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Any translation is a reading. Chris McCully reads Beowulf as an epic written in English using all the complex metrical conventions of its time, as well as distinctive epic tropes including sea-crossings, oracular pronouncements and encounters with the monstrous. This version renders the original in readable contemporary English but also keeps as close as it can to the older, alliterative metrical system, so that readers may experience something of the textures and formal properties of the original. An 'Afterword' explains the translator's formal choices and explores the nature of this epic, with its emphasis on tribe, location and mortality. 'McCully captures the special magic and power of the Beowulf poet's word-pile and life-thoughts.' (Martin Duffell, Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London)
The Earliest English provides a student-friendly introduction to Old English and the earliest periods of the history of the English Language as it evolved before 1215. Using non-technical language, the book covers basic terminology, the linguistic and cultural backgrounds to the emergence and development of OE, and the OE vocabulary that students studying this phase of the English language need to know. In eight carefully structured units, the authors show how the vocabulary of Old English contains many items familiar to us today; how its characteristic poetic form is based on a beautiful and intricate simplicity; how its patterns of word building and inflectional structure are paralleled in...
In Serengeti Songs Chris McCully plays poet-guide on a safari through East Africa's abundant wild landscape. Dik-dik, topi, elephant and impala roam these pages, darting between the acacia's 'burnt star-dome' and the baobab's myth-rich shade. The poems conjure a Serengeti both glorious and savage, its light 'stained with blood', its marshlands steeped in 'murderous silence'. But McCully's writing is formally playful and diverse, the collection a safari in itself; accompanying photographs and taxonomic endnotes riff on the guidebook form. The poems also play with gazes: they inspect not only wildlife but also the human need to inspect. Wealthy interlopers demand to see the lions 'do what they...
Any translation is a reading. Chris McCully reads Beowulf as an epic written in English using all the complex metrical conventions of its time, as well as distinctive epic tropes including sea-crossings, oracular pronouncements, and encounters with the monstrous. This version renders the original in readable contemporary English, but also keeps as close as it can to the older, alliterative metrical system, so that readers may experience something of the textures and formal properties of the original. An "Afterword" explains the translator's formal choices and explores the nature of this epic, with its emphasis on tribe, location and mortality. "McCully captures the special magic and power of the Beowulf poet's word-pile and life-thoughts." --Martin Duffell, Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London
"A picture book biography about Lizzie Murphy, the first woman to play in a major league exhibition game and the first person to play on both the New England and American leagues' all-star teams"--
Featuring sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, and translations from Old English, this compilation by Dutch poet Chris McCully spans 16 years of his work. A meditation on extinction, this supple, sparing verse celebrates the fragile place in which we live as it reveals the author’s engagement with language and the poetic form. Inspired in part by Anglo Saxon elegy, this rich and unique collection touches upon themes such as civility, memory, friendship, art, and literature.
Finally, someone has written a comprehensive, easily readable explanation of the tides on earth that is both simple enough for students and solid enough for their professors. Step by step, by analogy and illustration, Beyond the Moon describes how the cyclical motion of the near solar system is impressed upon the earth's oceans, and how the hydraulics over the continental shelf and the geography of the coastline orchestrate this rhythm into the bewildering variety of tide patterns seen around the globe. This volume demystifies the complexity of the tides by systematically examining its many constituents and demonstrates that: OC Nature is, at once, awesome in complexity and beautiful in simplicity.OCO"
"A gifted poet has given us an astute, adroit, vigorous, inviting, eminently readable translation. . . . The challenging gamut of Langland's language . . . has here been rendered with blessed energy and precision. Economou has indeed Done-Best."—Allen Mandelbaum
Goodbye, Mr. Wonderful gives a detailed account of the early stages of recovery from alcoholism. From his admittance into hospital to his life as a writer in the Netherlands, McCully offers a detailed and often analytical reflection on what it feels like to be a recovering alcoholic.
Alcohol thought Chris McCully was Mr. Wonderful. When Chris was drinking, he sometimes thought so too - Mr. Generous, Mr. Witty and Charming, Mr. Champagne. But there are other labels - 'chronic alcoholic' (all over the medical notes); 'high risk offender' (in the court record). Goodbye, Mr. Wonderful gives a detailed account of the early stages of recovery from alcoholism. From his admittance into hospital to his life as a writer in the Netherlands, McCully offers a detailed and often analytical reflection on what it feels like to be a recovering alcoholic. There is no cure for alcoholism, but there is daily management, and there is hope. This is a book for anyone who wishes to understand, or wishes that someone else could understand, the process of healing from addiction.