Gilgamesh: A Verse Play

by Yusef Komunyakaa, Chad Gracia

Bringing new life to the world's oldest story, Yusef Komunyakaa and Chad Gracia refashion a classic Sumerian legend into a verse play. In this ageless saga, Gilgamesh of Uruk, part god and part man, embarks on an otherworldly quest in search of immortality. This new version elaborates on the key themes of the story and weaves them into an emotional new form.

Genres: Poetry, Plays, Classics, Drama, Mythology

112 pages, Hardcover

First published October 16, 2006

About the author

Yusef Komunyakaa (born April 29, 1947) is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the poetry world.

His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[SaDarius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting reading the Verse version of this! The world is in need of a modern Gilgamesh adaptation.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ancient story of Gilgamesh – one of the world’s oldest surviving poems -- is a sweeping tale of friendship and fear of death. I highly recommend the Stephen Mitchell translation/interpretation for an eminently readable, entertaining version.

The tale, though, is expansive and far reaching, encompassing multiple characters and locations and conflicts. Squeezing this expansive vision onto the stage is certainly a challenge.

Komunyakaa and Gracia hit all the key moments of the poem and tell the story in a logical and comprehensible manner. (Though I’m unsure how the audience will know who some people are.)

Their presentation, however, feels choppy and fragmentary. This complicated, wide-ranging story is presented in a number of short scenes jumping from character to character and place to place. It just didn’t feel very fluid.

I felt like it needed some kind of narrative device to hold it all together. Perhaps a narrator to fill in the gaps between the scenes and help sustain the mood from one scene to another. It has a Chorus, but it is woefully underused. Perhaps focus a play on one scene rather than try to tell the whole story.

For a “verse play” as described on the cover, the language felt a bit flat. It was both prosaic at moments (“In the forest // I learned to read // the minds of animal.”) and artificially elevated (“Did I not put ….”). There was some quasi-mystical language, but outside the song of Siduri (which is very good), there’s not much that couldn’t have been written as prose.

While the play may not achieve its ultimate goal, it is a worthy experiment. This would be a challenge for any playwright.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have had the experience of reading a play and being unimpressed to then see a production and come out with a much improved mindset, and this particular script was written with an immediate performance in mind, according to its dramaturg, but the elements that most deflated my interest were its tremendous reliance on redundant dialogue to advance its ideas as well as its muddled and inconsistent characterization of the king of Uruk. While the source material is certainly no model of tight writing, as authorship in ancient Mesopotamia clearly didn’t work on our single-source assumption and we can’t even apply our assumption of a singular text, but Gracia’s introduction about the story being on the fear of mortality doesn’t translate well in this version, which seems hampered by a desire to offer a play imitating a style reminiscent of the original time period. But as the lack of effective performances of Oedipus will attest to this ancient style of performance translates poorly to contemporary expectations of theater. While I always appreciate a script that challenges the creativity of staging, like having stage directions that quite simply state that Humbaba’s arms get chopped off or that the Bull of Heaven attacks, but a story that relies more on its speeches than its actions tends to lose my interest.

[Sierra Bookworm☺️♪ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very cool retelling of The Epic of Gilgamesh that adds depth and development to certain aspects that, because the original text is so fragmented, we may never be able to explore as they were first written. I read this for my Introduction to Poetry class this semester.

[James Grinwis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving dramatic rendering of the great myth, though should not be taken as a substitute for the epic in general. David Ferry's translation for instance would be recommended before this one for a first take. Komunyakaa's powerful verses anchor a Gilgamesh world well worth the read.

[Jordan N Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful retelling of this ancient epic. Some of the finest and most resonant poetry I have read.

[Tom Romig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent writing here. Yusef Komunyakaa's poetic rendering of this ancient story is captivating. I'm not usually one for myths because the people tend to have a pasteboard existence, serving as they do to convey the grand themes. This story, too, deals with big issues--loss, mortality, death, grief (sounds like Woody Allen!)--but the characters have dimension, and the main character changes and grows, though the growth brings him to a place of pain that we call the human condition.

[Shaudee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great stuff. There should be more verse plays out there! Why did it stop at the 19th century? I love that he takes one of the world's oldest stories and makes it simple and yet profound with beautiful and yet sparse poetry. Definitely a refreshing new format for poetry for me. Yusef, I'll be following you.

[Garreth Heidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Komunyakaa is one of my favorite poets, and this translation is as full of liquid and liquored language as his poetry. The dramatic form isn't easy for a poet, but Komunyakaa plays by it's rules in playful ways, creating a Gilgamesh for stage that must have been truly moving.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astoundingly gorgeous! Thank you, Yusef Komunyakaa and Chad Gracia for making the oldest poem in the world accessible to modern readers. I hope to use this translation the next time I teach Gilgamesh to my high school students.

[Zjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very inventive. An innovative way to convey the old legend.

[sunny ݁ᛪ༙ · Rating 4 out of 5]

imagine the oldest piece of literature being queer
(gilgamenkidu is real to me.)