The buzz around the Pulitzer yesterday morning was that Saturday marathon reader Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes (one of the most read art blogs in the country) wrote a second post about his trip last week to the Pulitzer. If you haven’t caught all the skinny surrounding last weekend’s marathon, I’ve compiled Green’s notes along with a few other internet sources into a list for you. Read the rest of this entry »

For more photos from the weekend, please visit the Pulitzer’s Flickr page.

Or is it your bookmark?

Well, in any case, since 10am this morning, A Marathon Metamorphoses has been going full-throttle. I would like to tell you more, but I’m in a rush to listen to Stefene Russell, who begins in a few, so here are a couple video tidbits to tide over anyone out there glued to the computer, eagerly awaiting a blog update:

Prominent writer and David May Distinguished Professor of Emeritus William H. Gass kicks-off the marathon with the first 15-minute read at 10am.

2:00pm reader Richard Newman, Editor for River Styx, reflects on his fifteen minutes.

Representative Rachel Storch serves the 64th House district in Missouri and will be marathon reading on Sunday. Read another post from her, about grassroots advocacy, on the Pulitzer’s 2buildings1blog.

The Metamorphoses–like the Bible, like Shakespeare’s plays (which, of course, rely heavily on Ovid), like Dante or Chaucer–has remained a seminal work across the centuries because it renders something fundamental and elemental in the human experience. The stories capture an essence that makes the universe comprehensible in terms we understand: terms which weave together the intricacies of human relationship–of love, of hubris, of pain–and bring a particular resonance to the old adage: “nothing new under the sun.” Read the rest of this entry »

Carl Springer, Professor of Classics at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, describes Ovid, the Metamorphoses, and why he thinks it’s a good idea to revisit the 2,000-year-old poem. He and his wife, Avery Springer, Chair of the Classics Department at John Burroughs School, will both be reading this Saturday–in Latin.

Chris King is creative director of Poetry Scores, which translates poetry into other media, and editorial director of The St. Louis American newspaper. He reads at 3:45 p.m. on Sunday.

I suppose I am still not quite over the exceedingly pleasant surprise that The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is hosting a marathon reading of the Metamorphoses by Ovid. You see, I had thought Ovid was, if not my secret, then the secret of people like me, and I didn’t think there were all that many of us, at least not in St. Louis, and certainly not running august art institutions in St. Louis. Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, August 20, 7-8pm, Pulitzer Senior Curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra and Kress Interpretive Fellow Hannah Fullgraf as well as St. Louis Poetry Center Consultant Lorin Cuoco were guests on KDHX 88.1FM’s Literature for the Halibut. They, along with hosts Ann Haubrich and Jane Ellen Ibur, read sections of the Metamorphoses and discussed A Marathon Metamorphoses. Stream in the show’s podcast here.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Stefene Russell, writer and poet, is currently Culture Editor for St. Louis Magazine and Executive Editor for At Home Magazine. You can read blog posts from her regularly on St. Louis Magazine’s arts blog, Look/Listen, and listen to her read Ovid at the Pulitzer, Saturday, August 29.

So you know you’re a great poet when your images are so sticky they become the adhesive by which an entire literary tradition is pasted together. As Lorin Cuoco pointed out in an earlier post, western literature waterfalled out of the Metamorphoses, including the works of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. The text’s also the primary source for a good number of our universally understood metaphors—Icarus shows up in James Joyce as well as Nine Inch Nails.  Read the rest of this entry »