What is this?
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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
This line references glasses – often called frames – which are curved to help vision.
In addition, it also suggests the girl’s curves are holding his attention. It’s not that he doesn’t want to look – he CAN’T stop looking.
One can only imagine what girls with glasses would do to him:
By one or another of the myriads
Who hardly understand, through the compulsive
Reliving of their deaths, that they have died
--By fire in this case, when a warehouse burned. James Merrill – The Book of Ephraim (B)
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Born AD 8 at XANTHOS Where was that?
In Greece WHEN WOLVES & RAVENS WERE IN ROME
(Next day the classical dictionary yielded
A Xanthos on the Asia Minor Coast.) James Merrill – The Book of Ephraim (C)
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
A reconstruction of the Nereid Monument from Xanthos.
Xanthos was located at the center of ancient Lycia and can be seen on a map here:
Today, Xanthos would be in Turkey, where the red dots are:
By AD 8 Xanthos had already been conquered by the Romans (and was called Xanthus in Latin) and it is possible that Ephraim is lying.
If you compare the location with a map of the area using historical boundaries, Xanthos would arguably be a Grecian area, falling slightly east of what would be considered Ancient Greece and still well within the bounds of the Roman Empire.
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