<p>I like poetry, but when taking a couple of semesters of in in college I really felt my lack of knowledge of the Greek gods. Now my kid is taking mythology and loves it. So I'd like to produce from my ancient Norton anthology a couple of poems that mention the gods. I know they are there ;) Can anyone suggest an accessible poem to spark in her a small interest in poetry? Thanks!</p>
<p>Keats’ late poems dealt a lot with Greece and Greek mythology. There’s “Ode to Psyche”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (which doesn’t mention specific gods/goddesses), and two long fragments of different versions of a projected epic called “Hyperion” (or “The Fall of Hyperion”). The latter are not so short, though. (Nor is Keats’ “Endymion”, which is full of Greek stuff but inferior to the others mentioned.)</p>
<p>Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is a great, completely accessible poem written in the voice of Odysseus long after his return to Ithaca. There’s also his “The Lotos Eaters” on another theme from the Odyssey.</p>
<p>Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” is one of the greatest sonnets written by anyone, anywhere.</p>
<p>Holderlin has tons of poems on themes from Greek mythology, if you can find a good translation. The most famous is probably “Hyperions Schicksanlied”, which is long, but there are some short ones as well, “Once there were gods” among them.</p>
<p>Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” is another great, short poem on a topic from Greek mythology, but I don’t know how attractive it makes Greek mythology. (The topic is Leda’s rape by Zeus and the historical calamities that supposedly produced.)</p>
<p>[Auden:</a> “The Shield of Achilles”](<a href=“http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/99/jrieffel/poetry/auden/achilles.html]Auden:”>Auden: "The Shield of Achilles")</p>
<p>JHS: My BFF and I fell in love with “Leda and the Swan” in HS. Not kidding. I ended up ass’t. curator of the Yeats Archives at Stony Brook for a while. Sounds more prestigious and glamorous than it was.</p>
<p>Along the same lines as JHS: Sonnets to Orpheus by Rilke (an entire sonnet sequence.)</p>
<p>“The Wasteland” has multiple references to Osiris, but of course, he’s Egyptian.</p>
<p>Joyces Ulysses, obviously not a poem, is the greatest example.</p>
<p>Pounds Cantos, if you have any desire to sift through those, are full of references.</p>
<p>[Daphne</a> Tree Poems and Quotes compiled by Torrey Philemon - Greek and Roman Mythology](<a href=“http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/daphnequotes.htm]Daphne”>Daphne Tree Poems and Quotes compiled by Torrey Philemon - Greek and Roman Mythology)</p>
<p>The link is Daphne and Apollo poems in English – Marvel’s the most famous, Norman O. Brown most recently influential.</p>
<p>“Demeter and Persephone” by Tennyson also.</p>
<p>Treetopleaf: I have written a book of dramatic monologues about mythological subjects. Because of the vagaries of publishing, have never published. But I use them to teach my myth students and they seem to quite like them.</p>
<p>If you PM with a specific character or request, I will PM one or two back. They are about the people, not the gods.</p>
<p>S, my Classicist, is taking a semester long Ulysses course. He was quite intimidated as the only non-English major in the class. However, Joyce is so classically oriented, that he is finding his classical background invaluable and is quite voluable in discussion.</p>
<p>Of course, writing about Joyce is another thing. And there the English majors take pride of place, I’m sure.</p>
<p>You won’t necessarily find them in Norton, but these off the top of my head:</p>
<p>Jorie Graham’s “Self Portrait as Demeter and Persephone” (in The End of Beauty) or “Self Portrait as Hurry and Delay” (about Penelope)
Frank Bidart (in Desire) has a long and shattering poem about Myrrha
Eavan Boland, “Daphne with Her Thighs in Bark”, “Athene’s Song”
Seamus Heaney, “Hercules and Anteus”
Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” is, in a mediated way, about Icarus-- and will be in Norton (William Carlos Willams has a poem on the same thing-- “Landscape With Fall of Icarus”)
Derek Walcott, “Europa”
Robert Lowell, “Clytemnestra” and “Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid”
Denise Levertov, “Hymn to Eros”
Plath, “Virgin in a Tree”
Georffrey Hill, several poems
Mark Strand, “Orpheus Alone”
Louise Gluck has a whole book that repurposes the Odyssey as a story about her domestic life</p>
<p>[I got confused. Hyperions Schicksa*ls*lied is a compact, beautiful, appropriate Holderlin poem with lots of translations available because Brahms set it to music. Probably not in the Norton Anthology, however, because not originally written in English.]</p>
<p>creaturely – fabulous list!!!</p>