### Q&A with Editor Keeley Schell *Keeley Schell holds a PhD in Classics from Brown University. Her dissertation focused on metaphor and allusion in Vergil’s epic poem, The Aeneid. She is the librarian at St. Francis Xavier School in Winooski, Vermont, and adjunct professor of classics at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont.* “Poetry is one of the few things I still read like a child,” says *The Pierian* editor Keeley Schell. What does she mean by that? We ask. “By day I work in a library. And when I come home at night, I sometimes bring a book for one of my kids. If it’s something they’re into, they flop down on the couch and start reading, and before the evening is out they’ve devoured the whole thing. If it’s one of my daughters, I’ll probably find her there rereading it the next day,” says Schell. What does that have to do with contemporary verse? “A lot of what I read in graduate school and afterwards, as a professional, is very dense and needs to be grasped in small chunks. It’s a delight to try to appreciate a work of literature organically as a whole, and you can do that with poetry collections. I always try to read a new poetry book in the space of one day. Then I let it percolate in, see what jumps out in my mind and if I have to reread all or part in order to fully process it.” Asked whether this applies to the classics, Schell laughs. “No, I’m too nitpicky when I encounter a classical translation or edition for the first time. I get down in the weeds and am not going to be finishing it in one day. Seeing a production of a Greek dramatical work is the closest I can get to that holistic experience, within my discipline.” Any favorites there? “Well, for sheer number of different productions I’ve seen, Euripides’ *Helen* has to top the list. I think I have seen it in four very different renditions. It’s a good play and can support that better than, say, *As You Like It*. I would really love to see Sophocles’ *Ajax* and Aristophanes’ *Clouds* as live stage productions.”