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Derek Mahon: Cynthia's Ghost

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Cynthia's Ghost

Raw Material, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2011

Not included in CP

Length / Form Ten-line stanzas, laid out on the page in imitation of the elegiac meter (with alternate lines indented).

Allusion to Classical figure Cynthia, Chloris, Parthenië, Charon

Allusion to Classical place Tivoli, the Subura, Anio, Tibutine earth, Gates of Ivory and Horn, Styx

Relationship to Classical text Mahon's Cynthia is coursley comic ("shove over" [...] stricken with grief, sez you. Cheat! Lying sod!") and captures the humorous grotesque of Propertius' poem.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts The poem is a version of Propertius' Elegies IV, 7

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Robert Lowell's 'The Ghost' (Lord Weary's Castle, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946) is a heightened and dramatic version of the same elegy, whereas Mahon's interpretation is characterised by bawdy humour.

Derek Mahon