Ovid and Later Poets

• What is the poem about? • What Ovidian references can you find? • How do these poets put their own spin on Ovid?

I. “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” --William Carlos Williams

2. “Musee des Beaux Arts” --W. H. Auden

3. “The Tree” – Ezra Pound, 1921-24

4. “Where I Live in the Honorable House of the Laurel Tree” – Anne Sexton, 1960

5. “Ovid in the Third Reich” -- Geoffrey Hill, 1968

Translation of the Latin by A.S. Kline:

“She didn’t sin, if she can deny she sinned, only confession makes crimes notorious.”

6. “Daphne” – Alicia E. Stallings, b. 1999

Poet, Singer, Necromancer— I cease to run. I halt you here, Pursuer, with an answer: Do what you will. What blood you've set to music I Can change to chlorophyll, And root myself, and with my toes Wind to subterranean streams. Through solid rock my strength now grows. Such now am I, I cease to eat, But feed on flashes from your eyes; Light, to my new cells, is meat. Find then, when you seize my arm That xylem thickens in my skin And there are splinters in my charm. I may give in; I do not lose. Your hot stare cannot stop my shivering, With delight, if I so choose.