The Old Women of Magione

The Old Women of Magione draws on two visits to Italy; a long poem "A Former Franciscan Visits Assisi" develops as a meditation on the author's own involvement with the Franciscans and his decision to leave the religious life. The second part of the book offers a series of poems in which the sensuous powers of a year spent in Italy transform the poet's usual preoccupations into something rich and strange, culminating with the metamorphosis of the old women of an Umbrian town into angels.