Breaking news from the world of Calliope!

It's not every day there's a poetry story in the news. What a world it would be if we had one-twentieth of the ink we spend on Lady Gaga for poetry news. (Sort of like the Thursday Next series, which seems to keep a lot of the flavor of humanity's passion for extremes while finding cool ways to channel them that only appeal to Lit geeks like me. And probably you, since you're reading this.)


But I tracked down the poem, and here it is.

Achilles (for David Beckham)

Carol Ann Duffy

Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,
they would not take Troy.


Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
but when Odysseus came,


with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
and it was sport, not war,


his charmed foot on the ball...


but then his heel, his heel, his heel...




The poet gave a brief interview. Carol Ann Duffy: Why I was inspired to write a special poem to David Beckham


The public aspect of some lives provides a narrative, a story, for the rest of us to follow. We speak of 'living the dream', a 'fairytale existence' of 'legends' and of 'heroes'.


Like Greek Myths, such public lives can contain triumph and tragedy and in a way we all learn from them, as we do from Ovid, or the Brothers Grimm, or Shakespeare.


The narrative of David Beckham's public life is, I'm sure, far from over... but this poem is written in sympathy for this part of his story and to draw a parallel with Achilles, who gave his name to Beckham's injury.




So there you have it. Not a great poem, not a great subject, not a great explication. But POETRY NEWS!