Tag Archives: Mythology

POETS Day! Ovid and the Rape of Europa

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

My favorite librarian is missing. He’s been gone ever since I asked about a collection of James Dickey poetry. We couldn’t find it in the Jefferson County system or through inter-library loan systems with universities and other institutions (I have no idea what other institutions participate in library loan systems, but I’m told there are others). He said he owned a copy of the book personally and would let me borrow his copy. I haven’t seen him since.

Did he violate a librarian code? Do they have non-competes? Did they take him away for re-education? Are there really investigators like Mr. Bookman from that Seinfeld episode? It’s like he’s been shushed out of existence.

It’s POETS Day, so Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Ditch work. There’s an afternoon of fun to be had, but first take a look and make sure any library books you’ve checked out aren’t late. Be safe.

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There’s a very good article called “Ovid in exile” in last month’s New Criterion. Ovid’s out at Columbia University. I had a stumble when I came across the embedded quote by Lisa Libes, described as a “veteran of Literature Humanities” by article author David Lehman: “Ovid was sent on a three-year furlough, returning to the syllabus briefly in 2018 before being nixed entirely.” I stumbled wondering why a 2018 controversy, settled with seeming finality in 2021, showed up as consideration meat in the October 2025 issue, but the editors published it under the “Reflections” heading and Lehman, aside from being a poet and critic is the founder and series editor of The Best American Poetry anthologies, so he can bring up what he wants when he wants and we’re all the better for it.

Per Lehman, “In plain English, the students singled out the Metamorphoses because of the Greek and Roman god’s habit of coming to earth, pursuing mortal nymphs, and raping them.” He then lists the rapes of Perserpine by Pluto, Europa by Jupiter, Philomena by Terseus, and Apollo’s attempt at Daphne.

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Spring Lamb from a Once Noisy Rock

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Silla used to be Scylla. Those were heady days. When the Greeks were in charge this was a mighty place. Sailors knew: “but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps / abominably, a newborn whelp’s cry, / though she is huge and monstrous.” Six heads of monstrous per Homer, who knew a bit about showmanship, with “triple serried rows of fangs and deep / gullets of black death.” The place had a buzz.

Opposite the rocks that lore named Scylla was Charibdis; a Sicily-adjacent whirlpool, impassible. To risk the whirlpool was to lose your ship. The rocks meant a sacrifice of six crewmen, “from every ship, one man for every gullet.” It was the original hard place.

Further south along the toe’s coast, you find Palmi, with views across the Tyrrhenian of the Aeolian Islands’s Mt. Stromboli to the northish and across the Strait of Messina of Mt. Etna to the southwest. There aren’t many places in the world from where you can see two active volcanoes. Keep going with the sea to your right and olive trees to your left to reach Reggio Calabria, the provincial capital (Overly simplified: Italians say regions when Canadians would say provinces and their provinces are what we’d call counties.)

The most interesting thing about Reggio Calabria to me right now is that it’s listed as the 100th most populous city in Europe by Wikipedia. Not 99th. Not 117th. What are the odds that the city I read about last night and decided to look into further this morning would hold such a decidistinction? In grade school I was told that Mt. Everest was found to be 29,000 feet tall but reported as 29,001 because the statisticians didn’t think anyone would believe the round finding. “Latest measurements” put it at 29,032 feet. Better lasers than in Hillary’s time, I suppose.

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