Poetry NOW
The gods of writing, from Sumer to the Americas. Plus the world's first recorded poet, celestial librarians, Muses, the Mead of Poetry, codices, and a tangent re: Cortés.
“. . .From the civil rights and women’s liberation movements to Black Lives Matter, poetry is commanding enough to gather crowds in a city square and compact enough to demand attention on social media. Speaking truth to power remains a crucial role of the poet in the face of political and media rhetoric designed to obscure, manipulate, or worse.” - the Poetry Foundation
Poetry was once a purely performative experience. But then, in the land currently known as Iraq, the Sumerians developed cuneiform. Though the initial goal was to keep accounts, this new technology was quickly adapted to record devotional hymns, spells, and even love poems.
The English word “poet” has been in use for about 600 years. It comes from the Greek poiētēs, which is in turn derived from poiein, meaning "to make." Fun fact: Chaucer defined himself as a “maker,” not a poet. Maker, by the way, was also a term for God.
This is how we arrive at the world’s first recorded poet: Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad (2334 to 2279 B.C.E.). Enheduanna was the high priestess of the moon god. But she and her father were also personal devotees of Inanna, a fiercely powerful, paradoxical deity of sex and war. With her independence and achievement of power, Inanna/Ishtar is singular among the goddesses of the Sumerian and Akkadian pantheons. (She was later known as Astarte. And then, some say, Aphrodite, though super watered-down by that point.)
As Enheduanna artfully elevated Inanna, she advanced her own socio-political position as well.
Enheduanna to Inanna:
“. . .you startle the sky
riding out on seven great lions. . .”
When Nisaba is near
Inanna is the poet’s goddess, but she isn’t the goddess of poetry. Nisaba (or Nidaba) is the Sumerian goddess of writing, as well as grasses, grains, and reeds—the stylus used to inscribe clay tablets was made from reeds. Author and queer icon Judy Grahn claims when the stylus in your hand trembles, that means Nisaba is near.
The Egyptian Goddess of the Nerds
Like Nisaba, Seshat (meaning “female scribe”) keeps the books, so to speak, for ancient Egypt. She first appears in reliefs from the Old Kingdom (2575 to 2130 B.C.E.) and the Middle Kingdom (1938 to 1630 B.C.E.), crowned with a horned headband, embellished by a star with her name on it. Seshat carries a notched palm rib (naked palm frond), which represents the inevitable passage of time.
Seshat is also the keeper of the House of Life, which—squee!—hosts a library! In fact, Seshat is the patron goddess of libraries and librarians! She’s even known as the Celestial Librarian! Coolest title ever, best all around divine duties.
In some myths, Seshat is the wife—or daughter—of Thoth, the lunar deity of wisdom and sacred knowledge, including magic. It’s said that while Thoth created language, Seshat gave mankind words.
“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and look at it, until it shines.” – Emily Dickinson
The Divine Nine
The Greco-Roman Muses are the divine protectresses of poets and musicians. At first, there were only three: Melete (meditation), Mneme (memory), and Aoide (song). Over time, three became nine, each with her own specific purview.
Calliope, Muse of epic poetry, is probably the best-known among her sisters. The first line of the Odyssey (written somewhere between 750 to 650 B.C.E.) goes, “Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.” The Muse Homer addresses here is Calliope.
In the office occupied by the Librarian of Congress (what a title!), there’s a mural inscribed with the Latin phrase, “Dulce ante omnia Musae.” Meaning: “Muses, above all things, delightful.”
There’s a Muse for most every type of verse, including tragedy—the domain of Melpomene. The term was coined around the 5th century B.C.E., in the Greek state of Attica, home to Athens. It refers to a specific type of play put on at festivals, except “festival” is maybe the wrong word. These were solemn occasions attended by the entire community, with altars for worship, and priests bumming everyone out. The plays derived from historical and legendary tales of misfortune, and their authors were none other than the Titans of Tragedy: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
As the form evolved, tragedy prompted existential questions like: what’s the purpose of suffering? Is it chance, punishment, fate, or what?
Why are we always caught between good and evil, and other paradoxes?
Is justice even attainable?
“Writing is the painting of the voice.” –Voltaire
The Greeks are known for philosophy, not so much Gender Studies. So it’s horribly fitting that the muse, in the modern parlance, is a woman, often a lover, who stimulates the genius of her male companion by granting him access to her body. She herself is not an artist, only a passive vessel for the generative force of artistic creation. This is all, of course, some objectifying, Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl bullshit.
Now let’s drink some blood and spit.
The Mead of Poetry
In the Viking Age (roughly 800 to 1050 C.E.), you don’t receive inspiration, you imbibe it. Thanks to Kvasir, the Norse god of wisdom, who embodies poetry, quite literally.
First thing to know about Kvasir is he’s born from divine spit. (In world mythology, this happens way more than you think.) Long ago, the gods of the Aesir and Vanir were at war. The Aesir are warlike deities, while the Vanir are gods of fertility. Death vs life, see? Once balance is achieved, the gods spit in a cauldron as a symbol of their truce. Then Odin suggests they do something productive with all this divine saliva. So Freya, the beautiful goddess of sex, love, and war, reaches right into the cauldron and pulls out Kvasir.
