2 responses to “Sprezzatura”

1. 

   Mclibby

   January 24, 2021

   I never heard the word sprezzatura before and I love it: and I love the poem too. If you ever get a tiny house with a sunny garden in a place where people name their properties Sprezzatura would be a good name for yours.

   (I know people name their properties here too but in the US it always seems pretentious.)

   And “Minnow” which I don’t think I commented on moved me deeply.

   Thank you, Lucinda!

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2. 

   Elizabeth Delmonico

   January 24, 2021

   Hey, “Sprezzatura” has been one of my favorite words for half a century. You do it justice, with your colorfull and colorless metaphors. Good old Sir Philip Sidney had a lot of it–a courtier who gave his last sip of water to a common soldier as they both lay dying, saying something like, “Thy need is greater than mine.” Sidney was 31, and had already written my favorite sonnet sequence plus a “Defense of Poetry,” plus a huge romance titled ARCADIA, which featured a cross-dressing hero, a befuddled king, a randy old queen named Gynecia, and lots of shepherds.

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