April Lindner

I photographed this laurel tree, and the columns behind it, in Delphi, Greece--office of the oracles, omphalos of the earth. Mount Parnassus, home to the muses, rises imposingly behind it:   As with so much of Greece--where the names Penelope, Adonis, Calliope, and Apollo are still popular, where cities are named for Poseidon, Athena, and Hermes--the ancient myths echo powerfully in Delphi. Finding these photos in a recently rediscovered cache of missing study tour snapshots, reminded me of this poem, by Anne Sexton, one of a handful that first made me fall in love with poetry and want to write it myself.  From the myth of Daphne, transformed into a laurel tree in her flight from the amorous god Apollo, Sexton conjures longing and regret of flesh turned into wood: Where I Live in This Honorable House of  the Laurel Tree I live in my wooden legs and O my green green hands. Too late to wish I had not run from you, Apollo, blood moves still in my b...

Today my characters travel from Athens to Delphi--that is, if I can get myself to settle down and actually write.  (It's one of those jumpy, hyper-caffeinated days when I can't even seem to get started.) In the meantime, I thought I'd share one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, A. E. Stallings, an American expat in Athens: An Ancient Dog Grave, Unearthed During Construction of the Athens Metro It is not the curled-up bones, nor even the grave That stops me, but the blue beads on the collar (Whose leather has long gone the way of hides), The ones to ward off evil. A careful master Even now protects a favorite, just so. But what evil could she suffer after death? I picture the loyal companion, bereaved of her master, Trotting the long, dark way that slopes to the river, Nearly trampled by all the nations marching down, One war after another, flood or famine, Her paws sucked by the thick, caliginous mud, Deep as her dewclaws, near the riverbank. In...