New songs for Orpheus /

New songs for Orpheus /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Reibetanz, John, 1944- author.
Imprint:	Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2023] ©2023
Description:	ix, 138 pages ; 20 cm
Language:	English
Series:	The Hugh MacLennan poetry series Hugh MacLennan poetry series.
Subject:	Orpheus -- (Greek mythological character) -- Poetry. Orpheus -- (Greek mythological character) Metamorphosis -- Poetry. Canadian poetry -- 21st century. poetry. Poetry Poetry.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13161700

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780228016946 0228016940 9780228017400 9780228017417
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references. Issued also in electronic format.
Summary:	"If the Latin poet Ovid could be brought back to life in the twenty-first century, what kind of songs would Orpheus sing? What kind of poems would Ovid write? Since his art showed him to be a person of deep empathy for the natural and animal worlds, as well as for the human, he would probably be eager to take account of all that we have learned about them during the past two thousand years. He would be familiar with recent discoveries made by such investigators as Jane Goodall and Frans De Waal about the complex inner lives and societies of non-human animals, or by botanists such as Suzanne Simard and David George Haskell about the intricate interrelationships sustained in forests. In the human realm, he might find a suitably cataclysmic counterpart to the Trojan War in the barbarities and sacrifices of World War Two, or perhaps see an analogue to the Fall of Troy in the fall of the Two Towers in September, 2001. New Songs for Orpheus updates Ovid's poetry. Its poems look at and listen to the real creatures into which his characters were transformed in the Metamorphoses, and the act of transformation is viewed not as punishment or deprivation, but as a release into a form of life about which we have known far too little until recently. The collection also reinterprets Ovid's Heroides, his epistolary poems about heroic women, interrogating and revising the role of women in light of more contemporary values. A sequence of poems, for instance, focuses on letters written by Freya and Helmuth James von Moltke as he awaits execution by the Nazis for high treason: here, Eurydice becomes the survivor and mourner of her Orpheus. Finally, the songs of Orpheus become transformed into more contemporary shapes, as characters and incidents from the Canadian musical Come From Away--like those in Ovid's "restored" world after the Flood--are celebrated in a reaffirmation of community after the divisive horrors of 9/11."--
Other form:	Online resource: Reibetanz, John, 1944- New songs for orpheus. Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023 0228017416 9780228017417

Description
Summary:	For a change Orpheus / listens to the other / musicians once the hum / of his lyre no longer / hangs like moss from branches / in the forest air In New Songs for OrpheusJohn Reibetanz updates Ovid's poetry. Ovid's words showed him to be a person of deep empathy for natural, animal, and human worlds, and so Reibetanz posits that the Roman writer would likely be eager to take account of all that we have learned about them in the past two thousand years. Ovid would be familiar with recent discoveries about the complex inner lives and societies of non-human animals, and about the intricate interrelationships sustained in forests. The poems in New Songs for Orpheus look at and listen to the real creatures into which Ovid's characters were transformed, acts viewed not as punishment or deprivation, but as a release into other intriguing forms of life. In the human realm, he might find a suitably cataclysmic counterpart to the Trojan War in the barbarities and sacrifices of World War II, or perhaps see an analogue to the Fall of Troy in the fall of the Two Towers in September 2001. The songs Orpheus sings then transform into more contemporary shapes, as characters and incidents from the Canadian musical Come from Away - like those in Ovid's "restored" world after the flood - are celebrated in a reaffirmation of community after the divisive horrors of 9/11. In all these times and places, metamorphosis brings new meaning into a life, be it human, plant, or animal.
Physical Description:	ix, 138 pages ; 20 cm
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN:	9780228016946 0228016940 9780228017400 9780228017417