Ancient Afternoons, by Grove Koger

Prose, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Ancient Afternoons looks back to the cradle of Western civilization and forward into our own psyches.

Odysseus ponders the tumult of his life and his travels, wondering, again and again, whether those adventures he remembers were nothing more than the visions of a dying man. Theseus struggles to escape the labyrinth in which he has trapped himself. And, millennia later, young Plato undergoes a traumatic event that he will eventually transform into one of the most enduring myths of the Western world.

Interspersed among these stories are brief glimpses of the realms that lie just beyond our own. Are they illusions or insights? Or could they be both?

Grove Koger is the author of a reader’s guide to travel narratives, When the Going Was Good; a collection of poetry, Not; three collections of short stories—Something Strange, Treacherous Waters, and Sun Dogs—and a hybrid collection of fiction, poetry and nonfiction, Out of Idaho. He’s Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal and writes about travel and related subjects in his blog World Enough.