Poetry Friday: Mythology

I was looking for poetry at the library and found this book: Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology. There are many good poems in this collection. Here's one of them:

Parable of the Hostages

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
wants to go home, back
to that bony island; everyone wants a little more
of what there is in Troy, more
life on the edge, that sense of every day as being
packed with surprises. But how to explain this
to the ones at home to whom
fighting a war is a plausible
excuse for absence, whereas
exploring one’s capacity for diversion
is not. Well, this can be faced
later; these
are men of action, ready to leave
insight to the women and children.

. . .

There on the beach, discussing the various
timetables for getting home, no one believed
it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca;
no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas—oh unanswerable
affliction of the human heart: how to divide
the world’s beauty into acceptable
and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,
how could the Greeks know
they were hostages already: who once
delays the journey is
already enthralled; how could they know
that of their small number
some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,
some by sleep, some by music?

You can read the whole poem, including the middle that I left out, here.


I always enjoy poetry based on mythology, and I had been thinking of writing something about Odysseus and Penelope, since my husband and I are a long way apart right now. (After a breakup in college I wrote a terrible poem about Dido and Aeneas. What can I say? Sometimes I am a bit dramatic.) There were several poems in the book about Odysseus and Penelope, all much more cerebral than mine. I started out feeling tragic and ended up just enjoying Penelope. It was so much fun to write something light and ironic after all the impassioned pieces about me-me-me I've been doing lately. As I told my husband when I sent it to him, don't worry; it's not autobiographical. I don't have any suitors and this isn't what I think of my husband. You can look at several of my recent Poetry Friday posts for sappiness about him. (In case you aren't up on the story of Odysseus and Penelope, here's some information about it.)


Penelope Thinks it Over

Penelope thinks twenty years is pushing it,
With never a word from Odysseus
Except for vague rumors of what a hero he is.

Penelope wonders how she will ever get Telemachus to behave.
She tells him about how much his father loves him
And how when Palamades put baby Telemachus in front of the plough
Odysseus quit playing crazy and grabbed his son.
But that story gets old fast
Especially since there are no others to tell except the long story of absence.

Penelope hates crafts.
She makes such a mess every day
That she has to rip all her work out at night.
If only she could get that sewing project finished!

Penelope walks on the beach,
The white, white sands of Ithaka.
She wishes she had someone to talk to.
She remembers Odysseus used to talk a lot,
Mostly about himself.

Penelope couldn't follow the news of the war.
This guy died heroically,
That one went berserk and killed a bunch of Trojans,
That one got his feelings hurt
And sulked in his tent.
And all because of that insipid Helen?
She thinks she must have missed something.

Penelope may not know about Circe and Calypso
But she suspects that it doesn't have to take ten years
To get back from Troy,
Even if you take a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
She's no dummy.

Penelope remembers Odysseus fondly:
His blue eyes, exactly the shade of the Aegean,
His fantastical stories, all of which she has heard repeatedly,
His warm body in her bed at night.
She liked being married to a legend
But he has been gone a long time.

The suitors clamor,
Eat her out of house and home in an endearing, manly way,
Bring her narcissi and baklava and seashells,
Vie for her attentions flatteringly.

Penelope eyes the suitors,
Who, sure, are not Odysseus,
But who at least are there.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: An Ancient Gesture

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

You can find a poem I wrote about Penelope here.

And here is today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Ulysses

I read Garrison Keillor's 77 Love Sonnets last summer, and enjoyed the book immensely. Garrison Keillor does so much through his Writer's Almanac to disseminate great poetry, new and old, and I've enjoyed his anthologies, also. It was fun to read his own poetry. Here's a favorite, dealing with Ulysses and Penelope, whose story I love.

Ulysses

Here by the enormous swimming pool at the Biltmore
Twenty-six young dark-skinned women lie
In tiny bikinis like mermaids on the shore,
And I, bound for Ithaca, just sail on by,
Heading for you, Penelope, to tell the tale,
How that whole Trojan War gave me the willies,
The pointlessness of it, and I set sail,
Having paid off Homer and left Achilles
In his tent, and was lucky to get a favorable wind
And stopped here at the Biltmore to recompute
My course, and found twenty-six dark-skinned
Women, their breasts displayed like fresh fruit.
Thanks but no thanks.  They only want a tan.
You, dear, love a good story.  I'm your man.

