Both translators write in verse, but their line lengths and registers pull in different directions. Alexander tends toward longer lines that carry more of the Greek's syntactic weight in a single breath: her opening "Wrath — sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus' son Achilles" packs the invocation into one dense unit, and she keeps the formal epithet "gleaming-eyed goddess Athena" intact throughout. Wilson breaks the same material into shorter, more regular lines and reaches for contemporary phrasing: "cataclysmic wrath" in the proem, and in the Athena passage, "because I will be there to keep you safe," which reads as conversational in a way Alexander avoids. Alexander's register stays elevated across the passages; Wilson's shifts closer to spoken English, as her Achilles saying "So die, my friend" makes plain. Alexander's stated aim was close fidelity to Homer's Greek, preserving formulaic repetition and Homeric epithets even where they feel heavy in English. That approach keeps the oral texture of the poem audible but can slow the reader. Wilson leans toward readability and forward movement: her leaves passage ("The wind shakes some to earth. The forest sprouts / new foliage, and springtime comes") clips the image to clean units, while Alexander's version ("The wind scatters some leaves to the ground, but the forest grows others / that flourish") stays closer to the Greek's syntax. Wilson adds "Death cannot run so fast to overtake me" in the Book 9 passage, a phrase with no direct equivalent, choosing rhetorical force over literal correspondence. Alexander omits that addition and keeps the grammar tighter to the original.
Wrath—sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus' son Achilles,
that inflicted woes without number upon the Achaeans,
hurled forth to Hades many strong souls of warriors
and rendered their bodies prey for the dogs,
for all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished;
sing from when they two first stood in conflict—
Atreus' son, lord of men, and godlike Achilles.
Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath
of great Achilles, son of Peleus,
which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain
and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds, and so the plan
of Zeus unfolded—starting with the conflict
between great Agamemnon, lord of men,
and glorious Achilles.