Memorial: A Version of Homer’s Iliad

In this daring new work, the poet Alice Oswald strips away the narrative of the Iliad–the anger of Achilles, the story of Helen–in favor of attending to its atmospheres: the extended similes that bring so much of the natural order into the poem and the corresponding litany of the war-dead, most of whom are little more than names but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably and unforgotten in the copious retrospect of Homer’s glance. The resulting poem is a war memorial and a profoundly responsive work that gives new voice to Homer’s level-voiced version of the world. Through a mix of narrative and musical repetition, the sequence becomes a meditation on the loss of human life.

Author: Alice Oswald
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 11/18/2013
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.2lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.30w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780393347272
Language: English