Reviews for Metamorphoses

The average rating for Metamorphoses based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-12-24 00:00:00 Takeshi Oikawa   The Power of Myth Imagine this. You are a distinguished poet of an older generation, perhaps a poet laureate or tipped for the Nobel Prize. A couple of young colleagues ask you to write a poem, or two, or three, based on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses that they will assign. Do you phone something in? Do you brush them off? Do you even answer? The fact that no less than 40 poets of the caliber of Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon, Robert Pinsky, and Charles Simic turned in some 55 quality poems between them says much about the persuasive abilities of Michael Hoffmann and James Lasdun (who also contributed three very good poems each). But it says even more about the continuing power of Ovid's collection of myths to influence other writers, artists, and composers since the end of the Middle Ages. However reluctantly some of these people might have set to work, once they had opened their Ovid they were hooked. Two Goodreads friends (Kalliope and Roman Clodia) and I are setting up a discussion group to read and discuss the Metamorphoses and all its subsequent metamorphoses, and I imagine that many of the interpretations here will crop up in their due course. So this is a placeholder, not a full review, just to get it on the map. But at least I indicate the scope of the collection, and perhaps give a few samples. The range is deliberately wide. "We invited each contributor 'to translate, reinterpret, reflect on, or completely reimagine the narratives,' and got the full gamut" write the editors. We see this in the first four items in the book. Ted Hughes, at that time the Poet Laureate of England, contributes Creation / Four Ages / Flood, an enhanced translation of Ovid's first book'enhanced, in that Hughes incorporates passages that are entirely his'which would in turn become the opening section of his own Tales from Ovid; the link is to my review. The American poet Jorie Graham overlaps him with her version of Flood, clearly the poet's commentary and not at all a translation; it is printed in an unusual layout that unfortunately I can't reproduce. Then, still on the theme of the Flood, a brief poem Deucalion and Pyrrha by the English poet Christopher Reid; it is short enough to quote, if only to enjoy the delicious way the rhymes nudge, but do not stop, the run-on lines:                 Only two survived the flood. We are not of their blood, springing instead from the bones of the great mother: stones, what have you'rocks, boulders' hurled over their shoulders by that pious pair and becoming people, where and as they hit the ground. Since when, we have always found something hard, ungracious       obdurate in our natures, a strain of the very earth that gave us our abrupt birth; but a pang, too, at the back of the mind: a loss . . . a lack . . . Then comes another American woman, Alice Fulton, with Give: Daphne and Apollo. This is a 31-page drama in nine scenes preceded by a "Foreplay" (the double entendre is hers and intended). The story, of course, is that of the nymph changed to a tree to escape the lustful advances of Apollo. Among other images, Fulton conjures up the old age of recording: "A voice changed to a vinyl disc, a black larynx | spun | on the hi-fi as we called it, before light was used to | amplify | and the laser's little wand got rid of hiss." I can't really quote more, because each of the ten sections has its own layout, the lines sometimes running from margin to margin, sometimes skittering all over the page like a jumping cricket. There is nothing like a complete coverage of the Metamorphoses here; probably the majority of Ovid's subjects are omitted and, as we have seen with the Flood, there are several overlaps. But these duplications are useful, for they underline the vast range of stylistic response. Here, for example, is the first stanza of Thom Gunn's Arachne, who was turned into a spider by the jealous Minerva for besting her in a tapestry competition: What is that bundle hanging from the ceiling Unresting even now with constant slight Drift in the breeze that breathes through rooms at night? Can it be something, then, that once had feeling, A girl, perhaps, whose skill and pride and hope Strangled against each other in the rope? And as a contrast, here is the complete poem Spiderwoman by Michael Longley*: Arachne starts with Ovid and finishes with me. Her hair falls out and the ears and nostrils disappear From her contracting face, her body minuscule, thin Fingers clinging to her sides by way of legs, the rest All stomach, from which she manufactures gossamer And so keeps up her former trade, weaver, spider Enticing the eight eyes of my imagination To make love on her lethal doily, to dangle sperm Like teardrops from an eyelash, massage it into her While I avoid the spinnerets'navel, vulva, bum' And the widening smile behind her embroidery. She wears our babies like brooches on her abdomen. Wonderfully eerie, isn't it? Is he writing about the spider or his wife? It is the ambiguity and above all the personal element that makes this so effective. There are certainly a few straight translations here, but many of the most interesting poems shift Ovid forward by two milennia, bringing him down to earth, owning his archetypes in a personal way. Here, for example, is the opening of Mrs Midas by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, a housewife seeing her husband approaching down the kitchen garden: It was late September. I'd just poured a glass of wine, begun to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath gently blanching the windows. So I opened one, then with my fingers wiped the other's glass like a brow. He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig. Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky, but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked a pear from the branch, we grew Fondante d'Automne, and it sat in his palm like a lightbulb. On. I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy-lights in the tree? Probably the poem I like the best is by another Irish writer, Eavan Boland. Called The Pomegranate, it refers to the legend of Persephone who, while being brought back from the underworld after her abduction by Pluto, thoughtlessly plucked a pomegranate and ate the seeds, meaning that she would forever have to spend the winter months underground. "The only legend I have ever loved is | The story of a daughter lost in hell," Boland begins; "…And the best thing about the legend is | I can enter it anywhere. And have." And so, as she becomes Ceres and watches her daughter make that fatal mistake, you feel that this is the poet with her own daughter, and a chain of mothers and daughters stretching down the centuries, past and present: a sadness but also a wisdom, stretching through time. Here's how it ends: She could have come home and been safe And ended the story and all Our heartbroken searching but she reached Out a hand and plucked a pomegranate. She put out her hand and pulled down The French sound for apple and The noise of stone and the proof That even in the place of death, At the heart of legend, in the midst Of rocks full of unshed tears Ready to be diamonds by the time The story was told, a child can be Hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance. The rain is cold. The road is flint-colored. The suburb has cars and cable television. The veiled stars are aboveground. It is another world. But what else Can a mother give her daughter but such Beautiful rifts in time? If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift. The legend will be hers as well as mine. She will enter it. As I have. She will wake up. She will hold The papery, flushed skin in her hand. And to her lips. I will say nothing. ====== *Longley, incidentally, is one of no less than five poets born in Northern Ireland, with an additional three from the South; did they enlist Seamus Heaney as a recruiter, I wonder? No matter; Heaney's own two poems on the Orpheus legend are among the highlights of the collection.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-05 00:00:00 Vincent Pulcrano A collection of poems based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Some are fairly dutiful translations, some are loose interpretations. Unfortunately they vary a lot in quality. The high point for me was "Mrs. Midas," by Carol Ann Duffy, the current British poet laureate. (According to Wikipedia she is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the position.) "Mrs. Midas" has virtually nothing to do with Ovid's telling of the story--but it is perfectly Ovidian in tone and wit. "He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig. Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky, but the twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked a pear from a branch, we grew Fondante d'Automne, and it sat in his hand like a lightbulb. On. I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy-lights in the tree? He came into the house. The doorknob glowed... I made him sit on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself. I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone. The toilet I didn't mind. I couldn't believe my ears: how he'd had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted. But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold? It feeds no-one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette...At least, I said, you'll be able to give up smoking for good." Ovid would have loved it.