Garrison Keillor


Here's more on Penelope from past Poetry Fridays.

And here's today's roundup.

Reading Update

Welcome to the first Reading Update of 2018!  I haven't read much yet, but here are the first two books of the year.

Book #1 of 2018 fits in well with my OLW, ENOUGH.  Living in Haiti is a constant challenge in figuring out how to care for other people, and realizing that you are never enough. You can never fix all the problems around you, no matter how hard you try. You can never fix even the problems of the people who come and specifically ask you to fix their problems. You find yourself saying "No" a lot, and even when you do say "Yes" you feel conflicted about whether you did right. Kent Annan has many wise things to say in this book, Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, and Walking Humbly in the World.  There is no magic formula (I would mistrust it if there were), but here are some tastes from the table of contents:

Attention: Awakening to Justice
Confession: The Posture for Engaging
Respect: The Golden Rule for Helping
Partnering: With Not For
Truthing: Hard Thinking and Feet on the Ground
Practicing Faithfully Even When We're Overwhelmed

I highly recommend this book; it would make a wonderful choice for a discussion group.

Book #2 was Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey.  My daughter and I read aloud the Fagles translation to each other in the summer of 2016, and as soon as we saw this new one advertised, we knew we wanted to read this one too.  On January 1st the Kindle edition was on sale for $3.99, so we grabbed our copies and started reading. We finished the 24th book last night.  I'm sorry for you if you don't get to read it with my hilarious daughter, who also happens to be a Greek student, but you should definitely read it anyway.

This translation is fast-paced and readable.  It doesn't make any effort to preserve archaic diction; in fact, there were a few words that we found a little jarring in their modernness, like "canapés" being served at a banquet, Penelope's suitors sitting around "playing checkers," or Odysseus giving his men a "pep talk."  We loved reading it, and remembered once again that this is just a great story; there's a reason people have been reading it for so many centuries. Telemachus is a whiny adolescent who has every reason to feel grumpy.  Penelope is courageous and resourceful in spite of her terrible circumstances.  Windy, self-important, deceitful Odysseus somehow still stirs your heart.  Life is all about grief and loss, but it's also about dinner.  And how much more modern could you get than these lines:

"The worst thing humans suffer
is homelessness; we must endure this life
because of desperate hunger; we endure
as migrants with no home."

Reading Update

Book #98 of 2018 was Circe, by Madeline Miller. Since I am an Iliad/Odyssey junkie, I loved this book. Circe is a villain in the Odyssey, turning men into pigs, keeping Odysseus from continuing his journey. In this telling, she's got good reasons for everything she does, and you're on her side before you know it. We get to see not just Odysseus, but also Daedalus, Penelope and Telemachus, through Circe's eyes. The writing is good, too. Here's Circe on Odysseus: "And how would such a man go home again, to his fireside and his olives? His domestic harmony with me was closer to a sort of rehearsal, I realized. When he sat by the hearth, when he worked in my garden, he was trying to remember the trick of it. How an axe might feel in wood instead of flesh. How he might fit himself to Penelope again, smooth as one of Daedalus’ joints."

Book #99 was Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebayo, a Nigerian writer who explores the lives of a couple who can't get pregnant. The solution proposed by friends and family: a second wife. The story kept me turning pages, but I didn't find the ending to be very convincing.

Book #100 was Shonda Rhimes' Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person.  Since I've recently been introduced to Rhimes' show "Grey's Anatomy," it was fascinating reading about her own life and the way she sees the world, especially how she uses that material in her creative life.

Book #101 was That Kind of Mother, by Rumaan Alam. I was very surprised by the low customer ratings for this book on Amazon, because I liked it. I appreciated how quiet and understated it was in its handling of potentially explosive material: class, race, child-care, cross-racial adoption, friendship. I loved the recurring motifs of Princess Diana as a role-model, distant and imaginary, and Priscilla as the lactation consultant turned nanny turned saint. I found Rebecca a believable and sympathetic character, and particularly enjoyed the exploration of motherhood and creativity.

