serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude

I’ve been Ajax. I’ve spoken to Ajax.

Sgt. First Class Tony Gonzalez, an Iraq combat veteran from Brooklyn, speaking during a panel discussion on readings from Sophocles' plays Ajax and Philoctetes, and quoted in this morning's New York Times.

The tragic readings were staged in Manhattan by Theater of War, an independent production company that recently received $3.7 million from the Pentagon to visit 50 military sites "through at least next summer" with the production.

Aristotle is not mentioned in the piece, nor is his theory of how Tragedy, properly executed, effects catharsis, "through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions".

But our soldiers were mentioned -- one out of eight who have returned from Iraq suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- as was their sore need for some kind of salve.

homecoming

I think she knew him
in spite of the rags
in spite of the salt spray
that carved that deep cleft
between his eyes

Twenty years
is a long time
to be away.

her breasts soft
and slack
now pay attention
to his approach

Twenty years.

the rivals?
all hundred of them
encamped
soon to be slain

what woman wouldn’t want
for that kind of attention
her husband gone

Twenty years.

what woman would want
even one of the bunch
when the one she chose
disappeared

Homer tells of the weaving
undone in the dark
to keep the hundred rivals at bay

I say it was to keep the
widow at play

disappointed in love
but never wanting
for something to do

and then he comes.

the old dog knows him
and dies
from what -- gratitude?

the nurse knows him too.

of course his wife knows
but she’s no dog

and she will teach Odysseus
what all travelers know
the price of the road
is to win your way back in again
is to win your way back home

That said, Book 23 of the Odyssey, aka "The Great Rooted Bed", (preferably the Robert Fagles translation) has gotta be one of the sweetest, sexiest reads in epic poetry.

if. this.

if Semele had a mortgage
she would have been happy
to have Zeus
halfway

a quickie in the backroom
when Hera turned her head

then skirts down
back to work
a pat and a kiss
goodbye

but no

too much time on her hands

it was gimme all you got
and baby, you'll be sorry
and so she was

but for her curiousity
I have this glass of red

and a scattering
of Dionysian dreams

wondering about persephone

Pomme de Granada
Originally uploaded by The Department.


a found poem

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone

Maybe Persephone was glad
To run off with the king of death
To his underground realm

Maybe Persephone thought Hades
Was the infinitely cooler older man
Who held the knowledge she sought

Maybe she loved the darkness
The six months of winter
The pomegranates
The freedom from her mother

Maybe she knew
That to be truly alive
Death had to be a part
Of the picture

Just as winter must


Another one found in Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

I’m a chapter away from putting this book to bed and I still can’t decide if I like it. But I’ve enjoyed the ride – highly meditative, impressionistic. Not sure that we’ll arrive anywhere in particular by the time I close the cover – but the read is like a long desert ride -- good alone for what it is, just then, and for the way it takes you places off the map you didn't quite anticipate.

whole lotta sweetness

Unlike some brave souls I passed on a full weekend of Patty doing the Rose at Ravinia -- fearing mostly that, after a night like Friday, I’d be left like Semele when she begged Zeus to give it to her full on – and was split in half by the force of what he had to give.

I opted instead to hang out in a dark cellar of a theatre with the playwright Jeffrey Sweet.

Not a bad trade.

I only knew a little bit about this guy going in – the Chicago Dramatists blurbed him as an influence behind Wicked, so I was ready to be disappointed. A succession of phone calls on Saturday morning that pushed back the start time by three and half hours only added to the dread. But that turned out to be Amtrak’s fault, and the workshop – which was billed as a Playwriting Nuts and Bolts Intensive -- delivered the goods.

Two days later I came out with moleskine packed with techniques for turning it on, and a head full of stories from a man who’s lived his life in the theatre.

Sweet is a fierce technician with a great sense for a good story. He's also a gorgeous gossip and a name dropper and I loved every minute of it: How can you not get excited about hearing someone tell a story they got straight from Jack Klugman -- about being there the day that Clifford Odets returned to NYC (to run Golden Boy through rehearsals) from D.C. -- where he had just named the names of half of his Golden Boy cast and crew to Joe McCarthy. (Talk about a rough day at the office.) (Rat fink.)

Also came away with a list things to read and watch and listen to – some for a second time:

The Apartment
Beyond Culture
Fires in the Mirror
Waiting for Lefty
Daughter of Time
The Collection
The Gin Game
The Cradle Will Rock
The Dramatist's Toolkit

The weekend also succeeded in splitting me down the middle (kinda like Semele) -- torn between the impulse to do nothing but write and the impulse to do anything else at all.

stranger than fiction

“Ruth Padel...in her brilliant, frantic, wide-ranging I’m A Man (2000)...makes the connections between rock and myth absolutely plain (partly by using capital letters):

JIM MORRISON FOUND DEAD IN BATH IN PARIS? Wife Clytemnestra and lover murder Troy veteran husband in bath. MARVIN GAYE SHOT BY DAD IN BEDROOM? Oedipus kills father at crossroads. HENDRIX CHOKES TO DEATH IN HOTEL? Ajax stabs himself on beach. MANAGER ROMANCES BABY SPICE IN HOLIDAY HIDEAWAY? Zeus rapes Europa in Crete.”

Ian Sansom writing in the London Review of Books about Johnny Cash