Gods and Mortals

From Valery Yeats Lawrence Rilke Akhmatova and Auden writing in the first half of the century to such contemporary poets as Lucille Clifton Derek Walcott Rita Dove Wislawa Szymborska and Mark Strand the material of Greek myth has elicited a poetry of remarkably high achievement. And by organizing the poems first into broad categories such as Heroes Lovers Trespassers and secondly around particular mythological figures such as Persephone Orpheus or Narcissus Kossman treats readers to a fascinating spectrum of poems on the same subject.