Word: poem
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...occasionally repeats an effect needlessly. His talent lies in choosing witty, nimble metaphors to give life to the clash of values between his two protagonists. When Tognazzi starts rolling his own cigarettes, expropriating for the purpose a page from the professor's miniature volume of poems by Leopardi, the professor watches a classic poem burn, then resignedly selects for his own smoke "a minor work." Both men understate their roles in virtuoso style, whether locked in ideological combat or coping with a nubile vagrant (Stefania Sandrelli) who tramps the countryside like a one-girl emporium-stealing clothes, swapping souvenirs...
...poem opens with a noted tercet...
...genius for which the bird of the sun is no intemperate metaphor. For seven centuries La Commedia, which in 14,233 lines of lordly language describes the poet's descent into hell and ascent into heaven through the refining fires of purgatory, has been widely considered the greatest poem ever composed; and its author has been virtually deified by the critics. T. S. Eliot pronounced him "the most universal of poets in the modern languages," and added: "Shakespeare gives the greatest width of human passion; Dante the greatest altitude and greatest depth. They divide the modern world between them...
...much cheerier tone, Phyllis McGinley (TIME Cover, June 18) read her poem In Praise of Diversity, ended it with some newly minted last lines...
...Rochelle, her principal showed something less than approval of the new schoolmarm's extracurricular pursuit. One day he summoned her to the office, brandished a copy of The New Yorker with a McGinley poem in it, and confided the hope that this moonlighting would not interfere with her classroom commitments. At the end of the year, the schoolteacher decided not to let classroom commitments hobble her muse. She resigned...