The Poetry and Prose of John Livecchi

Poet John Livecchi discovered his poetic voice as a consequence of teaching. Intrigued by Homer through the Classics Illustrated comic series as a boy, Mr. Livecchi later taught Homer for more than four decades, first to high school students, now to adults in William and Mary University’s Lifetime Learning program. Convinced that “writing is an ideal way of learning,” Mr. Livecchi decided that while asking his students to write about Homer, he should do so as well, in solidarity. Out of this was borne his first book of poetry: Retellings: Homer's Characters Speak in Our Time.

The Iliad and The Odyssey, says Mr. Livecchi, “are Western civilization's earliest and, I think, best stories--war and its aftermath, adventure, gods, monsters, wild fantasy, harsh reality, family life, friendships, life's pains, disappointments and triumphs--in fact all that life offers and, though composed three millennia ago, as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines.” The poems Mr. Livecchi reads above are his imaginative rendering of the final conversation between the Trojan warrior Hector and his wife Andromache as Hector prepares for battle. His prose below details his life of Homeric adventures and invites us to share them.

You can find more resources on The Iliad here.

Reading Homer Matters

by Mr. John Livecchi

Back when I volunteered at WRL, one of my favorite chores was keeping the eight hundred shelves in order. Poetry and drama books, usually so thin, look more inviting when neatly arranged! And, as long as I was in the vicinity, I wanted to see if the “Eight eighty-threes” were circulating. Those delightful Dewey decimal numbers mark the correct locations for The Iliad, Odyssey and all things Homeric. Each time I’d look, I’d hope every copy was checked out, being discovered or rediscovered. But usually I’d find them all there, the neatly lined up but lonely “grandparents of literature,” waiting patiently for a visit. Why is that? I’m guessing that some people feel reading Homer doesn’t matter?

Perhaps they think if something is that old, it’s a “classic,” and if it’s a “classic” what’s the point? It’s probably no longer relevant or practical. Surely, studying something practical is good—and might improve the chance to find a good job. But shouldn’t education prepare people for life, not just good job skills? Training to be a phlebotomist is highly practical, but will it teach anyone how to deal with betrayal, death, or great loss? Will it help anyone learn how to love, build a strong family, or find joy? Probably not, but Homer will.

Others might assume reading classics, like Homer isn’t worth the effort because the works are difficult, humorless, dull, and so dated that they won’t understand anything. Certainly his works are ancient—about twenty-eight hundred years old—but what are the chances any written work would survive intact for that long? The written works, even by brilliant writers, that have been lost over the ages are too many to count! Besides, we don’t call Homer or other works “classics” because they’re old, but because they present all the most important things about living our lives in stories that are lively, engrossing, and stimulating. Through millennia they have helped shape how we view the world and our place in it. We turn to them because there is always something true there and often some new insight we’ve never considered or even thought we’d consider before. So, far from being old or irrelevant, Homer, like the classic it is, remains as fresh and current as tomorrow’s headlines.

I’m confident in claiming that always fresh relevance because Homer aims always to present, through his particular set of lenses, what being alive at any time means. He seeks to grasp life’s pains, triumphs, sufferings and glories—not just as they once affected people in the distant past—but as they always affect people in any age. By these means, Homer’s world, though always distant by millennia, is always familiar and in the “Now.” Homer uses his art to voice life’s experiences with objectivity, depth and honesty. And when that happens, all the spirits of Western Civilization’s shared cultural past find they have voices that speak in our own time. Anyone reading him will see firsthand how true this is.

The Iliad, for example, takes a single war that may or may not have ever really happened and makes it so real it becomes as true and gripping as any war in any time. What work better depicts the “terrible beauty” of battle or the poignancy of war’s costs? Civilizations clash, men die by the thousands, families break apart, lives shatter—all for a deeply held principle, a cultural idea, and a woman of stunning beauty. Rage and pride consume noble, heroic people, causing them to make terrible mistakes, even to self-destruct. Heroes wonder if they control their own fates or are mere playthings of the gods. Young people find their value systems yanked from under them by incompetent leaders. Valiant soldiers morph into monsters when a comrade’s loss is too much to bear. War’s cost never changes.

Wars end. Soldiers come home, but The Odyssey shows those returns are never easy. Some war-ravaged families suffer outcomes beyond human wisdom to fix. Others learn how to achieve a new beginning by working through difficulties. War and its aftermath troubles all cultures, ancient or modern. And even though The Odyssey’s hero attains spectacular success through cunning, diplomacy, strategies—not to mention help from gods and mortals, his joys are always incomplete and bittersweet, hardly surprising for someone whose name means “man of pain.”

At the risk of dating myself, let me tell you how I first discovered Homer. For me it involved what seemed at the time the most serious financial decision I’d ever encountered. I was a boy of nine and used part of my fifty cent weekly allowance to buy “Superman” comics. They cost a dime each, meaning I could get two and have enough money left for a week’s supply of candy.

One week, though, two new comics caught my eye. On one cover a single-eyed giant lifted up a huge rock that he obviously planned to hurl with all his might at a ship in the harbor below. It was Classics Illustrated, number 81, Homer’s The Odyssey. The other showed ancient warriors in the midst of combat. Over them an ominous being held a golden scale above their battle—this was Classics Illustrated number 77 The Iliad and by the same author. The name meant nothing to me. I’d never heard of Homer, The Iliad, or The Odyssey. I just wanted to find out why the giant wanted to crush that ship and how that golden scale might affect the battle.

But the fifteen cent price startled me—thirty cents for comics meant a third less candy. On the other hand, those comics promised adventures more thrilling than Superman. True, Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, had x-ray vision and was only foiled by kryptonite, but could he speak with gods or assume any shape or defeat a one-eyed brute with only his wits? Homer proved irresistible. It never occurred to me then that nearly sixty years later I would still be excited by that adventure.

I’m lucky to have learned to love Homer before I knew it was a “classic” work or great literature. His stories captured me before I knew anything about him, let alone that there was debate over who he was, or even if he was. I met him again in sixth grade, when we studied Greek mythology. With that reading, I found out some tantalizing background stories and things that hadn’t been clear, like why Athena and Hera were so upset with the Trojans, or why the Trojan horse wasn’t ever mentioned in The Iliad, or why Poseidon had such a grudge against Odysseus. By the time I studied him again in high school and learned that he may not have written the works at all, the information didn’t startle me. He was an old friend by then—even though I still hadn’t discovered, because we had always read his stories in prose, that his works were poems. College brought my first encounter with Homeric verse. That was when I first read the Robert Fitzgerald translation. It was a revelation. I’d never imagined before that Homer’s language was so direct, forceful and modern elevated and formal at the same time.

Reading a verse translation was as exciting as seeing the cover of those Classics Illustrated comics. More recently, the Robert Fagles translations were an even greater revelation—precise, direct, majestic, stirring, imaginative, and altogether engaging. Loving Homer early, I was never surprised when I found there is always more to discover. After college, my Homeric adventure took the twist of bringing him to high school students. The challenge was finding ways to let my students experience the same thrill I felt in reading him. I had to learn how to ease the elements they found daunting so they could be open to his timeless insights.

Better yet, I had to find paths they could follow to see Homer’s beauty for themselves. In doing so, I made my most significant discovery—the more I learn about Homer, the more I realized how much more there is to learn. It’s a humbling experience, to gaze up at that Olympus knowing full well the summit will always be out of reach. Mostly, though, I hold on to the exhilaration of realizing that no matter how high one climbs this mountain, the view either up or down only gets better. And I promise you, anyone who signs on to start climbing that mountain will find the experience worth the effort.

©2021, John J. Livecchi, All rights reserved