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Showing posts from August, 2008

Thanks to Ali Smith and Edith Hamilton

I just read (and totally recommend!) Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith, a retelling of the myth of Iphis. I dug out my copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology to look up Iphis; she doesn't retell Ovid's myth, alas, but I've always had a soft spot for Hamilton's book, so I've been reading bits of it. And the bits from Hamilton gave me an idea to work on a poem, which is good because I haven't had many ideas in that department at all. Our Neighborhood At pick-up games, Apollo shows off the same arms, legs, chest of the athlete he used to be, maintained with twenty minutes a day on his Bowflex machine as Hermes lugs boxes up and down the street for UPS, and artists who watch from windows don’t know they’re sketching the gods in our image, everyone’s weekend one tableau of overtime and basketball.