Anthony Harrington


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Locus Classicus

Think of the early humanists
Bent over in their privies
Reading the epics of Homer
Or some narrative of Livy’s.

Ignoring the cloacal smell
They preserved the classical mind
By letting their spirits soar above
That which they left behind.

Pity the students centuries down
Being force-fed Greek and Latin
Wishing the humanists had dropped
The texts in the place they sat in.

First published in Trinacria

Anthony Harrington, semi-educated in a seminary in Philadelphia, lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, and often resorts to the time-honored practice of self-publication, generating chapbooks whose small press runs get quickly exhausted because he hands them out with the zeal of a door-to-door missionary distributing leaflets. He has a sorely neglected blog. His latest collection is From the Attic: Selected Verse, 1965-2015 (Kudzu Editions, 2015).