I've been sort of fixated lately on a period when I was mainly imitating the voices of other poets rather than trying to find my own. What I was doing at this time, which was roughly 1999-2001, was trying to incorporate my worldview into my poems in a way that I never had before. In this period I was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism; and I obviously felt that the content of my poems was of far greater importance than the form or style, since the poetry itself, if it can be called that, which came from this period in my life was obviously nothing more than blatant imitations of Shakespeare and Milton, though I'm not sure I recognized that at the time of composition.
With the poem "Wallace", however, I was definitely trying to imitate Stevens, who I believe perfected IP to the point that he represented the logical progression of Shakespeare and Milton (and, to slightly lesser degrees, Tennyson and Keats) into the modern age. My ultimate goal I think was to arrive at some kind of stately formal style which was an amalgam of Shakespeare, Milton, and a dash of Stevens, with which I intended to pontificate and moralize in high-style. A modern day didactic poet with a mission.
What I wound up with, or course, was some unbelievably bad poems. Luckily for me, I didn't have a computer at this time. I did send a few of the poems out to magazines but none were taken, and no wonder. In July of 2001 I discovered PFFA and the following was the second poem I posted there. The first was a little piece which was ignored in General C&C; this poem was posted to High Critique, in the days of yore when the forum which is now called Advanced C&C was split into two fora: High and Merciless:
ODYSSEUS (FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH)
Hell take the ships that were exalted shapes
On the canvas of your mind's eye, heroic vessels
That crested mountainous waves, that flew
With sails full blown in wind and rain:
All finery of a poet's vision, a blind
Fireside singer who, by immaculate singing,
Held my name from oblivion and turned
My deeds to legend. Now to the ash pit alarums
And clash of shields, the brazen shouts of war,
To Acheron the blood, the bristling of swords,
The heap of bodies in the languor of death,
For here is the matter in plain speech: I sailed
And battled with man and beast, redoubtable
In valor, braved the ire of jealous gods
On land and sea, knocked pell-mell like a doll;
But this is merely prop and scenery,
Superfluous adornment, artifice.
Pray, when you speak of me say this: he was
A soldier and seafaring gentleman.
Forget the empyrean lineage, forget
All talk of body's prowess, strength of sinew,
All incidental by-the-ways that gild
A common story. When you speak of me,
Recall I had a wife, a son. Say this:
He was a simple and self-centered man
Who strove for nothing but his hearth and home.
?/99
The poem was critiqued by Dunc and Bela, and the comments were accurate. Dunc suggested I find a voice rather than borrowing someone else's, and Bela smartly advised: "Dump the superfluous adornment, aim for the plain speech." I took the advice and have been working on writing poems ever since.
Because I have something of a masochistic streak running in me lately, I want to show you three other pieces written from this time period. After getting the advice from Bela and Dunc, and after taking the time to examine what I was doing and seeing how artificial and contrived some of my poems were, I quickly took these three pieces out of my main body of work and put them somewhere dark and secure. I forgot about them for a while but when I was going through my things recently I found them, along with "Lorca" and "Wallace", and I thought it would be neat to put them up here.
I am trying to be humble, despite that by my own definition of that word any attempt at humility has its source in that which is the opposite of humility; but whatever. I no longer think of myself as an Objectivist, although in terms of metaphysics and epistmology there is very little I find disagreeable in that system of thought. I am still an atheist but one who talks with God almost every day: which means I address the only concept of God which I find is deserving of worship: which means my concept of God in all Her supreme beauty, benevolence, and love (I don't use the feminine pronoun as a concession to political correctness at all. It's just that when I was composing a fictional story which delineated my personal concept of God ["Embers of Servetus"], I discovered that my concept of God was overwhelmingly female. I also discovered that the narrator of my story was female during the process of writing it, which wasn't what I initially intended, what with the title and all).
