'As I write, I have before me Clive James's translation of The Divine Comedy, just out from Liveright, a division of W.W. Norton, where James and I both have the superb Robert Weil as an editor. It marks a new challenge - and represents years of hard work: first in mastering Italian, then in composing in modified quatrains with masculine rhymes. Now his readers will have even more to enjoy.' (Abstract)