The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem, a new book by Jack Mitchell, owes its genesis to the unique combination of Mitchell’s scholarly background and his children’s taste in bedtime stories.
“I was reading Homer and Vergil in the daytime, then Star Wars books to my kids at night,” the Stanford-educated poet tells StarWars.com. “And I realized this was our modern mythology, which I was already passing on.”
Like the tales of Odysseus and Beowulf that have come before it, the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader are larger-than life mythologies, filled with legendary battles, archetypal heroes and storied warriors, sleek ships and dangerous monsters lurking along the way. Alongside illustrations inspired by the terracotta art synonymous with Greek antiquity, Mitchell uses the ancient literary form of epic poetry to