heartbreaking

My book club's book for March was Maya Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing, a trans and fantasy-ish retelling of the Iliad. As a long-standing irreverent classicist and fan of iddy fanfic, I enjoyed it a lot, although I did have some quibbles (overall, the fantasy and science fiction elements worked less well for me, and at a certain point I did kind of reach my limit on bonkers shit...lol whoops). But I also could not stop thinking about this poem during our book club meeting on Sunday—it's exactly right tonally, even if it's the Odyssey rather than the Iliad.

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.

—Louise Glück (1943-2023), "Telemachus' Detachment" from Meadowlands (Ecco Press, 1996).