Thinking About Dante<\/p>\n
lo Alighieri has got off au revoir to all that<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Samuel Beckett<\/span><\/p>\n he yearns for the new, simply, not the 10th August 2021<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Robert Sheppard has just completed the third book of his ‘English Strain’ project. The first two books are available: The English Strain<\/em> from Shearsman; Bad Idea<\/em> from Knives Forks and Spoons. These sets mainly transpose sonnets of the English Petrarchan tradition, while tracing ‘British Standards’, the title of book three, during the age of immiseration represented by Brexit and Covid. Dantes (Alighieri and Rossetti) narrowly missed being targetted. The Robert Sheppard Companion<\/em> edited by James Byrne and Christopher Madden is a book of essays on his work, from Shearsman. He lives in Liverpool, and is Emeritus Professor at Edge Hill University. He blogs at robertsheppard.blogspot.com.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thinking About Dante lo Alighieri has got off au revoir to all that Samuel Beckett he yearns for the new, simply, not the novel this or that, but the \u2018new, now\u2019 as he styles it. He tries to speak of truth but nobody heeds, as though he\u2019s out of date, rather than out of patience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[63,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/images-2.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-1Kg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6712"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7522,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions\/7522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nnovel this or that, but the \u2018new, now\u2019
\nas he styles it. He tries to speak of truth
\nbut nobody heeds, as though he\u2019s
\nout of date, rather than out of patience
\nbridges collapse, tunnels
\ntunnel. He\u2019s amazed at this maze
\nall the way to the pub, guzzling
\nuntil sundown and moonrise, turning
\nthe thousand pages that cover the first 35
\nyears of our hero, and peering at his piratical
\nportrait: that singular eye
\nand his single woman startle with their remote
\nbeauty. Out in the territory, he\u2019s wary
\nof young men with slavering death dogs
\npulling at taut leads, of wing\u00e9d people
\nwho flutter too close. He\u2019s also aware
\ntree pollen is his biggest challenge
\nfinding himself in the middle of a dark wood
\nhe gags under the canopies, caught in the throat
\nthere\u2019s nothing going on in the world: nothing
\ngoing on in his writing. He doesn\u2019t want
\nto write about the five happy harpies
\njerking round the excited reclining woman
\n(and neither do they). Angels applaud
\nbut guard their naked faces from eternal light
\nhe remembers Chillerton Road swings
\nas a cold place, its \u2018chill\u2019 factor
\nin its very name. He remembers the rain
\nthe Walkman playing Bud Powell, while
\nthe child played in puddles and on swings
\nin his wild and uncoordinated way. In
\nhis memory, it is always dusk \u2013 as
\nit could never always have been. He
\nsits in the pub thinking about Dante
\nhis vision of the world. He decides to write
\n(but knows he won\u2019t) eternal versions of
\nthe opening triplet of La Commedia:
\n\u2018midway through the Black Forest Gateau
\nI threw up over you! Such things move
\nthe moon and the stars and the sun!\u2019
\nhe looks at himself through his words
\ncatches an eye between the letter-forms
\nwhat it has seen, what it has known
\nis quite distinct from what it says:
\nclutch the dry openings of deferred
\ningratitude. His flesh-mask
\nslips. In its sunken slits
\nthe spectral dream of the eyes is
\nringed with wrinkled ridges. He faces
\ntoads and cupids in equal measure. Like
\na retro-mayor in an ancient shire, Dante denounces
\ntransgender scarecrows on unicorn farms, as he
\nrepopulates the cornices for \u2018our\u2019 times
\nhe carries on his life in comic book form
\nneither funny nor graphic when viewed from
\nthis sphere. Between frames an ideal \u2018he\u2019
\nslips into the world where the rest of us laugh<\/p>\nClick here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"