If they find the bodies in the basement

[sovay]

Because grailquestion gave me one of the most beautiful quotations I have ever heard:

If you leave comment requesting a quick analysis, then I will respond to you about the following . . .

1. I'll respond with something random I like about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll name something we should do together.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must can post this on your journal so you can do the same for other people.

Comments

[larryhammer]

It's that #8 that's the kicker.

---L.

[sovay]

You want the seven oracular responses anyway?

[larryhammer]

Go for it.

---L.

[sovay]

Slightly adapted because I've never actually met you in person . . .

1. You own a 1983 Baedecker Guide to the United States.
2. Pretty Balanced's "Romeo and Juliet (Why'd You Come)."
3. Meet in person and read classical smut.
4. Odyssey!Homer.
5. "Paul Bunyan and the Photocopier."
6. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd . . .
7. When did you first read Ovid?

[sovay]

If one is allowed to correct these: I've realized that although Pretty Balanced did strike me first, your reminiscent song should really be Nick Cave's "The Lyre of Orpheus."

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood and she said to Orpheus:
"If you play that fucking thing down here, I'll stick it up your orifice!"

[larryhammer]

Any song that rhymes those words is clearly one I Need!Now. As is any song with "brindled in blood." (I intend to trash introduce the myrmidons to Orpheus after they I get done with Oedipus and Iocaste.)

I can think of way worse introductions than Paul. And Lehrer is certainly appropriate.

In re: #7 -- I bounced off the classic Penguin prose translation of the Metamorphoses in college; I first read it all the way through in verse ... sometime early grad school, say around age 23, shortly after discovering Catullus. I then glommed onto everything else and have been arguing with him ever since.

Thankee.

---L.

[sovay]

Any song that rhymes those words is clearly one I Need!Now.

It should be in your inbox. Enjoy!

I then glommed onto everything else and have been arguing with him ever since.

Cool. So far, I like the results of your argument.

Vergil is the first real Latin I remember reading, but Catullus was the first poet I ever imprinted on. (Thank you, Dr. Fiveash.) I'm pretty sure I read at least a little Ovid in high school, but my primary introduction to him was the Amores in college; and then I did a whole class on the Metamorphoses, which was bizarre because I knew most of the stories, but somehow I hadn't ever read the epic. And I've since become very fond of the Fasti. Yay, the Lemuria.

[larryhammer]

I find the Fasti more interesting in concept than on the page. I'm pretty sure I've read all of it, but not all the way through. I should try again Real Soon Now. Maybe if Peter Green did it. (Though, what I want from him is a Metamorphoses.)

BTW, did you hear that A.E. Stallings has a translation of Lucretius coming out next year?

---L.

[sovay]

Maybe if Peter Green did it.

I just read his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto on the train up from New Haven. I liked very much.

[larryhammer]

YES. Brilliant work, those. Ditto his version of the amatory poems.

I need to get his Catullus.

---L.

[sovay]

I need to get his Catullus.

I don't remember loving his Catullus. This may be partially because I don't really like anyone's translation of Catullus—he's like Sappho; I prefer him so much more in the original—but even so, Peter Green did not make my heart flutter. Which his Poems of Exile did, for whatever that's worth.

[larryhammer]

Hmm. Maybe library first, then.

---L.