Summing Up

Once we decide to swim for land, we start thinking about what we're going to do when we get there. "Motivation" -- it gets you moving, right?

And we're also going to be stopping now and then to tread water, as we search the horizon for the first signs of our goal. A tower, for instance. Or maybe a set of them (a castle?).

Well, we caught the tide and here we are. But it's not the sunshine and white sand we were hoping to find. It's rocks and cliffs and dangerous-looking coves and bad-looking crags. But, it's land.

Look, there's the castle, right there -- on top of the tallest and the craggiest cliff of them all. And here we jumped ship (it was sinking, anyway) without our climbing gear! Well, what do you want to do? Swim back to the ship that isn't there anymore?

We need more motivation. If there's a castle, then there's an aviary. There's a place to watch the stars. A place to worship or meditate. And a village. And there are other things there -- like a garden with a plant conservatory and a glade with trees and walls to hold all that and everything else. And a little retreat outside the walls hardly anyone knows about. And, within the walls, a place to ... well, heed nature.

So there's good reason to quit clinging to this rock and let the surf take us to the cliff, where we'll rest in a cove and then start climbing. Our climb will be lightened by thoughts of the people and stories and dramas and myths and battles and all the other things we'll see illustrated on the tapestries insulating the castle interiors. They'll tell us about this new land and what we may expect from it. Also, we may learn from it all a way to find our place in the sun.

Just keep moving.

________

The first part of this blog was called The Art of Definition. That part is the 2008 archive. The second part of this blog (in the 2009 archive) ran through several titles, ending with The Rogue Sonneteer. Both parts concerned prosody -- "the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry," according to the OED {online}. The first one, theory; the second, practice. But, both were about lots more, too ("form" comes to mind).

The Instauration (the 2010 archive) offered a challenging approach to the poet's second goal -- method. And it has been about lots more, too ("function" rings a bell).

Those of you who have been following all along by now have the two well-conditioned hands I think you'll need to reach the heights that your pluck --"spirited and determined courage" {ditto} -- and skill will take you.

I offer my best wishes. Good luck to you all.

"What was that?"

The Elite Eight is the final list of The Instauration. (Fanfare is appropriate here.)

This final list is one that is more prone to substitution with no loss to the general concept of a "tapestry" poem that the other two lists -- The Top Ten ("tower" poems) and The Back Nine ("fortress and grounds" poems) are. Unlike the other two lists, this one can, and does, include incomplete works.

They don't need to be complete to be useful. Also, you could put in the Dunciad instead of Essay on Man, for instance, or Samson Agonistes for, say, The Faerie Queen. Tapestries can be exchanged much more easily than towers and battlements, towns and schools, herbaria and observatories. And we can hold some extras in storage, just in case.

Have fun with this one. I did.

I'll have more to say soon about the total concept of The Instauration and the lists. For now, let me say that the lists concern what poems are for, more than anything else.

The Elite Eight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the "Pearl Poet"
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
*Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
"The Raven" and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
Hymn to Proserpine/Atalanta in Calydon by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Homage to Sextus Propertius by Ezra Pound (translator)