The Flaying of Marsyas - Softcover

These richly imaginative, unsettling poems cluster around the figure of Marsyas, from Titian's great late painting of 'the satyr who did what the poet has to do/ and challenged heaven with his flight of song'. Losing to the god Apollo in a music competition, Marsyas is flayed alive. But for Annemarie Austin, Marsyas is an exemplary figure whose horrible death in myth turns into a transformation. He gradually frees himself from the rich background of Titian's picture, moving through a series of vividly conceived poems until, in 'Marsyas in Hell', 'he strides as an underworld immortal in the flames'. Austin's Marsyas poems become the focus for others concerned with choice, change, transformation (or its denial), rootedness and haunting.