Cervantes [wrote](https://people.duke.edu/%7Egarci/garcitextos/bilingues/CERVANTES-MD/NOVELAS-EJEMPLARES/COLOQUIO-PERROS.HTM) satirically of a poet who had written— > "that part of the history of King Arthur of England which > Archbishop Turpin left unwritten, together with the history of the quest of the Holy Grail; > and all in heroic verse, part in rhymes and part in blank verse; but entirely dactylically—I > mean in dactylic noun substantives, without admitting any verb whatsoever." I...| Arthur O’Dwyer
Previously: ["A poem all in dactylic noun substantives, part 1"](/blog/2025/08/28/sin-admitir-verbo-alguno/) (2025-08-28). Cervantes [wrote](https://people.duke.edu/%7Egarci/garcitextos/bilingues/CERVANTES-MD/NOVELAS-EJEMPLARES/COLOQUIO-PERROS.HTM) satirically of a poet who had written— > "that part of the history of King Arthur of England which > Archbishop Turpin left unwritten, together with the history of the quest of the Holy Grail; > and all in heroic verse, part in rhymes and part in...| Arthur O’Dwyer
In Cervantes’ Coloquio de los perros (published 1613), a dog recounts all the colorful characters he’s met in his life. One is this frustrated poet: “I have strictly observed the rule laid down by Horace in his Poetica not to bring to light any work until ten years after it has been composed. Now I have a work on which I was engaged for twenty years, and which has lain by me for twelve […] a lofty, sonorous, heroic poem, delectable and full of matter; and yet I cannot find a prince to...| Arthur O’Dwyer
Around New Year’s, while our book club was reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, I serendipitously happened across a reference in Douglas Hofstadter’s Le ton beau de Marot (page 125) to a book of poetry by Giuseppe Varaldo titled All’alba Shahrazad andrà ammazzata (“Shahrazad Shall Hang at Dawn”). Hofstadter writes: “In his astonishing tour de force of a book, Varaldo takes roughly fifty classics of Western literature and synopsizes each one in a perfectly constructed classical Italia...| Arthur O’Dwyer