From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on four Italian spaces. Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ – a traveller moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice, Rome, the Basilica and Santa Maria Maggiore vividly to life.

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