If my path fills with darkness and there's no sign of light

[sovay]

My poem "On the Day When Dumuzi Comes Up" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. It was written last August when I was living for a month at the Baystate on Mass Ave; I had a bad weekend, read some Akkadian I hadn't looked at in eleven years, wrote a poem drawing on Ištar's Descent to the Underworld (as well as a sex charm and a hangover cure) while thinking about the friend who taught me the language. Learned later that same day that they had just had a stroke. Am very happy to report these days that they aten't dead (and I owe them e-mail), but the timing was unsettling. I was writing about the Anunnaki, not asking them to drop by. In any case, the poem has a home.

Comments

[yhlee]

Yay poem!

I'm glad your friend is well.

[sovay]

Yay poem!
I'm glad your friend is well.

Thank you!

Me, too.

[gwynnega]

That timing is unsettling, all right. But congratulations on the poetry sale!

[sovay]

But congratulations on the poetry sale!

Thank you!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I didn't know you read Akkadian. Does one do that in cuneiform, or is it generally transliterated?

[sovay]

Congratulations! I didn't know you read Akkadian. Does one do that in cuneiform, or is it generally transliterated?

Thank you!

Most of the texts that I worked with were transliterations, but we were taught to read the Neo-Assyrian forms of the signs. (I had some very small familiarity with older Babylonian forms, but not so as I could do anything with them at this point except distinguish them by sight.) I don't know how many signs I had memorized at my best. After more than ten years of disuse, I have what feels like a very small1111111111* handful of leftover recognition of signs, employed almost strictly when in the Near Eastern wings of museums or really randomly online; I'm not sure I can generate any except the simplest from memory. I retain much more of the grammar and morphology and a random assortment of vocabulary that my brain tends to hand me when I'm trying to come up with Hebrew. The rest of this paragraph had a terminal case of Tiny Wittgenstein and had to be shown the door.

* Autolycus thought that adjective needed emphasis.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! And man, what timing.

[sovay]

Congratulations! And man, what timing.

Thank you!

It was really weird.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Yay! Though they should really publish it in Summer. It is such a summer poem.

[sovay]

Yay! Though they should really publish it in Summer. It is such a summer poem.

It may yet be published in summer! I don't know how far ahead Mike has finalized issues.

[alexxkay]

Not a Sumer poem?

[sovay]

Not a Sumer poem?

Nah—the only Sumerian I know is the logographic values of Akkadian.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Whoo hoo! I always approve of Underworld-banished boyfriend resurrection.

[sovay]

Whoo hoo! I always approve of Underworld-banished boyfriend resurrection.

I do what I can!