Reading notes

• The Book of Hours §77 Venice

  Venice — the maritime republic and city of painters, first of the art-cities and holy places this poem says God will 'inherit.'

• New Poems: The Other Part §59 VENEDIG

  Venice, the maritime state whose hoarded 'darkness' is kept as a counterweight to the gold of San Marco.

• The Last Ones §20 Venice

  The lagoon city; the Princess is keeping her first winter there, among its old palaces.

• Early Poems §144 marble city

  Venice, entered by gondola; the whole short sequence (sections 144-146) is a Venice nocturne of dead doges and sleeping palaces.

• Stories of God §77 Venice

  The lagoon city; setting of the tale the narrator is about to tell.

• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge §285 Venice

  The Italian lagoon city; Brahe says Saint-Germain's eyes could have 'seen Venice into this room' until it stood there like the table. It returns as the setting of Abelone's later songs.

• New Poems §56 Venice's sun

  The poem is spoken by a courtesan of Renaissance Venice, who bleaches her hair gold in the sun; her brows are 'like the bridges' over the canals.