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In the Lone Ranger movie Lord Grade made Figuratively born sightless, dumb, and deaf, this poet, near the quarter mark of life, implored Heaven for an interpretation. -- How to treat it, for it must be significant, this four-color epic which, on a sleepless night two generations before mine, flowed from Jerry Siegel's lips as they quivered with glee and sparked Joe Shuster's urge to sketch, finally freeing his raw creativity? No answer came. I wondered at how silent they had been, those proud Jovan children, on this topic. Were the Muses dead? Then, aloud, I said: -- No, they live. They reply not for seeing mere cant where I see art. They are cackling in sisterly coven and have simply chosen to ignore me. Guess I'll give up and go to bed. Reaching for the light switch, I leaned over my bookshelf, where many ancient authors lived. "It's never too late," they insisted, "to walk a worn mile. Help them resist, all who would hate Modernism, the term itself a misnomer whose time at long last is over: Employ the Classical style." Who could refuse such appointment? Surely not I. A shofar blast, Joshua's horn, shrilled from out the past and rattled down my spine. That night I pined away, striving to right generations of wrong, to put Homer ahead of Hemingway again and win back the limb that Joyce and James and all their kin hacked off of civilization. Let the modern Odyssey begin. |
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Jump to canto: INVOCATION 1 PROLOGUE: THREE FATHERS 2 3 4 BOOK ONE: ARRIVAL 5 6 7 8 9 BOOK TWO: OLD GODS LIE 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 FIRST INTERLUDE: MALEFACTORS 22 23 BOOK THREE: KANSAS BLEEDS 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 BOOK FOUR: AND OLD WORLDS DIE 31 32 33 34 35 BOOK FIVE: NOT THE LAST OF THE KNIGHT-RIDES 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 SECOND INTERLUDE 47 48 BOOK SIX: SURVIVAL 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 EPILOGUE: TOWARD METROPOLIS 61 62 63 64 |
Words & story © 1994 by Michael E. Mautner, all rights reserverd. Superman and all related elements are TM & © DC Comics Inc. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. A Superman Through the Ages! Presentation
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