The Word Exchange: Anglo Saxon Poems in Translation
By The Editors on 11.12.10
On December 6th, W. W. Norton published The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto. It collects new translations of the best known poems of the Old English canon. The one hundred and twenty-three poems included are a reminder, as Seamus Heaney notes in the Foreword, that “Anglo-Saxon poetry isn’t all stoicism and melancholy, isn’t all about battle and exile and a gray dawn breaking: it can be unexpectedly rapturous…and happily didactic. It can be intimate and domestic, and take us to places far behind the shield wall. And everywhere…it rejoices in its own word-craft, its inventiveness, its appositive imagining and fundamental awareness of itself as a play of language.”
Poems Out Loud will be featuring readings of many of these fresh new translations from contemporary poets. This post will be updated to include links to each reading as they go live. You can also follow along by subscribing to our Readings RSS feed.
Readings:
• Greg Delanty reads The Wanderer
• Seamus Heaney reads Deor
• Jane Hirshfield reads A Moth Ate Words
• Billy Collins reads My Jacket is Polished Gray
• Nick Laird reads Field Remedy
• Molly Peacock reads I Watched a Wonder, a Bright Marauder
• Paul Muldoon reads Wulf and Eadwacer
• Eavan Boland reads The Wife’s Lament
• Robert Pinsky reads Whale
