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Two Cities
From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on two cities, Venice and Rome—each a work of art, both a monument to the past—and on how love and loss shape places and spaces.
Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.
The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.
Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.
The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.
112 pages, Paperback
Published June 9, 2020
3 people are currently reading
262 people want to read
About the author
Cynthia Zarin
21 books31 followersCynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, as well five books for children and a collection of essays. She teaches at Yale and lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 4, 2023
I’ve been saving this one for when I move to Italy and it was worth the wait; I associated with the author a great deal - still being a tourist but not feeling quite as one.
On wandering around sensibly to one’s surroundings, trying to get hold of all the dense stimuli but getting lost in them in the meantime.
Truly charming and meant to be reread. I know I will. at least each time I visit Venice or Rome.
On wandering around sensibly to one’s surroundings, trying to get hold of all the dense stimuli but getting lost in them in the meantime.
Truly charming and meant to be reread. I know I will. at least each time I visit Venice or Rome.
September 16, 2021
Stunning and timeless. To be reread prior to any travel
July 27, 2023
muligvis bedre hvis læst i rom eller venedig
October 13, 2021
“There is no one with whom I have been to Venice that I am now on speaking terms, as if one caprice of the city is to induce fever dreams from which there is no return.”
“As usual, do I read into it, turning a complicated story into a lullaby? A week from now, when a friend comes to visit, he will chide me for tears that come to my eyes, and say, ‘Remember, this was hell disguised as heaven.’”
a deeply personal meditation on the lived experience and metaphorical and allegorical possibilities of Venice and Rome, two of the most enigmatic and truly special places on earth. Zarin writes in such an evocative and poetic way that makes me feel like I’m back in my favorite country, and so naturally I really enjoyed this small book.
“As usual, do I read into it, turning a complicated story into a lullaby? A week from now, when a friend comes to visit, he will chide me for tears that come to my eyes, and say, ‘Remember, this was hell disguised as heaven.’”
a deeply personal meditation on the lived experience and metaphorical and allegorical possibilities of Venice and Rome, two of the most enigmatic and truly special places on earth. Zarin writes in such an evocative and poetic way that makes me feel like I’m back in my favorite country, and so naturally I really enjoyed this small book.
April 25, 2025
random book shop pull. i found the second section more captivating than the first. it left me yearning for rome while my bank account wags its finger in my face. probably for the best; i too would be harrassed by a ghost.
September 24, 2023
This book is part of the ekphrasis series put out by David Zwirner Books, and that word always makes me think of my freshman year of college, about a classroom with an instructor talking about Homer. I remember the instructor asking, rhetorically, what ekphrasis does and then I remember him answering: "it fucking interrupts the action." (This was more than twenty years ago, I may not be remembering exactly.) Per
The Cambridge Guide to Homer
, "ekphrasis is the poetic device of describing one type of art within another." (Like: the description of a piece of visual art in a work of literature.) Per the blurb in the back of this book, ekphrasis aims "to bring to an audience the experiential and visceral impact of the subject." Or subjects, in this case: the two cities of the title, which are Venice and Rome.
The first section of the book, Serene, is about Venice, and made me think a bit of Pitch Dark by Renata Adler, in that it's about the end, maybe, of an affair. Something about the phrasing, how in the first page of this section Zarin says "In the first place, it was the wrong time," and then "In the second place, I did not want to go at all." (Adler: "To begin with, I almost went, alone, to Graham Island.") Zarin talks about past trips to Venice, and a solo trip she's taking; how she'd "fallen in love with an old friend" six months before and is now in Venice to get some space or perspective or solace or solitude. Or, as she puts it: "I had come to Venice because I was preparing to break my own heart and I needed another version of love." Venice is described as "the city where one is lost at any time of the day, winter or summer," so it's an apt place for this kind of trip. Zarin describes the interiors of churches: their paintings and their sculptures. She also describes bridges, water, light, restaurants, shops, dogs, people, the graves at San Michele. There is a lot of loveliness, like this: "On the way back to the pensione, after an evening out, the water under the Ponte Accademia is black, then azure, the lights of the vaporetto turning the waves sunset colors until it disappears in the direction of Ca'Rezzonico."
And then there's Rome, where (Zarin tells us) the writer Elizabeth Bowen stayed for three months in 1953, writing to and thinking about her lover. (The affair had lasted for years then, and would, Zarin tells us, last for decades more.) So there's Bowen thinking about her lover, and Zarin thinking about her former lover, her "ghost," about time spent with him in Rome, and how he taught her the words for things in Italian. But there are memories of other trips to Rome, too, and the sights of the current trip: contemporary art in old buildings, parchment drawings from the 1300s, and history, so much history: "Rome is like a great railway station, in which the past and the present are coming and going." Rome is also "a city built on portents and omens, seen through centuries of dreams," where "the air smells of trash and salt" and sometimes honeysuckle. I love this, from when Zarin is talking about her first trip to Rome, when she was nineteen: "the starburst geometry of the streets converging, the hum of the pigeons, the hawkers, and the sun on the spumes of the fountain, the falling water that Keats heard from his deathbed." And this: "everyone's Rome is their own, a mapped and delineated interior city." (Isn't that true of all cities, though?)
Anyway: I really liked this book and it was excellent to read over the course of two days in preparation for my own upcoming trip to Italy, which will include time spent in both Venice and Rome. I'm sure I'll read it again at some point after I'm back.
