Poetry is a bit out of fashion these days. It seems almost designed when it's rhyming or rhythmic to worm its way into our brains in a way that prose does not. One thing I think about, there's an almost forgotten author now, who I like quite a bit named Lilius Haggard and she would slip in little bits of verse. And what was fascinating too she didn't know where it came from.
Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a graphic novel for children based on the Old English poem, speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poetry in general, Beowulf in particular, whether we should require students to memorize poems, and the value of stories for children even without a moral lesson.