Word: poetes
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...judges, of course, did not suddenly come to their senses about the merits of a manuscript composed sometime late in the first millennium. They gave their prize--and an instant spot at the top of British best-seller lists--to a new verse translation of Beowulf by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature...
...maneater called Grendel (Beowulf rips off the creature's right arm at the shoulder); Grendel's aggrieved mother; and, 50 years later, a fire-breathing dragon that mortally wounds Beowulf before expiring. But these bloody deeds actually occupy fairly few of the epic's 3,182 lines. The Beowulf poet, who is recounting legends that were passed down orally from several centuries earlier, is interested less in violence, which appears to be inescapable in the world he portrays, than in the workings of fate (wyrd) in human lives...
...extent to which this poet or bard can be called a Christian has prompted much scholarly disagreement. He alludes to the Old Testament and expresses a monotheistic religious faith: "Almighty God rules over mankind/and always has." But the characters in the poem behave according to a moral code in which loving one's enemies and hoping to be redeemed in heaven figure not at all. As Beowulf prepares to fight his second monster, he announces his credo: "It is always better/to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning./For every one of us, living in this world/means waiting...
...preface, Heaney acknowledges the irony of a Celtic poet's attempting to revivify an Anglo-Saxon poem. When younger, he notes, "I tended to conceive of English and Irish as adversarial tongues, as either/or conditions rather than both/ands." But this notion faded the deeper he got into his translation. Digging, delving into the loam of language, has been a central metaphor throughout his poetic career. (His most recent selection is titled Opened Ground.) What Heaney has brought to the surface with his Beowulf is an old and newly burnished treasure...
When an eccentric old Mongolian walked into the backyard of a laid-back American poet in 1987, neither imagined, surely, that they would one day be lurching through modern China in search of a teacher's grave. But Tsing Tsai proved to be no ordinary monk, poet and kung-fu master; and George Crane turned out to be a sympathetic Sancho Panza and inner Mongolian at heart. Written with the quick, vivid immediacy of an ancient Eastern poem, Bones beautifully recounts the recent heartbreaking history of Mongolia--and shows how spirit can get the better of even the deepest sorrow...