April 2024 - Workshop Shit

For the prompt this month, we explored the idea of reimagining historical or mythical figures in other contexts. In the poem below, the writer imagines an alternate history for the Greek mythological figure of Icarus. As the story usually goes, Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned on Crete. Daedalus, a brilliant inventor, fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax so that he and Icarus could fly away from the island, and he cautioned his son not to fly too close to the sun. As they were in air, Icarus got carried away, and without realizing, flew too close to the sun. The wax in his wings melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. In the reimagining below, the writer wonders not only what would have happened had Icarus survived his fall, but also what he might look like transported from the world of ancient Greece to a 20th century suburb.

Prompt Poem:

Icarus

Edward Field

Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.

Using tables like the ones shown below, we brainstormed a few different figures, where they would be in an alternate context and why, and then we came up with some images to help get us thinking.

Using the graphics above, we did a 15-minute free write responding to and incorporating any of the images we’d generated.

Prompt Responses:

Andrew’s Response:

Beside me on the bench, one lonely eye,

Half-opened, scans the street. It’s owner sighs:

“The waiting’s always worst. Bus couldn’t fly

On schedule?” The tongueless street replies

With horns, profanities, and rotten smells.

The traveler, his cap pulled-down to shad

His face, adjusts his walking stick. “Heat’s hell

Today,” he mutters as the sunlight fades.

A raven lands beside him, silently

Surveilling all the traveler sees, then turns,

And flies away again. He says to me:

“There is no comfort for a heart that yearns.

The World-Roots give us life, World-Branches sing;

Once passed, we drink to ends of everything.”