“No mortal can escape or flee from death. / So let us go. Perhaps we shall succeed, / and win a triumph from another’s death, / or somebody may triumph over us.” The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson
In this six-week, in-person workshop, we'll explore poetry's oldest form, the epic, as a means by which to mythologize, historicize, criticize and ultimately understand our current cultural moment. The epic has played an integral part in many civilizations' establishment and understanding of themselves, from ancient Mesopotamia and pre-Christian Greece to the burgeoning national identities of Finland and the United States. In this workshop, we'll contextualize and engage with excerpts from a number of epics across upwards of 4000 years, all the while working on our own extended "modern epic" poems. The central questions are these: what makes a hero heroic? What power can collective memory hold? How, ultimately, do our memory and belief outweigh any attempt at uncovering "the truth"?
Works engaged with include:
Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author. Translated by Sophus Helle.
Gilgamesh. Translated by Sophus Helle.
The Iliad. Homer, Translated by Emily Wison.
The Aeneid. Virgil, Translated by Shadi Bartsch.
Metamorphoses. Ovid, Translated by Stephanie McCarter.
Kalevala. Edited by Elias Lönnrot, Translated by Eino Friberg.
Citizen: An American Lyric. Claudia Rankine.
Always Coming Home. Ursula K. Le Guin.
Time (the Revelator) Gillian Welch.