{"id":2971,"date":"2010-09-15T11:43:02","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T16:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=2971"},"modified":"2010-12-20T23:18:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T04:18:20","slug":"songs-of-the-byzantine-border-guards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=2971","title":{"rendered":"Songs of the Byzantine Border Guards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Stonetelling.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2915\" title=\"Stonetelling\" src=\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Stonetelling-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"179\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Stonetelling-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Stonetelling.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 179px) 100vw, 179px\" \/><\/a><em>Stone Telling<\/em> magazine <a href=\"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/issue1-sep2010\/\">went live<\/a> this morning.  As I said in an earlier entry, it is the brain- and heart-child of Rose Lemberg who wished to elicit and showcase poetry that crosses boundaries.  It contains an introduction by Rose, fourteen poems, three non-fiction articles and a round-table contributor interview.<\/p>\n<p>Among the poems is my dear friend Calvin Johnson&#8217;s eloquent and thought-provoking <em><a href=\"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/issue1-sep2010\/johnson-towards-a-feminist-algebra.html\">Towards a Feminist Algebra<\/a><\/em>.  Among the articles is <em><a href=\"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/issue1-sep2010\/andreadis-borderguards.html\">A (Mail)coat of Many Colors<\/a><\/em>, my discussion of the songs of the Akr\u00edtai, the Byzantine border guards &#8212; poetry of a time, place and language that is virtually unknown in the Anglophone world.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Hellenes still sing these songs&#8230; and they still reverberate in the popular imagination in subtle but powerful ways. As the accompanying image shows, Antoine Fuqua&#8217;s Sarmatian border guards in Roman England hearken back to the Akr\u00edtai of Byzantine Anatolia.  Too, real amazons lived and fought in the lands of the Akr\u00edtai &#8212; a liminal zone where all kinds of boundaries were crossed and history survived as tales and songs.<\/p>\n<p>The poems in <em>Stone Telling<\/em> open wondrous windows to the world.  And if that is not the best purpose of poetry, what is?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Archetypes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2982\" title=\"Archetypes\" src=\"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Archetypes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"426\" height=\"273\" srcset=\"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Archetypes.jpg 831w, https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Archetypes-300x192.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 426px) 100vw, 426px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Image: Left, the Byzantine warrior saint Merkourios, a Scythian by birth (fresco by Manu\u00edl Pans\u00e9linos, Mt. Athos, 1360 AD); right, Ioan Gruffudd as a Sarmatian border guard in Antoine Fuqua\u2019s <em>King Arthur.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stone Telling magazine went live this morning. As I said in an earlier entry, it is the brain- and heart-child of Rose Lemberg who wished to elicit and showcase poetry that crosses boundaries. It contains an introduction by Rose, fourteen poems, three non-fiction articles and a round-table contributor interview. Among the poems is my dear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-history","category-poetry","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}