The Banquet by Stav Poleg
Carcanet Press
Published 30th October 2025.
The Banquet * It was a difficult autumn, I reached for Dante because I needed to walk out, needed to be taken by the dark, unreliable highway that links ethics to knowledge. All winter I found myself running in the spiralling evenings and streets of Florence”” a city haunted by longing”” a road leading inwards and outwards”” shaken with grief. * The Banquet follows Dante's Convivio and Purgatorio, from the streets of Florence to the heartbreak and darkness of exile, where language seems to be the only material left with which memories can be recreated and new landscapes formed. In Dante's Convivio (meaning Banquet) the vernacular takes centre stage as the ultimate nourishing force for studying, creating, and finding solace in. Stav Poleg's The Banquet explores the fragile, intricate links between language and longing”” how words can reconstruct great cities out of memories and dreams, tear them apart, or carry them from one place to another, as if each city, house and chamber were made of sonic and visual images rather than walls and bricks. Knowledge as an ideal concept”” its promise to lead and propel us forward”” is at the heart of the collection. In the Convivio and Divine Comedy, Dante shows us time and again that intellectual or artistic practice is never a guarantee against moral depravity. The poems in The Banquet move between the worlds of philosophy, theatre and poetry”” from Dante's Florence to Wittgenstein's Cambridge; from Tom Stoppard's theatre stage to the harsh landscapes of Rimbaud's poetry”” in seeking to explore the ever-growing tensions between words and action, knowledge and ethics.
The Banquet * It was a difficult autumn, I reached for Dante because I needed to walk out, needed to be taken by the dark, unreliable highway that links ethics to knowledge. All winter I found myself running in the spiralling evenings and streets of Florence”” a city haunted by longing”” a road leading inwards and outwards”” shaken with grief. * The Banquet follows Dante's Convivio and Purgatorio, from the streets of Florence to the heartbreak and darkness of exile, where language seems to be the only material left with which memories can be recreated and new landscapes formed. In Dante's Convivio (meaning Banquet) the vernacular takes centre stage as the ultimate nourishing force for studying, creating, and finding solace in. Stav Poleg's The Banquet explores the fragile, intricate links between language and longing”” how words can reconstruct great cities out of memories and dreams, tear them apart, or carry them from one place to another, as if each city, house and chamber were made of sonic and visual images rather than walls and bricks. Knowledge as an ideal concept”” its promise to lead and propel us forward”” is at the heart of the collection. In the Convivio and Divine Comedy, Dante shows us time and again that intellectual or artistic practice is never a guarantee against moral depravity. The poems in The Banquet move between the worlds of philosophy, theatre and poetry”” from Dante's Florence to Wittgenstein's Cambridge; from Tom Stoppard's theatre stage to the harsh landscapes of Rimbaud's poetry”” in seeking to explore the ever-growing tensions between words and action, knowledge and ethics.
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