Penelope: Poems

What People Are Saying

"Homer and Beckett remind us the major stories of life all involve waiting. Indeed, Odysseus's long journey home is in itself a form of waiting. And, of course, there is Penelope at her loom, as intelligent and cunning as her husband. We say 'Faithful Penelope, ' as if one word sums up a complex woman. But there is so much more to know, and Julie Whitaker's remarkable poems-soliloquies actually, all prefaced by a line or lines from The Odyssey-allow readers to see Penelope, wife, mother, and storyteller, as 'Grief folds her in familiar pain, ' more clearly, more modern than ever: 'Stark words: Save my son!/Her cry of pain resounds.' As do these poems."-Louis Phillips, poet and playwright.

"Homer's Penelope is finally finished waiting, thanks to Julie Whitaker's poignant imagination and deft poetics. Whitaker offers a Penelope for whom waiting is as vibrant, various, active, and textured as any hero's journey. Penelope's world is not just the home but the vast and complex world of a mind suffering and sustaining itself, a wife and mother whose interiority is conjured and renovated with each of Whitaker's astonishing poems. Alternating between first and third person, the poems unravel and fill out the inner life of every wily woman who has known that grief does not always quell hope, and the hottest passions often require patience. 'My emptiness is like my loom, ' declares Whitaker's Penelope. Rage unspools into glee, nostalgia tangles with fantasy. It takes a finely tuned lyric voice to finish and make new such epic weaving-Whitaker leaves us a loom of language richly resounding with empathy and music. 'The air's alive. My head is light, ' this debut is not to be missed."-Elizabeth Metzger, author of Lying In

"Julie Whitaker's PENELOPE is consistently fascinating, often touching and remarkably faithful to the style of the translations that supplement her story. The feelings about her son, her contempt for her suitors, her longing for Odysseus and her ambivalence about him are all vivid. This is a real accomplishment."-Warren Wechsler, writer and musician

"Julie Whitaker's Penelope captures the metre and mood of Penelope's long sadness and, finally to the oaken bed, at last. Quite a tour de force!"-BC Vermeersch, arts and music educator

Julie M. Whitaker taught international literature at the Nightingale Bamford School in New York City. is the coeditor of Late Poems 1968-1993: Attitudinizings Verse-wise, While Fending for One's Selph, and in a Style Somewhat Artificially Colloquial by Kenneth Burke.