War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad [Christopher Logue]

[Modernist] [Iliad] [GOAT'ed]

War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad

Christopher Logue

FSG, NY. 2016. First American edition hardback. Aside from a small tear to the front of the dust jacket, in pristine condition. Excellent.

From the publisher:

"Your life at every instant up for― / Gone. / And, candidly, who gives a toss? / Your heart beats strong. Your spirit grips,” writes Christopher Logue in his original version of Homer’s Iliad, the uncanny “translation of translations” that won ecstatic and unparalleled acclaim as “the best translation of Homer since Pope’s” (The New York Review of Books).

Logue’s account of Homer’s Iliad is a radical reimagining and reconfiguration of Homer’s tale of warfare, human folly, and the power of the gods in language and verse that is emphatically modern and “possessed of a very terrible beauty” (Slate). Illness prevented him from bringing his version of the Iliad to completion, but enough survives in notebooks and letters to assemble a compilation that includes the previously published volumes War Music, Kings, The Husbands, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls, along with previously unpublished material, in one final illuminating volume arranged by his friend and fellow poet Christopher Reid. The result, War Music, comes as near as possible to representing the poet’s complete vision and confirms what his admirers have long known: that “Logue’s Homer is likely to endure as one of the great long poems of the twentieth century” (The Times Literary Supplement)."

One of my absolute favorite works of poetry in translation (and to that, a house favorite over at Amphetamine Sulphate, or so I hear). This version turns the Iliad into modernist war reportage, sheer brilliance end to end. What is a better title than "All Day Permanent Red"? Nothing. You are a FOOL if you skip this one.