Athena Becomes a Swallow and Other Voices from The Odyssey
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"A classic in terms of psychological depth, creativity, style, angle, and theme... It's rare that one reads a 90-page collection of poems filled with so much craft, wit, and brilliance." — Arc Poetry Magazine
"Exploring the nooks and crannies of Homer's great epic poem, Brent MacLaine casts a kind of anti-Circean spell, granting a deeper humanity, a lyric consciousness, to figures half-hidden in shadow, fate-gripped. As the monologues build, this cadenced talk of laundry maid or beggar or musician becomes a meditation on poetry itself." — Mary Dalton
"'My imprint keeps. I shall be transformed,' says the scribe in one of these vivid monologues. MacLaine's own imprint keeps, and we are transformed — enchanged by rhythms that catch the throat-sounds of unsung heroes, and by luminous visions seen through their eyes, as his art turns ‘rounded underwater stones to gold.'" — John Reibetanz
Brent MacLaine teaches modern literature at the University of Prince Edward Island. His poetry collections include Shades of Green, These Fields Were Rivers, and Wind and Root. MacLaine has won the PEI Milton Acorn Award for Poetry and the Atlantic Poetry Prize.