by phillipw | Apr 22, 2020 | ET, GR, OR
Etymology of Orpheus If “of the river bank” is what the name Of Orpheus might mean,* then that might flow From jet slick River Hades and the shame Of failing to recover, to the glow Of life and sunlight, his lost love. Again It might refer to two of his five...
by phillipw | Apr 21, 2020 | AN, GR, PO
Poetry before Writing “Greece down through the fifth century has aptly been described as a ‘song culture’.” ~ Michael Schmidt in The First Poets, 10, quoting Leslie Kurke, “The Strangeness of ‘Song Culture’: archaic Greek poetry’” In ancient Greece the...
by phillipw | Apr 16, 2020 | AN, GR, PO
Daedalus and Icarus “The natural rhythms of Greek [poetry] tend ‘downward,’ falling” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 14 How strange it is to think that ancient Greek In poetry inclined to downward flow. We think that the trajectory was sleek In upward movement...
by phillipw | Apr 14, 2020 | AN, GR, MA
The Truth The ancient Greeks are there. They do not hide The truth about themselves like holy priests Of papal Rome. The Greeks adored male pride And loathed it. They were not pure logic’s beasts: They gloried in their contradictions, found Them, not...
by phillipw | Apr 11, 2020 | AN, GR
Also Sprach Nietzsche “ ‘Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes in the Iliad?’ asks Friedrich Nietzsche. We modern readers do not even begin to understand them ‘in a sufficiently “Greek” manner’. If we understood them in Greek, ‘we should...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | GR, PO
Primal ………. “As early as 500 BC, if we credit the images on Greek pottery, Homer and other poets were being read, not merely performed, by individuals.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets,7 When poetry existed in the mind And air and...
