Our very next book is The Book of Job. However, if you're reading ahead, here are selections for our discussion of Ovid.

For Ovid's Metamorphoses, I will focus on the selections from the following Books. You'll find the Lombardo edition recommended for class has a useful Analytical Table of Contents:

• Book 1: Invocation, Origin of the World, The Four Ages, The Flood, Deucalion & Pyhrra, Apollo & Daphne, Io
• Book 2: Phaeton & Phoebus, Jupiter & Europa
• Book 3: Cadmus & the Earthborn People, Diana & Actaeon, Echo & Narcissus
• Book 4: Pyramus & Thisbe, Perseus & Andromeda
• Book 5: Hymn to Ceres
• Book 6: Procne & Philomela
• Book 7: Jason & Medea
• Book 8: Minos & the Minotaur, Daedalus & Icarus, Philemon & Baucis
• Book 10: Orpheus & Eurydice, Pygmalion
• Book 11: Midas
• Book 13: The Fall of Troy, Hecuba
• Book 15: The Teachings of Pythagoras, Envoi

More reading by or about Ovid:

After Ovid: New Metamorphoses

Heroides (Penguin Classics)

The Art of Love (Modern Library Classics)

The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

An Imaginary Life

Here is a link to another Gilgamesh translation, well worth comparing, and which I have used in the past: Kovacs translation.

For a study of the extensive influence of Gilgamesh, see: Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic. There doesn't seem to be a paperback version available, but there is a Kindle edition.

Gilgamesh was onstage in DC this Summer, here is an account: DC Theatre Scene based on Gilgamesh: A Verse Play (Wesleyan Poetry Series) by  Pulitzer winner Yuself Komunyakaa.

I'm looking forward to our Fall semester. To keep us company along the way, I've compiled a Wikipedia Supplement with an article for each one of our selected books. Where an article is not available for the specific work, I've included the article for the author. You can download it here as either a PDF file or an eBook (epub format - works best, I've found with Apple's iBooks):

Download Brilliant Minds Wiki Supplement (PDF)

Download Brilliant Minds Wiki Supplement (epub)

I remember reading Eliot's "Waste Land" my Freshman year. There was no course including it that semester, but I wanted to explore it and I did. It was the first time I really connected with a poem, wanting to understand & experience it. I took it with me on vacation that Summer. The only book I packed. And I read and re-read it for weeks. The footnotes too. Just the fact of them was interesting & enticing. They were a part of the poem and added to the sense of intentionally, actively connecting with whatever it had to offer. Music, ideas, images. Possibility. Do you recall the first time a poem, play or novel created this experience for you?

Fall classes at NYU begin on September 24th. Registration: enroll

Syllabus (pdf) with dates for readings (page 2) is now available:

Download BMinds_Fall2013syllabus