Sarah Nooter, Queering the Classics: When Poetry Looks Back

The ancient Greeks thought that the future was to be found in the space behind (opisthe). To see what is in store for us, we must crane our necks and take a backwards glance. This session examined the work of both modern authors Frank Bidart, Thom Gunn, and Joe Brainard and ancient ones, including Catullus, Plato, and Homer, to suggest that the stance of classical study itself, in looking back to the past, echoes the queer stance of the backward glance to a lost loved one and to one’s own lost past that we find in both ancient and modern poetry.