Wolfe and Other Poems by Donald Mace Williams, Wundor Editions, 2017

Wolfe and Other Poems is an extraordinarily good collection of poems, clearly written by a veteran writer. The underlying credo of the collection is very aptly summed up in the opening poem called, appropriately, 'Credo':

Step out under the stars on a dark night
Or open Rilke, Frost, or Dickinson.
Like that, all poems (mine too) should invite
Small breaths, quick nods, and ninety at the bone.

That last line is surely wonderful, surely anti-modern and anti-postmodern as it invites us into a coherent narrative, and there is also surely a sense of irony too about the 'ninety at the bone', since Williams is himself nearly 90 years old! This collection, then, could be seen to be an example of that late flowering of true poetry which sometimes accompanies masters of the art, most famously, Yeats.

The collection is actually quite brief and in two parts: there are 21 short lyric poems followed by 1 long narrative poem, Wolfe, which is a 'Western' re-telling of the Beowulf story. In a way they are quite separate things, and so in reviewing this collection I would like to consider them separately.

So far as the 21 lyrics are concerned, we have a master poet at work. At least 8 of the poems are sonnets, a definitive form in which to display skill, and here we see someone wrestling with his landscape, his heritage and history, and his feelings, and from all these particulars great and universal themes emerge. For example, 'The Canal, 1942' says, in its understated way, and as soldiers march past, 'how water that had just been green was red' - the disturbance of the water a prolepsis of the blood to come. Or, 'The Oak That Stayed,' in which finally, the poet asks:

Soon now, dear friend, I thought, you're down for good.
I almost think it thought the same of me.

That the 'Credo' poem cites Frost as an influence should be very clear from these two lines; but I think Williams, whilst influenced, has his own unique voice. And this leads on to the truly ambitious part of his collection, the narrative poem, 'Wolfe.'

I certainly would say, 'Buy this book; it's excellent poetry', but I almost must say that the 'Wolfe' poem leaves me with more mixed feelings. It is in one sense a triumph, for what do we want a narrative poem primarily to do? Well, we want it to engage us and keep us reading on; so, I found myself wanting to read it. And as far as a homage to the original Beowulf poem is concerned, it is extremely good. The narrative flows, there are some wonderful lines of pure poetry in it:

To ride out when the moon sat round
And dark on the far rim and sound
A sadness he could not explain,
As if pity and guilt had lain
Unknown through the long interval
Since the last moon had hung that full
Of melancholy, even fear.

And the transposition for Beowulf from Anglo-Saxon times to the American Wild West is extremely well done - I almost think a film could be made of it. So what is my problem with it?

The problem is a technical one. Williams has chosen his form to represent as closely as possible the original Anglo-Saxon. But he has substituted rhyming for alliteration, and opted for a tetrameter line, occasionally broken up with hexameters. Strangely, moments of brilliance occur often at these interfaces, these cross-over points:

Even him, and for just a breath
He felt a touch of pity at that great thing's death.

That's marvellous, but the trouble is, a long poem in iambic tetrameter, and rhyming tetrameter at that, invariably leads us to less than optimal sense, because it becomes more driven by rhyme. The fact is that the rhyming couplet form is really difficult to tell a compelling narrative in, and the best examples - like Crabbe's Peter Grimes for example - tended to use the pentameter line; in other words, the more extended line, which opens up far more syntactical and semantic possibilities. Of course, combine a tetrameter with a succeeding hexameter as in the example I quoted above, then you effectively have two pentameter lines. So because Williams is such a fine poet, he came to realise this - perhaps subconsciously - as he wrote the poem; for the incidence of hexameters increases as we progress.

But here's another thing: one needs to buy the collection anyway just so that one can have one's own debate with Williams' poetry, for it is a mark of how good it is that I am wrestling with my thoughts on its technical aspects now! So I invite all readers of The Society of Classical Poets to get their copies: there’s a lifetime’s wisdom and insight contained in Williams’ poetry, there are some truly beautiful lines and images, and finally there is also much that can be gleaned technically in the writing of poetry. If you love Frost, I think you will love this.

