Fifty years ago, in July 1969, human beings embarked on an epic journey to land on the moon. Now, in July 2019, poet Ken Hunt utilizes NASA's Apollo 11 voice transcription document, a chronicle of the first six days of that mission, to create The Odyssey, an erasure poem of star charts carved from the technical jargon and offhand remarks found in that transmission. The resulting text is both a progressive investigation and a commemorative homage to a major historic event; it will transport you from the surface of our planet to the eerie territory of outer space, a realm populated by the disembodied voices of ghosts, gods, and lost explorers.
The Odyssey compares the astronauts of the 20th and 21st centuries to seafarers of ancient Greek literature, mythic figures who devoted their lives to endeavours of discovery and understanding.