Pushcart 2026 L: Suzanne Cleary, “It Is Said” (poetry) from The Southern Review #60.1

Illustration from Medieval Manuscript of Dante’s Inferno 17 It is said that until 1950 every Italian could recite by heart twenty-five lines of Dante, … Uh oh, she’s doing poetry again…. Yes, but this poem is more of a story. And, as poems do, it layers meanings on top of one another so they are both themselves and part of a whole. The little story is of the interaction between a Pisan shepherd and a professor in 1944. I suspect, if I knew more about Italian history (I’m very curious, for example, about why 1950 seems to be a transition point), I would find more in the setting, but maybe keeping the focus on the primacy of Dante’s Commedia is better. … in 1944 the partisan shepherd stationed at Pisa, ordered to shoot anyone out after dark without ID, would ask the stranger to recite from The Divine Comedy in order to prove himself Italian, the dialect to prove himself local. This elevates the American dramatic/comedic trope of asking a suspected spy who plays first base for the…