Dante in China

In John Barr's poems, the ancient masters encounter the modern world. Dante on a beach in China beholds the Inferno: Flaring well gas night and day, / towers rise as if to say, / Pollution can be beautiful. Bachs final fugue informs all of nature. Villon is admonished by an aging courtesan. Aristotle finds Demagogues are the insects of politics. / Like water beetles they stay afloat / on surface tension, they taxi on iridescence. And his afterlife: When three-headed Cerberus greeted him / Socrates replied: I wont need / an attack dog, thank you. I married one.