The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation

by Greg Delanty (Editor), Michael Matto (Editor), Seamus Heaney (Foreword by)

Overview

"A book the many fans of Heaney's Beowulf might take home and dip into, almost at random, for years." —Publishers Weekly

Featuring 123 all-new translations by seventy-four of our most celebrated poets—including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Eavan Boland, Richard Wilbur, and many others—“this brilliant anthology infuses new vigor into Old English poetry” (Library Journal). Presented in an authoritative bilingual edition, The Word Exchange is as fascinating and multivocal as the original literature it translates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393342413
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/09/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	866,214
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Greg Delanty is an artist-in-residence at Saint Michael’s College. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Michael Matto is an associate professor of English at Adelphi University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Seamus Heaney (1939—2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born at Mossbawn farmhouse between Castledawson and Toomebridge, County Derry, he resided in Dublin until his death.

Editorial Reviews

"The editors and translators . . . have unlocked the word hoard here, and have made us see this rich legacy with fresh eyes."

Financial Times - Michael Wood

"A superb anthology . . . the results are wide-ranging, both in variety of original poems and in the distinctive voices of the translators."

John Wilson

"Anyone who has been put off Anglo-Saxon poetry because of the stiffness or academese of older translations will discover much to enjoy in The Word Exchange."

Michael Dirda

A superb anthology . . . the results are wide-ranging, both in variety of original poems and in the distinctive voices of the translators.--John Wilson "Commonweal"

Anyone who has been put off Anglo-Saxon poetry because of the stiffness or academese of older translations will discover much to enjoy in The Word Exchange.--Michael Dirda "Washington Post"

The editors and translators . . . have unlocked the word hoard here, and have made us see this rich legacy with fresh eyes.--Michael Wood "Financial Times"

From the Publisher

Anyone who has been put off Anglo-Saxon poetry because of the stiffness or academese of older translations will discover much to enjoy in The Word Exchange. Almost everything is here, with the exception of the book-length "Beowulf." Still, bear in mind that the softer passions are seldom mentioned, and this is definitely not a book for a late Valentine's Day present. But there is wonderful stuff here…
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

Hefty and easy to like, fit at once for the classroom and the kitchen table, this anthology is a rare beast, a commercial opportunity that also fulfills a real literary need. Most of the corpus of surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry--though it has been translated before--has had no recent, high-profile rendering until this capacious book. Most of the short poems and passages from all the long ones are rendered into modern English, sometimes (but only sometimes) in Anglo-Saxon alliterative metrical form, by several dozen British, Irish, and American poets of some repute, and the results are consistently good and sometimes stunning. The editors (one Irish but resident in Vermont, one American) do well to mix famous Americans such as Robert Hass with talented poets known mostly across the Atlantic, such as Paul Farley and David Constantine. Delanty and Matto divide their selections by genre--accounts of historical events (mostly battles), charms and recipes, proverbs and advice, lyrical laments, and the famous riddles, broken up into seven “hoards” throughout the book. Anglo-Saxon culture was stark and practical, deeply Christian once converted, and with few illusions about life on Earth: “Holly must be burned,” says a maxim translated by Brigit Kelly, “and the goods of a dead man divided./ God’s judgment will be just.” The riddles are sometimes easy, sometimes hard to solve, and many are double entendres: riddle 45 (“I saw in a corner something swelling,” in Richard Wilbur’s version) might be bread dough, or something else. To these light moments--and there are plenty of them--such poems as “The Damned Soul Address the Body” (in Maurice Riordan’s choice words) add force and gravity. The editors have produced a book the many fans of Heaney’s Beowulf might take home and dip into, almost at random, for years. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

This brilliant anthology infuses new vigor into Old English poetry and will delight scholars and general readers alike. Poet Delanty (artist in residence, St. Michael's Coll.) and Matto (English, Adelphi Univ.) invited over 70 poets, some seasoned, some lesser known (as a group, they range from Seamus Heaney to Yusef Komunyakaa), to translate over 100 extant Anglo-Saxon poems (excluding Beowulf), including riddles, charms, and religious and historical verses. The results are stunning. The different translations convey the multivocal variety characterizing the originals, a quality usually absent from selections translated by one hand. Original texts and translations appear on facing pages, a format that encourages readers to dust off their college Old English or dive headlong into this thorny and muscular language. Organized into thematic sections divided by "riddle-hoards," the volume offers a reading experience that is both structured and visceral. A foreword by Heaney and brief essays from selected translators supplement the superb scholarly apparatus that rounds out this book. Matto's introduction and guides to Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and meter are especially enriching. VERDICT This work affirms the reliable vitality and mystery of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Highly recommended.—J. Greg Matthews, Washington State Univ., Pullman

Library Journal