The Achilles of Elizabeth Cook

~
There are Trojans who speak of the time when they saw her close - maybe at an upstairs window, or shaking a rug at a door; perhaps even smiled. Others have only seen her far off on the battlements in her finery for the monthly showings Paris insisted on.... they cheered and their cheers were in Paris' ears as he fucked her. He needed others to want her to want her.

-- Achilles by Elizabeth Cook

Monk devoted his weekend to re-reading Ms. Cook's Achilles, and when he picked it up and looked for his notes at the back of the book, he was surprised that the last time he read it was January 13, 2003 - how could so much time pass that fast...

A year should not pass without immersing himself back into this prose-poem, taking him away back to that wondrous ancient Greek lore. In her brief volume, she brings out the stories that surround and serve as background to Homer's tales. To read it is to fall into a dreaming...

What makes this volume more special is that there is a closing chapter in which she breaks off to give a little study into the life of Keats. When Monk first got the book, he was turned off by this, because he knows practically nothing of Keats, but Ms. Cook turns this into an ode to reading.

Apparently, Keats was a sickly little man, but he had a particular fondness for Homer, and being of the same race and color as Achilles, Keats felt a certain identity with the legend - that power of reading. This closing chapter begins with this paragraph that may have been lifted from Keats' own diary:

"I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds... According to my state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches or with Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily."

The Achilles of Elizabeth Cook

~
There are Trojans who speak of the time when they saw her close - maybe at an upstairs window, or shaking a rug at a door; perhaps even smiled. Others have only seen her far off on the battlements in her finery for the monthly showings Paris insisted on.... they cheered and their cheers were in Paris' ears as he fucked her. He needed others to want her to want her.

-- Achilles by Elizabeth Cook

Monk devoted his weekend to re-reading Ms. Cook's Achilles, and when he picked it up and looked for his notes at the back of the book, he was surprised that the last time he read it was January 13, 2003 - how could so much time pass that fast...

A year should not pass without immersing himself back into this prose-poem, taking him away back to that wondrous ancient Greek lore. In her brief volume, she brings out the stories that surround and serve as background to Homer's tales. To read it is to fall into a dreaming...

What makes this volume more special is that there is a closing chapter in which she breaks off to give a little study into the life of Keats. When Monk first got the book, he was turned off by this, because he knows practically nothing of Keats, but Ms. Cook turns this into an ode to reading.

Apparently, Keats was a sickly little man, but he had a particular fondness for Homer, and being of the same race and color as Achilles, Keats felt a certain identity with the legend - that power of reading. This closing chapter begins with this paragraph that may have been lifted from Keats' own diary:

"I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds... According to my state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches or with Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily."