Eurydices's Song
Timeless myths invite-perhaps demand revision." Haunting monotypes and anguished poetry retell this classic tale from Eurydice's point of view.

Poem by William Borden
Monotyopes by Douglas Kinsey
60 pages/hardcover/$16.95

And so you've come for me,
dressed up, suited out, high-stepping, flute and lyre hanging from your belt- you think you're pretty hot.

                                                 Were you desperate for me? Or merely bored? Winter's snows kept you warmer than my breasts? fee caressed your smooth skin, sleet kissed those lips puffed from fluting?

                                                                       Or did other arms wrap your                                           loneliness in a forgetfulness
more poignant than despair?

Was it love that brought you here? The anguish of absence? Or curiosity
and your hurry burly pride that dares everything? This was the tune
no one had played, this journey to the dark.

was your excuse, not your beloved.

                                                  You
were afraid I had forgotten you?
Oh, no, my smooth-cheeked boy.

                                                    You made
the trees waltz. Birds slowed their swift flights
to glide atop your rhythms. I could hold
a stone to my ear, and the stone sang.

It is, yes, lyric, while being dramatic. It's probably the combo in Borden of
novelist and dramatist along with the poet. Very smooth and engaging and
passionate!

-Robert King, poet, University of Nebraska at Lincoln

A few days ago I received Eurydice’s Song in the mail and I read it through at one go. This morning I looked at a few bits again. It is a very handsome book. The fact that I was able to read it straight through makes me admire it no end. How has Borden managed to come up with such a rapid, lively, yet lyrical style? It is modern yet full of the mythological Greece. His telling of the myth both as a tale imbued with the age-old themes of love and death and as a gloss on modern gender wars was surreptitiously ingenious. Shrewd, resourceful, and lyrical - not a usual combination. Elizabeth Bishop remarked that one can never write enough about love, and Borden's addition to the corpus is worthy and also a gas.

-Jeffrey Carson, poet and translator of The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis