Memorial: A Version of Homer's

ISBN: 0393088677

Author: Oswald, Alice

Condition: New

The most remarkable and affecting book of poetry I encountered this year.-James Wood, The New Yorker 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 Homers glance. The resulting poem is a war memorial and a profoundly responsive work that gives new voice to Homers 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.