"After Achilles" by David Yezzi

After scrambling the anagram to come up with the correct answer -- "The Triumph of Achilles" by Louise Gluck -- David Yezzi wrote this acrostic poem in two stanzas. The first letters of the lines spell out the name of the poet who served as guest editor of THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1993. But beyond its poetic correctness, what I love here is the way Yezzi invokes the trope of wrathful Achilles -- the warrior in THE ILIAD who best exemplifies what Kant meant by the "terrifying sublime" -- in the light of "recent / Updates from the embattled / Interior."  -- DL
 
After Achilles

Love worth dying for, she thinks
Of it often, reading through recent
Updates from the embattled
Interior: once again
Senseless slaughter
Erupts in the outlying villages.

Gone are the innocent attractions
Lately praised by the poets. Instead, the poor
Überglücklich throng
Cleaves dearly to its own,
Kills for the simple love of it.

                        -- David Yezzi

Comments

[Minor Morgan]

Great poem David Yezzi.