Search by keyword or six-digit Content ID
My Stuff | Register | Help


What's Hot

    Stories
  1. 1. Group urges local control in medical marijuana debate 0
  2. 2. Parker Republicans caucus at Legend High School 0

    Events
  1. 1. Come Sing with Young Voices of Colorado! (Not Rated) 0
  2. 2. 100th Anniversary of Scouting - 2010 Scout Show (Not Rated) 0

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Parker [Change Location]

Blog Entry 48 of 198 Dial 'T' for Tabitha
I first came to YourHub.com as a community journalist from 2005-2007, covering Parker and Franktown.

I have a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and love a good discussion about poetry, graphic novels, meditation, the creative process or Tarot and Tea Leaf Visualization

I hope you can post a comment or two and that you will enjoy my blogs.

... Thanks for the read.

Links used in this blog are found with GoodSearch. I use GoodSearch to benefit Art from Ashes in Denver and hope you will, too.

To bookmark this blog, click here.

(Check other bloggers out on Brendan's list.)

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~MusingsOfTabithaDial

Mythology and poetry

Article Contributed on: 4/20/2006 12:55:58 PM

Editor's Note: Great! I had prepared this to be my Poetry Friday blog. Then I get the latest poem from American Life in Poetry and I've decided I'll have to post it tomorrow... So... Here is what I prepared:

I'm breaking with tradition, but still sharing a poem. I just decided to go with www.poets.org this week instead of American Life in Poetry.

It fits more with a current theme in my life. I've been chipping away at a series of poems based on Greek deities and I am preparing a workshop for The Columbine Poets of Colorado that I'm calling the Odyssey of Poetry.

It'll look at Homer's Odyssey and Louise Gluck's re-examination of the epic poem in her collection of verse, Meadowlands. You can read a large number of her poems here.

This is from Louise Gluck's new collection of poetry, Averno.

A Myth of Devotion

When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.

Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness

Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.

A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn't everyone want love?

He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.

Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns-

That's what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there'd be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.

Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn't imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.

He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone's Girlhood.

A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you

but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you're dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true.

Guidelines: Be kind. Abusive commentary may be removed. If you believe someone has been abusive, please click "Report Abuse".

SUBMIT COMMENT
Talk Back : submit comments to the blog

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.
Thank you! Your comment has been updated.