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eArthur Hugh Clough\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eAmours de voyage\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThomas Hardy\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eFelicia Hemans\u003c\/b\u003e, “Roman Girl’s Song”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA. D. Hope\u003c\/b\u003e, from “A Letter From Rome”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eBrigit Pegeen Kelly\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eC. Day-Lewis\u003c\/b\u003e, from “A Letter From Rome”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eMartial\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEpigrams\u003c\/i\u003e VII.61 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSharon Morris\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Hunted”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePier Paolo Pasolini\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Holiday Over”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eFrancesco de Quevedo\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome Buried In Her Own Ruins” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Starbuck\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome 1965”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCharles Wright\u003c\/b\u003e, “Roma I”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PLACES\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eCampo de’ Fiori\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eMoira Egan\u003c\/b\u003e, “Campo de’ Fiori”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCzeslaw Milosz\u003c\/b\u003e, “Campo dei Fiori” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHeather McHugh\u003c\/b\u003e, “What He Thought”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eJaniculum Hill\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eMartial\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEpigrams\u003c\/i\u003e IV.64 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJoseph Brodsky\u003c\/b\u003e, “Porta San Pancrazio” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Garrett\u003c\/b\u003e, “Back”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePier Paolo Pasolini\u003c\/b\u003e, from “I Too Am…” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDavid St. John\u003c\/b\u003e, “The \u003ci\u003eKama Sutra\u003c\/i\u003e According to Fiat”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGiorgio Vigolo\u003c\/b\u003e, from “The Hermit of Rome” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePiazza Farnese\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Kenney\u003c\/b\u003e, “At the Pteranodon Baths”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Walter Thornbury\u003c\/b\u003e, “Palazzo Farnese”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePiazza G. G. Belli\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eG. G. Belli\u003c\/b\u003e, “A Very Roman Pastime” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eG. G. Belli, \u003c\/b\u003e“A nice Estend’abit”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJames Wright\u003c\/b\u003e, “Reading a 1979 Inscription on Belli’s Monument”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePiazza di Spagna\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJohn Ciardi\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome, 1951”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDavid Constantine\u003c\/b\u003e, “26 Piazza di Spagna”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJorie Graham\u003c\/b\u003e, “Scirocco”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCesare Pavese\u003c\/b\u003e, “I Will Pass Through Piazza di Spagna” (translation by Glyn Pursglove)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJames Rennell Rodd\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Keats-Shelley House: Rome 1909” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHawley Truax\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Spanish Steps”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Wilbur\u003c\/b\u003e, “Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eProtestant Cemetery\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eStella Gibbons\u003c\/b\u003e, “Writ in Water”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThomas Hardy\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJohn Keats\u003c\/b\u003e, “This Living Hand”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eC. Day-Lewis\u003c\/b\u003e, from “A Letter From Rome”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAlice Meynell\u003c\/b\u003e, “On Keats’ Grave”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChristina Rossetti\u003c\/b\u003e, “On Keats”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDante Gabriel Rossetti\u003c\/b\u003e, “John Keats”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWilliam Kean Seymour\u003c\/b\u003e, “Cestius and Keats” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePercy Bysshe Shelley\u003c\/b\u003e, from “Adonais” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAlgernon Charles Swinburne\u003c\/b\u003e, “Cor Cordium”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eOscar Wilde\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Grave of Keats” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eOscar Wilde, \u003c\/b\u003e“The Grave of Shelley”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJames Wright\u003c\/b\u003e, “In View of the Protestant Cemetery in Rome”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRoman Forum and Via Sacra\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAlfred Austin\u003c\/b\u003e, from “In the Forum”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAubrey Thomas de Vere\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Arch of Titus”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHorace\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eSatires\u003c\/i\u003e I.9 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eElizabeth Jennings\u003c\/b\u003e,“Roman Forum”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eKenneth Koch\u003c\/b\u003e, “To the Roman Forum”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eOvid\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eTristia\u003c\/i\u003e III.1 \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRosanna Warren\u003c\/b\u003e, “What Leaves”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJames Wright\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Vestal