Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      October 24, 2018HandscapeCaleb M.X. Dance

      He was teaching his students
      the parts of a plow
      while reading the Georgics
       
      in Latin: a learned poem for
      learning the parts of
      a plow, how to raise trees,
       
      ways to summon bees from
      the carcass of a cow.
      He was teaching his students
       
      in a town wedged in hills still
      tended by farmers
      and vintners and modern day
       
      wainwrights (H&J Tire Co.).
      But he did not know
      what a share-beam was,
       
      what lolium is, what drags do.
      He knew, however, that
      vomis (“plough”) is another form
       
      of vomer (“plow”) and that both
      words can mean “penis”
      and that labor (“labor”) conquered
       
      all other meanings over thousands
      of years to mean now
      that we still work with our hands.

      from #61 - Fall 2018

      Caleb M.X. Dance

      “I teach classical literature and languages at Washington and Lee University, and many of my favorite poems are thousands of years old. I often imagine how Roman poets like Ovid and Horace, as they were drafting poems on wax tablets, would have had to rub out old words for their revisions … perhaps as often as I consult my eraser.”

      →