POETS ONLINE ARCHIVE
Revisionist History

Revisionist history - the attempt by current scholars to incorporate into the historical canon the new facts, information, evidence and interpretation that recent academic work has uncovered ; looking again at what has happened and changing our perspective on what we can otherwise never change.

In her poem, "History" (from The Next Ancient World ,Tupelo Press) Jennifer Michael Hecht revises the story of Eve, seeing her as "the only soul in all of time to never have to wait for love" and explaining her reason for falling from grace.For this prompt, look at either an actual event in history or your own personal history and reexamine it in the light of your perspective today.

Also see our blog entry on Jennifer Michael Hecht

HISTORY WITHOUT WORDS

There is in Rock Creek Park
A nameless statue
Among all the names
In Washington.
Henry Adams planned quiet.

St. Gaudens made her
In Silence as planned,
A faceless cowled woman
In Silence as planned.

Do the apples in the bowl
Who lean on each other
Have no story to tell
But the science of light?

The hung side of beef
Where Rembrandt stood
With burn sienna blood
Still reaps the smell of earth and time.

Edward N. Halperin

THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHETYPES

ATHENA AND ARACHNE I.

Humans. Their love is like a challenge.
We grant them gifts,
to handle something well.
Music or money,
cooking or cloth,
words or weaving.
They pull it close.
As if we could not pry it
from their fingers.
As if these party favors
were the prize.

Some humans cling so tight
they almost meld themselves
to the gifts they're handed
and they become poets
or warriors
or Arachne.

ATHENA AND ARACHNE II.

That girl could spin anything.
Hands moving so fast
that her story wove
and warped
through histories and oceans
until she found herself
locked high in a tower
spinning, surrounded by straw.

And the centuries of singers
transformed me,
turned me male and short,
dead certain that no one
could guess my real name.

Paula Elsloo

PINES

It's far too warm for a mid-winter morning.
I walk and the wind changes towards me,
near the town dump. My nose anticipates
sourness and rot. I have known that smell.
Instead there is-pine! Like hundreds of freshly
cut trees. Just sharp, cold pine, and I am in that

kitchen in puddling snow and my father curses,
my mother retreats but I'm stuck, pine needles
pin me in place. "Hold up your end, goddamn it!"
I try but he's sawing the lopsided trunk of the
scraggly tree that will never fit in the tree stand.
Soon he gives up and lets it list to one side and

it's my husband, our kitchen and needles, a trail
through the house, sticky pitch, more cursing, I
say it looks fine but "No! Can't you see, it's not
even!" A punch caves the wall. He cuts some more
and the sections of spruce trunk hit the floor, roll awhile
and rest, each fragrant slice almost the exact circumference
of one thin neck.

Svea Barrett-Tarleton

PERSPECTIVE

DRAWING 1 - FINAL EXAM
Draw a fantasy landscape showing figures
and buildings on an inclined plane.

Following the rules as I understood them,
sweating over contours, masses, vanishing points,
pretending Golden Mean was my middle name,
I drew a castle at the top of a light-headed hill.
The frail princess could barely be seen,
her feet tiny pin points below the flounces
of her dress, her arms outstretched
as she looked down. She was clearly in need
of saving by the metal clad Knight standing tall
in the center of town.

That was twenty years ago. Today, well, OK,
I would keep the vanishing point to save my grade.
But only the castle would stand on the crest.
The princess in her denim dress or even jeans
would have begun walking down on her own,
aerobic sneakers propelling her swiftly into town.
She could survey the crowd at first hand,
perhaps choosing to speak to the open-faced
young man in the soft flannel shirt,
who seems on unfamiliar ground.
They could visit places she couldn't imagine
from her aerie room; hour by hour,
day by day, becoming friends. In the future
she might share living space with him.

Or if that wasn't her bag, she could say,
the hell with men, and live up there alone.

Ruth Zimmerman

HOT FROM THE PLATE IN HIS HEAD

". . . all men are alike in outward forms and all religions are one and the
Poetic Genius is the true Man and that the body or outward form of Man
is derived from the Poetic Genius likewise the forms of all things are
derived from their Genius which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel
& Spirit & Demon . . ." - William Blake