The Tapestry of Bronze is sponsoring a series of poetry contests to celebrate Greek and Roman mythology and the Olympian gods. The subject of the fourth contest is Demeter (also known as Ceres), the Goddess of the Harvest.

All poems remain the property of the authors. However, Tapestry of Bronze reserves the right to post winning poems and those receiving Honorable Mention on the Tapestry of Bronze Web site. Furthermore, interest has been expressed in setting the poems to music.

E-mail your poem (no more than 30 lines) to tapestryofbronze (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Please, NO ATTACHMENTS! Paste the poem into the e-mail instead. Don’t get fancy with formatting—pretty pictures and peculiar fonts are distracting and may irritate the judges. Please limit creativity to the poem.

Make sure your poem is about Demeter/Ceres. They received a surprising number of irrelevant poems during the last contest. These are guaranteed to irritate the judges and are all discarded.

Please also include your real name and your alias if you have one. Make sure they can respond to your e-mail. If you are entering the contest for those under 18, please include your birthdate; otherwise, simply indicate that you’re an adult.

No entry fee. Entries will be evaluated by the owners of the Tapestry of Bronze and additional experts at their discretion. It costs nothing to submit a poem to the contest, but each contestant may enter only once, so take time to make your poem your best.

The first prize winner in each age group (’Under 18′ and ‘18 and Over’) will receive $50. Honorable Mentions may be awarded as well, but without cash prizes. If no poem is of sufficient quality, no prizes will be awarded.

tapestryofbronze.com/OdeForm.html. Deadline: November 30, 2009.

Dionysus has been toying with me lately. Maybe it’s just the spring air, but I have the overwhelming urge to kick my shoes off, run screaming through the maze of cubicles where the adjunct faculty slave, grading endless stacks of composition papers, and out into the sunshine. I recently read the “Bacchae,” by Euripides, for a class I’m teaching and am consequently, it would seem, possessed by the effeminate, upstart god. I feel irresistibly drawn to the abandonment of reason, the throwing off of social mores, and complete surrender to the irrational. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of rending flesh with my teeth is not in the least appealing. A wild, naked run through the forest, on the other hand, is extremely enticing. Rationality is not really doing it for me today. I have the urge to be swept away, caught up in Bacchic frenzy, and driven to the brink of madness by animal urges—all without repercussion, of course. That must be it, why we struggle against the irrational side of our nature, stick with the rational. It’s safer, nothing to explain the next morning.

Leslie

Although the game is for kids, I found the Web site charming, not to mention a fun way to brush up on some of the lesser-known mythological players (monsters, heroes and gods—oh my!). Skidmore gives both a detailed version the Odyssey, or, my favorite thing on the site, an amusing, yet accurate, abbreviated version. The site offers learning products, teacher resources, and myth related-writing contests for kids. You might also want to check out sister sites: Mesoweb and Cultures.

—Leslie

The word “chimera” has been coming to my attention a lot lately. I find it interesting that a word can have such diverse connotations. In mythology, a Chimera, or Chimaera, refers to a beast with a goat’s body, lion’s head, and a snake’s tail – oh, and it breathes flames. Genetically speaking, it refers to two dissimilar tissues in one being or two or more species in one body. People, plants, or animals exhibiting hermaphroditism are also referred to as being chimerical. I wonder at the notion of calling someone with mixed male and female traits a word equated with a monster. But then that is a topic for another blog, on a another Web site, far, far away.

The third meaning of chimera, the one that’s been tickling at the edge of my fancy, is the one that means fantasy, or according to MSN Encarta, “a wildly unrealistic idea or hope or a completely impractical plan.” How this word evolved from a mutated creature to a vain dream, I am not sure, but my own chimera does seem at times as mythical and unfeasible as a goat with a lion’s head. Yet, I keep trudging the writer’s path, honing my craft, submitting manuscripts, fighting off imaginary monsters burping up all-too-real fire and threatening to turn me to cinder and ash. The connection of these definitions is tenuous, but one I’m determined to make, for no other reason than poetic irony. I’m also determined to mispronounce the word with a “sh” sound instead of a hard “k,” clearing-of-the-throat, sound. I was tickled – before I realized my mistake – with the onomatopoeic quality of the word when I thought it sounded like shimmering. I imagined a desire, an unrequited dream, on the horizon, wavering like a mirage above the hot tar. It’s very romantic, if not quixotic, to think of a fantasy as a fire-breathing dragon made of incongruent parts. The real question is this: if you do manage to sneak up on it – what the heck do you do next?

– Leslie Fox

In Greek mythology, wood nymphs: Dryads, Meliai, and their many variations, though a divinity, died when the tree they inhabit died. Daphne, a nymph, was transformed into a Laurel tree in an attempt to escape Apollo’s unwanted advances. Trees often appear in folklore as anthropomorphic: speaking, bleeding, and having desires. It may simply be that they resemble us with arm-like appendages, knotty eyes, and leaves instead of hair. When the mortal, Erysichthon, began to chop a tree down, the Hamadryad that lived in the tree cried out. When Demeter found out about the crime, she punished Erysichthon for killing the Hamadryad in her sacred oak grove.

I found a cool Web site depicting photographs of the human form posed artistically with a series of imposing trees. It’s called The Tree Spirit Project at: http://jackphoto.com/images/tree/Mission.html. The humans are not the focus of the images – the trees are. I found it interesting that seeing people and trees together like this, the similarities become more obvious; the humans are more, for lack of a better word, “tree-like.” We usually think of trees as having human characteristics, not the other way around – reminding us that we are nature too.

– Leslie Fox