Poetic Mood

Greek Mythology Reworked

Ulysses, James Joyce

She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. ‘Which prayer shall we answer today?’ they ask one another. ‘Let’s cast the dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we’re at it, let’s destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!’ I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they’re bored.

The Early Poems, Alfred Lord Tennyson

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Endymion, John Keats

Until, from the horizon’s vaulted side,
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,
Spangling those million poutings of the brine
With quivering ore: ‘twas even an awful shine
From the exaltation of Apollo’s bow;
A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

“Name one hero who was happy.”
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason’s children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus’ back.
“You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
“I can’t.”
“I know. They never let you be famous AND happy.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Tell me.” I loved it when he was like this.
“I’m going to be the first.”

From: http://the-library-and-step-on-it.tumblr.com/tagged/from-the-vaults

please remember

By m.k.

please remember,

no one is as

strong

as they seem

no one is as

careless

as they pretend to be

Hmm

By Anonymous.

More than once
I thought I knew
But I didn’t
More than once
You thought you could
But then you didn’t
More than once
We thought we might
But then we chickened
And then
Once more
I loved you.

Duplicity

By Jennifer N. Kurdyla

This face has less
character than those around it. There,
fine grooves have been etched
in a pattern that give away

an important habit. A handsome
facet of personality, worn proud
and hard to duplicate, easy
to pick out in a crowd.

And that one, there, must be young
at heart, if not in age. To embrace
modernity with polished indifference.
No creases of fret about the means

necessary to support such delicate
construction.
(But perhaps it is no
burden at all—perhaps it only
shows on the inside, which is all

that matters, after all.) You know,
living among such company would
be hard elsewhere—someplace with
far fewer faces.