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Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides was first performed in 414 BCE. Euripides and the Greeks considered it a tragedy even though these days literary folk like to argue otherwise. But no one dies! There is no blood and keening, no eye gouging! It kind of has a happy ending! What ancient Greeks considered a tragedy is quite different from our modern day definition and it seems completely pointless and silly to waste ink arguing over how to classify this play. But I guess scholars need something to do and it is harmless in the scheme of things.

If you recall your Greek stories, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon sacrificed her in order bring the winds that would get the Greek fleet to Troy where the dastardly Paris had absconded with Helen, his brother’s wife. That’s Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus, not Paris’s brother, Hector. Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon on his victorious return from Troy ten years later in part as revenge for him murdering her daughter. Orestes, Cly and Agie’s son, eventually shows up and kills his mother and her new husband in revenge for his father’s murder. As punishment for the matricide, the Furies are set loose on Orestes. Well and so.

Iphigenia, however, according to some, was not actually sacrificed. At the last moment Artemis saved her by substituting a pig/lamb/calf (take your pick) and whisked Iphigenia away to her Temple among the Taurians somewhere on the Black Sea (there was never an actual country called Tauris yet the people were called Taurians but I can’t for the life of me find out what their country was called, if it was even real so if you know, please enlighten me). Euripides chooses to go with this version of the story. Obvs.

So for all these years Iphigenia has been the High Priestess in the Temple of Artemis among the Taurians who think that human sacrifice is a pretty awesome thing. They especially like to capture strangers who are driven to shore by the freak tides and dangerous waters around their country and offer them up to Artemis. In spite of the excitement sacrificing humans must be, especially when you yourself were at one time supposed to be a human sacrifice, Iphigenia seems rather bored. She spends quite a lot of time missing Greece and wishing she could go home (she has apparently forgiven her father for his attempted sacrifice of her). If she knew all that had been going on, she might change her mind, but she doesn’t because no one from Greece has set foot on Taurian shores in all the years Iphigenia has been there.

Until now.

Two young Greeks land their boat on the shore and then hide it and themselves because they don’t know how friendly these barbarians are. On a side note, when you come across anything in ancient Greek stories that talk about barbarians, it usually isn’t referring to specific barbarians (like Conan for instance or even Cohen and Nijel the Destroyer for that matter), but to anyone who is not Greek. The Greeks thought very highly of themselves and if you were not Greek, you were a barbarian which goes a long way towards explaining quite a lot of ancient Greek history.

Anywho, these stealthy Greeks had been sent by Artemis to “recover” something from the Temple, an icon made of wood. They are none other than Orestes and his best bud Pylades. Even though he is on this mission for Artemis he is still also being chased by the Furies. Since Artemis knows that Iphigenia is at this temple and she and Orestes are siblings, one can’t help but think this an elaborate ruse to get them to meet. The pair of icon thieves are captured by Taurian guards even before they get to reconnoiter because Orestes has a crazy Furies moment and starts yelling and waving his arms about on the beach in front of everyone. So much for stealthy.

The Taurians are delighted to have prime Greek humans to sacrifice. They are brought before Iphigenia. No, she does not recognize Orestes because he was just a boy when he was fostered out elsewhere for his own protection. Before getting to the sacrificing bit, Iphigenia starts pumping them for information about what’s been going on in Greece all these years. She realizes pretty soon that these two are actually from her hometown and the more questions she asks, the more evasive Orestes gets. He has no idea he’s talking to his sister. Round and round they go.

Finally in desperation, Iphigenia strikes a deal. She’ll only sacrifice one of them if the other one will carry a message back home for her, letting the family know she is actually alive and hoping that maybe someone will come for her. This bargaining is all carried out without once mentioning family names. But the men agree and then the pair proceed to argue over who is going to be the one sacrificed. Orestes thinks being killed would be pretty okay, it would, after all, rid him of the Furies. Pylades, says no, I love you too much, let me be killed so I can die happy knowing you are still alive even if the Furies are chasing you. After many declarations of love and bickering over whose life is worthier, Orestes gives in and Pylades is thrilled that he gets to die for him.

Since Iphigenia doesn’t know how to read or write, she has to tell Orestes the message for her family at which point Orestes and Pylades gawp at her because they realize who she is. Orestes reveals himself as her brother but Iphigenia makes him prove it which he does by telling her something only a family member would know. Happy reunion scene ensues followed by a what-do-we-do-now conference since Iphigenia is supposed to kill them.