The first section of the book, Serene, is about Venice, and made me think a bit of Pitch Dark by Renata Adler, in that it's about the end, maybe, of an affair. Something about the phrasing, how in the first page of this section Zarin says "In the first place, it was the wrong time," and then "In the second place, I did not want to go at all." (Adler: "To begin with, I almost went, alone, to Graham Island.") Zarin talks about past trips to Venice, and a solo trip she's taking; how she'd "fallen in love with an old friend" six months before and is now in Venice to get some space or perspective or solace or solitude. Or, as she puts it: "I had come to Venice because I was preparing to break my own heart and I needed another version of love." Venice is described as "the city where one is lost at any time of the day, winter or summer," so it's an apt place for this kind of trip. Zarin describes the interiors of churches: their paintings and their sculptures. She also describes bridges, water, light, restaurants, shops, dogs, people, the graves at San Michele. There is a lot of loveliness, like this: "On the way back to the pensione, after an evening out, the water under the Ponte Accademia is black, then azure, the lights of the vaporetto turning the waves sunset colors until it disappears in the direction of Ca'Rezzonico."
And then there's Rome, where (Zarin tells us) the writer Elizabeth Bowen stayed for three months in 1953, writing to and thinking about her lover. (The affair had lasted for years then, and would, Zarin tells us, last for decades more.) So there's Bowen thinking about her lover, and Zarin thinking about her former lover, her "ghost," about time spent with him in Rome, and how he taught her the words for things in Italian. But there are memories of other trips to Rome, too, and the sights of the current trip: contemporary art in old buildings, parchment drawings from the 1300s, and history, so much history: "Rome is like a great railway station, in which the past and the present are coming and going." Rome is also "a city built on portents and omens, seen through centuries of dreams," where "the air smells of trash and salt" and sometimes honeysuckle. I love this, from when Zarin is talking about her first trip to Rome, when she was nineteen: "the starburst geometry of the streets converging, the hum of the pigeons, the hawkers, and the sun on the spumes of the fountain, the falling water that Keats heard from his deathbed." And this: "everyone's Rome is their own, a mapped and delineated interior city." (Isn't that true of all cities, though?)
Anyway: I really liked this book and it was excellent to read over the course of two days in preparation for my own upcoming trip to Italy, which will include time spent in both Venice and Rome. I'm sure I'll read it again at some point after I'm back.
November 22, 2023
i tried starting with Serene. i cannot finish this book with a straight face, i'm rolling my eyes a lot. the style in which it's written is too melodramatic. everything is a tragedy, or an average complainy mess of a very self-centred person with very shallow worries. i really did not like it, i was expecting a nice descriptive travel-inspired journal, focused on notes on architecture and city life, and i was disappointed.
..on another note, i used this book to do improv acting, to gain range of expression, and i found it quite useful for this, since it's so melodramatic, with a lot of insinuated thoughts that are not expressed clearly or connected well, forcing you to get creative and complete the sentences/paragraphs to paint a better picture of the characters. it worked like this for me, so i added 1 star for that...even though i would have initially rated it 1 star, as a normal book, for general lecture.
Basilica and Angels where better, less melodrama, but still there, read them sparsely, since they were so short. Browsed through Rome, and spotted the same problem, so i dropped the book completely at that point.
Note: my book's name is "In Italy", but it's about Venice and Rome as well, there is no book named "In Italy" here by this author, and it says in the Acknowledgements that "In Italy" contains "Two Cities", plus the two very short stories Angels and Basilica, published in The Paris Review, so not a major difference, the main content of the book is still made up of Serene and Rome.
..on another note, i used this book to do improv acting, to gain range of expression, and i found it quite useful for this, since it's so melodramatic, with a lot of insinuated thoughts that are not expressed clearly or connected well, forcing you to get creative and complete the sentences/paragraphs to paint a better picture of the characters. it worked like this for me, so i added 1 star for that...even though i would have initially rated it 1 star, as a normal book, for general lecture.
Basilica and Angels where better, less melodrama, but still there, read them sparsely, since they were so short. Browsed through Rome, and spotted the same problem, so i dropped the book completely at that point.
Note: my book's name is "In Italy", but it's about Venice and Rome as well, there is no book named "In Italy" here by this author, and it says in the Acknowledgements that "In Italy" contains "Two Cities", plus the two very short stories Angels and Basilica, published in The Paris Review, so not a major difference, the main content of the book is still made up of Serene and Rome.
May 20, 2024
There’s something aimless and free about these two stories, while you can also tell the author was riddled with self doubt and existentialism upon writing them. They both mainly deal with the author reckoning with her own independence and heartbreak during her solo travels, and she articulates what this loneliness and freedom can feel like in a beautiful way. I really loved the first story on Venice, the Rome one is a little more meandering. With both, the cities are vehicles to peer into the author’s mind and history but also given respect and reverence that comes from someone who is not just a tourist of both places. Definitely will give this a reread in a couple years.
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February 7, 2023another one for the sharon olds / mary oliver library - it's all beautiful but then we're trying on dresses in valentino, but look, something about it turned me off way less than sharon olds' gold bricks. wanna reread this one in italy!
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March 19, 2022The best travel book I’ve ever got to read. Will be coming back to this every time I miss Venice.
August 11, 2023
I think I would’ve liked it more on vacation. 3.5. Beautiful writing, vivid images. Never really sustained an emotional connection with the material tho I guess.
August 18, 2023
Im sure someone older than me might like this, but i found it extremely boring a hard to follow, I hardly ever don't finish a book but I couldn't finish this short novel.
November 1, 2023
I read ‘Italy’ by Cynthia Zarin (two more very short essays, due to be published in January 2024)
Lovely, maybe 5 stars if I’d been to Italy
Lovely, maybe 5 stars if I’d been to Italy
June 23, 2024
THE BEST READ IN TRANSIT!!!!
March 9, 2025
Bought from the Phillips Museum store in May 2023. Read in part on my own in an AirBnb on Florida Avenue. Will always be associated with that time of my life.
July 1, 2025
Read this over a weekend in Venice. Couldn’t have chosen a better book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews