The Flaying of Marsyas

by Austin, Annemarie

• ISBN13: 9781852243289
• ISBN10: 1852243287
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-05-01
• Publisher: Dufour Editions

Summary

These richly imaginative, unsettling poems cluster around the figure of Marsyas, from Titian's great late painting of 'the satyr who did what the poet has to do/ and challenged heaven with his flight of song'. Losing to the god Apollo in a music competition, Marsyas is flayed alive. But for Annemarie Austin, Marsyas is an exemplary figure whose horrible death in myth turns into a transformation. He gradually frees himself from the rich background of Titian's picture, moving through a series of vividly conceived poems until, in 'Marsyas in Hell', 'he strides as an underworld immortal in the flames'. Austin's Marsyas poems become the focus for others concerned with choice, change, transformation (or its denial), rootedness and haunting.

Table of Contents

I	11	(13)
The Flying of Marsyas	11	(1)
Of Formal Gardens	12	(1)
Back and Forth	13	(1)
Winter Without Me	14	(1)
The Skeleton in the Cupboard	15	(1)
Here Are Candles	16	(1)
Victorian	17	(1)
Dynastic	18	(6)
II	24	(10)
The Sensible Child Meets Marsyas in the Wood	24	(1)
Babes	25	(1)
The Mermaid Examined	26	(2)
Mermadonna	28	(1)
Making Use	29	(1)
`Silos to Rent, Suitable for Growing Mushrooms'	30	(1)
Tomb	31	(1)
Making a Boy	32	(2)
III	34	(20)
Goat Song	34	(1)
Blood	35	(1)
Moonmen	36	(1)
Moonless	37	(2)
The Zone Begins	39	(1)
Daughter of the Zone	40	(1)
Atlantis	41	(1)
Achilles Acted	42	(1)
Looking for Helen	43	(9)
She	52	(2)
IV	54
Marsyas in Hell	54	(1)
Penelope	55	(1)
Portrait of a Lady	56	(1)
Drowning Out	57	(2)
Anchoress	59	(1)
Capitals	60	(3)
Air Writing	63