Dante’s House

Richard Greene’s first collection since winning the 2010 Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, take as their subject the rumors, misunderstandings and half-truths that often comprise our knowledge of others. With an astonishing gift for capturing states of feeling, Greene’s new poems movingly reflect on the “presence and absence, glory and disarray” of our flawed life, moving from his mother’s oil paintings to harrowing conditions at a corrections facility to recollections of a much-loved mentor. The capstone of the book is the magnificent title poem. Written in fluent, colloquial terza rima and set in sun-drenched Siena during the frenzied pageantry of Il Palio-the Italian city’s bi-annual horse race-it is a brilliant, beautifully realized achievement that consolidates Greene’s reputation as an emerging master of narrative verse.