But they work it out as only the children of Agamemnon can. All three escape from Tauris and Orestes and Pylades even get the icon they came for. The king is about to send his navy after the three but Athena appears and tells him that it wouldn’t be prudent. The king knows which side his bread is buttered on, calls off his men, and places a help wanted ad in the local paper for a new High Priestess for the Temple. Meanwhile, Orestes, Pylades and Iphigenia sail off into the sunset.

You can see why scholars are into arguing how to classify this play. It’s also not the most exciting or interesting Euripides play ever. There is lots of longing for home from both Iphigenia and Orestes, and how that homesickness can really drag on a person. The play sets up a scenario where you could really dig into the psychology of longing and exile and the meaning of home, but this being a Greek tragedy, it only flits around the edges, psychology not having been invented yet.

One more thing, it’s really hard to type “Pylades” over and over and not “Pilates.” I’ve never done Pilates but I am sure there are plenty of people in the world who have and wouldn’t mind seeing Pilates sacrificed in the Temple of Artemis. But then that would be an entirely different story.

This selection of ancient Greek literature includes philosophy, poetry, drama, and history. It introduces some of the great classical thinkers, whose ideas have had a profound influence on Western civilization.

Jason and the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes

Apollonius’ Argonautica is the dramatic story of Jason’s voyage in the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece, and how he wins the aid of the Colchian princess and sorceress Medea, as well as her love. Written in the third century BC, it was influential on the Latin poets Catullus and Ovid, as well as on Virgil’s Aeneid.

Poetics by Aristotle

This short treatise has been described as the most influential book on poetry ever written. It is a very readable consideration of why art matters which also contains practical advice for poets and playwrights that is still followed today.

The Trojan Women and Other Plays by Euripides

One of the greatest Greek tragedians, Euripides wrote at least eighty plays, of which seventeen survive complete. The universality of his themes means that his plays continue to be performed and adapted all over the world. In this volume three great war plays, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, and Andromache, explore suffering and the endurance of the female spirit in the aftermath of bloody conflict.

The Histories by Herodotus

Herodotus was called “the father of history” by Cicero because the scale on which he wrote had never been attempted before. His history of the Persian Wars is an astonishing achievement, and is not only a fascinating history of events but is full of digression and entertaining anecdote. It also provokes very interesting questions about historiography.

The Iliad by Homer

Homer’s two great epic poems, the Odyssey and the Iliad, have created stories that have enthralled readers for thousands of year. The Iliad describes a tragic episode during the siege of Troy, sparked by a quarrel between the leader of the Greek army and its mightiest warrior, Achilles; Achilles’ anger and the death of the Trojan hero Hector play out beneath the watchful gaze of the gods.

Republic by Plato

Plato’s dialogue presents Socrates and other philosophers discussing what makes the ideal community. It is essentially an enquiry into morality, and why justice and goodness are fundamental. Harmonious human beings are as necessary as a harmonious society, and Plato has profound things to say about many aspects of life. The dialogue contains the famous myth of the cave, in which only knowledge and wisdom will liberate man from regarding shadows as reality.

Greek Lives by Plutarch

Plutarch wrote forty-six biographies of eminent Greeks and Romans in a series of paired, or parallel, Lives. This selection of nine Greek lives includes Alexander the Great, Pericles, and Lycurgus, and the Lives are notable for their insights into personalities, as well as for what they reveal about such things as the Spartan regime and social system.

Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra by Sophocles

In these three masterpieces Sophocles established the foundation of Western drama. His three central characters are faced with tests of their will and character, and their refusal to compromise their principles has terrible results. Antigone and Electra are bywords for female resolve, while Oedipus’ discovery that he has committed both incest and patricide has inspired much psychological analysis, and given his name to Freud’s famous complex.

Heading image: Porch of Maidens by Thermos. CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post A reading list of Ancient Greek classics appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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What an amazing play is Medea by Euripides. I read an edition from 2006 translated by the poet Michael Collier and the Greek scholar Georgia Machemer. Machemer also wrote a fantastic introduction. Of all the introductions to all the Greek plays I’ve read over the last several years, this one is hands down the best. What was so good about it? It provided context for the play without trotting out all the usual tired historical droning that usually makes its way into these kinds of introductions. The context provided was specific to this play itself and what was going on in Athens during the time it was produced, what the audience would have known and expected, how they would have probably reacted when their expectations were challenged, and what they would have known and how they would have felt about Euripides himself.

