Murder at Jagged Rock: A Translation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis

Poetry. Drama. Translation from the Greek by Keyne Cheshire. Cheshire’s translation inhabits the territory of American myth–the Wild West. With its harsh landscapes and larger- than-life heroes, it is a world both familiar and distant, a world that still resonates within the American psyche. Says Kenneth J. Reckford, I was first shocked, then moved and delighted by Cheshire’s translation of Sophocles’ Trachinian Women into an American vernacular and Wild West setting. Poetic and rhythmical speeches propel the reader forward and deeper into Sophocles’ tragedy, while the choral odes give voice to lastingly powerful feelings of hope and fear, spiritual exultation and earth-bound sadness and pain.