England's Poet Laureate' Ode to Becks

BBC News published an article about the latest work by England's Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who was inspired by Becks' injury which will keep him from playing in the World Cup. You MUST NOT MISS hearing the Bard herself reading her radical poetic masterpiece as her delivery only adds to the potency of her rhymes. You can read more and watch her read the poem here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8570282.stm

Achilles by Carol Ann Duffy

Myth's river - where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesied, they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...

But when Odysseus came, with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,

And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball...

But then his heel, his heel, his heel...

Note the subtleties of her poem. First there is the tragically serendipitous nature of Becks' injury. Second is her audacious anachronism. Third is her post-Modern appropriation of Classical myth to bring such tropes closer to the British, privileging the global/glocal mass cultural form that is football. Third, her way with words. Rhyming "sarong" with "song" which although geographically incongruous might be seen as in the interests of melodious rhyme and as a post-Colonial move to undermine the hegemonic role of Western culture. She could have gone another route, the sartorial and temporal incongruity, selecting "thong" to rhyme with "song" and thus inserting a meta-reference to Posh and Becks' well-known fashionista tendencies and recent underwear advertisements. Here she would have fused several mass cultural forms - fashion, print culture, video, the internet, and football. So, one might say, in passing over "thong," she dropped the ball. Ah, her heel, her heel, her heel.......