Andra moi, by Andrew Sunshine

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Andra moi is an addition to the library of post-Homeric works that retell, translate, elaborate upon, interpret, or continue the Odyssey. It is rooted in Homer’s narrative, but could it be read without reference to Homer? What of the willfully unhomeric brevity of each of its twenty-four books? Prisms to break the light of the ancient epic into lyrical experience? The author or translator says, “I have been faithful to Homer in my own way.”

The late Paul Friedrich, linguist, anthropologist, poet, and translator, whose many works include The Meaning of Aphrodite and The Language Parallax, wrote “Andra moi [is] an exciting read. I’ve taught the Odyssey many times—in or without the Greek—and students keep asking me to do it again …. Andra moi triggered lots of stuff in my deep memory. The great condensation.”

Andrew Sunshine is the editor of The Alembic Space: Writings on Poetics and Translation by Joseph Malone and (with Donna Jo Napoli) of Tongue’s Palette: Poetry by Linguists (Atlantis-Centaur 2006 and 2004 respectively). His poems, prose, and translations have appeared in recent years in Map Literary, Speculative Nonfiction, Panoplyzine, Ezra, Toho Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Hole in the Head Review, and Spectra Poets. He lives and works in New York City.