From Caravaggio’s Rome to the tombs of Florence, these vivid poems explore the sensual textures of art, desire, and mortal history.
A rich debut collection from a promising new poet -- selected by Campbell McGrath as a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series Open Competition
The volume gathers an ambitious sequence of poems, tracing how sacred relics, Caravaggio’s canvases, and the Medici tombs register both violence and grace. Florence and Rome frame these historical encounters, from the cloister of San Marco to the preserved cape of Savonarola.
Norton extends this inquiry into twentieth-century memory, observing a father’s quiet death in Philadelphia alongside the austere disciplines of Zen Buddhism.
For more than twenty-five years, the National Poetry Series has sought out and discovered new voices, helping to launch the careers of such luminaries as the former poet laureate Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Stephen Dobyns, Mark Levine, and Dionisio Martinez.
- Ekphrastic Poetry: Norton engages masterworks across European art, from Domenico Ghirlandaio’s refectory fresco of the Last Supper to Michelangelo’s captive slaves emerging from raw stone.
- Historical Excavations: Dramatic monologues and investigative verses uncover forgotten narratives, including the secret burial of Dante’s bones in Ravenna to shield them from Napoleonic conquest.
- LGBTQ Themes: Lyric sequences explore queer desire, gender transgression, and the bodily boundaries of intimacy across classical myth, modern romance, and feminist thought.
- Literary Homage: Norton converses directly with twentieth-century aesthetic forebears, crafting inventive formal tributes to Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, and Denise Levertov.