Book #102 was 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in my Head, Reduced Stress without Losing my Edge, and Found Self-Help that Actually Works, by Dan Harris. I read this book back in August and wrote about it in this post, where I said I wanted someone else to read it so we could talk about it. I solved that one by reading it to my husband, and we both enjoyed discussing it. (I love reading aloud, and it's something we enjoy doing together.)

Book #103 was Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading, by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. I have been using this teaching method since the beginning of this school year (I wrote about it some here), and it is extremely useful and effective. I was glad to finish reading the book, finally. It includes scripts for teaching lessons, examples of the signposts in YA books, and even worksheets to share with students.

Reading Update

Book #33 of 2018 was another Beatriz Williams book, which I picked up after enjoying A Hundred Summers, reviewed here. But I didn't like this one, Cocoa Beach, nearly as much, and then I started another Williams title which I didn't even finish.

Book #34 was The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. I dug out this book to quote it in this post and then realized it had been many years since I had read it last. It must have been before I started keeping track of my reading on this blog about eleven years ago. Time to read it again. Now I want to go back and reread all the Lewis books; there's just nobody like him. This one is a classic and highly recommended.

Book #35 was The Peach Keeper, by Sarah Addison Allen. Very rom-com, but a quick, fun read.

Book #36 was The Space Between Words, by Michèle Phoenix. This one was well-written and entertaining, with its surprising plot going from the Bataclan attack in Paris in 2015 to the persecution of the Huguenots in the seventeenth century. I say surprising because the depth and intensity of the story were beyond what I had seen coming. Recommended!

Book #37 was I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, by Maggie O'Farrell. The conceit for this memoir is revisiting all of the author's near-death experiences. Although they aren't told chronologically, these vignettes do work together to give us an unforgettable portrait of O'Farrell, and in the process, a reminder of how fragile and precious we humans are.

Book #38 was A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. I read this with my seventh graders, an experiment I don't think I'll repeat next year. The scenes I remembered from my first reading of this novel when I was about ten years old were every bit as exciting to me, but I had forgotten how talky this book is and how little actually happens. Most of the kids didn't really get it, but they liked the movie preview I showed, and begged to watch the movie next year in eighth grade when it's available. And I had forgotten that L'Engle used the image of a sonnet to illustrate human freedom - I love that.

Book #39 was Odysseus in the Serpent Maze, by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris. This was loads of fun, and I wish I had been able to read it the same year I first read A Wrinkle in Time, because I think I would have enjoyed it even more back then. Who could resist reading about the adventures of Odysseus, Penelope, Mentor, and even Helen of Troy as teenagers?

Reading Update

Book #18 of the year was Polite Society, by Mahesh Rao. My daughter gave me this Jane Austen retelling, in which an approximation of Emma takes place in Delhi, for Christmas. I enjoyed it very much. 

Book #19 was Pictures of Hollis Woods, by Patricia Reilly Giff. I read this in order to teach it to my seventh graders. It's the story of a child called Hollis Woods because of the place she was abandoned as a baby, and her struggles in the foster care system. I found Hollis' story of attachment troubles and abandonment very affecting, and worried that it was going to have a tragic end, but thankfully it ended happily, as befits a middle grade novel. The character development is believable, and my students are enjoying the book right now.

 

Book #20 was The Last Garden in England, by Julia Kelly. This was an entertaining story about a garden in three different time periods. We meet the woman who initially designs the garden, the people living there and working the land during World War II, and the modern gardener who is restoring the original design. 

 

Book #21 was The Push, by Ashley Audrain. The reviews compare it to We Need to Talk About Kevin, and the subject matter is very similar. I found the whole concept very unsettling, the stuff of nightmares. The narrator may or may not be reliable, and you're kept guessing about that all the way through. It's well-done and kept me reading.

 

Book #22 was A Thousand Ships, by Natalie Haynes, a retelling of the Iliad from multiple female points of view, from the Muse to the wives of various warriors to Briseis and Chryseis, Penthesilea, and Penelope. This was a highly enjoyable read for a mythology lover like me. I'm currently reading The Silence of the Girls, which essentially does the same thing, so I'll have something to say about that pretty soon. 

