Customer Reviews

Logue's Homer Cold Calls (Vol 1)

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I needn't have worried. British poet Christopher Logue has been working on his "account" of Homer's Iliad since the early 1960s, and I've long feared he might not live to complete it, especially when you consider how long it takes him to write. "War Music," published in 1962, was the first piece he released, covering Book 16 of the Iliad. Over forty years later, and he's only covered Books 1-6 and 17-19. But now we have Cold Calls, which covers Books 7-8, and is apparently the penultimate chapter. According to his publisher, Logue is even now working on the final (!) volume of War Music.

Logue's installments have been released years (even decades) apart from one another, but the day will come when they are placed together, in order, in one volume, and they will provide a seamless read. Logue has lost none of his masterful touch. If anything, he's improved with age; there should be no fears that the decades separating each chapter of this work might spoil its impact. In fact, Cold Calls contains some of the best lines Logue's written. Here's one such example, as Zeus speaks to Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena:

"Darlings," He said,
"You know that being a god means being blamed.
Do this - no good. Do that - the same. The answer is:
Avoid humanity.
Remember - I am God.
I see the bigger picture."

Like the earlier "All Day Permanent Red," Cold Calls is filled with harrowing combat scenes, but also contains a healthy amount of squabbling amongst the gods, including a hilarious song Hera and Athena sing about Aphrodite that's too vulgar to recount. Only here, in Logue's fabulous Iliad, will you find Aphrodite calling Hera a "blubber-bummed wife" with "gobstopper nipples," and Athena an "undercurved preceptatrix." Only here will you find this same goddess appearing in "grey silk lounge pyjamas piped with gold" and "snakeskin flip-flops," and referred to as "Our Lady of the Thong." Only here will you find Athena screaming for the blood of Troy from a decapitated Greek head.

Special mention must be made of the sequence in which Aphrodite, injured by the Athena-empowered Diomedes, goes to the river-god Scamander for aid. Homer hinted at the erotic overtones here, but Logue highlights them, with an over-eager Scamander screaming in lust for Aphrodite's "bum" as she steps into him. It's not only a comical sequence, but also one of the best written in Logue's Iliad. But then, as expected, Cold Calls is filled with Logue's excellent writing. Here's another of my favorite sections, and another example of how Logue's "account" of the Iliad excels over your standard, dry translations:

Around the tower 1000 Greeks, 1000 Ilians; amid their
swirl,
His green hair dressed in braids, each braid
Tipped with a little silver bell, note
Nyro of Simi - the handsomest of all the Greeks, save A.
The trouble was, he had no fight. He dashed from fight to
fight,
Struck a quick blow, then dashed straight out again.
Save that this time he caught,
As Prince Aeneas caught his breath,
That Prince's eye; who blocked his dash,
And as lord Panda waved and walked away,
Took his head off his spine with a backhand slice -
Beautiful stuff...straight from the blade...
Still, as it was a special head,
Mowgag, Aeneas' minder -
Bright as a box of rocks, but musical -
Spiked it, then hoisted it, and twizzling the pole
Beneath the blue, the miles of empty air,
Marched to the chingaling of its tinklers,
A majorette, towards the Greeks, the tower.

Yet more proof that a nonstandard approach to this ancient poem can produce fantastic results. I hope Logue finishes his decades-long work, and one day we have the complete War Music in one volume.

The books that make up Christopher Logue's retelling, (reimagining?) of the Iliad are astonishing--I completely agree with Gary Wills' assessment: "Great Poetry. But is it Homer? Yes, all the way down,in deepening gyres, to the Iliad's inmost core." And Wills again: "Translators come and go, but it is given to few poets to bring Homer crashing into their time, like giant trampling forests. In English only three have done it--George Chapman, Alexander Pope, and Christopher Logue." Get these books by Christopher Logue without fail--you will be delighted, shocked and amazed. And utterly captivated.