August 30 marathon reader Elizabeth Ketcher is Executive Director and founder of StudioSTL, a non-profit, in the Grand Center Arts District of St. Louis, which empowers youth through writing programs. You can find StudioSTL  young authors’ published works in bookstores or online.

I confess I haven’t read all fifteen books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Okay, I haven’t read even one. When I tell my friends that I am participating in the Pulitzer’s marathon reading, they casually say, “Oh, yeah. I read that in college.” Huh? All fifteen books? I learned that my friends (and husband) are confused. Not Kafka, The Metamorphosis!  This is OVID, Metamorphoses! Duh.

Here’s the truth: when the Pulitzer called and honored me with a request to participate in the mara-read, I didn’t flinch. I would have confused “the Ovid” with “the Kafka” had I then known the difference. (I do now.) What intrigued me was the thought of 70 people reading together over one full weekend, and yes, that word:  metamorphoses. How I love that word. Talk about onomatopoeia–the word itself conjures meaning. 

For me, the word brings up this visual:  a pudgy caterpillar wrapping itself around a skinny tree branch, curling and winding its way to nowhere, clinging to that spindly stick shooting out into thin air. Clueless about what’s ahead, what waits–its fat body transforming and wrapping into itself. How does this happen? My image doesn’t include the chrysalis, the green, shiny case that will later become a butterfly–a Monarch, a Viceroy–not a moth (that’s a cocoon).

And though I have not read even one page of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I feel close to the work because of that amazing word.  Because, after all, as you probably surmise–Ovid’s  masterwork is a story of transformation. It is the story of the transformation of the world, the history of the world told by mythmaker Ovid. It’s full of Greek Gods and Goddesses (no fat caterpillars or cocoons), and humans who transcend the Gods and fall in love. Not Kafka who I think is dark and not at all about love.

So I am giddy excited about my fifteen minutes of fame. My reading. Me and my fat caterpillar and our interpretation of the great Metamorphoses. I will stand proudly and read and stumble over words and meanings. This makes no difference to me. I am not stuffy or pretentious about such things. Neither, it appears, is the wonderful world of our Pulitzer where staff invite me (and now you too) to this reading–regardless of whether we are confused, lack knowledge, background, and understanding. Pulitzer people who are happy to have patrons who see caterpillars and think Kafka.  No matter.  What a treat. –Beth Ketcher