 

Book #23 was American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins, a story about illegal immigrants making the journey from Mexico. I had read some criticism of this book long before I read the book itself. People said that it was stereotyped and inaccurate, and that the Spanish in it read like something from translation software rather than natural language. I'm not in a position to judge any of that, since I have no knowledge of Mexico or Spanish.  I didn't find it badly written, as some accused it of being. It was readable and convincing, in my opinion. But the other criticisms could very well be true. 

Book #24 was the 2021 Newbery Medal winner, When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Kelly. I didn't love this book as much as I expected to. I thought that the main character was hallucinating, and I kept thinking it was going to turn out she was sick. I have no problem with magical realism, but I wasn't sure if that was what was going on. There was just something about the mixture of realism and fantasy that I found difficult to reconcile, especially in a book for children, and even more so, one which deals with such a serious matter as a terminally ill grandparent. Maybe I need to read it again.

 

Book #25 was Winterkeep, by Kristin Cashore. I couldn't wait for a new Kristin Cashore book, and there were many things I loved about this as I have about her others. But this one was probably my least favorite in the Graceling Realm series. All of the books are about people who have faced trauma, and Kristin Cashore writes inventive, mind-bending fantasy. 

 

Book #26 was a birthday gift from my daughter, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. It's short essays about nature and human life, beautifully written and inspiring. 

 

Book #27 was Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam. This story about an unspecified disaster was incredibly convincing and well-written, but I wished for a couple hundred more pages. Having completely bought the situation and found the characters compelling and interesting, I was not satisfied to be left hanging the way I was at the end. What? That's it?

Poetry Friday: Advice to Odysseus

When I read the Odyssey with my daughter last summer, we noticed that Odysseus was very dismissive of the emotion of grief.  Anytime someone expressed sadness - and there was plenty of opportunity during the story, especially since they were constantly recounting the various horrid deaths in the Trojan War - he responded by saying that grief was useless.  I've used one of those quotes in the epigraph to the sonnet I wrote about this. 


Advice to Odysseus, on Grief

“So I said,  and it broke my shipmates’ hearts,
They sank down on the ground, moaning, tore their hair.
But it gained us nothing - what good can come of grief?”
The Odyssey, book 10 lines 622-624

Odysseus, no; no good can come of grief;
It’s such a waste of time, and days, and tears,
Till when you look, a wilderness of years
Spreads out behind you, cacti in relief,
And tumbleweed, and skulls à la O’Keeffe:
You’ve spent your life in simply being sad.
And think of all the feasts you could have had,
The loud carousing, all the sides of beef.

So quit your thinking of Penelope
And fallen friends, the thoughts that make you cry.
Instead, just pour yourself another glass,
Or sail some more upon the wine-dark sea,
Or find another bed where you can lie
And wait for all this pointless grief to pass.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Grief may be pointless, but it's part of life, and in my experience, it's not possible to just power your way through it.  Even if you use Odysseus' methods (eating, drinking, travel, companions both human and divine), grief takes as long as it takes.

Odysseus (source: mythology.net)

The Poetry Friday roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: Morning

Last week I wrote that I was adding a poetry book to my wish list. Yesterday the book arrived in the mail, purchased by a friend and reader. Wow! What a nice surprise! So far I am enjoying the book very much and I will post a review soon, perhaps for next week's Poetry Friday.

For today, in my new-found boldness, I am once again sharing an original poem.



Morning

I woke from a dream of him
to find myself alone in bed.

How banal is that?
How many women have done the same,
from how many dreams
of how many hims?

Maybe he was fighting a war (Iraq, Civil, Trojan)
Maybe he was with someone else
Maybe he didn't exist at all except in that dream
Maybe he was crushed under rubble when the house collapsed in an earthquake

And how many beds?

Beds big and small, comfortable and lumpy
Penelope's (the one Odysseus made out of a tree)
Beds in dorm rooms and apartments and lonely houses
Or on the hard ground, a mat shared with four children in a tent city in Port-au-Prince

I woke from a dream of him
to find myself alone in bed

What a platitude,
and how foolish to write a poem
about that moment
when I looked for him among the sheets,
that brief panic before I remembered.
And then the sadness.

Except that this time
it was my dream
and my bed.

by Ruth from www.thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.