HUGHES—STRANGE STATES OF BEING.

HUGHES–STRANGE STATES OF BEING. Cadie Robertson urged me to read the translation by Ted Hughes of Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES. It’s a great book, the product of two geniuses. Hughes and Ovid are both fascinated with nonhuman states—Actaeon being changed into a deer or Callisto being changed into a bear. The Sidesteps essay that I posted on recently describes Hughes looking at the world from the point of view of a pike. And then there is his poem about the wodwo, which is told from the point of view of the wodwo. In that poem, as the essay says, “The Wodwo is uncertain of its own identity, as seen in the rhetorical questions ‘What am I?’ and ‘What am I doing here in mid-air?’” Here are three more lines from “Wodwo”:

“But what shall I be called am I the first
have I an owner what shape am I what
shape am I am I huge if I go…”

Here is a link to “Wodwo.”