(Ed note: Earlier this month, our friends over at Ideasmyth ran a series post by poet John Foy. His theme was "braving storms" and the posts so good we're going to share them with you this week. –sdh)
The theme this month at the Ideasmyth blog is “braving storms.” To address it, I’ll be posting poems that deal in one way or another with storms, of the real sort or the figurative kind. In literature, storms are rarely meant to be mere external events. A storm outside usually points to a storm inside or to something else that is more than just weather.
“The Seafarer” is a good place to begin. It’s an Old English poem that comes from the Exeter Book, a tenth-century anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The author is unknown. The excerpt I’ve posted below is a loose translation by Ezra Pound. In its harsh, consonant-clanging Anglo-Saxon music, it tells of the hardships a sailor endures during winter storms at sea. It can be read as a sapiential poem urging fortitude in the face of misery, danger and deprivation.