Who? I hear you ask. The man wasn’t particularly well known, but I was introduced to his work my freshman year in college. Purely by chance I learned that he died on December 2. It didn’t make even a small splash in the news.
He was a poetr who has been working on the most idiosyncratic, weird, and wonderful translation of Homer’s Iliad. He’s been working on it for over fifty years, and it’s still not finished. He’s been publishing it piecemeal, and was supposed to be working on the last installment when he passed away.
His translation is unlike any other translation of the Iliad. Or of any other book. It includes parodies, lines borrowed from advertising campaigns, and typographic fireworks.
Here’s Achilles’ prayer to Zeus from Book 16 (The Patrocleia):