A peeling poster of the movie Beowulf clings to the scratched skin of the old bus stop behind the Bronx Zoo. Some bored kid, perhaps, drew a plump dick kissing the lip of the morose warrior.
Never read this grand epic of Old English. Not even the snippets of mangled translations during high school. Was shocked, though, to have easily remembered what the Beowulf poet--this according to my zealot of a junior high English teacher-- calls the sea. The Beowulf poet names it the whale-road.
Kennings they’re called. These descriptive, almost always short, metaphors that amp up the poet’s descriptions in much of old poetry.
Had the Beowulf poet lived today, how would have he, or perhaps, she called New York? Soul-trap?