My Cloak Is Poetry (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Rachel Hadas | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Rachel Hadas taught Greek myth for four decades at Rutgers-Newark. In My Cloak Is Poetry she admits what she'd known all along: her cloak was never the bard's costume of the lecture hall-it was the poem itself. This prosimetrum pairs nearly thirty poems, drawn from collections spanning Pass It On (1989) to Ghost Guest (2023) plus new work, each followed by an essay on its occasion. Achilles tells a doomed suppliant that death comes at dawn or sunset or high noon, and lands in a windowless basement where Hadas ran a poetry workshop for men dying of AIDS. Thetis grips her baby's ankle. Charon turns up in an Upper West Side lobby, hunched over a laptop, keeping count. A Vermont woodpile dwindles through the first pandemic autumn while Althaea's brand waits in its box. Translator of Euripides, Hugo, and Nonnus, Hadas reads myth the way she taught it-not for the lesson but for the vision-and shows how these stories keep arriving, uninvited and on time.

PRAISE FOR MY CLOAK IS POETRY:

We often hear that stories acquire new meanings through retelling. In the prosimetrum My Cloak Is Poetry-part collection, part textbook, part memoir-Rachel Hadas proves it as never before. The poems let you in on a lifetime of sage contemplation of what and how myths mean, and as you're wondering where all this wisdom comes from, the prose essays come along like a friend and say, "Here, let me show you."

-C. Luke Soucy

Like the classics which transmit it, mythology comes to us as an unsettled issue: its enduring freshness derives from its being revisited and renewed by each generation. In this compelling new collection of verse and prose, Rachel Hadas creates a kind of classroom without walls, in which we take part in, or play our parts in, the process of transmission. Here you will find a rich selection of poems and an equally rich array of essays, both of which illuminate myth, poetry, and the life of a poet dedicated to passing them on.

-Charles Martin

In My Cloak Is Poetry, the poet and classicist Rachel Hadas has created a stunningly original hybrid form comprising verse and prose directed toward an exploration of ancient myth. The verse is her own, written over the course of three decades, abetted by Hadas's outstanding translation of Victor Hugo's 1888 poem "Boaz Asleep," about the characters in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Ruth. My Cloak Is Poetry makes a persuasive case for the particular value to us today of the foundation texts of Western civilization.

-David Lehman

The wise and humane Rachel Hadas has done something extraordinary: she has combined in one volume exquisite poetry engaging with classical myths, profound interpretive reflections, and a zeal for using both creativity and interpretation in inspirational pedagogy. She has no equal in the practice of what in the poem "Demeters" she calls "rediscovering the humanity in the old stories." Highly recommended.

-Edith Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rachel Hadas is the author of over twenty books of poetry, essays, and translations from Greek; she has also edited or coedited several poetry anthologies. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the O. B. Hardison Poetry Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and an award in literature from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters. In addition to Rutgers University-Newark, where she was for many years Board of Governors Professor of English, Rachel Hadas has taught writing at the West Chester Poetry Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, and 92NY. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.