SEVENTEEN ANCIENT POEMS Translated from Greek and Latin by Thomas McEvilley
Meleager of Gadara Raising the Alarm Meleager Commiserates with His Soul Meleager Addresses His Servant Dorkas Meleager Speaks to a Honey Bee Instructions for Meleager’s Burial Meleager Reproaches the Dawn Meleager Reproaches the Dawn Again An Address to the Bedside Lamp Meleager Writes a Poem for the Police Meleager Puzzled
Go through my things god knows what you'll find. When I'm not here. I'm not here, in this poem I'm in another room, writing praises of their loveliness and terror the ones that dance through my mind not endlessly, but to be one at one with them I want to be. I want to be one, I want her to be one when the voice begins she is, and she dances. I am the voice. I praise There is no mind.
Nothing could be more purely poetic than the line, so it is perhaps less a metaphor than usual to think of Elena Berriolo's performance as a reflection on the verse line. Charles Olson was once asked, how long is a line? He put his chalk to the board and ran a line to the end and continues, chalk in hand, to walk out of the room. Berriolo's work had something of that quality, though more whimsical: I was reminded of Mary Poppins flying with and umbrella as well as 1960s performance work by Charlotte Moorman or Yoko Ono. Or then again, as the line flew away in the sky, the sky writing poems of David Antin.
This series promotes and pursues topicsin the burgeoning field of 20th and 21st century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interestto the series includes social location in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construction of authorship, to oeuvres,and to careers; poetic reception and dissemination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection ofpoetry and theory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts ofsocial life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. Topicsthat are bibliographic, pedagogic, that concern the social field of poetry, and reflect on the history of poetry studiesare valued as well. This series will allow Palgrave to focus both on individual poets and texts and on larger movements,poetic institutions, and questions about poetic authority, social identifications, and aesthetics.
Nothing could be more purely poetic than the line, so it is perhaps less a metaphor than usual to think of Elena Berriolo's performance as a reflection on the verse line. Charles Olson was once asked, how long is a line? He put his chalk to the board and ran a line to the end and continues, chalk in hand, to walk out of the room. Berriolo's work had something of that quality, though more whimsical: I was reminded of Mary Poppins flying with and umbrella as well as 1960s performance work by Charlotte Moorman or Yoko Ono. Or then again, as the line flew away in the sky, the sky writing poems of David Antin.
