Poetry and Myth
Poetry...has grown from myth, and it still preserves a mythical character.
-Frederick Clarke Prescott
This website endeavors to show the correlations between the world of myth and works of poetry. In order to do this, I have selected poems that pair with various characters from the Odyssey. Some of the poems are directly based on the Odyssey and are reworkings or re-imaginings of certain situations. Other poems are simply poems that I believe represent the emotions and events of the Odyssey well, though they are not directly connected.
My interest in myth and poetry stems from a semester in college in which I took both a mythology course and a poetry seminar. I found that the stories from my mythology course bled naturally into my poetry. While writing myth-based poetry that semester, I though that the correlation existed only because of my interest in the myths we were studying. However, now that I have researched the connection between myth and poetry further, I am persuaded that these two modes of writing are connected on a complex level.
According to Joseph Campbell, the result of our knowing mythological stories is that they begin to have "relevance to something happening in your own life" (Campbell, 4). This, I think, is one of the basic motivators of our interest in myth. Myth speaks to our primal instincts and selves; the parts of us which are often not fully displayed among our peers. When we hear a myth, whether it regards a long separation, or focuses on mother/daughter relationships, it is difficult to not make comparisons to our own life. When this happens, we as humans are able to be instructed by a story because we have placed ourselves inside the story.
Poetry is the same. In poetry, there is ample opportunity for a writer to express their imagination, personifications of the inhuman world, and the spiritual revelations discovered in the process of living. These actions are very similar to those used in myth. Poetic language is the “language of the imagination” and captures our “mythical feelings” according to Frederick Clarke Prescott, who has written extensively on poetry’s connection to myth as well as to dreams (40-41). Clarke notes our tendency to rename inanimate objects to give them human characteristics. A name such as ‘Giant’s Causeway’ is an example of this fanciful desire to create links to humanity everywhere. Clarke argues that this tendency is seen in myth as well. For example, Greek mythology is notorious for crafting gods of nature with exaggerated human traits. Zeus, god of the sky and of thunder, is also incredibly sexually promiscuous and quick to anger.
This imaginative reconstruction of the world is at work in poetry in the use of metaphor as well. We have often heard the metaphor defined as the “comparison of two unlike things.” So metaphor takes opposing or unrelated things and creates a new, imaginative understanding of an abstract thought. In myth, according to the research of Jean-Pierre Vernant, some mythological beings function as literal metaphors. The goddess Artemis functions as a metaphor by linking the opposites of civilization and wilderness into a cohesive and understandable oneness. Similarly, the centaur, a beast that is half man and half beast, links the wildness of an animal with the rationality of man, allowing for us to comprehend of a being that encompasses both traits, as we as humans so often do ourselves.
Many authors have used the correlation between myth and their own lives to express discontentment or a desire for change. In our class this semester, The Odyssey in Modern Literature, we have spoken about Ralph Ellison, James Joyce and Margaret Atwood as examples of this. Poets, as well, find myth a useful channel for expressing their contemporary views. Janet Lowery, author of Traffic in Women, a collection of poems about mythological females, says that she believes "no other culture has produced a pantheon of trouble and troubling women" as the realm of women she found in the pages of Greek mythology (xi). Lowery was able to use these women and their stories and contemporize them (I realize that is not an actual word, but it is exactly what I mean) to give speech to modern issues facing women. Lowery's goal, and the goal of many such authors/poets, is to "give voice to...characters from classical literature in contemporary language" (xi).
This is my goal as well, to bring the characters of the Odyssey, who are so active in my imagination, to new light and new meanings, and to give them new voices as well.
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph, and Bill D. Moyers. The Power of Myth. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Print.
Gwynn, R. S. Dogwatch: Poems. 1st ed. Evansville: Measure, 2014. Print
Gwynn, R. S. Poetry: A Pocket Anthology. 7th ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2012. Print.
Lombardo, Stanley. Odyssey. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2000. Print.
Lowery, Janet. Traffic in Women: Poetry from Women of Classical Mythology. Houston: Odonata House, 2008. Print.
Prescott, Frederick Clarke. Poetry & Myth. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Print.
Stallings, A. E. Olives: Poems. Northwestern UP, 2012. Print.
Vernant, Jean Pierre, and Froma I. Zeitlin. "Figure and Function of Artemis in Myth and Cult." Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1991. Print.
