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Tag: #teamtrojans

CAVAFY

For National Poetry Month, I am going to gush about Cavafy. I’m going to do this instead of reviewing books. I am a rotten blogger. I swear I will get back to the business of reviewing books really soon. I’ve written several reviews of ARCs, but I can’t post them yet. They exist though! Regular programming will commence shortly, I hope to God. In the meantime, you’ll have to get by with guilt-fueled excuses for my bad posting habits, and gushy posts full of my new favorite poet, Constantine Cavafy. I discovered Cavafy via the Poetry Foundation, a glorious resource…

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Review: The War that Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander

What was I reading recentlyish that talked about the Dark Ages being defined by the lack of Homer and Ovid? Was it The Secret History? Or The Fall of Rome maybe? Probably it was Tom Stoppard, Arcadia or The Invention of Love. It sounds like the kind of thing Tom Stoppard would say. Anyway, whatever character it was, they said something about how the Dark Ages were Dark because we didn’t have the classics around, in all their universal brilliance, to explain us to ourselves. When the West got them back again (thanks, Arabia!), it was like being reborn, a…

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Fagles’s Odyssey: Divided loyalties in the first quarter

Fagles’s translation of the Odyssey is so great it hurts my brain. Granted, I am a sucker for epic poetry. I took eight years of Latin when I was in school, and I never loved anything we translated like I loved the Aeneid. It is epic. Plus I love the Greek and Roman gods. So I am reading the Odyssey right now, in the Fagles translation, which I have to say appears to be the best translation in all the land. Fagles. (Not Lattimore, Capt. Hammer). Check this out: Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists…

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