Beowulf, Edited by Seamus Heaney

Beowulf as edited by Seamus Heaney

aka "Kicking Shakespeare in the Arse With His Own Left Leg"

Reviewed by Joe Cascia

You know, I've always thought that poems were boring. From Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath (the only reason I remember her name is because she fried herself in an oven), nothing could put me to sleep faster like something in pentameter. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I learned that Beowulf--the ONE thing I had to read for class that I actually looked forward to--was an epic poem. Here I was, expecting a good, old-fashioned Lord of the Rings-style bloodbath, but what I got instead was just a gigantic, overly-glorified haiku. Almost unconsciously, I picked Beowulf off of the shelf and opened it up, now expecting each page to be covered with sleep-inducing "thees" and "prithees."

One hundred and twenty pages into the poem, I had not encountered any of those damnable words. What I had found instead, to my incredible surprise, was some of the most disgusting and vile gore ever to be lain down in print. Several people are decapitated; another person has their torso ripped off and eaten; the main character (Beowulf, of course) tears a villain's arm, shoulder and all, right off his body with his bare hands--each one of these events is described with a disturbing amount of detail, and the fact that most of the monsters in the story happen to bleed acid makes it so much more gory (and so much more enjoyable, I might add). Beowulf is a likable hero with all his morals and such, but what makes him truly appealing--to me, at least; the same may not be true for those who are sane--is the way he holds on to those morals even though he's tearing things apart like crazy.

In itself, the story is interesting and (mostly) keeps your attention; however, it is irking that the reason the poem is over three thousand lines long is because half of it is dedicated to describing things that have nothing to do with the main plot. Seriously, I think at least fifty of those lines are devoted to a Dane's description of his ham sandwich (or something around those lines; the point is that a lot of the lines are pointless). Reading through all the descriptions of the fungus between Healfdane's toes is worth it in the end, however, as for every hundred lines of random nonsensical gibberish, there are two hundred and twenty-two lines of relentless, entrail-slashing action.

All in all, Beowulf isn't as bad as I thought it'd be--it's bloody, it's fun, and it's probably a hell of a lot better than the new movie. Even though it gets slow in some parts--and I mean guy-with-all-his-limbs-hacked-off-by-a-rusty-sword slow--it's still worth a read, and there's no denying that ripping off a guy's arm with your bare hands is really, really cool.