Temporary like Achilles #2 and Kerouacts 1-6, by Thomas Palaima
'Rage,' Homer sings. 'Sing the rage of Achilles.' Twenty-three raids, twenty-three sieges of cities, all taken, feeding soldiers and the pride-lust of commanders. Read more
CI Poetry Project
Mandelshtam’s Homer: an introduction
by Natasha Bershadsky This space of the CI Poetry Project is dedicated to links of poetic inspiration reaching back to ancient Greece and mediated by the figure of Osip Mandelshtam. Mandelshtam had his own, utterly personal, understanding of Hellenism. Hellenism is a spirit that Mandelshtam perceives as inherited by the… Read more
“We’ll die in crystalline Petropolis,” by Osip Mandelshtam, translated by Carol Rumens
We’ll die in crystalline Petropolis Whose ruling deity is Proserpina. We swallow deadly air with every breath, And every hour becomes a year of death. Goddess of oceans, terrible Afina, Resign your helmet’s stone magnificence. We’ll die in crystalline Petropolis Which is not ruled by you, but Proserpina. From Carol… Read more
Insomnia, Homer, taut sails, by Osip Mandelshtam
Translated by Philip Nikolayev Insomnia, Homer, taut sails: my lips have lisped Down to the middle the detailed list of ships, That long brood and angular train of cranes That rose above Hellas once on wings of waves. A wedge of cranes into far foreign lands… Read more
Three poems by Manuela Pellegrino
2020.04.11 | Introduction by Keith DeStone δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα . . . μέσαι δὲ νύκτες. The moon has gone down . . . it is the middle of the night. Only a young moon could have set so early, early enough that the middle of the night should be, as it was for Sappho in this famous poem, moonless. But what if the moon were a little older, and… Read more