Peter Valente
Let the Games Begin: Five Roman Writers ISBN: 978-1-58498-115-2, paper, $16.95 |
"Let the Games Begin reminds us, quite convincingly, that there is more to Roman writing than just Vergil, Horace, Cicero or Tacitus. These versions breathe new life into the work of these classical writers, extract the cultural messages fully intact. Valente’s versions are very welcome additions to the canon."—Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, Galatea Resurrects
“Disguised as translations from the canon of classical Greek and Latin letters, Let the Games Begin is, in essence, the shooting script of a depraved uproarious movie where the aristocratic decorum of Pliny is undone by the original wild boys of the European imagination, Catullus, Ovid, and the anonymous cock-suckers and rambunctious reamers of The Priapeia. Peter Valente’s transgressive cinema shows us in quick absorbing cuts passion, loss, defiled propriety, wicked wit, and of course the final ‘translation’ all of us eventually get around to reading, death. In Valente’s keen renderings, once ancient voices live again in lucid, vivid bursts of words.” —Joseph Donahue, author, Terra Lucida “In Let The Games Begin, Peter Valente has borrowed, sampled, excised, and rearranged the canon of Greek and Latin letters to consolidate the extremes which that literature is famous for. Life was just as shitty in Ancient Rome as it is today and for many of the same reasons. Just ask Pliny the Younger. Taking a break from leisurely hunting all morning in the woods of his villa, he sits down to write prose. ‘There is so much suffering in the world,’ he thinks, and then commences to write. Pliny’s cash-rish stoic hygiene is countered by the anonymous cock-obsessed poems of the Priapeia, along with stunning re-visions of Ovid, Catullus, and Lucian. Let The Games Begin is a rich, embodied reading of Roman life, which is to say our contemporary life. A life which, like ours, includes not only bloody spectacular violence but a poetry which refuses, beautifully, to ‘just accept things as they come and make the best of your situation, whatever it is.’” — Brandon Brown, translator, The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus “This collection of poetry from the era of Classical Rome is an important step forward in understanding our connection to the Roman writers. Peter Valente shows us who we were back then in versions of Catullus, Ovid and the anonymous poets who were gathered in the anthology dedicated to Priapus. Under skillful hands our wild dreams and ribald realities are presented in all their renegade mastery, teased into contemporary language without losing the sharp edge of the past. Valente helps us to feel deeply the world in which these poets wrote so fervently of the triumphs and tragedies of love and sexuality.” — Neeli Cherkovski, author, The Crow and I |