Logue’s style is fast-paced, poetic, graphic, and shocking as he brings Achilles’ extreme form of rage to the forefront in just a few words. Logue captures the spirit, the essence and the central concepts of the first two chapters of Homer’s war poem, The Iliad, and he does it with his own unique poetic style that, at times, is quite startling. An example is Logue’s handling of Agamemnon’s character with a focus on Agamemnon’s mouth. “Mouth, King Mouth,” Achilles shouts to Agamemnon when they are fighting over Agamemnon’s unacceptable and dangerous behavior. The king listens to no one, he is brash, and he is all mouth. By contrast Nestor says about Achilles: “Your voice is honey and your words are winged.”
Originally published by Faber & Faber, 1991. Collected in various editions of War Music, Jonathan Cape, 1981; University of Chicago Press, 2003; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017
A Personal Anthology 