It would appear that I have plainly overdosed on translations and retellings of Greek epics and mythologies thanks to Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad, Circe by Madeline Miller, and Pandora’s Jar, A Thousand Ships, and Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. I’m not sure how else I’d explain this outpouring of doggerel, which came during an extended lunch break.
It might be worthwhile to keep going with it, though. Mainly because I appear to be identifying the trickster god from Greco-Roman myth, Prometheus, with Isaac Magnin from my Starbreaker stories (who I’ve also identified with a bunch of other trickster deities/adverserial powers, including Imaginos from the poetry of Sandy Pearlman and songs by the Blue Öyster Cult). It probably doesn't help that I had also recently read Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley, either.
If I ever get around to writing more Starbreaker stories, I could perhaps attribute it to a character from that setting and use selected stanzas as Michael Moorcock did with the verse of Ernest Wheldrake (who originally appeared in Gloriana; or, The Unfulfill’d Queen) or The Chronicle of the Black Sword in his Elric stories.
Daughters of Memory, I invite you to aid me. Though, unlike that blind old bard Homer I am prepared to work and sing alone in the absence of divine assistance and, indeed, in the presence of divine opposition. Such is fitting tribute to the unconquered lightbringer Prometheus, who was ever Zeus' adversary and advocate for humanity, who stole the flame of defiance from the gods and enkindled it in our hearts to make us human. At least, that is the story Prometheus once told To men and women who gazed on him in awe To encourage them to look within and find in themselves the strength to defy adversity and conquer all obstacles natural and otherwise. Lift your voices in harmony with mine, O Muses, for it is not a hymn to the Titan I sing, but your requiem and that of all the gods we made in our own images. We projected unto these idols our own highest aspirations and our own fatal flaws alike. We heard echoed in their imagined voices our worst impulses and soaring desires, mistaking them for commandments from on high. Were we not warned by our own wise elders against this impulse toward deifaction, this spandrel arising out of apophenic and pareidolic adaptations that let us find patterns in the world around us and identify threats to our survival? If not, we should won through struggle such wisdom on our own and passed this knowledge unto our children as our mortal legacy, brighter than steel and more enduring than stone. Surely Prometheus might have taught his own thus, had he sired any children of his own on some woman or goddess possessed of power, wisdom, and courage sufficient to prove her his equal if not his better. No doubt he might have done so while teaching them how to sacrifice to the gods they made: giving them their due, the bare minimum, and keeping the choicest cuts for themselves.
I’m confident this is not iambic pentameter, or that this fragment conforms to any form of metrical English verse. With no meter, it can’t be blank verse. Perhaps it is free verse?
On a technical note, I am not sure I know how best to mark up verse in HTML.
In this post I decided to use the pre element and style it with CSS so it doesn’t resemble code.
I could instead have used paragraphs with line break elements, but that’s a pain in the ass.
It would seem that even people involved with the W3C aren’t sure how best to semantically mark up verse and poetry in HTML. If you know a better way, I’d like to hear about it. But if you want to tell me not to quit my day job, don’t bother. How do you think I’m paying to keep this site on the net, anyway?