Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 2

Over the centuries, the epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer have been translated scores of times. The English translators have included George Chapman, Thomas Hobbes, Alexander Pope, William Cowper, William Cullen Bryant, William Morris, Samuel Butler, Padraic Colum, T.E. Lawrence, W.H.D. Rouse, Robert Fitzgerald, Richmond Lattimore (the translation I first read), and Allen Mandelbaum, among many others. The most recent English translation was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.

In other words, Homer has lasted. And with good reason. The story of the siege and fall of the pf the city Troy and the (mostly) seagoing wanderings of Odysseus still captivates and enchants. And amid the sounds of battle before Troy and encounters with witches, sirens, and various monsters are several very different love stories, including Menelaus and Helen and Odysseus (or the Roman Ulysses) and Penelope.

Top continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Odysseus and Calypso, from The Odyssey.

Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 1

The Odyssey by Homer is the second oldest book in the Western literary canon; Homer’s The Iliad wins the prize for the oldest. The works are believed to have been written sometime about the end of the 8^th century B.C. (or B.C.E., if you prefer). They describe the fall of the great city of Troy and its aftermath, which occurred about 400 years earlier. (Two scholarly camps argue about the identity of Homer; one says he is a single individual and the other says he is actually a group of individuals.)

The two works give us innumerable images and metaphors. The face that launched a thousand ships. The Trojan horse. Achilles’ heel. The judgment of Paris. The sirens’ song. The Cyclops. Circe the witch. Scylla and Charybdis.

The Odyssey (Robert Fitzgerald translation)was the source for the prompts for Tweetspeak Poetry’s most recent poetry party on Twitter, held Dec. 10, where 10 would-be Homers wrote their own epic poem.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A Hellenized version of what Homer may have looked like.