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urn:uuid:637566b3-dca3-4a8b-b5bd-01fcbb77ca09 03 15 9780615612652 00 EB E107 10 01 01 Beowulf A Translation 1 B01 David Hadbawnik <bold>David Hadbawnik</bold> is a PhD student at University at Buffalo, SUNY, focusing on poetics and medieval studies. In 2011 he co-edited (with Sean Reynolds) <italic>Jack Spicer’s Beowulf</italic>, a selection of Spicer’s previously unpublished translations of the Old English poem, in CUNY’s “Lost and Found” series. His book <italic>Field Work: Notes, Songs, Poems 1997-2010</italic>, was also published in 2011 by BlazeVOX Books. 2 B06 Thomas Meyer <bold>Thomas Meyer</bold> was born on Saint Valentine’s Day and has always lived where there are cows and there is rain: for many years in the Yorkshire Dales, but now and more recently above a vineyard in North Carolina, at the southernmost end of the Appalachians, on the western slope of Happy Hill at Skywinding Farm. After graduating from Bard College, he joined Jonathan Williams in forty years of domestic partnership and advocacy of the Jargon Society. His recent books include <italic>At Dusk Iridescent (A Gathering of Poems, 1972-97)</italic>, <italic>Coromandel</italic>, and a translation of the daode jing. 3 A24 Daniel C. Remein <bold>Daniel C. Remein</bold> holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and is a PhD candidate in English at New York University where is working on his dissertation, tentatively titled <italic>“Wonder and Ornamentality: A Medieval/Modern Poetics.”</italic> His poems appear in numerous journals including <italic>Sentence</italic>, <italic>Sidebrow</italic>, <italic>Holly White</italic>, <italic>Lit</italic>, and <italic>Shampoo</italic>; critical essays have appeared in <italic>Literature Compass</italic>, <italic>postmedieval</italic>, and <italic>Glossator</italic>. Remein is a member of the BABEL Working Group, co-founder of the Organism for Poetic Research, and edits the journal <italic>Whiskey & Fox</italic>. 4 A15 David Hadbawnik <bold>David Hadbawnik</bold> is a PhD student at University at Buffalo, SUNY, focusing on poetics and medieval studies. In 2011 he co-edited (with Sean Reynolds) <italic>Jack Spicer’s Beowulf</italic>, a selection of Spicer’s previously unpublished translations of the Old English poem, in CUNY’s “Lost and Found” series. His book <italic>Field Work: Notes, Songs, Poems 1997-2010</italic>, was also published in 2011 by BlazeVOX Books. 01 ang 01 eng 00 312 03 23 Beowulf 12 DB 23 Fabulations 10 POE022000 23 Languages+Translations 23 Old English poetry 23 modern translation 23 Premodern 23 avant-garde poetry 01 06 03 00 Many modern <italic>Beowulf</italic> translations, while excellent in their own ways, suffer from what Kathleen Biddick might call “melancholy” for an oral and aural way of poetic making. By and large, they tend to preserve certain familiar features of Anglo-Saxon verse as it has been constructed by editors, philologists, and translators: the emphasis on caesura and alliteration, with diction and syntax smoothed out for readability. The problem with, and the paradox of this desired outcome, especially as it concerns Anglo-Saxon poetry, is that we are left with a document that translates an entire organizing principle based on oral transmission (and perhaps composition) into a visual, textual realm of writing and reading. The sense of loss or nostalgia for the old form seems a necessary and ever-present shadow over modern <italic>Beowulf</italic>s.What happens, however, when a contemporary poet, quite simply, doesn’t bother with any such nostalgia? When the entire organizational apparatus of the poem—instead of being uneasily approximated in modern verse form—is itself translated into a modern organizing principle, i.e., the visual text? This is the approach that poet Thomas Meyer takes; as he writes,A glance anywhere in Meyer’s text demonstrates the stunning results. One place he turns it to especially good effect is the fight with Grendel in Fit 11, transforming the famously hyper-condensed syntax of the scene from a discouraging challenge for the translator into a visually pleasing strength:"The eyes of Hygelac’s kin watched the wicked raiderexecute his quick attack:without delay,snatching his first chance,a sleeping warrior,he tore him in two,chomped muscle, sucked veins’gushing blood,gulped down his morsel, the dead man,chunk by chunk,hands, feet & all.& thenfootstephandclawfiendreachmanbedquicktrickbeastarmpainclampnewnotknownheartrunfleshofeargetawaygonowrunrunnever before hadsinherd feared anything so."Here the reader is confronted with the words themselves running together, as if in panic, in much the same way that the original passage seems in such a rush to tell the story of the battle that bodies become confused. This is just one example of the adventurous and provocative angle on <italic>Beowulf</italic> to which Meyer introduces us. His <italic>Beowulf</italic>—completed in 1972 but never before published—is sure to stretch readers’ ideas about what is possible in terms of translating Anglo-Saxon poetry, as well as provide new insights on the poem itself. punctum books 01 punctum books 04 01 20120825 02 WORLD 06 15 9780615612652 WORLD 09 punctum books 20 01