For instance, even though the songs Euripides wrote for his choruses were popular and sung all over town, the playwright and plays themselves often unsettled audiences. Euripides was schooled by the Sophists who were foreigners to Athens, had unnerving theories about the nature of things and could deftly argue either side of an issue. They stirred things up. Euripides didn’t let them down.

Medea opens with Medea’s nurse coming on stage. Today we would think nothing of this, but then, this was shocking. Not only was it a woman giving the opening monologue of the play but a servant who was an old slave of a “barbarian” princess. When you expect a highborn man or a god to walk out for the opening monologue, this move is quite astonishing and right off sets you reeling.

And then the play itself. A woman carries it and not just any woman. Medea is a priestess of Hecate, she has immense knowledge of the healing arts as well as potions that kill. She is from a foreign country. And she speaks throughout with the rhetorical skill of a man, scheming, tricking, deceiving to save her own honor instead of submitting to the will of her husband like a good and proper wife should. After seeing this play the men in the audience, and the audience would have been almost all men, would have been shaking in their sandals for fear of the power that a woman might wield. I could also hope that some of them left the theatre with a bit more respect for their wives but that might be hoping too much.

This play would have resonated with Athenians on a different level too. Athens had recently passed a law that said foreign-born wives could not be citizens nor could any of their offspring. This law effectively disinherited any children born from such a marriage. As a result, many men divorced their wives and married Greek ones instead. So when Jason leaves Medea for the daughter of King Creon, the men of Athens watching this play got an extra dose of discomfort.

There is an interesting note in the text of my edition of the play that says a good many scholars believe Euripides invented Medea killing her children, that prior to this play, the story did not include their deaths. So why did she have to kill them? Medea needed to destroy Jason for his betrayal and the best way to destroy him is to destroy his whole family. Thus Medea kills Jason’s new wife with poisoned gifts and Creon in rushing to her aid is also poisoned by he deadly robes. The children could not be left alive as heirs nor after killing the king and his daughter could Medea leave the children alive to likely be killed my an angry mob. So she does the deed. She almost couldn’t. Can you blame her? The gods do not punish her for killing her children because her act was honorable vengeance against a man who betrayed both her and the gods who had given him Medea to help him escape with the Golden Fleece.

Medea gets to exit in a golden sun chariot with the corpses of her children after she curses Jason. And we all known Jason dies a sad and ruined man, killed when his famous ship, the Argo, falls on his head while he is beneath it repairing its keel.

Medea, of course, has some marvelous speeches in this play. One of my favorite passages happens when she is talking to the chorus who are all women:

But I’ve been talking as if our lives
are the same. They’re not. You are Corinthians
with ancestral homes, childhood friends,
while I, stripped of that already,
am now even more exposed by Jason’s cruelties.
Remember how I came here, a war bride,
plundered from my country, an orphan?
Now who’s obligated to shelter me? Not you,
I know. As you watch my plans for justice unfold,
keep them secret, that’s all I ask. I’ve never felt
this threatened nor fearless: men win their battles
on the field but women are ruthless when the bed
becomes the battleground. We’ve lain
in our own blood before…and have survived.

In the face of Medea, Jason comes off sounding like a greedy, petulant boy whining about how Medea isn’t being reasonable in accepting the crumbs he is reluctantly offering so he looks like a good man and doesn’t feel guilty. Why he is so surprised that this powerful woman throws it all back in his face and calls him on his betrayal is the real surprise.

The sad thing though in the end, in spite of Medea triumphing over Jason and being carried away to Athens in a chariot of the sun (he’s a relative), she has lost everything too. She will have protection in Athens, but she has no home, no friends, no children. She wins by losing and that is the biggest tragedy of all.

Andromache by Euripides is a jam-packed play that goes from Andromache under threat of murder to a fight between Peleus, Achilles’ father, and Menelaus, to Orestes stealing away Hermione, Neoptolemus’ wife, to Neoptolemus being murdered, to his son with Andromache being sent to Molossia where he will then continue the line of Troy and Achilles by producing a long and prosperous reign of kings. It’s really crazy just how much Euripides does in this play without it completely falling to pieces.

