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.

Christopher Patton is a Canadian poet living in the United States, where he teaches courses on ecopoetics and visual poetry at Western Washington University. His asemic visual poetry has been shown at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Whatcom Museum. Patton’s books include Ox, whose first section won the Paris Review’s long poem prize, and Curious Masonry, an earlier volume of Old English translations. He blogs at theartofcompost.com.

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