The Instauration Part 5

Sir Phil and the Worth of It

When this English poetry thing got under full steam, a poet in my Back Nine wrote "A Defense of Poesie." Ever since then, we've felt the need to defend our right to write, in every way possible.

I don't know why that is, really. I suppose our shared Anglo-Australo-American culture (is "Australo" right?) is so driven by its work-ethic that poetry looks like a waste of time. We know it's the opposite, but it seems sometimes that we're the only ones.

We also know poetry is hard work, even if it's of the "spontaneous bop prosody" type. Especially that one, since its inspiration/criticism vector is calculated simultaneously, rather than measured continuously. (I'm a math idiot, so the preceding metaphor is equally idiotic. Sorry.)

Here in the States, pragmatism is the one philosophic movement originally ascribed to our country, at least as I learned it. And in this country, nothing looks less pragmatic than poetry. Why on Earth would anyone do it, other than as a way for the non-musical to sing the blues? (Actually, not a bad purpose, come to think of it. The blues also use pathos, humor and metaphor to try and bury death, as well as uncover transformation.)

Nothing is less pragmatic than poetry? Perhaps. Nothing human is surely more powerful. What social, political, economic movement has lasted as long as anything on The Top Ten, for instance? The problem is that time tests the quality of our work -- there's really no way around that fact. Some really good poetry grabs people from the start, other works take longer -- much longer, for more than a few. However, this fact should not deter us. In fact, it should do the opposite. Poetry is the polarity, the paradox, the unknown we alone know. And we are its proof.

We sit at the intersection of time and space, alone and aware of the oncoming traffic. We can either get it in gear or get clobbered. The poetry is how we go further.

That's how it should be. For us, nothing less than the best will do.


Old Long Since

While ruminating over a magazine article concerning the fate of the cave bear, something occurred to me: what if some of these cave paintings (used in the article to illustrate what the now-extinct bear may have looked like) served as mnemonic devices for poets? An outline for epics composed to celebrate or commemorate big events in the life of a tribe?

This is not original -- I know I've heard or read it somewhere some time ago. But, if this hypothesis proved to be true even once, it would be staggering. Think of it -- poems more than 30,000 years old!



What I Meant (I think)

It's easier to explain what I didn't mean: the cave paintings themselves contain (AFAIK) no secret poems in cipher. (That probably won't stop anyone from looking.)

So, any 30-millennia-old tribal epics are as extinct as the cave bear. But, to me and probably other fellow poets, the very idea that such works may have existed once excites the imagination, bolsters a sense of mission and provides a connection to prehistoric antiquity and perhaps the essence of humanity itself.

In other words: "Cool!"


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)


"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, in this case, as well as more open to substitution. 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.


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.

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.

Just keep moving.