Publisher Description
Robert Pinsky's new verse translation of the Inferno makes it clear to the contemporary listener, as no other in English has done, why Dante is universally considered a poet of great power, intensity, and strength. This critically acclaimed translation was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award given by the Academy of American Poets. Well versed, rapid, and various in style, the Inferno is narrated by Pinsky and three other leading poets: Seamus Heaney, Frank Bidart, and Louise Glück. Canto XXI (The Lawyers) (detail), 1992. Michael Mazur, 1935-2009. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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About Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), one of the greatest poets in the Italian language, was born in Florence and later banished from there for his political activities. His philosophical-political poem La Commedia, later called La Divina Commedia, is considered a masterpiece of world literature.
About the Narrators
Louise Glück (1943-2023) was the author of two collections of essays and thirteen books of poems. Her many awards included the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild Iris, the National Book Award for Faithful and Virtuous Night, the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Triumph of Achilles, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poems 1962–2012, and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. She taught at Yale University and Stanford University.
Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, translator, and lecturer. He won numerous awards, including the PEN Translation Prize and two Whitbread Prizes. In 1995 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published many collections of poetry and prose, as well as numerous translations, the best known of which was his translation of Beowulf, which became a New York Times bestseller in 1999.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.