Reviews
Stephen Osborne

Fresh Hell

Tags

A new translation of Dante’s Inferno by the American poet Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf Press) has been well received by most critics, and less favourably by some who are offended by references to Woody Allen, Virginia Woolf, Bob Dylan, T.S. Eliot, Jell-O, Boy Scouts, South Park, Pink Floyd, Star Trek, etc., that seem to me to be flourishes renewing one’s attention to the sometimes recondite aspects of the Dantean view of hell. The book is well laid out and lavishly illustrated by Henrik Drescher, whose work is appropriately gritty and scratchy. The endnotes to each canto are worth a separate read. In the ninth circle, for instance, Bang points out that “commentators vary on whether the giants standing in the pit with Satan are standing on the bottom of the pit, or on the ledge surrounding it.” The only flaw in the book is the paper it’s printed on: a dense, coated sheet cold to the touch and far too heavy for 340 pages of poetry: one’s wrists complain.

No items found.

Stephen Osborne

Stephen Osborne is a co-founder and contributing publisher of Geist. He is the award-winning writer of Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the New World and dozens of shorter works, many of which can be read at geist.com.


SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU

Reviews
Maryanna Gabriel

More Than one way to hang a man

Review of "Hangman: The True Story of Canada’s First Executioner" by Julie Burtinshaw.

Reviews
Kendra Heinz

Big Dread at West Ed

Review of "Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning" by Kate Black.

Reviews
Meandricus

Wordy goodness

Review of "Rearrangements" by Natan Last, published in The New Yorker December 2023.