Which Iliad?

I’m already bogged down in my Teaching Company course because of the compulsion to read the books which Professor Fears is discussing.  I’ve ordered Bonhoeffer’s book from the library and I picked up the Iliad from my own bookshelf.  I’ve tried reading it before and was overwhelmed by the sea of prose, the mind-numbing lists of Trojans and Achians, the relentless cataloging of who kills whom. But when Professor Fears recited the first line of the Iliad, in Greek, I was so thrilled-my heart stood still-and I was moved to try again.

I own two versions of the Iliad, the first is a Modern Library edition translated by three people, and set out in long, dense paragraphs.  The other version, translated by Robert Fitzgerald is much easier to read as it is set up in stanzas, like a poem, which after all it is.  I wonder that Professor Fears does not mention a preferred translation.  I’ve heard good things about the Robert Fagles edition from 1998,  ”groundbreaking” was the word, but I’ve also heard that Richard Lattimore’s 1961 tranlsation is more poetic.