Arts

I share below (without comment...which is a personal act that belongs in the real, not the virtual world), an evolving, far from exhaustive, but from an emotional point-of-view, highly illustrative and authentic selection of my favourite poetry and lyrics...

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And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal

- from Tom Traubert's Blues, by Tom Waits

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(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift

- The Uses of Sorrow, by Mary Oliver

Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is an epic poem written in the early 14th century, divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Inferno:

• Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest and guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
• The pair descends through the nine circles of Hell, each representing different sins and their corresponding punishments.
• Notable figures from history and mythology are encountered, and Dante learns about the consequences of sin.
• Satan resides at the centre of Hell, and Dante and Virgil eventually climb down Satan's body to reach the other side of the Earth.

Purgatorio:

To The Globe in 2018 to visit the exhibition and then watch Taming of the Shrew as a groundling. Great fun.

However, my relationship with the Bard's works has always been a complicated one. Over time, I will try to develop some of my thoughts, inspirations and reservations here.

For now, some others' more interesting observations:

• According to Harold Bloom, Shakespeare invented modern humanity. If this seems to go too far, he at least captured human complexity with greater inventive skill than any English writer before him, and possibly after.