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Poets know how to begin. Poets are, in fact, almost by definition, especially good at beginning. The seductive art of poetry lies largely in beginning well, writing or singing or saying in such a way that the audience is, in every way that matters, yours. Consider how Homer begins his Iliad:
Menin aeide, thea, Peleiadeo Achileos oulomenen, e myri' Achaiois alge' etheken, pollas d' iphthimous psychas Aidi proiapsen heroon, autous de heloria teuche kynessin oionoisi te pasi, Dios d' eteleito boule ...
The wrath sing, goddess, of Pelian Achilles, terrible, a wrath that put numberless pains on the Achaeans and cast into Hades so many of the strong souls of heroes, and their rich bodies as a feast for dogs and every ravenous bird, and the will of Zeus was fulfilled....'
In just a few lines, Homer baits his poetic hook with some really irresistible morsels: a goddess (thea), an undefined anger (menis), the countless souls (psychas) of dead young warriors, the inscrutable will of Zeus (boult Dios). He also invokes the idea of heroism (heroes), although he does not tell us what he thinks it is. That will prove to be important later on.
Or consider the way Homer begins the Odyssey. Two lines suffice him here: "Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polytropon, hos mala polla / planghthe, epei Troies hieron ptoliethron epersen" (Sing the man in me, Muse, the man of many ways, / who suffered countless journeys after sacking the sacred citadel of Troy).2 This opening is, if anything, both denser and more seductive than its counterpart in the Iliad. Homer baits the hook even more tantalizingly in these two short lines: the goddess is here again, as is the suffering, but so are some things that were not quite so clearly in evidence before (as many other commentators have noted as well). Consider the first word of each poem: Menin and Andra, "wrath" and "a man." The whole point of Achilles' wrath is that it was "something more than mortal [dai.moni Isos]," 3 distorted and distorting, consuming finally to Greeks and Trojans alike, more than human and thus distinctly out of balance. By contrast, the whole point of Odysseus's character is no more and no less than his manliness. Odysseus is...