Unlikeness Is Us

Unlikeness Is Us offers fourteen new translations of Old English poems from the tenth-century Exeter Book. Some are well known, like “The Seafarer” and “The Ruin.” One, “Maxims I,” has rarely appeared whole, and what few published translations exist ignore small, crucial elements in the source, obscuring the deft shape of its thought-in-action. Christopher Patton’s translations, which draw the alliterative Anglo-Saxon verse into a richly patterned four-beat line, emphasize the concrete, tangible being of the poems as they are bedded on the manuscript page?scribal errors, fire damage, irreducible ambiguities?over the otherworldly values they sometimes espouse. With a critical introduction, commentaries, and extensive notes, this edition is equipped to serve students, scholars, and poetry readers alike.