Since he’s new to the world(s), Kvasir goes wandering, dropping wisdom along the way. He visits Midgard, where men live. Then two dwarf brothers kill him and brew mead from his blood. Anyone who drinks this mead would be blessed with poetry, except the brothers keep it all for themselves. Meanwhile, they commit more murders. Once caught, they endeavor to bargain their lives for their greatest treasure.
Via murder, trickery, and seduction, Odin manages to down every drop of the Mead of Poetry in just three gulps. Then, in the form of an eagle, he spits it all into some enormous vats built by Thor. Well, almost all. Odin-the-eagle sharts some at his enemies. (The Norse really enjoyed butt jokes.)
Though his appearance is brief, Kvasir’s value as the god of wisdom is inestimable. Evidence of his influence—or the refusal of it—abounds.
Brigid is the red-headed Celtic triple-goddess of poetry, healing, fertility, and smithing. When they got to the British Isles, the Romans thought Brigid was a manifestation of their own goddess, Minerva (Roman Athena).
Brigid the deity transformed into Brigid the saint. Both are associated with fire and holy wells.
“I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be stilled.” – Sylvia Plath
Lost in Translation
A bird-snake god of knowledge, venerated by the most educated members of society: that’s Kukulkan, or Quetzalcóatl, a Mesoamerican deity who may have originated with the Olmecs. The Maya equated snakes with life and death, rebirth, and renewal, and the dichotomy of above vs below. Likewise, the serpent was a fertility symbol in Aztec culture (and many others around the world).
In Aztec myth, Quetzalcóatl is the guardian of civilization, which is wonderfully ironic, given he repeatedly creates and destroys the world. In one myth, his very birth triggers the fifth-ever eclipse, earning him the nickname “the Fifth Sun.” He’s also the god of wisdom and writing—he even designed the Aztec codex and calendar.
Both Mayan and Aztec codices were written on accordion-style sheets of bark paper. The former included hieroglyphic displays that predicted eclipses, tracked the moon and the paths of Mars and Venus. Three pages of the Dresden Codex alone (the surviving codices are named for the cities where they were found) were devoted to monitoring Venus, the morning star, paradoxically imbued with bad luck, and associated with Kukulkan himself. (Inanna is also goddess of the morning star. She’s a chthonic deity too, yet has absolutely no relation to Mesoamerica whatsoever.) The library in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan once housed thousands of such Aztec codices, which were also largely pictographic, and recorded historical and political events.
In the mid-sixteenth century, Franciscan missionaries set fire to almost all of the Maya’s written records. Only a handful now remain. The Spanish likewise ravaged the Aztec codices. Today, there are fewer than twenty surviving pre-Columbian documents.
The deliberate destruction of ancient knowledge is an erasure, a kind of cultural assassination.
And then, adding insult to injury, there’s the myth of the Spanish gods.
And now, a historical tangent
Let me be clear: the Aztec emperor Moctezuma did NOT take Cortés for a god.
Moctezuma was quite prudent in his response to the arrival of the Spanish: he sent out scouts and assembled a war room. According to Camilla Townsend, author of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, when the Spaniards were finally face-to-face with the emperor, they attempted to deliver a sermon, but were promptly cut off. Their host indicated he was already familiar with their spiel, sorry not sorry.
The Nahuatl language didn’t have quite the right word for people as foreign as the Europeans. So they were called teules, which has been mis-translated to mean “gods.” The Aztecs did not believe that people could become divine. Instead, teules has multiple associations, including “strange and unearthly power,” such as a sorcerer or priest might possess.
The god myth add elements of divine entitlement/white man’s burden BS to a mythologized colonization narrative, which serves to justify the unconscionable.
Protesters at the the 2017 Women’s March bore signs quoting Pablo Neruda: “Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrá detener la primavera.” Translation: “You can cut all the flowers, but you can’t stop spring.”
Recommended Reading
Inanna Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna by Betty De Shong Meador is a lovely translation of Enheduanna’s temple hymns and rather personal work composed to her goddess. De Shong Meador calls Enheduanna a “literary genius.”
Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power features lyrical retellings from Judy Grahn, a poet-priestess in her own right.
The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion by Thorkild Jacobsen is dense but captivating. It breaks down a lot of the basics, like core myths and the who’s who of the gods.
Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature by Gwendolyn Leick challenges a lot of the interpretations and assumptions made by (mostly male) experts on Sumerian myth and Mesopotamian culture. But this book was published in the 90’s, and it shows re: non-binary gender. Cringe.
I haven’t read all of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend, I’ve just used it as a resource, but what I’ve learned so far is fascinating.
If fiction is more your thing, support indie bookselling and check out Pick Your Potions’ Bookshop.org reading lists, full of ghosts, feminist horror, mythological reimaginings, and more. Cheers!