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After Octavian

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Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above
Ian Sales
After Ovid: New Metamorphoses - Michael Hofmann, James Lasdun An uneven and rather disappointing collection. While there are a few stunning poems (I particularly liked those by Alice Fulton and Eavan Boland) the majority are average (even Ted Hughes is not at his best here) and frequently seem laboured or dutiful, as if the myth chosen did not truly inspire the poet but was merely a commission to complete on time. An excessive overlap in theme among the poems doesn't help (so much to choose from in the Metamorphoses, and yet so little done with it here); the book becomes a monotonous read well before the halfway point and I was genuinely relieved to be moving onto something else when I turned the last page-a feeling I've certainly never had when reading Ovid himself!