Wolfe

by Donald Mace Williams

A COWBOY BEOWULF MEETS THE MONSTERS
OF PALO DURO CANYON

Wolfe is a modernized and daringly original reenactment of the Old English heroic epic poem, Beowulf. Setting his contemporary version of the epic in the ranchland environs of Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon and substituting cowhands for the Danes, Donald Mace Williams has written an engaging and memorable tour de force. Highly recommended.
            —Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate,
            author of New and Selected Poems

The story is unique not only in concept but in the fact that it is a
narrative poem of much power. Once into it I had to read it all the
way through without stopping.
            —Elmer Kelton, WWA Western Writer of the 20th
            Century, author of The Good Old Boys

I love Wolfe. It’s such a natural retelling of an old story that the
new clothes fit perfectly: the setting, the well-named and persuasive characters, the tone of the dialogue, the speed of the action, the way the monster is never really pinned down by explicit description, the linking together of medieval lore and the history of American Western expansion, the exploitation of the land and the native peoples—all of it feels exactly right and creates a pageturner that is a gift to any imaginative reader.
            —Rhina Espaillat, Richard Wilbur Award Winner,
            author of Her Place in These Designs

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Donald Mace Williams, a former newspaper writer and editor and former college instructor of English and associate professor of journalism, lives in the Texas Panhandle. His poems have run in Western Humanities Review, Measure, Iron Horse Literary Review, Barrow Street, and other magazines. He is the author of two nonfiction books and a novel, Black Tuesday’s Child. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas-Austin.