Gilgamesh Modernized

Interested in what critics had to say?  New York Times review

   My Gilgamesh

At Barnes and Noble

this past Sunday night

after I thought

I had spent

a profitless day

looking at

Easter hats

in front of

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

I found Stephen Mitchell’s

translation of Gilgamesh

telling of one who had

seen all

who had felt all

who had journeyed

to the edge of the world

who carved his trials

on stone tablets

who restored the

holy Eanna Temple

sacred to Ishta

and slew Humbaba in

the cedar forest then lost

the marvelous plant

which was the antidote

to the fear of death

and finally resolved his grief

with a walk on the wall of Urek

observing its gleaming ramparts

its glorious palaces and marketplaces.

My eyes ran with this verse

I was like the watcher of the skies

who sees a new planet swim into view

and I was like the beguiled poet who read

Chapman’s Homer first time.

Gail Tuch

Reminder that the March book is not just any old Gilgamesh...it is the version by Stephen Mitchell.  Don't show up with your old college version and think you can talk myths at the March meeting. ( February's review of  In the Garden of the Beasts is below."