
I have been teaching four of my classes The Odyssey, classic Homer. We're doing the edited in-the-text version, which is fine, because we get to skip the recursive bits, and the text summarizes the long boring bits.
We just finished the Siren/ Scylla and Charybdis scene, and did the selection note-taking today.
I played vixy and Tony's Siren Song, the version from the live Duckcon album with Sooj doing the awesome harmony and commentary alongside. ("But honey! You're so good at it!") My students were unsurprised I knew people who wrote songs like this. There was much laughter.
The writing assignment: Write a story selection or poem from the perspective of a character in the Odyssey other than Odysseus. Does not have to be contemporaneous with the epic.
This was the first time I've assigned such a writing prompt that did not get complaints. The song gave them such a clear idea of what they were to do, they all got started right away!
Thank you, vixy and Tony!
Coming up for my students studying The Illiad: this past year's Pegasus award winning song by Katy and Ju about Helen, "A Thousand Ships" same writing assignment.
And I have a snippet running through my head: "He spiked my eyeball, my evil, evil eyeball. And I want, and I want, back my precious seein'. And I want, and I want, back my precious seein'."