"Clever choices from the past"

Mary Beard's description of the art outside BBC headquarters:

It's one of those neatly simple ideas that works partly because it is so simple, and because it joins the familiar with the strange, and makes clever choices from the past.

I love this and wanted to make sure I saved it somewhere. It seems to me the second part works equally well as a description of Augustan poetry, or of modern poetry with classical influences (like Anne Carson's). 

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Antigonick by Anne Carson

Anne Carson's new translation of Sophocles' Antigone looks exciting. Attempting to modernize tragedy is nothing new ("How is a Greek chorus like a lawyer? / They're both in the business of searching for a precedent") but her simultaneous celebration of tragedy's convoluted language makes for an intriguing mix.

With the current emphasis on making classics 'relateable', it's nice to be reminded of that magical moment when you first learned Greek and were drawn to its weirdness (At least, that was the effect passages like this had on me):

"Many terribly quiet customers exist but none more / terribly quiet than man / his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea … and every Tuesday / down he grinds the unastonishable earth / with horse and shatter … Every outlet works but one / : Death stays dark."

See the Guardian's review for more. I'm planning to pick up a copy as soon as I'm done with The Song of Achilles.

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