\u201cIt\u2019s a way of respecting Old English poems,\u201d Oberman says of his approach. \u201cLet\u2019s hold this empty space here in the poem where there used to be a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a very young age, Oberman was immersed in words. He used to go to his local library and check out every book he could carry. He often chose the biggest books he could find, even though he did not always fully understand them.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember not being able to read!\u201d he says. \u201cI read Moby Dick<\/em> when I was in second grade \u2026 well, I read the words at least. I remember just wanting to read impressive things. I wanted to casually hang out downtown, reading War and Peace<\/em> or something, possibly in Russian.\u201d<\/p>\n This love of language quickly developed into a love of poetry. Oberman studied poetry throughout high school and college, before entering the Ph.D. program in English at UConn.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I came [to UConn] to get a Ph.D., I realized that I didn\u2019t really know anything about my own language,\u201d says Oberman. \u201cI decided I was going to try to learn Old English.\u201d<\/p>\n Old English is the earliest recorded stage of the English language, which was used for more than 700 years from the 5th century to the late 11th century. Famous works that were originally in Old English include Beowulf<\/em> and Caedmon\u2019s Hymn<\/em>.<\/p>\n At UConn, Oberman says he became \u201cobsessed\u201d with the language and its rich history. He found that most of the poems in the language were translated by poets who did not know the language well, or by Medievalists who were not familiar with writing poetry. Oberman thought he could fix this disconnect as both a poetry and medieval studies scholar.<\/p>\n Translating a poem can be a very complicated and creative process. It\u2019s not just about creating a direct word-for-word account, but also about re-writing in a way that makes sense musically, says Oberman. His notebook, color-coded and with tiny notes in the margins, contains notes he\u2019s taken in his classes, lists, and translation pages.<\/p>\n Oberman takes the original text and writes the word-for-word translation beneath it. Often there is not a direct translation for certain words or phrases in Old English, so the creative part, he says, is deciding what words embody the original meaning best.<\/p>\n Frequently, the poems are missing words or are incomplete. Where the original text is missing, he inserts a set of brackets. Since Old English poems follow strict rules for meter and structure, he is able to determine almost exactly how much of the poem is missing.<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Ruin,\u201d the speaker comes across a destroyed and abandoned city, which Oberman explains is the ruins of a city built by Romans, and describes the experience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe speaker is looking at the city in ruins, but the city is more advanced than anything the speaker has ever seen before,\u201d he says. \u201cFor us to find the ruins of a city more advanced than us, that\u2019s science fiction! Like, if these people were so advanced, how could this have happened?\u201d<\/p>\n The title poem of his dissertation originally comes from an ancient, one-of-a-kind book called the Exeter Book<\/em>, which contains many Old English poems that we know of today. Someone put a hot poker on the book nearly 1,000 years ago, burning holes through the pages, ruining parts of many poems.<\/p>\n Oberman says that there have been many translations of \u201cThe Ruin,\u201d but they almost always try to smooth out the missing sections.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a poem about ruins, the whole thing is about gaps and fallen, missing things, and now you\u2019re working with a document that has gaps and fallen, missing things in it, and then you\u2019re just faking that? Why would you fight that?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n Oberman thinks contemporary poets understand that space in a poem is important to its meaning and sonic quality.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s stuff outside of the frame, and sometimes the frame has nothing in it,\u201d he says. \u201cI think [modern poets] really understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n Winning the Discovery Prize is a humbling experience, he says, but he hopes it will give a major leg up to his book project.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the world of poetry there isn\u2019t much money, but some things have a lot of prestige,\u201d he says. \u201cSo if you\u2019re a poet, then you know that getting this is very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Back on stage, Oberman closes \u201cThe Ruin\u201d with a description of the waters of Rome, using his hands to depict the natural breaks. The broken meter seems to augment the sense of true majesty lost.<\/p>\n \u201cThen they let flow [ ] \/ hot streams over old stone \/ [ ] \/ [ ] until the ringed pool hotly [ ] \/ [ ] where they were. \/ When is [ ] \/ [ ] That is a kingly thing \/ house [ ] \/ [ ] city [ ].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A UConn graduate student in English has won the prestigious 2016 Discovery Prize for work that connects ancient poems to modern poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":111802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,2226,2459,2076,1875,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1860],"class_list":["post-111852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-clas","category-graduate-students","category-research","category-grad-school","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 02:52:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111852"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111859,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111852\/revisions\/111859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/111802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111852"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=111852"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=111852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Oberman](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/oberman-coop.jpg\")