Visual Artist/Poet Marcia Scanlon will read from Poems, Mythological, the first publication of her poetry. Copies of the book will be on sale after the reading.

Scanlon is moved by the exquisite limning of human experience in ancient works of Greek and Roman mythology. She uses myth to frame her response, with wit and irreverence, to modern dilemmas.

Marcia Scanlon’s Poems, Mythological, conjure some of the oldest voices of myth in vivifying lines. Like Pound, like H.D., like Louise Glück, but wholly herself, Scanlon channels the ancients into something rich, strange, and utterly now. Here we have Hephaestus, forging Achilles’ shield, saluting “You, grubby kid, gasping hot, sharp dust, /stumbling over stubbled rows”. Here we have the bizarrerie and pathos of metamorphosis-“Her silvery bark, green twigs stayed warm” (“Dryope”). Helen gets her defense, ever needed, ever renewed. Toggling between dramatic monologue and narrative lyric, these poems dig deep into the soil of the speech of the tribe. They speak as well of primary conflicts, ever erupting, never resolved. These are long-pondered, precisely etched, yet utterly fluent poems.

—Maureen N. McLane