Since English is not my native language, it’s very difficult for me to capture the exact nuances of a word like ‘cataclysmic’. So I really can’t be a judge of that sort of thing, and I can’t be a judge of the “poetic qualities” of the translation either. But I think that in instances where it’s not some much a question of fine nuances of English I can be a judge, and I think that in several places that I’ve sampled Wilson has actually succeeded pretty well. (One example here http://discourse.textkit.com/t/odyssey-reading-group-book-6-lines-262-294/16940/13)
As far as the culture war stuff goes, I think she is herself instrumental (at least to a point) in creating what you call hype. Fundamentally I think that she wants to make her audience aware of the “dark side” of the Homeric epics - slavery, sexual violence, toxic masculinity, which is certainly a valid point of view. There comes to mind a passage where Nestor basically incites the Achaeans to gang rape Trojan women (Il. 2.354ff.):
τὼ μή τις πρὶν ἐπειγέσθω οἶκον δὲ νέεσθαι
πρίν τινα πὰρ Τρώων ἀλόχῳ κατακοιμηθῆναι,
τίσασθαι δ᾽ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε.
(If anyone has access to Wilson’s book, I’d love to know how she handles this one)
But I feel that her treatment of these problematic issues is mostly a lost opportunity. We’ve had a lot of discussion about the way she translates the word αμφιπολος in the Odyssey, which is a euphemism for slave. The Odyssey poet has a recurrent tendency to downplay slavery by using euphemisms like this, but Wilson, despite her keen interest on issues of power relationships, doesn’t address the question why “Homer” doesn’t call a slave slave; instead, she is just content to de-euphemise. More generally, I feel that she is more interested about being polemical rather than truly analytical about these things. Perhaps that works better on Twitter, I don’t know.