in the Forum”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eVia del Corso\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRobert Bagg\u003c\/b\u003e, “Paolo and Francesca”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChristopher Pearse Cranch\u003c\/b\u003e, from “Rome, Streets of the Corso: the Roman Carnival”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eVilla Sciarra \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHenri Cole\u003c\/b\u003e, “\u003ci\u003eArte povera\u003c\/i\u003e”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDavid St. John\u003c\/b\u003e, from “To Pasolini”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Wilbur\u003c\/b\u003e, “A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBaths of Diocletian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAubrey Thomas de Vere,\u003c\/b\u003e “Birds in the Baths of Diocletian”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eColosseum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHenry Wadsworth Longfellow\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eMichael Angelo: a Fragment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSharon Morris\u003c\/b\u003e, “Vanishing Point”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWilliam Wetmore Story\u003c\/b\u003e, from “A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eColumn and Forum of Trajan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAnthony Hecht\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Cost”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGiorgio Vigolo\u003c\/b\u003e, from “The Hermit of Rome” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWilliam Wordsworth\u003c\/b\u003e, “Rome, Ruins of the Pillar of Trajan”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eMausoleum of Augustus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eVergil\u003c\/b\u003e, from the \u003ci\u003eAeneid\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRosanna Warren\u003c\/b\u003e, “Poetry Reading”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWilliam Whitehead\u003c\/b\u003e, “Mausoleum of Augustus”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePantheon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eKevin Craft\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Pantheon (1)”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Kenney\u003c\/b\u003e, “Design” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Kenney, \u003c\/b\u003e“Annunciation”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eMay Swenson\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Pantheon, Rome”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRoman Fountains\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eLouise Bogan\u003c\/b\u003e, “Roman Fountain”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eElizabeth Jennings\u003c\/b\u003e, “Fountain”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRainer Maria Rilke\u003c\/b\u003e, “Roman Fountain (Borghese)” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eTrain Station (Termini)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRobert Hass\u003c\/b\u003e, “Sunglasses Billboard at Termini Station”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Wilbur\u003c\/b\u003e, “For the New Railway Station in Rome”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eTemple of Portunus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJames Merrill\u003c\/b\u003e, “Graffito”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PICTURE GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eGalleria Borghese\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Kenney\u003c\/b\u003e, “Imaginative Literature 101”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eHannah Sanghee Park, \u003c\/b\u003e“Galleria Borghese”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eGalleria Doria Pamphilj\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Hugo\u003c\/b\u003e, “Brueghel in the Doria”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePalazzo Altemps\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eLouise Bogan\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Sleeping Fury”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eKarl Kirchwey\u003c\/b\u003e, “Ludovisi Throne”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePalazzo Barberini\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eElizabeth Jennings\u003c\/b\u003e, “Caravaggio’s ‘Narcissus’ in Rome”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eKevin Craft\u003c\/b\u003e, “Narcissus in Darkness”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eVilla Giulia (Etruscan Museum)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCarol Light\u003c\/b\u003e, “Notes From the Etruscan Necropolis”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e CHURCHES\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eChiesa Nuova\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGiorgio Vigolo\u003c\/b\u003e, from “The Hermit of Rome”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSan Clemente\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRobert Gittings\u003c\/b\u003e, “Church of San Clemente, Rome” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSanta Cecilia in Trastevere\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCarol Light\u003c\/b\u003e, “A Cavallini Annunciation”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePeter Riley\u003c\/b\u003e, “S. Cecilia in Trastevere”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSant’Ingrazio\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eG. G. Belli\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Ingenuity of Man” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSan Luigi dei Francesi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eF.T. Prince\u003c\/b\u003e, from “Walks in Rome” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSanta Maria del Popolo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThom Gunn\u003c\/b\u003e, “In Santa Maria del Popolo”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSanta Maria in Aracoeli and the Victor Emmanuel Monument\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThomas Bailey Aldrich\u003c\/b\u003e, “Santa Maria in Aracoeli”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSanta Maria in Trastevere\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePeter Riley\u003c\/b\u003e,“Santa Maria in Trastevere”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eDavid