Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths

by Nina Kossman, Bertolt Brecht, Ted Hughes, et al.

Book Overview

From Valery, Yeats, Lawrence, Rilke, Akhmatova, and Auden writing in the first half of the century to such contemporary poets as Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Wislawa Szymborska, and Mark Strand, the material of Greek myth has elicited a poetry of remarkably high achievement. And by organizing the poems first into broad categories such as "Heroes," "Lovers," "Trespassers," and secondly around particular mythological figures such as Persephone,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195133412
• ISBN13: 9780195133417
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

just a wonderful anthology

This is a very comprehensive collection, worthwhile for students and teachers of classics, comparative literature, and modern poetry and for anyone interested in mythology and literature. One of the attractions of this book is the mixture of poems by modern English-language poets and poems translated from foreign languages. The editor has obviously searched far and wide for poems on Greek myth--poems from Romanian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Bengali, Hebrew, Danish, Hungarian, Polish, and Estonian are included in addition to the expected languages. The poems are well chosen and the translations are masterfully done. Another thing that makes this collection so comprehensive is the sheernumber of mythological characters covered. A great collection in every respect!