My love of epic poetry began in high school because of one teacher in particular: Dr. Zohra Saed. That class was the first time I felt welcome to view history and poetry as strange--not grand or beautiful. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, Popol Vuh, the Descent of Inanna. The experience reading these poems were weird and she let us lean into the weirdness. Poetry that is that old That was the first time I ever presented a queer reading on anything (me an my friend argued that Enkidu and Gilgamesh were queer).
I think without knowing it this was the first of many times that I fell in love with poetry. But even so, in a class with a different teacher we were assigned the Iliad. And I dread it. Mainly because I think going into it our teacher emphasized the weight and importance of this story.
The announcement of Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey has renewed my interest in Homer. I had already heard about Emily Wilson's translation, and once I heard Nolan namedrop her when asked about his research process I laser-focused on it. After making my way through the first hundred pages I tried coming up with a working theory of the Iliad and the Odyssey and what I have is this: the Iliad is a larger than life story that is about many things, one of them being elite men and their relationship to each other; and the Odyssey is a larger than life story that is about many things, one of them being elite men and their relationship to women.