Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem

The author offers reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets.

Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found again in the 1850s, it tells the story of a great king, his heroism, and his eventual defeat. It is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Michael Schmidt provides a unique meditation on the rediscovery of Gilgamesh and its profound influence on poets today.

Schmidt describes how the poem is a work in progress even now, an undertaking that has drawn on the talents and obsessions of an unlikely cast of characters, from archaeologists and museum curators to tomb raiders and jihadis. Fragments of the poem, incised on clay tablets, were scattered across a huge expanse of desert when it was recovered in the nineteenth century. The poem had to be reassembled, its languages deciphered. The discovery of a pre-Noah flood story was front-page news on both sides of the Atlantic, and the poem's allure only continues to grow as additional cuneiform tablets come to light. Its translation, interpretation, and integration are ongoing.

In this illuminating book, Schmidt discusses the special fascination Gilgamesh holds for contemporary poets, arguing that part of its appeal is its captivating otherness. He reflects on the work of leading poets such as Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, and Yusef Komunyakaa, whose own encounters with the poem are revelatory, and he reads its many translations and editions to bring it vividly to life for readers.

About the Author

Michael Schmidt OBE FRSL is the founder and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press Limited and the general editor of PN Review. He was until recently Professor of Poetry and convener of the Creative Writing programme in the Department of English, University of Glasgow. He has also been Writer in Residence at St John's College, Cambridge, and Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is now Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester, editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press Ltd and folunder and general editor of PN Review.

In 2013 he completed The Novel: A Biography, published in May 2014, a companion volume to Lives of the Poets (1999). His most recent anthologies include, The Great Modern Poets, published by Quercus on National Poetry Day 2006; Five American Poets (including Robert Hass, James McMichael, John Matthias, John Peck, and Robert Pinsky), published by Carcanet in 2010, New Poetries V, including 22 hitherto uncollected anglophone poets from around the world, in 2011, and New Poetries VI, including 21 hitherto uncollected anglophone poets in 2015; and New Poetries VII, including 22 hitherto uncollected poets, in 2018. New Poetries VIII, edited with John McAuliffe, came out in 2021. His collection of poems The Resurrection of the Body was published in 2007. His Collected Poems appeared in 2009 and The Stories of My Life in 2013. A Very Selected Poems appeared from The Poetry Business in 2018, and Talking to Stanley on the Telephone in 2020.