Michael Schmidt

Acclaimed literary historian Schmidt provides a unique meditation on the rediscovery of Gilgamesh and its profound influence on poets today. He 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.

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 is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Michael Schmidt provides a...

An essential introduction to the most significant poems and their works since 1900 Reproduced within this collection are some of the greatest poems of the 20th century, featuring works from major writers such as T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Langston Hughes and W.B. Yeats. For each, Michael Schmidt provides an insight into their themes and the background to their...