Dante in China

In John Barr's poems, the ancient masters encounter the modern world. Dante on a beach in China beholds the Inferno: "e;Flaring well gas night and day, / towers rise as if to say, / Pollution can be beautiful."e; Bach's final fugue informs all of nature. Villon is admonished by an aging courtesan. Aristotle finds "e;Demagogues are the insects of politics. / Like water beetles they stay afloat / on surface tension, they taxi on iridescence."e; And his afterlife: "e;When three-headed Cerberus greeted him / Socrates replied: I won't need / an attack dog, thankyou. I married one.