City of Palms

📖 The Scoop

Poetry. "Like his early teacher Robert Lowell, William Doreski is a poet of vast learning and great intellect. In his ambitious long poem CITY OF PALMS, he interweaves Greek and Roman myths into a brilliantly colored tapestry of stories. In Doreski's recasting of these myths, Penelope betrays Odysseus with all the suitors and with the God Hermes, giving birth to Pan; Orpheus's head sings not from the sea near Lesbos, but at Race Point Beach, two miles behind Provincetown, and Endymion has been rendered pink forever by the hand of a mortician. While wonderfully energetic in the telling, his compelling new poem transforms myth into an examination of the failures of our culture and the devasting effects of our mythological and historical past. Like Dante, the poet digs deeper into the inferno, where history, myth, language and culture intersect only to come face to face with his own mortality. A stunning poem, ripping with anger, cosmic irony, deadpan humor, and pathos."—Jeff Friedman

Genre: Poetry / General (fancy, right?)