Linda Howe Steiger
Writing a poem is like
 dropping a rose petal
down the Grand Canyon
and waiting for the echo.
--Don Marquis
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A Dram of Poison (1956)

6/28/2013

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I've been horribly lax here. Still haven't finished my Dorothy Sayers marathon, but truth be told I was getting a bit tired of Peter Wimsey. Sacrilege!! And I went off in other directions: for example, Flagels translation of The Illiad. Very long, but also very readable, lovely verse. Better than the Richmond Lattimore version I read in college (sorry Mr. Lattimore, with whom I studied the Greeks in translation). I skipped the catalog of ships I admit, but quite enjoyed the drama of Achilles and the battles and the sniping gods and goddesses. Worth it, and I'm drawn to reread the Odyssey and the Aeneid too. Pity me. Read a few other things as well, though I think I'll post remarks on Goodreads, saving this blog for mysteries, from which I took a bit of a break (oh dear me). Back in the swing though with Charlotte Armstrong's "A Dram of Poison," 
for which I understand she won an Edgar. Well, friends, she deserved it! I'm not sure why I picked this one up, but I did. It's a stand alone, and for a while I thought it was going to be a rewrite of Othello, driven to do murder by the infamous Iago. But hang in there, friends. It gets way better. A bit of a romp in fact, though nothing like the romps of Lord Peter. And it even has a serious side, not particularly deep, but serious, and I do like that too. Not going to say more than that, except it's fun and fits none of standard categories, but is sufficiently mysterious to fit the genre. 
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    A reader, a writer, a poet, and sometime philosopher; an urbanist, a planner, an earth advocate, a peaceable person; a mother, a grandmother, a weeder of gardens, a baker of pies. 

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