Ajax and Alamein
Logue’s rendering of Homer is powerful because he makes it immediate, either by transporting you through sheer force of description...
Hospitality protocol 101
Homer is awash with examples of great hospitality and generosity between hosts and guests, even uninvited ones washing up on...
Beware the Idomeneus spear
Famed with good reason - see his bringing another warrior to meet his 'dark-named destiny'. However, the most graphic...
A luminous spot in Chicago
What makes a city great? What makes a civilization? How about a bright, quiet, dazzling new building in the heart...
As quiet as…
Christopher Logue’s vivid, muscular version of some episodes in the Iliad abounds with striking metaphors – I noted about 60...
Poikilometis
Nicolson refers to this word, used to describe Odysseus, and translates it as ‘dapple-skilled, with so much woven into him...
Nestor berates the Greeks
Old Nestor has a few choice words to say to his fellow Greeks for their unwillingness to take on the...
Sweet-running river
Flowing like the sweet-running river it evokes, a meandering metaphor for Hector's strength and movement, likened to a thoroughbred horse...
Sunlight like birds
This conveys the distant wink and sparkle of sun glancing off a choppy sea surface and appearing, at a distance,...
A shire-sized dust-sheet
The tearing of a dust-sheet isn’t an obvious sound to describe the dis-scabbarding of a Greek sword, and then Logue...
As timid as…
A memorable and graphic (if unsympathetic) way to convey timidity and fearfulness. You can see a cowering dog, skitting about...
Quiet in quiet rooms
A simple movement, settling back against a rope, evoking entire lives spent leaning into comfort and quiet, disengaging from din...
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