Category: Poetry

Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley

Bro! As has been said before, Beowulf is a poem that forces translators to show their style from the very first word. That word in the original is “Hwæt,” an Old English attention grabber, and how translators render it tells a lot about what’s coming in the rest of the poem. Will the version lean …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/06/beowulf-translated-by-maria-dahvana-headley/

Door into the Dark by Seamus Heaney

Door into the Dark

I admit that my first time through Door into the Dark I did not get as much out of it as I did from Death of a Naturalist. Entering again, I see more in the rooms that Heaney is making, evoking, although there is much that is still murky to me. The titles of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/04/door-into-the-dark-by-seamus-heaney/

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

Ideally, of course, I would take the time to live with Death of a Naturalist for a good long while, absorbing the images, being surprised by new readings, seeing more levels of meaning on re-reading, having some poems shift from mild interest to true favorite, having others fade only to be rediscovered later and seem …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/05/death-of-a-naturalist-by-seamus-heaney/

Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O’Driscoll

Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

So now I want to read all of Seamus Heaney’s poetry. I want to start with Death of a Naturalist and see what set him apart from other poets getting started. I want to follow him up North to see how he both did and did not address the Troubles of his native Northern Ireland. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/02/02/stepping-stones-interviews-with-seamus-heaney-by-dennis-odriscoll/

Lines Composed a Few Yards from Schlachtensee, With Apologies to W.W.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I read These pages, rolled from their printing-press With a rotary hum.—Once again Do I behold those last and polished drafts That many a wild scene describe, Acts the more connected to themes And th’ arguments of the plays. The …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/20/lines-composed-a-few-yards-from-schlachtensee-with-apologies-to-w-w/

The Door by Margaret Atwood

Morning In The Burned House is one of my favorite collections of poetry but I took my time getting to Margaret Atwood’s latest because her recent output of fiction (i.e. pretty much everything after Alias Grace) has been not great to terrible. The Door, sadly, doesn’t reach the heights of MitBH but is still a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/20/the-door-by-margaret-atwood/

Sonnets from the Crimea by Adam Mickiewicz

When Tsar the Polish poet southward sent For stirring trouble and renewed dissent He took his pen — described the lands he crossed The steppes so vast, the palaces long lost Exiles who before Adam M. had gone And Muslims who so well had served their Khan Crimean shores, the mounts above them ranged The …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/22/sonnets-from-the-crimea-by-adam-mickiewicz/

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/

What Work Is by Philip Levine

What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/01/what-work-is-by-philip-levine/