 Tha com of more   under misthleoþum

Grendel gongan,   Godes yrre bær.
—Beowulf

When he arrived at the cave or den, the hunter took a short candle in one hand, his six-shooter in the other, wiggled into the den, and shot … by the reflection of the light in her eyes.
—J. Evetts Haley, The XIT Ranch of Texas

Fat Herefords grazed on rich brown grass.

Tom Rogers watched three winters pass,

Then, all his ranch paid off, designed

A bunkhouse, biggest of its kind

In that wide stretch of Caprock lands,

To house the army of top hands

That rising markets and good rain

Forced and allowed him to maintain.

At night sometimes a cowboy sang

Briefly to a guitar’s soft twang

While others talked, wrote letters home,

Or stared into brown-bottle foam.

Rogers, white-haired as washed gyp rock,

Stood winding Cyclops, the tall clock,

One night and heard the sleepy sound

Of song across the strip of ground

Between the bunkhouse and the house.

He smiled and dropped his hand. Near Taos,

At night, pensive and wandering out

From camp, a young surveyor-scout,

He had heard singing just that thin

Rise from the pueblo. Go on in,

A voice kept saying, but he stood,

One arm hooked round a cottonwood

For strength until, ashamed, he whirled

And strode back to the measured world.

Strange, how that wild sound in the night

Had drawn him, who was hired to sight

Down lines that tamed. So now, he thought,

Winding until the spring came taut,

This clock, this house, these wide fenced plains,

These little towns prove up our pains.

He went to bed, blew out the light

On the nightstand, said a good night

To Elsa, and dropped off to sleep

Hearing a last faint twang.  

From deep

In the fierce breaks came a reply,

A drawn-out keening, pitched as high

And savage as if cowboy songs,

To strange, sharp ears, summed up all wrongs

Done to the wilderness by men,

Fences, and cows. With bared teeth then,

Ears back, the apparition skulked

Across the ridges toward the bulked,

Repulsive forms of house and shed,

Till now not neared. The next dawn’s red

Revealed a redder scene. The pen

Where calving heifers were brought in

In case of need lay strewn and gory,

Each throat and belly slashed, a story

Of rage, not hunger; nothing gone

But one calf’s liver. His face drawn,

Rogers bent close to find a track

In the hard dirt. Then he drew back,

Aghast. Though it was mild and fair,

He would always thereafter swear

There hung above that broad paw print

With two deep claw holes a mere hint,

The sheerest wisp, of steam. He stood

Silent. When finally he could, 

He said, “Well, I guess we all know

What done this. No plain lobo, though.

I’ve seen a few. They never killed

More than to get their belly filled.

This one’s a devil. Look at that.” 

He toed a carcass. Where the fat

And lean had been flensed, red and white,

From a front leg, a second bite

Had crushed the bone above the knee.

By ones and twos men leaned to see   

With open mouths. A clean, dark hole

At one side punched clear through the bole.

“That’s no tooth, it’s a railroad spike,” 

One cowboy breathed. Or else it’s like,

Tom Rogers thought, a steel-tipped arrow

Such as once pierced him, bone and marrow,

Mid-calf when, riding in advance

Of wagons on the trail to Grants,

Attacked, he turned and in the mud

Escaped with one boot full of blood.

At least the Indians had a cause,

He thought. This thing came from the draws

To kill and waste, no more. He spat

And said, “I’ll get hitched up.” At that,

Two cowboys jumped to do the chore

While from the pile by the back door

Others, jaws set, began to carry

Cottonwood logs onto the prairie  

Where horses dragged the grim night’s dead

Like travois to their fiery bed.

Rogers, with hands in pockets, stood

And said, “That barbecue smells good.”

