The Washington Post - Ron Charles
…Armitage's spectacular translation…renders this anonymous poem into modern English lines that command your full allegiance…forget Tennyson's Victorian niceties in Idylls of the King; Armitage's pages are splattered with gore, "gloupy with slime"…With captivating articulation, these lines growl and roar and hiss in a way that reminds us just how much our preference for rhyme over alliteration has cost us. And amid all the viscera and gore, we find such startling moments of intimacy and grief, expressed by soldiers wholly unconstrained by our narrow, modern-day expectations of manhood.
Independent - Bill Greenwell
"Armitage, on top form, renders [Arthur] expertly."
Spectator - David Blackburn
"Armitage has triumphed. . . . The verse requires attention; but, once you are attuned to the alliterative structure, it’s as swift as the swish of a sword."
Washington Post - Ron Charles
"[T]ake heart, brave literary warriors. Norton has...just published a paperback edition of Simon Armitage’s spectacular translation of The Death of King Arthur. The celebrated British writer renders this anonymous poem into modern English lines that command your full allegiance."
Guardian - Jeremy Noel-Tod
"Invitingly ingenious and inventive."
From the Publisher
Armitage has triumphed. . . . The verse requires attention; but, once you are attuned to the alliterative structure, it's as swift as the swish of a sword.--David Blackburn "Spectator"
Armitage, on top form, renders [Arthur] expertly.--Bill Greenwell "Independent"
Invitingly ingenious and inventive.--Jeremy Noel-Tod "Guardian"
Library Journal
Award-winning British poet Armitage follows his celebrated 2007 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this muscular, clanging rendering of the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure. The original poem appears on facing pages and presents readers with a miscellany of linguistic loose ends, some lines requiring very little translation and others remaining lost in the Middle English word horde. Armitage's translation preserves the robust alliteration of the original and utilizes the repeated blows of letter sounds to evoke the din of battle as well as to propel the poem to its ferocious and tragic end. Here, Arthur is an ambivalent figure, sure of God's grace yet troubled by dreams that bind the fate of all Britons to his conflict with Sir Lucius, the Roman emperor whose ambition and arrogance mirror Arthur's. VERDICT Armitage's version of the Alliterative Morte Arthure strengthens Norton's catalog of new translations of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts. It is also a remarkable instance of Armitage's own unique poetic strengths, especially his ear for lyrical economy and gift for sensual, tactile description.—J. Greg Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
MARCH 2012 - AudioFile
The cadences of medieval alliterative poetry are made surprisingly playful in Simon Armitage’s new modern English translation of the ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE. Narrator Bill Wallis engages the listener with his kindly, craggy voice, and one imagines the Dark Ages storyteller who might have first read this tale. This lesser-known Arthurian story focuses on King Arthur’s European campaign against the vestiges of the Roman Empire. It’s filled with vivid descriptions of battlefield gore, which Wallis thrillingly animates. The original Anglo-Saxon MORTE ARTHURE is included in this recording, and for this reading Wallis appropriately adopts a heavy brogue. Having just heard the modern translation, the listener is prepared for the archaic vocabulary and will ultimately be rewarded with access to the deeper music of the English language. F.T. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
