Richard E. Miller
219 Principles of Literary Study

Interpreting Poets Interpreting Homer

Throughout this first month, we have been moving back and forth between the activities of reading individual poems closely and considering the relationships between individual poems--the ways that individual poets pick up, respond to, and transform themes other poets have addressed before them. With this work in mind, I would like you to discuss the relationship between one of the poems assigned for Thursday, September 30th [Daniel, "Ulysses and the Siren" (84); Tennyson, "Ulysses" (402); MacLeish, "Calypso's Island" (622); Merwin, "Odysseus" (789); Graham, "Ravel and Unravel," (handout); Walcott, Chapter XL from Omeros (handout)] and the selections from The Odyssey assigned on Tuesday, September 28th. Specifically, I would like for you to address how the poem you have selected uses the material it takes from The Odyssey. What is the poet's project in drawing on Homer's poem? In what ways is The Odyssey changed, remade, or reproduced through its being retold in the poem you've selected?

In preparing this essay, you will want to recall the work you've already done reading an individual poem closely and providing an "authoritative interpretive footnote," for here you will be both looking closely at a poem in isolation and at the relationship between the poem you've selected and the work that poem cites (i.e. The Odyssey). Thus, you should seek, in the final draft of your essay, to provide a close reading of the poem you've selected and a sustained discussion of how the poet has used Homer's material and to what end. In order to do this, you will, of course, need to refer directly to the poems in question, citing directly from the material (including line numbers), and providing your interpretation of that material.