Who's Afraid of Helen of Troy?: An Essay on Love

by David Lazar

Overview

David Lazar extends the language of prose poetry, mixing the classical and the high modern, the song and dance man and the Odyssean. Nothing, he finds, is as far apart as we think, except for the chaos and order, innocence and experience. Lazar’s voice is a sacred last resort: something’s gotta give.

The voice in these poems is semi-autobiographical and performative: masked yet emotionally raw. Each poem draws on the features of modernist poetry, using an arch, cadenced sentence as its primary unit, but drawing on the Iliad, Odyssey , and other classical myths as part of its internal cosmos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990322115
Publisher:	Etruscan Press
Publication date:	05/10/2016
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

David Lazar's books include essays, prose poetry, nonfiction anthologies, and interview collections. He has lectured widely on nonfiction and editing, founded the Ph.D. program in nonfiction writing at Ohio University, and directed the creation of the MFA program in nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches. Lazar is the founding editor of Hotel Amerika, now in its fourteenth year.

Table of Contents

At a Diner Near Thebes 5

Anna Perenna 6

The Stranger on K Street 7

On a Train from Ithaka to Chicago 8

I Found It At the Movies 9

Down South 10

Deal 11

Late Stop 12

Harpy 13

Calypso 14

Andromache 15

In Troy It Rains on Main Street 17

Fortuna 18

Cleveland 19

In Dreams Begin Elsa 20

My Saranyu 21

Crossing the River 22

Pieces of a Dream 23

Certain Nights 24

March 25

Mnemosyne 26

Swim 27

Haemon's Song 28

To Let You Know 29

Hard Nox 30

Lyssa 31

Oracle 32

As the Fates Would Have It 33

Wichita 34

The Last Time I Saw Paris 35

No Vertigo 36

Big Trouble 37

Something Has Happened to the Night 38

One/Other 39

Why Things Happen 40

Peregrine 41

Aletheia 42

Narcissus 43

Melisande 44

Ricochet Avec Soleil 45

The Code 46

See Patroclus 47

Les Oiseaux de Paris 48

In Place 49

Who's Afraid of Helen of Troy 50

Killing a Rock with a Spider 51

Questions for the Sphinx 52

Five Unscrambled Anagrams 53

Let's Go to Troy 54