Stanley B. Greenfield, one of the world s foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars, writes of why, after more than thirty years of study, he undertook the Herculean task of rendering "Beowulf "into contemporary verse: I wanted my translation to be not only faithful to the original but, as the late John Lennon would have put it, A Poem in Its Own Write. I wanted it to flow, to be easy to read, with the narrative movement of a modern prose story; yet to suggest the rhythmic cadences of the Old English poem. I wanted it both modern and Old English in its reflexes and sensibilities, delighting both the...