Historical Context
One approach to examining Wilbur's "Beowulf" is by contrasting the poet's era with that of the epic hero. Wilbur released "Beowulf" in 1950, shortly after World War II concluded. During the war, he served as an Army cryptographer and soldier, with his infantry division engaged in battles throughout Europe. Wilbur experienced active combat in intense campaigns for three years. Interestingly, he hasn't written many poems specifically about the war, although he has mentioned that the experience of combat made him take poetry writing seriously.
In 1950, Americans were eager to move past the war. Many had endured World War I (1914–1918), the Great Depression (from 1929 into the late 1930s), and World War II (1939–1945). Numerous young couples, including Wilbur and his wife, were starting families. America emerged victorious and prosperous, playing a key role in financing the reconstruction of Europe and Japan after the war. Despite this, tensions rose between the United States and the communist Soviet Union, the two leading global powers, sparking the Cold War, which persisted for nearly fifty years.
The epic Beowulf is set during the Migration Age in Europe. According to critic Rodney Edgecombe, Wilbur takes the repetitive language typical in epic poetry and interprets it as language's inability to express complex ideas. This perspective mirrors the chaos and discord in contemporary life.
Literary Style
"Beowulf" is comprised of seven stanzas, each containing six lines. Every stanza narrates a segment of the story in sequential order. The tone remains formal, aligning with the tale of a hero. However, Wilbur focuses more on exploring Beowulf's character, or the essence of heroism, rather than narrating a detailed story. The poem dedicates just two lines to the most dramatic scene—the battle with the monster. While the stanzas convey the mood of the hero's journey, they offer limited specifics about the actual events.
The rhyme scheme is uniform across all stanzas. Using the letters a, b, and c to represent the end rhyme of each line, the pattern is a, b, b, c, a, c. For instance, in the concluding stanza, the final words of each line are king, one, done, land, ring, and understand. This consistent rhyming pattern enhances the poem's formal feel. It also gives certain phrases a sense of inevitability. For example, in the fifth stanza, the last line ends with "cold," rhyming with "old" in the fourth line.
The poem's meter, or rhythm, is less consistent than its rhyme scheme. Lines of poetry can be divided into feet, each with a pattern of light and heavy stresses based on pronunciation. In "Beowulf," most lines follow iambic pentameter, where each foot has one light stress followed by a heavy stress, with five feet per line. Line 17 follows this pattern: The_ he_ ro_, to_ his_ bat_ tle_ rec_ on_ ciled_. [NOTE: the scanning symbols follow the syllables they should be directly over.] However, some lines deviate from this meter. Line 30, for instance, is split into two nearly equal parts: "And the people were strange, the people strangely cold." This rhythm resembles that of Old English poetry, which often includes a pause in the middle of the line. The reader pauses between "strange" and "the." Wilbur pays homage to the original poem by structuring certain lines in this manner.
Media Adaptations
A Conversation with Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur features an interview conducted by Grace Cavalieri, who hosts the national radio show “The Poet and the Poem.” This video can be found in libraries or obtained from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
The Richard Wilbur videotape, produced by the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles, CA, includes a poetry reading by Wilbur at the University...
(This entire section contains 104 words.)
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of Southern California in 1990, along with an interview conducted by poet David St. John.
An audio recording from 1997 of “Beowulf,” translated by Francis B. Gummere and narrated by George Guidall, is available from Recorded Books Productions in New York.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Bender, Todd K., et al., Modernism in Literature, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977, p. 246.
Bennett, Joseph, Hudson Review 4, Spring 1951, pp. 131–145.
Bly, Robert, ed., The Best American Poetry 1999, Scribner, 1999, p. 213.
Bogan, Louise, Achievement in American Poetry 1900–1950, Henry Regnery, 1951.
Bradley, Sculley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long, eds., American Tradition in Literature, W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1967, pp. 1659–1660.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin and Bruce Mitchell, Beowulf, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.
Deutsch, Babette, New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1951, p. 12.
Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning, A Reader’s Guide to the Poetry of Richard Wilbur, University of Alabama Press, 1995.
Evans, Harold, The American Century, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Hill, Donald, Richard Wilbur, Twayne Publishers, 1967.
Hollander, John, ed., The Best American Poetry 1998, Scribner, 1998, p. 324.
Jarrell, Randall, The Third Book of Criticism Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965.
McMichael, George, ed., Anthology of American Literature, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974, p. 1678.
Michelson, Bruce, Wilbur’s Poetry: Music in a Scattering Time, University of Massachusetts Press, 1991.
Rosenthal, M. L., The Modern Poets, Oxford University Press, 1960.
Sacks, Peter, “Richard Wilbur,” in American Writers, edited by Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991.
Salinger, Wendy, ed., Richard Wilbur’s Creation, University of Michigan Press, 1983.
Stepanchev, Stephen, American Poetry Since 1945, Harper & Row, 1965.
Stern, Carol Simpson, “Richard Wilbur,” in Contemporary Poets, edited by Tracy Chevalier, St. James Press, 1991.
Swanton, Michael, Beowulf, Manchester University Press, 1997.
Wilbur, Richard, New and Collected Poems, Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1988.
For Further Reading
Butts, William, ed., Conversations with Richard Wilbur, University Press of Mississippi, 1990. This compilation of nineteen interviews and discussions with Richard Wilbur, spanning from 1962 to 1988, allows readers to experience Wilbur’s “disarmingly open” personality and his insights on poetry. Butts’ introduction and a timeline of the poet’s life highlight the evolution of Wilbur’s work throughout his extensive career.
Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning, A Reader’s Guide to the Poetry of Richard Wilbur, University of Alabama Press, 1995. This guide is designed to be read alongside Wilbur’s New and Collected Poems. Edgecombe analyzes each poem in the collection and shares his observations on recurring motifs in Wilbur’s work over the years.
Heaney, Seamus, Beowulf, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. In this Whitbread Prize-winning translation, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney uses the four-stress line and heavy alliteration typical of Anglo-Saxon poetry. James Shapiro in The New York Times Book Review praises the translation, stating that “generations of readers will be grateful” for Heaney’s achievement.
Salinger, Wendy, ed., Richard Wilbur’s Creation, University of Michigan Press, 1983. Salinger examines the critical reception of Wilbur’s work amidst shifting literary perspectives in the post-World War II era. While she expresses her admiration for Wilbur’s brilliance in the introduction, she also includes a balanced array of reviews and essays from both supportive and dissenting critics.
Richard Wilbur's New and Collected Poems, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanich in 1988, includes all seven of his poetry collections released prior to that year. Among these is Ceremony and Other Poems, featuring the poem “Beowulf.” Additionally, this volume presents the text of the cantata “On Freedom’s Ground,” composed by Wilbur to commemorate the Statue of Liberty's centennial, which was performed in New York City in 1986.
