Review: ‘The Best Barbarian’ by Roger Reeves

Two excellent poems, “Grendel” and “Grendel’s Mother,” recreated the notorious characters from “Beowulf.” In the first, Grendel emerges from the wilderness with “Absolute prophecy/And a desire for mercy in his chest, an end for a friend/Drifting in Solitude”. The beast’s “alien” status is what makes the Danes in the mead parlor view them positively. They …