Matthew Arnold praised the "Iliad" for its 'nobility', as has everyone ever sinc
e - but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its 'bright unbearable real
ity' (the word used when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves).
To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her
account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biograph
ies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of
whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Hom
er's glance. ""The Iliad" is an oral poem.
