The Lyrical Descent. (Original writings and translation)

The common thread of this collection is negotiation. A speaker's particular plane of imagination may negotiate its relationship to the physical world. Eventually one or the other becomes dominant, and the bond is secure. The Cavalcanti translations parleyed with a distant, opaque mind and its archaic views of love, as well as with traditional verse forms. The poems also negotiate with the creative past; they inhabit stories, the lives of artists, works of art. A duel ensues between the past's power to mold a living personality, and the power of a contemporary pen to do what it likes with the truth of the past.