Beowulf: For Fireside and Schoolroom is Donald Mace Williams’s translation of the oldest narrative poem in English, made to be read aloud rather than studied. He keeps the Anglo-Saxon kennings — the sea stays “whale paths” — works in four-stress iambic meter, and holds the scholarly apparatus down to eight endnotes.
This new translation of the oldest narrative poem in English—the first in more than twenty years—is designed for easy, pleasant reading. It cuts the scholarly touches to a minimum, using simple margin notes to explain some word or phrase. With students, young readers, and Beowulf fans in mind, Donald Mace Williams has approached his translation as both a published writer of modern metrical poems and a scholar in the verse structure of Beowulf. Williams received a Ph.D. Beowulf prosody from the University of Texas under the direction of the noted prosodist and philologist Thomas M. Cable.
For readers who found Heaney too literary, or a classroom edition too heavily annotated, this edition has three qualities that set it apart from previous translations.
First, it has cut the scholarly touches to a minimum, using only eight end notes to clarify certain passages. Notes in the margin often amount to a single word to explain some word or phrase. The introduction, too, is designed for easy, pleasant reading.
The second quality that makes this translation distinctive is that it is written in iambic meter, familiar to readers of more than six centuries of poetry in modern English. The translation uses almost always four stresses per line, the same as in the Anglo-Saxon, though the alliterative formula of the ancient text is not a part of Williams’s scheme.
The third distinctive feature of the translation is that it keeps the kennings that are such an important characteristic of the original. When the Beowulf poet (or poets) calls the sea the “whale paths,” Williams does the same. To translate the phrase as the “sea,” to Williams’s mind, would take away much of the Anglo-Saxon charm and would deprive the reader of an image.
Category: Poetry
Publication Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN (paper): 979-8-9879002-7-7
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9879002-8-4
Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.5
List price: $16.95
Category: Poetry, Literature
Pages: 108
Sheryl Oliver, Panhandle High School, Panhandle, Texas“In his newly released translation of Beowulf, Donald Mace Williams has brought the historical context and the sheer drama of the original English poem to life for the 21st century. His fresh take on the story as well as the introductory material make this work far more accessible to students who typically find themselves separated from the novelty and allure that Beowulf should automatically offer to readers. Williams has set the table, so to speak, for today's readers, and as a high school English teacher I look forward to implementing this new version into my curriculum. Many thanks from a grateful teacher!”
Robert Bjork, director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies“From the first word of the brief and extremely helpful introduction to the last word of the translation, Williams captures you and will not let you go. His lyrical prose energizes and delights you; the strategically sparse notes propel you further along; and the whole experience of this powerful book leaves you wanting more. I strongly recommend it.”
Donald Mace Williams translates Beowulf for reading aloud rather than for study. He works in four-stress iambic meter, preserves the Anglo-Saxon kennings rather than flattening them into modern equivalents — the sea remains “whale paths” — and limits the apparatus to eight endnotes plus marginal glosses, so the poem carries the page rather than the footnotes.
It is built for it — the subtitle is “For Fireside and Schoolroom.” Eight endnotes and marginal notes replace the dense apparatus of scholarly editions, and the meter makes it work read aloud in a classroom.
Donald Mace Williams, a published metrical poet with a doctorate in English from the University of Texas and a scholarly background in the verse structure of the original.
“Breathtaking”
Sheryl Oliver, Panhandle High School, Panhandle, Texas“In his newly released translation of Beowulf, Donald Mace Williams has brought the historical context and the sheer drama of the original English poem to life for the 21st century. His fresh take on the story as well as the introductory material make this work far more accessible to students who typically find themselves separated from the novelty and allure that Beowulf should automatically offer to readers. Williams has set the table, so to speak, for today's readers, and as a high school English teacher I look forward to implementing this new version into my curriculum. Many thanks from a grateful teacher!”
Robert Bjork, director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies“From the first word of the brief and extremely helpful introduction to the last word of the translation, Williams captures you and will not let you go. His lyrical prose energizes and delights you; the strategically sparse notes propel you further along; and the whole experience of this powerful book leaves you wanting more. I strongly recommend it.”
Old West Monsters and a Texas Poet's Life
Wolfe and Being Ninety pairs two works by Donald Mace Williams. “Wolfe” retells Beowulf in late-nineteenth-century Texas, where Billy Wolfe hunts a creature that has killed livestock and a laborer on a remote ranch. “Being Ninety” is Williams’s memoir of nine decades — a Depression childhood, and a life as poet, journalist, professor, and trained singer.
Of Granddaughters and Mars is a poetry collection by Donald Mace Williams, written in traditional forms alongside riddles, monologues, and translations. The poems move between family tenderness and political anger — sequences on bugs and birds, a long poem reimagining the explorer Zebulon Pike, and closing translations from the German Romantics.
A 150th Anniversary Reader
Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke: A 150th Anniversary Reader is a selection translated by Donald Mace Williams, with the German and English printed on facing pages. Williams keeps Rilke’s meter rather than flattening it into free verse. His translation of “The Girl Grown Up” won the 2024 Der Hovanessian Translation Prize from the New England Poetry Club.
The Nectar Dancer collects sixty-one short poems by Donald Mace Williams, most of them under a page. He spent his working life as a newspaper writer and editor, and the poems carry the compression reporters aim for — observations of life, loss, and the natural world, written in meter and rhyme.
High-Country Encounters from California to Maine
Timberline, U.S.A. is Donald Mace Williams’s account of the country above the last stunted pine, from California’s Sierra Nevada to New Hampshire’s White Mountains. A career journalist, Williams reports on the high places themselves and on the people who go up into them, asking what keeps drawing Americans into thin air and hard weather.