St. John\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Bells of Santa Maria in Trastevere”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSaint Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican, and the Vatican Museums\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAubrey Thomas de Vere\u003c\/b\u003e, “St. Peter’s By Moonlight”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThomas Hardy\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJosiah Gilbert Holland\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Laocoön”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSan Pietro in Vincoli\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRobert Browning\u003c\/b\u003e, “The ‘Moses’ of Michael Angelo” \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSanta Prassede\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRobert Browning\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb, St. Praxed’s Church”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e OUTSIDE ROME\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eVilla Adriana\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAdrienne Rich\u003c\/b\u003e, “Villa Adriana”\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFrascati\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eFrances Anne (Fanny) Kemble\u003c\/b\u003e, “Close of Our Summer at Frascati”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eOstia Antica\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJulia Ward Howe\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Ruins of Ostia”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eTivoli and Hadrian’s Villa\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAntony Hecht\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Gardens of the Villa d’Este”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJohn Edmund Reade\u003c\/b\u003e, “Tivoli”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eVia Appia Antica\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron\u003c\/b\u003e, from \u003ci\u003eChilde Harold’s Pilgrimage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRainer Maria Rilke\u003c\/b\u003e, “Roman Campagna”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eElizabeth Stoddard\u003c\/b\u003e, “The Tomb of Cecilia Metella”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eOliver Wendell Holmes\u003c\/b\u003e, “A Roman Aqueduct”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eKarl Kirchwey is an award-winning American poet whose work is strongly influenced by the Greek and Roman past. He is also a book reviewer, creative writing teacher, translator, arts administrator, and literary curator. He has been a director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, directed the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College, served as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, and is currently a professor and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boston University.\u003cb\u003eFOREWORD:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA Poet’s Roman Baedeker\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even the most hurried visitor to Rome cannot help but be struck by the nonchalant energy with which its modern population inhabits a cityscape of seemingly bottomless stratigraphic history and beauty. Traffic buzzes around a complex of Republican temples, below the level of the modern street, part of which has been repurposed as a community shelter for stray cats (a carved stone cat watches from a second-storey lintel nearby in the appropriately named Vicolo della Gatta). The city moves so easily between life and stone, and so gracefully balances its opposites: pagan luxury and decadence, on the one hand, and spiritual transcendence, on the other; the chaos and noise of its major thoroughfares, on the one hand, and the tranquility of the cloister garden in the Church of the Four Crowned Saints or of the frescoed dining room of the Empress Livia in the Palazzo Massimo, on the other. All is comprehended by the buildings of the historic center, their earth tones flaking in the sun and looped by the muddy S-curve of the Tiber River.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The \u003ci\u003eubi sunt \u003c\/i\u003elament over Rome’s fall from greatness is familiar and inevitable. Byron identifies the historical trajectory: ‘‘First Freedom, and then Glory – when that fails, \/ Wealth, vice, corruption – barbarism at last.’’ This contributes to a ‘‘tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression,’’ as one English visitor puts it. But even in the sixteenth century, French poet Joachim du Bellay felt something else in the city, a kind of galvanic energy by which it was constantly reconstructing itself out of its own ruin, with death and life intermingled. ‘‘Compost,’’ the English poet C. Day-Lewis calls it, ‘‘the very type of\/ The hugger-mugger of human growth.’’ American poet Robert Lowell, translating du Bellay, concludes that ‘‘Whatever\/ was fugitive maintains its permanence,’’ and Charles Wright is echoing du Bellay too when he declares, ‘‘Rome in Rome? We’re all leading afterlives\/ of one sort or another . . .’’ Native Romans look on their city with an endless wit and cynicism because of its corruption (as the obscene dialect sonnets of G.G. Belli so splendidly demonstrate); yet they are fiercely proud of Rome too, and they know it is the center of the world. It has never \u003ci\u003estopped \u003c\/i\u003ebeing the center of the world. ‘‘Theatrical, vulgar, rhetorical, fractious, sublime’’: those are Day-Lewis’s adjectives for Rome. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Italian artists may feel the burden of all that previous art and history as almost insurmountable. Pasolini speaks of the ‘‘flimsy crust of our world\/ over the naked universe.’’ But foreigners, including those perched at the American Academy in Rome across the Tiber on the Janiculum Hill, have often found in the city a reliable inspiration, no proof of its ongoing greatness more persuasive than its ability to provide clues to a postmodern and postcolonial world, even across gulfs of time and its own imperial history. Nineteenth-century English poet Samuel Rogers (a celebrity in his day, forgotten in ours) writes that Rome ‘‘Still o’er the mind maintains, from age to age,\/ Her empire undiminished.’’ And the American Julia Ward Howe, author of the ‘‘Battle- Hymn of the Republic,’’ declares in her poem ‘‘The City of My Love’’ that Rome ‘‘rules the age by Beauty’s power,\/As once she ruled by armed might;\/ The Southern sun doth treasure her\/ Deep in his golden heart of light.’’