The Hours of Fiammetta / A Sonnet Sequence

A linked sonnet sequence voiced by a feminine persona who passes through reverie, longing, disillusion and eventual reconciliation. The poems juxtapose two traditions of womanhood—the maternal and the solitary visionary—while repeatedly returning to themes of love, art, mortality and the tension between soul and body. Imagery ranges from mythic scenes and art-historical allusions to intimate confessions, and the sequence charts a psychological movement from romantic idealism into darkness and back toward a steadier, more comprehensive acceptance of love’s ambiguities. Formal shifts in rhythm and syntax mirror the speaker’s turmoil, producing a music of bewilderment that resolves into quiet illumination.