La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

in one of his essays, italo calvino suggests that each writer has a writer to whom he or she always returns. i don't know whether or not his statement is true with most writers, but i definitely use dante as my divining rod for what i think of as the poetic. more than just expressing that the medieval situation is closer to contemporary life than is an age like the renaissance or the enlightenment, i suppose that dante's image as the poetic creator, the tightly structured world of the commedia (i like to think of it as geometric), and his playfulness with the poetic form keep me entranced--i never grow tired of rereading his works.