Penelope's Web

Selected Poems - Second Edition 2026
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Cover Art: Dora Wheeler, Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night, 1886, silk embroidery with silk thread (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
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Stefania Lucchetti is an Italian award-winning poet and essayist. Bilingual in Italian and English, she writes poetry of lyrical refinement and contemporary relevance. Lucchetti is among the most read Italian contemporary poets worldwide.
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Penelope's Web is a sophisticated poetry collection which draws upon the timeless power of mythological figures, weaving together ancient narratives with the intimate textures of contemporary experience. The collection includes Stefania Lucchetti's poems dedicated to mythology figures which have been originally published in other larger collections. It is bilingual with the English and Italian version of each poem side by side,

Stefania Lucchetti's verses explore the inner lives and legacies of goddesses, gods, heroines, heroes, and mortals, revealing the profound emotional currents which connect their stories to modern existence. Lucchetti's words capture the depth of longing, resilience, and transformation, breathing life into stories as old as time and yet intimate and personal.

Each poem becomes a meeting place between the mythic and the human, the universal and the intimate, where longing, resilience, transformation, and desire echo through time. Through her thoughtful and evocative language, Lucchetti illuminates the parallels between divine archetypes and everyday emotions, offering readers a lens through which myth becomes both mirror and metaphor.

Aphrodite, Artemis, Ariadne, Penelope, Ulysses, Hekate, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Medusa, the Crone, Eve, Lilith, Anubis, and Bilquis are among the mythological figures featured in this collection, accompanied by poems dedicated tarot archetypes which further enrich its symbolic landscape.

With Penelope's Web, readers are invited to enter a lyrical realm where classical figures speak in new voices, where ancient tales resonate with present-day meaning, and where every line serves as a connecting thread to the larger human story.