Excavations in Homer
The essay offers a comparative examination of Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011), which re-works material from the Iliad, and the German poet Barbara Köhler’s poem cycle Niemands Frau (Nobody’s Wife, 2007), which responds to the Odyssey. I argue that in dissolving the narrative line that characterizes Homer’s epics, both poets perform ‘speculative archaeologies’. Oswald’s treatment brings to the fore traces of lament and pastoral lyric forms that may have predated Homer’s narrative organization, recollecting the function of formal poetry in social rituals of mourning. Through her handling of the similes in particular, Oswald draws out of Homer’s text those moments in it which encapsulate connectivity and collectivity. Köhler’s differential treatment of grammatical gender likewise highlights connectivity, encapsulated in the female figures in the Odyssey and their complex interrelations (also a figure for poetic speech), which contrasts with linear narrative as projected by the male hero’s story.