from PurgatorioXIX: Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, Oxford UP, 1911, by Andy Weaver

 

1.

in
chill

  

dawn in
long dusk
in dreams stuttering
in distorted
lack

 

 

 

 

to

 

inveigle 

a
song 

when
in
confusion

 

2. 

disdainful

 

rending

 

 

a
mountain 

 

laden with

here

 

wings of

granite
pinion us
to 

art
an
angel mounted
and misgiving

 

3. 

ancient saw

 

 

King orders
falcon
turns
desire 

to

freedom

 

 

with words

 

 

 

thus poet was

 

 

urned
where
desire was king

 

4. 

pleasure
that creature
whose 

return

 

 

 

plunges

its 

 

burdens seem a feather
ah
Roman 

art

of

 

 

purgation
a bitter penance

 

5. 

 

whelmed
tinguished 

stricted
captive

 

 

but
obeisance
bent
to 

an other

owner

 

discourse

disturbs weeping
with
yonder
its wicked
yonder

 

 

 

PurgatorioXIX is a book-length project that erases numerous translations of Canto 19 from Dante’s Purgatorio. Each section works through a different translation, erasing all but nineteen words from each page (taking each page of the translation as a separate numbered part of the section and preserving the line on which each word appears).

 

Andy Weaver is an Associate Professor of creative writing, contemporary poetry, and poetics at York University in Toronto, Canada. His fourth book of poetry, The Loom, was published in 2024 by the University of Calgary Press. His work has been nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award, and the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize.