Poems of Rome

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets anthology of poems inspired by the art and architecture of the Eternal City.

Poems of Rome ranges across the centuries and contains the work of poets from many cultures and times, from ancient Rome to contemporary America. Designed to accompany readers visiting the city--whether in person or in imagination--the book is divided into sections by place. Its pages lead the reader from the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, from the Vatican to the Villa Sciarra, from the Pantheon to the Palatine Hill, all seen through the eyes of poets who have been dazzled by these glorious sites for centuries. The poets range from Horace and Ovid to Pasolini and Pavese, and from Byron and Keats and Rilke to James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, Derek Walcott, and Jorie Graham, in a collection of international talent as scintillating as the great city itself.

Karl Kirchwey is an award-winning American poet whose work is strongly influenced by the Greek and Roman past. He is also a book reviewer, creative writing teacher, translator, arts administrator, and literary curator. He has been a director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, directed the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College, served as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, and is currently a professor and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boston University.

  
Foreword: A Poets’ Roman Baedeker

THE ETERNAL AND FALLEN CITY
Joachim du Bellay, Les Antiquitez de Rome
George Gordon, Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Arthur Hugh Clough, from Amours de voyage
Thomas Hardy, “Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter”
Felicia Hemans, “Roman Girl’s Song”
A. D. Hope, from “A Letter From Rome”
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “Rome”
C. Day-Lewis, from “A Letter From Rome”
Martial, Epigrams VII.61
Sharon Morris, “The Hunted”
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The Holiday Over”
Francesco de Quevedo, “Rome Buried In Her Own Ruins”
George Starbuck, “Rome 1965”
Charles Wright, “Roma I”
 
PLACES
Campo de’ Fiori
Moira Egan, “Campo de’ Fiori”
Czeslaw Milosz, “Campo dei Fiori”
Heather McHugh, “What He Thought”

Janiculum Hill
Martial, Epigrams IV.64
Joseph Brodsky, “Porta San Pancrazio”
George Garrett, “Back”
Pier Paolo Pasolini, from “I Too Am…”
David St. John, “The Kama Sutra According to Fiat”
Giorgio Vigolo, from “The Hermit of Rome”
 
Piazza Farnese
Richard Kenney, “At the Pteranodon Baths”
George Walter Thornbury, “Palazzo Farnese”
 
Piazza G. G. Belli
G. G. Belli, “A Very Roman Pastime”
G. G. Belli, “A nice Estend’abit”
James Wright, “Reading a 1979 Inscription on Belli’s Monument”
 
Piazza di Spagna
John Ciardi, “Rome, 1951”
David Constantine, “26 Piazza di Spagna”
Jorie Graham, “Scirocco”
Cesare Pavese, “I Will Pass Through Piazza di Spagna” (translation by Glyn Pursglove)
James Rennell Rodd, “The Keats-Shelley House: Rome 1909”
Hawley Truax, “The Spanish Steps”
Richard Wilbur, “Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning”
 
Protestant Cemetery
Stella Gibbons, “Writ in Water”
Thomas Hardy, “Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats”
John Keats, “This Living Hand”
C. Day-Lewis, from “A Letter From Rome”
Alice Meynell, “On Keats’ Grave”
Christina Rossetti, “On Keats”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “John Keats”
William Kean Seymour, “Cestius and Keats”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “Adonais”
Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Cor Cordium”
Oscar Wilde, “The Grave of Keats”
Oscar Wilde, “The Grave of Shelley”
James Wright, “In View of the Protestant Cemetery in Rome”
 
Roman Forum and Via Sacra
Alfred Austin, from “In the Forum”
Aubrey Thomas de Vere, “The Arch of Titus”
Horace, from Satires I.9
Elizabeth Jennings,“Roman Forum”
Kenneth Koch, “To the Roman Forum”
Ovid, from Tristia III.1
Rosanna Warren, “What Leaves”
James Wright, “The Vestal in the Forum”
 
Via del Corso
Robert Bagg, “Paolo and Francesca”
Christopher Pearse Cranch, from “Rome, Streets of the Corso: the Roman Carnival”
 
Villa Sciarra
Henri Cole, “Arte povera”
David St. John, from “To Pasolini”
Richard Wilbur, “A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra”
 
BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS

Baths of Diocletian
Aubrey Thomas de Vere, “Birds in the Baths of Diocletian”
 
Colosseum
George Gordon, Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from Michael Angelo: a Fragment
Sharon Morris, “Vanishing Point”
William Wetmore Story, from “A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem”
 
Column and Forum of Trajan
Anthony Hecht, “The Cost”
Giorgio Vigolo, from “The Hermit of Rome”
William Wordsworth, “Rome, Ruins of the Pillar of Trajan”
 
Mausoleum of Augustus
Vergil, from the Aeneid
Rosanna Warren, “Poetry Reading”
William Whitehead, “Mausoleum of Augustus”
 
Pantheon
George Gordon, Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Kevin Craft, “The Pantheon (1)”
Richard Kenney, “Design”
Richard Kenney, “Annunciation”
May Swenson, “The Pantheon, Rome”
 
Roman Fountains
Louise Bogan, “Roman Fountain”
Elizabeth Jennings, “Fountain”
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Roman Fountain (Borghese)”
 
Train Station (Termini)
Robert Hass, “Sunglasses Billboard at Termini Station”
Richard Wilbur, “For the New Railway Station in Rome”
 
Temple of Portunus
James Merrill, “Graffito”
 
PICTURE GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS

Galleria Borghese
Richard Kenney, “Imaginative Literature 101”
Hannah Sanghee Park, “Galleria Borghese”
 
Galleria Doria Pamphilj
Richard Hugo, “Brueghel in the Doria”
 
Palazzo Altemps
Louise Bogan, “The Sleeping Fury”
Karl Kirchwey, “Ludovisi Throne”
 
Palazzo Barberini
Elizabeth Jennings, “Caravaggio’s ‘Narcissus’ in Rome”
Kevin Craft, “Narcissus in Darkness”
 
Villa Giulia (Etruscan Museum)
Carol Light, “Notes From the Etruscan Necropolis”
 
CHURCHES
 
Chiesa Nuova
Giorgio Vigolo, from “The Hermit of Rome”

San Clemente
Robert Gittings, “Church of San Clemente, Rome”
 
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
Carol Light, “A Cavallini Annunciation”
Peter Riley, “S. Cecilia in Trastevere”
 
Sant’Ingrazio
G. G. Belli, “The Ingenuity of Man”
 
San Luigi dei Francesi
F.T. Prince, from “Walks in Rome”
 
Santa Maria del Popolo
Thom Gunn, “In Santa Maria del Popolo”
 
Santa Maria in Aracoeli and the Victor Emmanuel Monument
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Santa Maria in Aracoeli”
 
Santa Maria in Trastevere
Peter Riley,“Santa Maria in Trastevere”
David St. John, “The Bells of Santa Maria in Trastevere”
 
Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican, and the Vatican Museums
George Gordon, Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Aubrey Thomas de Vere, “St. Peter’s By Moonlight”
Thomas Hardy, “The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse”
Josiah Gilbert Holland, “The Laocoön”
 
San Pietro in Vincoli
Robert Browning, “The ‘Moses’ of Michael Angelo”
 
Santa Prassede
Robert Browning, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb, St. Praxed’s Church”

OUTSIDE ROME
 
Villa Adriana
Adrienne Rich, “Villa Adriana”
 
Frascati
Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble, “Close of Our Summer at Frascati”
 
Ostia Antica
Julia Ward Howe, “The Ruins of Ostia”
 
Tivoli and Hadrian’s Villa
Antony Hecht, “The Gardens of the Villa d’Este”
John Edmund Reade, “Tivoli”
 
Via Appia Antica
George Gordon, Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Roman Campagna”
Elizabeth Stoddard, “The Tomb of Cecilia Metella”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “A Roman Aqueduct”
 
Acknowledgments