In conjunction with the Irish Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney’s visit to the American Academy in Rome as William B. Hart Poet-in-Residence, the American Academy in Rome will present an AAR Gallery show based on the Arion Press (San Francisco) fine arts letterpress edition entitled Stone From Delphi, featuring Heaney’s poems on classical subjects accompanied by watercolors by the American artist and AAR Advisor Wendy Artin. As the critic Helen Vendler makes clear in her introductory essay to that volume, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Sophocles, and Aeschylus have all been important influences on Seamus Heaney; the forty-nine poems included in the volume are drawn from seventeen of Heaney’s books, from 1966 to the present. Artin’s thirty-five meticulous and virtuosic watercolors of classical statues embodying subjects referred to in Heaney’s poems renew the ancient conversation between the visual arts and poetry.

This exhibition has been made possible with the support of Arion Press. It will be open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 4:00 to 7:00pm until June 3, 2013.