Poetry...has grown from myth, and it still preserves a mythical character.
-Frederick Clarke Prescott
This website endeavors to show the correlations between the world of myth and works of poetry. In order to do this, I have selected poems that pair with various characters from the Odyssey. Some of the poems are directly based on the Odyssey and are reworkings or re-imaginings of certain situations. Other poems are simply poems that I believe represent the emotions and events of the Odyssey well, though they are not directly connected.
My interest in myth and poetry stems from a semester in college in which I took both a mythology course and a poetry seminar. I found that the stories from my mythology course bled naturally into my poetry. While writing myth-based poetry that semester, I though that the correlation existed only because of my interest in the myths we were studying. However, now that I have researched the connection between myth and poetry further, I am persuaded that these two modes of writing are connected on a complex level.
According to Joseph Campbell, the result of our knowing mythological stories is that they begin to have "relevance to something happening in your own life" (Campbell, 4). This, I think, is one of the basic motivators of our interest in myth. Myth speaks to our primal instincts and selves; the parts of us which are often not fully displayed among our peers. When we hear a myth, whether it regards a long separation, or focuses on mother/daughter relationships, it is difficult to not make comparisons to our own life. When this happens, we as humans are able to be instructed by a story because we have placed ourselves inside the story.
Poetry is the same. In poetry, there is ample opportunity for a writer to express their imagination, personifications of the inhuman world, and the spiritual revelations discovered in the process of living. These actions are very similar to those used in myth. Poetic language is the “language of the imagination” and captures our “mythical feelings” according to Frederick Clarke Prescott, who has written extensively on poetry’s connection to myth as well as to dreams (40-41). Clarke notes our tendency to rename inanimate objects to give them human characteristics. A name such as ‘Giant’s Causeway’ is an example of this fanciful desire to create links to humanity everywhere. Clarke argues that this tendency is seen in myth as well. For example, Greek mythology is notorious for crafting gods of nature with exaggerated human traits. Zeus, god of the sky and of thunder, is also incredibly sexually promiscuous and quick to anger.
This imaginative reconstruction of the world is at work in poetry in the use of metaphor as well. We have often heard the metaphor defined as the “comparison of two unlike things.” So metaphor takes opposing or unrelated things and creates a new, imaginative understanding of an abstract thought. In myth, according to the research of Jean-Pierre Vernant, some mythological beings function as literal metaphors. The goddess Artemis functions as a metaphor by linking the opposites of civilization and wilderness into a cohesive and understandable oneness. Similarly, the centaur, a beast that is half man and half beast, links the wildness of an animal with the rationality of man, allowing for us to comprehend of a being that encompasses both traits, as we as humans so often do ourselves.
Many authors have used the correlation between myth and their own lives to express discontentment or a desire for change. In our class this semester, The Odyssey in Modern Literature, we have spoken about Ralph Ellison, James Joyce and Margaret Atwood as examples of this. Poets, as well, find myth a useful channel for expressing their contemporary views. Janet Lowery, author of Traffic in Women, a collection of poems about mythological females, says that she believes "no other culture has produced a pantheon of trouble and troubling women" as the realm of women she found in the pages of Greek mythology (xi). Lowery was able to use these women and their stories and contemporize them (I realize that is not an actual word, but it is exactly what I mean) to give speech to modern issues facing women. Lowery's goal, and the goal of many such authors/poets, is to "give voice to...characters from classical literature in contemporary language" (xi).
This is my goal as well, to bring the characters of the Odyssey, who are so active in my imagination, to new light and new meanings, and to give them new voices as well.
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph, and Bill D. Moyers. The Power of Myth. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Print.
Gwynn, R. S. Dogwatch: Poems. 1st ed. Evansville: Measure, 2014. Print
Gwynn, R. S. Poetry: A Pocket Anthology. 7th ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2012. Print.
Lombardo, Stanley. Odyssey. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2000. Print.
Lowery, Janet. Traffic in Women: Poetry from Women of Classical Mythology. Houston: Odonata House, 2008. Print.
Prescott, Frederick Clarke. Poetry & Myth. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Print.
Stallings, A. E. Olives: Poems. Northwestern UP, 2012. Print.
Vernant, Jean Pierre, and Froma I. Zeitlin. "Figure and Function of Artemis in Myth and Cult." Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1991. Print.