It’s been a number of years since the fall of Troy and Andromache, Hector’s wife, was awarded to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus. They have a young son together. The play opens with Andromache as a suppliant in the temple of Thetis. Hermione, the legitimate wife of Neoptolemus, is barren and insisting that Andromache has cast a spell on her so she cannot bear children. Hermione is the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. Neoptolemus is away at Delphi, though expected back at any moment. In his absence, Menelaus has shown up and nominally taken charge of the household. He plots with Hermione to kill Andromache and her son who Andromache had hidden but Menelaus has found him. Andromache doesn’t know this at first and she thinks she just has to hold out until Neoptolemus gets back. Just in case though, she has sent for Peleus, Achilles’ father and Neoptolemus’ grandfather.

In the first part of the play we have Hermione in her rich queenly robes verbally sparing with Andromache, former princess of Troy, now dressed in slave’s clothes. There is a back and forth over who has the right to speak and who doesn’t. Hermione, being the wife, establishes as quickly as she can her right to speak freely and then launches into accusations against Andromache. Besides causing Hermione to be barren, Andromache is, according to Hermione, an opportunistic whore for having shared a bed with the son of the man who killed Andromache’s husband and bearing him a son.

Andromache, though a slave, refuses to keep her mouth shut. She did not willingly go to bed with Neoptolemus, as a slave she had no choice. She goes on to tell Hermione that it is not drugs and spells that keep Hermione from bearing children, but a husband who hates her — it is Helen’s fault Achilles is dead so by association, the son of Achilles hates the daughter of Helen. By the end of the long argument, Andromache clearly has the upper hand. At this time Menelaus arrives with Andromache’s son and joins the argument, telling her that he will spare her son if she leaves the altar of Thetis and allows him to kill her, Andromache.

Andromache puts up a good argument for her life and her son’s, so good that Menelaus, clearly at a loss, has to be saved by the chorus:

You are a woman talking to a man, and so you have said too much. You have lost sight of womanly modesty.

This allows Menelaus to spit out

Woman, this is petty business and unworthy of my regal power.

Which becomes a really interesting thing in light of Mary Beard’s recent lecture in the the public voice of women.

Menelaus tricks Andromache into leaving the altar with his promise to spare her son which he immediately takes back, saying he will not kill her son but Hermione will. At which point Andromache tosses out a nasty curse on Sparta.

There is an interesting political and racial dynamic in the play. Andromache is from Troy and therefore from the east. Hermione and Menelaus are Spartan. Neoptolemus is Greek. The play was produced sometime near the start of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. Andromache’s curse on Sparta would have been quite a rousing moment for the Athenians watching the play.

Peleus finally shows up and he and Menelaus have a good argument in which Peleus bests Menelaus and sends him packing back to Sparta with a really lame excuse in order to save face. Then the play gets weird. Hermione unprotected by her father is frantic because she is sure that when Neoptolemus arrives he will kill her for having plotted to kill Andromache and his only son. So Orestes shows up. Yup, that Orestes, son of Agamemnon, chased by the Furies for killing his mother in revenge for her killing his father. He is currently having trouble with the Furies but his troubles aren’t so bad that he can’t run off with Hermione. Apparently Hermione had originally been promised in marriage to Orestes. But because of Troy and Achilles’ great deeds Hermione was given to Neoptolemus instead.

Now in a reenactment of Paris stealing Helen while Menelaus is away, Orestes steals Hermione while Neoptolemus is away. But Orestes is going to get away with it because he also went to the trouble of getting Neoptolemus killed at Delphi by the people there who thought he was planning on sacking the temple thanks to slanders by Orestes. Off they go and finally, after almost an entire play of everyone waiting for Neoptolemus to get home, he arrives, only he is dead and shows up being carried on a bier. Peleus is bereft now that his son and grandson are both dead. Thetis, who was once married to Peleus and is mother of Achilles, swoops in and makes it all right.

What is this play of domestic dispute about? The repercussions of war played out on a smaller scale to be sure. But also household rights, who can speak and how, who has power and who doesn’t. And there is warning for the men of Athens watching the play: don’t keep your wife and your mistress under the same roof. There are several references to this in the play as well as many more comments about how women like to plot against each other. Sigh.

