With cavalier wit and keen erudition, Last Call for Ganymede presents a veritable “Devil’s Party” of dramatic monologues in the personae of an assortment of eminent ghosts of Western Literature Past. This it does in any number of traditional forms, from the familiar sonnet and villanelle to the more rarefied ballade, rondelle, and pantoum, all carried off with superlative aplomb.
Be it a triolet in the voice of Collette, mock-heroic couplets for Dante’s Beatrice, or dueling sestinas delivered by the great Euripidean divas Medea and Phaedra—not to mention the odd quatrains à la Millay or nonce form per Byron—every entry in this compendium of literary delights speaks with as much alacrity as panache.
“A call has repeatedly gone out to poets, both young and old, to be bold, be bold, be bold. This call is often made in the form of a summons, and in this book, Keith O’Shaughnessy has answered the summons with an impish aplomb . . . Last Call for Ganymede is a restless book, a pure delight.”
Ifeanyi Menkiti
Late Owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square
“Immersing us in the worlds of classical mythology, Dante, and Shakespeare, the poems in Last Call for Ganymede do not rely on description or allusion. Rather, Keith O’Shaughnessy inhabits and animates Phaedra, Cleopatra, Beatrice, and many others, and does so with lyric precision and crackling wit. The poems in this collection are like filigreed lightning.”
Rachel Hadas
Writer & Guggenheim Foundation fellow