Dear Dante : Poems

An imagined conversation with Dante Alighieri written in response to the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death by fellow Catholic poet, lover and master of the sonnet, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell.

In the summer of 2021, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell honored the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, by embarking on a three-month pilgrimage through the 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy, reading one canto per day. This new collection, Dear Dante, is her response to Dante’s epic poem: 39 poems (13 for each of the 3 canticles), plus an additional 3 to serve as prologue and epilogue, all written in the poetic forms Dante loved best: the sonnet and the form he invented, terza rima.

In O’Donnell’s words: “Dear Dante is a species of accompaniment, an act of homage, and a long love letter to Dante. It might also be read as a series of meditations that attest to how dear Dante is to us. The Commedia is our inheritance, a gift granted to readers by our brother poet 700 years ago. These poems are an admittedly small expression of gratitude for that grand and graced gift. Grazie Mille, Maestro.”