Hecuba and Trojan Women were such powerful plays with strong women that Andromache, in spite of some really good speeches, is a bit of a let down. Though I admit Orestes stealing Hermione is a nice Days of Our Lives touch. Even though Euripides manages to keep the plot more or less in line, the play just doesn’t come together with a unified emotional force..

I think I’ll take a break from Euripides for a month or two. Then maybe I’ll come back with Medea. Or perhaps I should save that one for last?

My days of poking fun at ancient Greek plays are over. Hecuba is too awesome to make fun of. Euripides wrote Hecuba in 424 BCE. The play takes place not long after the fall of Troy. The Greeks are camped on the shores of the Thracian Chersonese. Hecuba, wife of Priam king of Troy, is among Agamemnon’s prizes. She has gone from Queen to slave, her husband is dead and all but one of her sons are dead. That son, Polydorus, was too young to fight in the war and was sent off to Thrace with a cartload of gold. Here he has been a guest of Polymestor, the king and a friend of Troy.

The play opens in an unconventional way for Greek tragedy. We have the ghost of Polydorus, the son Hecuba believes is still alive and safe, explain to us his fate. When Troy fell Polymester killed him and took all his gold. Polymester didn’t even give him a burial, but tossed his body into the ocean:

He killed me and flung me into the surging salt sea so that he could keep the gold in his own house. And I lie sometimes on the shore, sometimes in the rolling waters, carried on the constant ebb and flow of the waves. There is no one to weep over me, no one to bury me.

Until someone gives Polymester proper burial rites, he will remain a ghost.

But he is not the only ghost in the story. Achilles appeared above his tomb and demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena, Polydorus’ sister and Hecuba’s daughter. Until this is done, there will be no winds to sail the Greeks home. Nice bookend that, since Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia so the winds would blow the Greeks to Troy at the start of the war. Achilles demanding Polyxena be sacrificed was a shocking request and the Greek army argued over whether they should obey Achilles’ demand. They weren’t going to do it until Odysseus

that cunning-hearted
logic chopping, sweet-tongued courtier of the people

convinces them otherwise.

I never much liked Odysseus, and in the play my dislike of him is justified. He goes to the tent where Hecuba and her daughter and some other Trojan women are being kept and is a perfect unfeeling bastard. Hecuba, however, has nothing to lose and she goes at him toe to toe, trying every angle of verbal attack to get him to back down. Valiant as her efforts are, she cannot win. The good hearted Polyxena steps up and says she will go willingly since she no longer has any reason to live anymore. She chooses sacrifice with honor over spending the rest of her life as a slave.

Just after Hecuba hears the details of her daughter’s death and we think she can’t slip any deeper into despair and grief, her serving woman arrives to tell her that the body of Polydorus has been found on the beach. She cries out

All is over for unhappy Hecuba — I no longer exist.

Agamemnon takes pity on her and summons the Thracian king and his small sons to the camp where he arranges a meting for them with Hecuba. She takes her revenge after Polymester lies to her face. Hecuba kills Polymester’s sons and then blinds Polymester. In his grief and blindness he crawls on all fours on the ground, crying out his agony and asking to be avenged. But no one will come to his aid because he violated the sacred guest-friend laws by killing Polydorus.

The play ends with the winds beginning to blow. Agamemnon orders the army to dump Polymester on an island somewhere. And Polymester foretells Hecuba beng transformed into a dog and Agamemon’s death when he reaches home.

The play focuses on Hecuba but it also has moments in which it acknowledges the fate women face when men go to war:

From one man’s folly came evil for all,
bringing destruction on the land of Simois
with disaster for others too,
and the rivalry was settled
when the herdsman judged
the three daughters of the blessed ones on Ida,
settled with war, with blood and the ruin of my home.
And by the fair-flowing Eurotas
a Spartan girl laments at home, with many a tear,
and a mother beats her grey head with her hand
and tears her cheek, rending it with bloody nails,
for her children are dead.

One of the most groundbreaking things Euripides did was make his characters speak in everyday language. They do not talk in ritualized ways or formal speech, but as regular people talked. This, I think makes his plays so very powerful because it erases the distance between the characters on stage and the people in the audience so there is no escape from the pain of Hecuba’s grief and the force of her vengeance.

