Fates: The Medea Notebooks; Starfish Wash-Up; And Overflow of an Unknown Self

"The Medea Notebooks by Ann Pedone: The Medea Notebooks opens up the ancient Greek story of Medea and Jason of the Argonauts by imagining three "Medeas": a re-working of the Medea character from the Euripides play, the writer of The Medea Notebooks herself, as well as the 20th century opera singer Maria Callas who played Medea both on stage, and in Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1969 film version of the myth. By weaving together three stories of marriage and murder, sex, and infidelity, the book seeks to explore and complicate our understanding of love, female sexual desire, and betrayal. Starfish Wash-up by Katherine Soniat: The writing of this ekphrastic collection began with the discovery of a 19th-century watercolor portrait of Telemachus kneeling by the Aegean seashore, back to his audience. Along with him, the reader searches the horizon for the Father (Odysseus) always it seems "off to another war" ...Telemachus thus becomes an archetypal symbol for the Lost Son, who really has no parental guidance (many times due to war). What remains across history is the many youth who in fact are still children of a missing parent. This focus repeats and circles into Modernity in this collection by also addressing the wreckage of our planet in current times due to Humankind's neglect-our own planet that offered us our first home. Life itself now in a tailspin in so many ecological ways. Overflow of an Unknown Self: A Song of Songs by D. M. Spitzer: The erotic theme and imagery, along with its apparent secular tone, distinguish the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon) from the other books of the Bible. But whose love, which lovers, does the Song celebrate? Traditionally, the Song narrates the relationship(s) of heterosexual lovers, even as interpretations have offered other, allegorical configurations that depart from the heterosexual rubric. Translated primarily from the Song of Songs included in the ancient Jewish Hebrew-to-Greek translation project called the Septuagint, D. M. Spitzer's overflow of an unknown self: a song of songs opens the ancient poem to and for the trans- moment. By way of a queering translation practice that replaces the text's hetero-gendered pronouns with the intimacy of direct address and its I-you paradigm, overflow of an unknown self attempts to widen the Song's full-throated praise of embodied, human loving. Arrayed in eight "Cantos" that point back to the Septuagint's presentation of the Song of Songs, each section of overflow of an unknown self trans-figures the poem, diversifying the reverberant possibilities arising from a text always-already in translation. Hopefully this translation creates a zone where more numerous arrangements of loving bodies can imagine themselves in the Song's celebration. overflow of an unknown self works to fray and break the circle of heteronormativity towards an ever-expanding horizon of sexualities radiant with the bright, multicolored lights and possibilities of inclusion, of diversity, of love"--