Ulysses

The Odyssey is one of the Western world’s most influential works of literature. Originally an oral poem, it was eventually written down as early as the 8th century BCE or as late as the 6th century BCE. It is attributed to Homer, who is also credited with composing The Iliad, an epic poem describing the ten years of the Trojan War. This epic poem includes 12,109 lines composed in Homeric hexameter that are organized into 24 books.

This poem describes the Greek War hero Odysseus’s journey to return home after the Trojan War, which lasted for 10 years. This return journey takes 10 more years. While Odysseus is making the journey, his wife Penelope must keep suitors at bay while she waits for her husband’s return.

On this journey, Odysseus and his crew are constantly beset by challenges and obstacles. Of the stops that they make, the three referenced by Brooks include the meeting of the Lotus Eaters, the tricking of the Cyclops, and the trips to the entrance of the underworld.

Odysseus and his crew experience their first major obstacle when they land on an island after being blown off course in a storm. Once they land on the beach, Odysseus sends out a group to explore the island. When the men fail to return in the expected time frame, Odysseus finds his men with the Lotus Eaters. The Lotus Eaters are feeding his men lotus flowers that cause the men to forget their home and live in a blissful state. Odysseus must drag his men back to the ship to make their escape.

During the next major event, Odysseus and his crew meet the cyclops Polyphemus when they land on an island and start to explore a cave. This cave is actually Polyphemus’s home and he seals the entrance with a large boulder when he discovers intruders. Over the next few days, Polyphemus eats a few of Odysseus’s men each day. To escape, Odysseus uses his cunning to devise a plan. He tells Polyphemus that his name is Nobody before blinding him with a wooden stake. When Polyphemus cries out for help, his neighbors ask what happened. Polyphemus responds that nobody has attacked him, which causes his neighbors to leave and to allow Odysseus and his men to escape while tied to the bellies of sheep.

At the midpoint of Odysseus’s journey, he is told he must go to the entrance of the underworld to make a sacrifice. Here, he speaks to the spirits of many dead historical figures, including those who died in the Trojan War like Achilles, the Greek leader Agamemnon who died soon after the war, and the man Elpenor who died early on this trip home.

Brooks draws upon the events of these influential texts to elevate the Black experience to something worthy of being outlined in high art like poetry. The intertextuality gives these works equal weight. While The Odyssey ends somewhat happily with the reunification of Odysseus and his family, Brooks’s poem instead ends with the suggestion that this perilous journey will have to be undertaken by these children again the next day.

In 1922, Irish writer James Joyce modeled his modernist novel Ulysses on The Odyssey. This retelling uses the events of the poem to describe the wanderings of the itinerant Leopold Bloom around Dublin. Brooks’s use of the name Ulysses as her title and her use of the events of Homer’s work in her contemporary setting suggests that she was influenced by Joyce as well.

This is not Brooks's first engagement in her poetry with classical literature. 42 years before the publication of the collection featuring “Ulysses,” Brooks published her second collection Annie Allen (1949). The central section of this poem also uses a Classical source, here Virgil's Aeneid, to elevate Black women as poetic subjects. The text also served as inspiration for its style and form in describing the life of a Black woman coming of age in a contemporary working-class Chicago setting.