an apology for the life of

I'm sorry I hadn't come across this before. Put a group of RSC actors on a set and have them talk about Shakespeare--what could possibly go wrong? (Not much.) Sometimes I think John Barton is over-explaining, but not egregiously so. And David Suchet really has a very fine voice.

I graduated from college on Sunday.


My department had a small reception in the equally small classics museum. I had an interesting talk with Dr. C about his possible wrongness, met both of two other professors' children (one a sleepy baby, the other an energetic six-year-old), and ended up in a photo with Dr. L, right in front of the plaster cast of the Winged Nike. He'd come in carrying two bottles of Tropicana; the only juice that catering had provided was mysteriously pink.

LAS began as a general crowd that moved forward sometimes, then slowly turned into what was more or less a procession. I have a terrible weakness for ceremony, and will confess to liking regalia. (Why don't I just dress like that all the time?) The commencement band played Vaughan Williams, and made me happy. I got a sunburn. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that the chancellor invited all the students attending to take selfies for the university's Facebook.

I have handed in my honors thesis.

It weighs in at thirty-four pages (plus an eight-page chart as the appendix). The title is "Standing Between: Supernatural Events in the Iliad," which conveniently gives away the subject. It's hard to explain the premise without sounding pretentious, but, as I once put it, it considers the plot in terms of the reinforcement and dissolution of boundaries between the divine and mortal worlds. I had the first stirrings of this idea in GRK 312, when the professor asked if anyone else was bothered by Achilles' horse talking; it seemed too strange, he said. I didn't speak up at the time. Instead, I wrote about 10,600 words about why I think he's wrong there, which would seem to say a lot about my MO.

. . . I'm going to end up downloading all of these, aren't I.

I took some chalk and wrote H. D.'s "Oread" on a concrete wall by the exterior stairwell of the humanities building. Today I went back and wrote Sappho 105c. I have no idea what anyone who saw me thought I was doing; likely they didn't think about it at all, or assumed I was just putting up something for the student senate candidates.

This year the Academy of American Poets is sponsoring something they call the Dear Poet Project. Send a letter to one of the Academy chancellors, commenting on a poem of theirs, and they might even write back. I found myself composing a missive to Edward Hirsch about "What the Last Evening Will Be Like." I realized too late that my handwriting was horribly small and cramped, and I imagine I sounded rather pretentious, but I really was struck by how the poem draws the reader in. (No idea if early twenties still counts as a "young person," or if the Academy is thinking of twelfth graders at most.)

I've been accepted by several grad schools--although I have to say no to one of them--and am waiting on another. I still don't know where I'll be this fall. For the moment, that's not truly unpleasant; I have options, people want me to come to their programs, they really like me! Options, however, are not a plan, and it remains to be seen what choices I'll have in a month or two. (My prospective field is library/archival science, if you were wondering.)

I'm not sure what exactly was behind the sidewalk pseudo-marching-band led by the person in the "V for Vendetta" mask, but what little I heard didn't sound bad.

It's 85 degrees.

1. My poem "Duality" is online at The Siren.

2. Tired of Veterinarian-Ballerina-Schoolteacher Barbie? Why not Classicist Barbie? Accessories include a bust of Homer and a tiny Oxford Classical Dictionary.

3. Mel Gibson IS Hamlet. Or, well, maybe not. The Viking-ish setting also gives me pause--I'm well aware of the fallacy of depicting the past as "primitive" and therefore "noble," but it seems to me that the world of the play is rather too subtle, too courtly, too corruptly sophisticated for this age. (Would a true Beowulf-era Hamlet simply have denounced Claudius as a murderer and delivered a challenge to him?)

I guess it's time for even more self-promotion, by which I mean, if you liked "La Dame à la licorne," you could always vote for it, in any slot from #1 to #5. The poll is open until March 11.

If you had asked me, I would have said that Patroclus is the only character Homer addresses in the second person--and I would have been wrong. He does the same with Menelaus in 17.702-704:

οὐδ' ἄρα σοὶ Μενέλαε διοτρεφὲς ἤθελε θυμὸς
τειρομένοις ἑτάροισιν ἀμυνέμεν, ἔνθεν ἀπῆλθεν
Ἀντίλοχος, μεγάλη δὲ ποθὴ Πυλίοισιν ἐτύχθη . . .

I can't immediately say what the significance of this is (that's not my topic!), but it's an interesting note along the way.