The Greek tragedies by the “big three” are so formal and often over-the-top to my modern-day ear that I enjoy poking a bit of irreverent fun at them. I was looking forward to doing the same with Euripides’ Orestes but it is such an interesting play that I have to take it seriously. Mostly. I read a fantastic translation by Anne Carson. My respect for her work continues to grow the more I read it. She really is top-notch and better than Robert Fagles in my opinion.

I imagine Orestes was probably the third play in the traditional three-play cycle and we just don’t have the others. But since the introduction doesn’t mention this, perhaps Euripides placed it differently in his play cycle. Oh, wait, Euripides has an Elektra too. So much for reading in order. Anyway, the story that comes before this play is the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra when he returns from Troy. Orestes who has been fostered out, returns and kills his mother. Now, in this play he suffers the consequences: the Furies.

But Euripides does something so totally unexpected and I would love to have seen how the audience reacted when it was performed at the Dionysian Festival in 408 B.C. Whereas others like Aeschylus, portrayed the Furies as actual women flying through the air relentlessly chasing Orestes and tormenting him, Euripides turns them into a psychological metaphor for guilt. Not that they weren’t before, but the Furies in this play are all in Orestes’ head, they have no physical manifestation. Apparently Euripides introduced into Greek theatre

a concern for the solitary inward self, for consciousness as a private content that might or might not match up with the outside appearance of a person, that might or might not make sense to an observer. He lived at a time when philosophers as well as artists were becoming intrigued by this difference between outside and inside, appearance and reality, and were advancing various theories about what truth is and where truth lies.

In Euripides’ story of Orestes, his sister Elektra and his best friend Pylades helped him kill Clytemnestra at the command of the god Apollo. Nonetheless, Orestes is still being tormented with the guilt of murdering his mother even though he did the right thing according to Apollo and according to custom that the son must avenge the murder of his father. But it gets complicated when the murderer is your mother and there is a law against matricide.

This then being a psychological situation with Orestes looking inward we get conversation like this:

MENELAOS: What’s wrong with you? What sickness wastes you away?

ORESTES: Conscience. I know what I have done.

MENELAOS: How do you mean?

ORESTES: Grief is killing me.

MENELAOS: She is a dread goddess. But curable.

ORESTES: And fits of madness. Mother madness. Mother blood.

It has only been six days since his mother’s burial. Though surprised by his grief and guilt, he is still expecting Apollo to come through for him and absolve him of his crime and madness.

The town has been holding the guilt-stricken Orestes and his co-conspirators captive trying to figure out what to do with them. Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother arrives with his wife Helen and their daughter Hermione on the eve of the town taking a vote on whether or not Orestes and friends will be stoned to death. Orestes pleads with Menelaus to intercede for them but he pretty much claims he can’t do anything but that he will try anyway. Elektra, Orestes and Pylades start making a plan directed at the hateful Helen (“the weapon of mass destruction” she is called in the play by Pylades) who they see as being the one at fault for the mess they are in since she is the one who started the war and thus the whole chain of terrible events leading up to this moment in time.

I love poems written to pictures. If you're a regular reader, you know all about 15 Words or Less poems, and I've spent much of 2007 writing poetry collections for young kids, in which each poem has been written to a specific photo. 

I'm going to be writing a brief article about writing poetry in response to art. It will appear in Quercus, a free online magazine. Quercus' target audience is mainly librarians, media specialists, and teachers, though many writers subscribe, too--it's full of interesting stuff! Read a sample issue here, or sign up here.

So I'm going to write an article to help classroom teachers use art and images to add some zip to their poetry-teaching. I have a number of activities I'll be including, but I'm looking for a few more. Are you an author or illustrator who has a nifty idea for this? Or a teacher who has a successful activity to share? Or are you an educator who's used a mix of poetry with visual art and would like to share any anecdotes about how it went over? If I use your idea or story, I'll certainly credit you and can link to your website or blog, if you have one.

Elaine at Wild Rose Reader has a great post on this topic, which I've been saving. And Sara Holmes of Read Write Believe recently posted about a fascinating site with artists' interpretations of a boxer's pose. I know many more of you have terrific ideas or resources. If you're willing to share, please leave a comment or email me through my website (see sidebar). Thanks for your help!

P.S. The article will come out in Quercus in March, in advance of Poetry Month, and I hope to be able to then post it here in mid-April or so.