War Music

For more than forty years, the English poet, wit, and troublemaker Christopher Logue (1926-2011) was at work on what came to be regarded as his masterpiece: an idiosyncratic contemporary version of Homer's Iliad. Beginning with the publication of his first volume in 1981, Logue's project was distinct from conventional translation, for it set out to be a radical reimagining of Homer's tale of warfare, human folly, and the power of the gods, in a language and style of verse that were emphatically of Logue's era.

while illness prevented Logue from finishing his version of the Ilia, enough survived in notebooks and letters to allow his friend the poet Christopher Reid to compile a version of the unpublished final installment, Big Men Falling a Long Way. This has been added to the previous parts of the poem, published individually between 1981 and 2005 - all, finally in one magisterial volume.