—thoughts on finishing Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey
Book 22 of The Odyssey
reads like the story line of The Punisher
so we know that men have been bloodthirsty
at least since the Greeks sacked Troy
and that Homer rivals Hensleigh in imagery of hacked limbs
and sanguine springs
………………….. almost 3000 years have not dulled our thirst
for an aesthetic of pain. We can imagine Homer
yakking with Tarantino of techniques depicting death
and cruel dispatch over cups of blood-dark seas,
imagining clueless suitors mocking an 800 bc ISIS
collapsed into the form of one Odysseus
disguised by god Athena as a mendicant —an old beggar
imagining his tormentor’s imminent decapitations,
amputations, punctures, skewers, unconcerned of R ratings,
happily scripting till bloody-fingered dawn rolls in
with crime scene cleaners to make the place habitable
for almost-civilized folk who’ve slapped good money down
for admission to sanitized screen brutality and spent
small fortunes on popcorn and coke
Jim Culleny
1/26/18
Blink 