\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The rule of beauty is subtle, even insidious. Rome speaks directly to the body. English poet Elizabeth Jennings exclaims, ‘‘O and the heart is drawn to sense,\/ Eye and the mind are one.’’ Eros is part of the city’s allure, certainly, but so is an ambient violence, whether felt in the brooding hulk of the Coliseum or in a sudden traffic accident. Rome offers you a kaleidoscope of brilliances, but does not care what you do with them, because so many have come before you. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The city is impersonal in a different way from New York: not with a gray indifference, but with a golden one. Yet though the city where Augustus died can hardly be expected to take note of each new arrival, each individual’s encounter with the city is in fact of paramount importance. The scholar William L. Vance writes that ‘‘The unity of any successful image of Rome (of life) is finally that given to it by the perceiver and the experiencer, impressed upon it by a loving act of representation, of imaginative possession through language. . . . Representations are always mostly of oneself; but the complexity and abundance of Rome encourages amplitude of spirit: in any fountain one may find an image of oneself or see a new self coming to life.’’ American poet James Merrill may be reformulating the same idea in more specifically erotic terms when he writes, ‘‘As if to speak were rather\/ Those promenades in Rome\/ Where each cool eye plays moth\/ To flames largely its own.’’ So du Bellay was not mistaken, five hundred years ago: each visitor to Rome is offered the chance to construct a new self from the city’s ‘‘ruined dust.’’ As Wallace Stevens writes in his poem for the philosopher George Santayana entitled ‘‘To An Old Philosopher in Rome,’’ ‘‘The sounds drift in. The buildings are remembered.\/ The life of the city never lets go, nor do you\/ Ever want it to.’’\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Poets’ delight in Rome is in part the delight of a conversation amongst themselves, a conversation with those who have come before. Thus Australian poet A. D. Hope, in ‘‘A Letter From Rome,’’ is speaking not only to any later visitor, but also to his poet-ancestors Byron and Felicia Hemans. And in striving to register Rome’s beauty and decay, poets have resorted to a dazzling array of forms and voices, from A. H. Clough’s dactylic hexameters to Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s prose poetry, from Felicia Hemans’ rustic song to A.D. Hope’s ottava rima, from Byron’s Spenserian stanzas to Thomas Hardy’s trimeters, from Longfellow’s dramatic dialogues to David St. John’s ribald couplets or Anthony Hecht’s sensuously-shaped garden stanzas. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This anthology originated in several itineraries I devised during the three years (2010–13) I served as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome. These tours were offered for the entertainment and edification of the American Academy Trustees during their annual visit to Rome. We travelled on foot or by jitney through Rome’s crowded streets; I would offer some commentary and then read a poem aloud in the presence of the site or monument or artwork that had inspired it. One of the ways Rome tests the affection of its visitors is by its unpredictability. We arrived at a celebrated fountain to find that there was no water in it. Having secured permission in advance, we arrived at a celebrated Caravaggio painting in a church only to be evicted by an elderly woman in black who was unmoved by our protests and indifferent to our permission. On the other hand, reading the last ten stanzas of Shelley’s poem ‘‘Adonais’’ while standing in front of Keats’ grave in the sublime peace of the Protestant Cemetery was an experience I will never forget. And so eventually it occurred to me that others might like to have, between two covers, a collection of poems to illuminate their own wanderings in Rome. The poems are organized, not with a virtual tourist in mind, but with an actual and perambulating one, offering first ‘‘Places,’’ then ‘‘Buildings and Monuments,’’ ‘‘Picture Galleries and Museums,’’ ‘‘Churches,’’ and finally some destinations outside the historic city center. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Given the vast history of Rome, this anthology cannot hope to be comprehensive; it can only hope to be representative. Many people provided valuable suggestions of work to be included, including Giuseppe Albano, Christopher Celenza, Gregory Dowling, Moira Egan, James Galvin, Stephen Greenblatt, Patricia Johnson, A. M. Juster, Christopher Martin, Catherine Payling, Bruce Redford, Roger Woodard, Sarah Wootton, and CharlesWright.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The one unmatchable precedent for this anthology was edited (with characteristic nineteenth-century perseverance and thoroughness) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and published in 1877: a series of some thirty volumes, entitled \u003ci\u003ePoems of Places\u003c\/i\u003e, with three volumes dedicated to Italy, one of them to Rome. More recently, Glyn Pursglove’s anthology \u003ci\u003eRome: A Collection of the Poetry of Place \u003c\/i\u003e(2008) provides a compact selection with a helpful connecting narrative; contemporary poets included are mostly from the U.K. For the New World angle, Miller Williams’ 1980 anthology \u003ci\u003eA Roman Collection: Stories, Poems and Other Good Pieces By the Writing Residents of The American Academy in Rome \u003c\/i\u003eis put in perspective by William L. Vance’s critical and art-historical study in two magisterial volumes entitled \u003ci\u003eAmerica’s Rome \u003c\/i\u003e(1989), which contains an epilogue with a useful survey and discussion of American poets’ encounters with Rome since World War II. John Varriano’s \u003ci\u003eRome: Ten Literary Walking Tours \u003c\/i\u003e(2007) provides a dense collage of responses to the Eternal City by writers from many countries working in different literary genres.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e--Karl Kirchwey","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301432840421,"sku":"NP9781101908013","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781101908013.jpg?v=1767734913","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/poems-of-rome-isbn-9781101908013","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}