hwt, another Beowulf translation? Not exactlyWelcome to Denmarks Heorot Hall, where King Hrothgar invites to his banquet table everyone but Grendel, Saxons cradle-made monster. Dissing this ur-outsider initiates a predictable and monstrous backlash, a Medival fracas that only the eponymous Beowulf can quash. Sailing across the whaleroads, he arrives to quell and queltch and quatch the Grendel beast.Beowulf, that still-recognizable hero, embodies a blank function, a motive-driven yet motiveless megastar. Hes the young, fit, male, self-sacrificing protagonist-interloper who will fight any monster to protect his people. Or to defend strangers. Or to gain a reputation. Or because he just really wants toIn her rendering of Beowulf, Nicole Markoti offers a rollicking cover song of fantastical text. These pages will surprise readers as they introduce new ways to embrace, challenge, or click with Anglo-Saxon heroics. Writing original poems, Markoti de-stories the story of one man, who mostly does not play well with others, who fights monsters (and defeats their mothers, too), and who practically invents the poetic tradition of entitled bravery Upending the tale with her fresh and enchanting style, Markoti gives a nod to previous translations, winks at canonical critics, bares historical biases, all while gifting transmogrifying pages that will whet your whimsy!Nicole Markoti takes the original English-language epic and reprocesses it. That is, she rereads, rewrites, reimagines, rethinks, and retells it, all at the same time. The result is the story re-understood. The phrasing and incantation is Markotis own (and our eras own), deployed with deliciously textured and diverse registers of language. Blake saw infinity in the palm of his hand. Markoti puts a millennium in yours.Wayde Compton, author ofThe Outer HarbourBeowulf, with its unfathomable monsters and monster-slaying hero, its bro world of mead, boasting, weapons, and booty, remains a stubbornly relevant template for much of our contemporary scene. Nicole MarkotisAfter Beowulfhandles all this with dazzling sprezzatura. It is a pleasure to follow the narrating, condensing, commenting voice as it sashays through a range of verbal registers from high Olsonic to comic book pratfall, snark to scholarship. After Beowulf provides an up-to-date reading of Beowulf through the eyes of a feminist poet. And it continually suggests what things might be like after Beowulf.Bob Perelman, author ofJack and Jill in TroyThe collision of ancient and colloquial language creates bursts of humour as my dude Beowulf makes his way into the banquet hall and beyond. Linger here to experience the aesthetics of poetry in action: vibrant and intensely moving, we feel the wrenching pain of Grendels mother. Markotis language is thick with meaning and light with humour: a creation of the most projective of verses.Jacqueline Turner, author ofFlourish
