Tales of Telemachus

By Steve Lang

Tales of Telemachus begins with a door closing and finishes with one left open. In between, the reader becomes a partner in a wide-ranging journey, a search, a quest.

Expect tight, lyrical, and literate poetry. Expect to laugh and likewise be appalled, to be touched but also challenged. Don't expect to be provided answers but don't be surprised if you find some . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666765656

Steve Lang

Steve Lang's third poetry book, Tales of Telemachus has just been published by Resource Publications. It follows Cuarentena (2021) and Heavenly Hurt (2016). Steve's poetry has been published in a wide range of literary journals including: The Galway Review, California Quarterly, Allegro and Chiron Review. Though from Scotland originally, Steve has traveled widely, especially in Africa, and currently lives in El Salvador with his family, where he works as Director of a well-known international school.

Book preview

Preface

Telemachus was the son Odysseus abandoned, together with his mother, Penelope, on Ithaca, to fight in the Trojan wars, before then undertaking his decade-long, epic journey to return home. When the pressure of the suitors to win his mother’s hand, and thereby Odysseus’ estate, finally became too much, Telemachus heeded the advice of Mentor, the goddess Athena in disguise, and set out in search of his father.

Prologue

Too coy the haiku- Horatian the ode,

A villanelle reels- a limerick’s too light;

A little lugubrious, for me, the ballad,

Too desperate to soar the elegy’s height.

No, to page and poet, a blessing’s the sonnet-

Witness Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Petrarch-

An incensed chapel, pregnant silence on it,

Framing so aptly the clear Divine Spark

Of Spenser and Hopkins, Larkin and Donne,

Yeats, Heaney, Shelley, Frost, Keats and Gray,

Their temples high-built, sweet oratories sung.

So, for clarion truth and harmony pray,

Like Blessed Emily’s, both keen and strong,

In this dark world and wide,¹ for a little song.

1

. Milton: Sonnet

19

The Space Between

The crescendo creak of the door

And the slam;

The howling shriek of the brakes

And the crash;

The slip, the frenzied scrabble

And the