Beowulf Beware: Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival Out by Year’s End?
How time doth fly. Let us take a trip now in the Wayback Machine with stops at February 5, March 28, and April 29, 2021 (cf., as appropriate, below). Not much more than a year back, actually (well, maybe closer to a year and a half for the first, but still). But time goes back farther, the first of these, headlined “Ancient” Poems May Be Re-Published In Scholarly Volume, being about a request from one Dennis Wilson Wise for (quoting myself) reprinting two poems published twenty and twenty-six years back, respectively, to use in a proposed academic anthology of speculative alliterative poetry in the late 20th century.
This is high class stuff, a recognition as it were of the worth of one’s work by actual scholars. For publication for other actual scholars to read! The poems in question, “The Westfarer” and “The Worm in the Wood,” go back a ways farther too, the latter more recent, published in STAR*LINE for May-June 2001, while “The Westfarer” first appeared in DARK DESTINY II: PROPRIETORS OF FATE (White Wolf, 1995). But both also are written using a technique with much older roots, “The Worm in the Wood” opening with quotes from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory, both from the Middle Ages, on the fate of King Arthur, and written in a style “inspired” by the 14th century English poem GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, and “The Westfarer,” on Norse explorations of the new world — and werewolves — taking after the Old English epic BEOWULF* from probably before the 10th century.
The book will be titled SPECULATIVE POETRY AND THE MODERN ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL: A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY, to be published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, with the March and April entries cited having to do with “writing life” matters of contracts and okaying preliminary drafts. And today word has just come from Dennis Wise: All right! After a seven-month wait, I’ve now finally received the reader’s report on the manuscript . . . and it’s good news. Some reasonable revisions will be required on my end, but I hope to resubmit the final manuscript version . . . by the end of summer.
Then, if that weren’t enough, he quotes from the reader’s report, adding a note that as for actual publication, “within the year might not be too optimistic”: I do believe this is a very worthwhile project, and I am very pleased that it has been undertaken with such zeal. The material gathered here will no doubt appeal to those who are aware of some pieces herein, but the volume is also going to amaze readers and scholars who otherwise had little to no awareness of such poetic works in the past 30, 40, or 70 years.
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*No, BEOWULF is not about werewolves itself. But there is a dragon.