But the half-smile he struggled for

Turned on him like a scimitar

And cowboys, sensing, kept their eyes

Down and said nothing. By sunrise

Of the next day the word was out

By mouth and telegraph about

The beast that crept out of the dark

And slaughtered like a land-bound shark,  

Evil, bloodthirsty, monstrous. Soon

The story was that the full moon

Caused that four-legged beast to rise

On two feet and with bloodshot eyes

To roam the plains in search of prey

Like some cursed half-man. In one day

Three of Rogers’ good cowboys quit,

No cowards but not blessed with wit

To fathom the unknown, and more

Kept glancing at the bunkhouse door

At night as if, next time, the thing

Might burst inside. “Hey, man, don’t sing,”

One said as a guitar came out.

There did seem, thinking back, no doubt

That music must have been what stirred

The anger out there. Some had heard

The answer. They agreed the sound

Came after Ashley’s fingers found

The highest note of that night’s strumming.

“Play it again you know what’s coming,”

Said one named Humphrey. Ashley, who

Like Humphrey had seen Rogers through

The hard first years of ranching there,

Loyal and lean, kept guessing where

The thing would strike next. Every night

He rode out to some downwind site

Deep in the wildest breaks and waited.

Nothing. But then, as if so fated,

Homeward at dawn, on this high rim

Or in that gulch he found the grim

Fang-torn remains of cow or calf.

Before long Rogers’ herd was half

What it had been. If half his hands

Had not already found the bands

Of loyalty no longer served

And drawn their pay and left, unnerved

By these unholy deeds, their boss

Would have no choice, with nightly loss

Of his best stock, but cut his force

Like cutting calves out with a horse.

Ashley, of course, would always stay 

Though everything else went its way.

Those two had cowboyed in all weather

And for a while had fought together

Against the Indians’ dwindling ranks,

Ending between the steep red banks

Of Palo Duro, that brief fight

That put the tribes to final flight,

Horseless and foodless. The next day,

Colonel Mackenzie took the way

Surest to keep the foe from turning

Back to his killing, theft, and burning.

He gathered his captains about,

Said, “Take these Indian horses out

And shoot them.” Rogers was the head

Of Ashley’s squad. The soldiers led

Horse after snorting horse away,

A thousand head to kill. They say

The white bones made, in later years,

A heap like bent and bleaching spears.

They might as well have been spears. Shorn

Of their chief means of war, forlorn,

Hungry, and whipped, the sad tribes found

The long paths to that plotted ground

Decreed as home for them, no more

To hunt and plunder. From that store

Of battle memories, of thirst

And weariness they shared, of worst

And best, noncom and soldier grew

To boss and hand when they were through

Clearing the way for settlement,

Theirs and the thousands like them, bent

On owning, taming that wild land.

Now, one had grown a wise top hand

In middle years, tough, and yet given

To strumming music, sometimes driven

To ride out when the moon sat round

And dark on the far rim and sound

A sadness he could not explain,

As if pity and guilt had lain

Unknown through the long interval

Since the last moon had hung that full

Of melancholy, even fear.

But Rogers, finding year by year

That sitting on a horse straight-spined

Was harder, most days stayed behind

While cowboys went out riding fence

Or pulling calves. His recompense

For his lost saddle was a chair

On his long, screened-in back porch, where

He rocked and watched his herd on grass

That not long back felt no hooves pass

But buffaloes’, there where the brim

Of Palo Duro Canyon, dim

And distant, showed. He was content.

Then came the night marauding. Bent

Or not, he started work again,

Helping fill in for the lost men

Who left for where no ghostly thing  

Came from the jumbled breaks to bring

Slaughter and ruin. So it went,

The kills still coming, no trap meant

For wolf or bear seeming to draw

Even a glance. One cowboy saw

A skulking form outlined at dusk

Once, and he claimed the creature’s tusk

Far off flashed like a polished blade.

He left. A dozen, shaken, stayed.

re.