I don't know what it was about 2005, or perhaps living in Manila, that sent me on an epic-poetry jag -- but something did, and that was the year I finally read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf, all in superb, direct, forceful translations (Fagels for the first two, Heaney for Beowulf). I re-read it about two months ago, prompted by my sense of revulsion at the ads for the film adaptation that greeted me at the bus stop every day (I think it was Angelina Jolie's high-heeled hooves that pushed me over the edge). Like Fagels's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Heaney's translation here just sings, and the dead poem of English majors' nightmares comes alive. Beowulf's funeral is probably the place where Heaney is at his finest, but what I really loved were the many passages of Beowulf's bad-ass boasting; if there had to have been a Beowulf movie, these passages convinced me that Sam Raimi should have directed, with Bruce Campbell in the lead.

In the end, however, it's still Beowulf -- a poem whose narrative flow will seem decidedly odd to a modern reader and whose major project is in weird ways similar to Christian rock music: selling and/or reaffirming Christian faith through an unlikely genre as a means of appealing to an audience whose commitment to the faith may be a bit shallow. My rating notwithstanding, I'm not sure I actually like the poem -- but I do find it fascinating, which is more than I can say for most of what I read.