Everyman's Odyssey

Length / Form 25 lines, 5 stanzas of 6 lines, 1 stanza of 7 lines

Allusion to Classical figure Telemachus

Relationship to Classical text Direct address to Odysseus’s son Telemachus on his coming of age, his resentment of the Suitors, his inability to emulate his father and the eventual return of Odysseus and their joint revenge on the Suitors. The poet’s voice in the poem expresses the desire to experience the violence of the events through Telemachus’ story (‘I would hear...’, ‘I would see one of the beggars...’, ‘I would see these gluttons, guests by grace of  their numbers / Flung through the doors with bellies full of arrows.’)

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Comment ‘Everyman's Odyssey’ is from Hughes’s second collection of poems, Lupercal. Taking its name from the Lupercalia fertility festival of ancient Rome, Hughes laces his poems with images and symbols associated with the festival with the effect that the poems read like a series of incantations in an attempt to reinvigorate his writing. Lupercal  is rich in classical allusions as befitting the title of the collection. ‘Everyman’s Odyssey’, the second poem in the collection, not only instigates these allusions, but also the idea of journeying which marks a number of the poems.