cover image Ajax

Ajax

Sophocles, , trans. from the ancient Greek by John Tipton. . Flood Editions, $13.95 (112pp) ISBN 978-0-9787467-5-9

Tipton takes the colloquial directness of Robert Fagles and the blunt eroticism of Anne Carson to the breaking point in this experimental translation of one the stranger and more unyielding works by one of Western civilization's founding dramatists. Tipton's opening dialogue between Athena and Odysseus astonishes, and his treatment of the chorus ventures into the territory of the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre: “where will it end / the count of years wandering / the toll the statistics of missiles / in flight that fall / back to the ground / where a crater accuses .” Flood Editions are published by Chicago poet Devin Johnston and poet Michael O'Leary. (May)