Publisher's Synopsis
This translation of Dante's lyrics follows the Barbi format and contains 118 poems. It seeks to follow the central issue of Dante's aesthetic: championing vernacular poetry. Dante relied on his vernacular and so these translations rely on the common language of today's speech, free verse, and open form, so as to give English readers an experience of Dante that is as contemporary to us as his poetic moment was to him. The original Italian appears on the facing pages of the text.