What I didn't know back when I was writing these poems was that there were quite a few Objectivist poets around (refering not to the old "objectivist" school of poets but to Randian Objectivists). I believe that Mike Farmer is one and I spoke of the issue of being an Objectivist poet with him via email. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I've seen from them is pretty lousy. Not nearly as lousy as the three following pieces, but pretty dang lousy.
***
TO ONE WITH ADAM'S CURSE
(They understood that wisdom comes of beggary. - Yeats)
To speak so well of beggars, to applaud
the practice of beggary, albeit Christian,
dilutes the freshets of Pieria, refutes
at once all Apollonian testimony.
That wisdom comes of beggary? Better say
that knowledge is born of ignorance, that light
is born of darkness; let us claim, moreover,
that poetry, rather than an act of making,
is the inactive issue of idleness,
the insipid progeny of indolence.
We would placate the haters of poetry
thereby: irreverent men, the word be-mockers,
and do injustice to what monuments
our kindred made on hallowed Helicon.
That mendicants exist is true; yet though
they are accorded a type of blessedness,
an impotence that ravishes the heart
and frailty akin to piety,
we need not take them as a sign or blessing,
for little or nothing comes of beggary.
4/99
TESTAMENT FOR A DEATH-BED
I would with devils in Abaddon dwell
than hymn forever on green hills in Heaven,
inhabit darkness and, in adamant chains
transfixed, in contemplation think for aeons;
albeit time become irrelevant,
eyes obsolete, and flesh inured to torment,
accosted in bleak perpetuity
by hideous and unconscionable furies,---
and yet a grave were better, or such fire
as turns the sinew to inanimate dust
and makes a paltry powder of the bone.
Better the mercy of oblivion
than be mere parcel of a throng that trills
in sycophantic everlasting. Come,
sweet consummating flames, finish by fire
days lived in joy, untrammeled by hosannas.
4/99
THAT OLD SAW
(And there shall be beautiful things made new... - Keats)
Beautiful things made new? Furnish a sty
with cleanlier muck where swill recidivous swine,
wallowing, slothful, unrepentent beasts?
Better to ford them over Acheron
A succulent fodder for the tines of furies
or supple fat for talons fain to rend.
Our house is built upon a clasping loam
that draws us ever deeper into mire.
Knock the house down, or suffocate in flame
the flagging timber, dress the walls with fire
that they may dance into oblivion
as bright as high-born women at a dance,
resplendent in annihilation. Build
(again, with trowel and sword in either hand:
that old saw. Though you've heard it often enough
it bears repeating) over solid ground.
4/99
I warned ya.....
With the poem "Wallace", however, I was definitely trying to imitate Stevens, who I believe perfected IP to the point that he represented the logical progression of Shakespeare and Milton (and, to slightly lesser degrees, Tennyson and Keats) into the modern age. My ultimate goal I think was to arrive at some kind of stately formal style which was an amalgam of Shakespeare, Milton, and a dash of Stevens, with which I intended to pontificate and moralize in high-style. A modern day didactic poet with a mission.
What I wound up with, or course, was some unbelievably bad poems. Luckily for me, I didn't have a computer at this time. I did send a few of the poems out to magazines but none were taken, and no wonder. In July of 2001 I discovered PFFA and the following was the second poem I posted there. The first was a little piece which was ignored in General C&C; this poem was posted to High Critique, in the days of yore when the forum which is now called Advanced C&C was split into two fora: High and Merciless:
ODYSSEUS (FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH)
Hell take the ships that were exalted shapes
On the canvas of your mind's eye, heroic vessels
That crested mountainous waves, that flew
With sails full blown in wind and rain:
All finery of a poet's vision, a blind
Fireside singer who, by immaculate singing,
Held my name from oblivion and turned
My deeds to legend. Now to the ash pit alarums
And clash of shields, the brazen shouts of war,
To Acheron the blood, the bristling of swords,
The heap of bodies in the languor of death,
For here is the matter in plain speech: I sailed
And battled with man and beast, redoubtable
In valor, braved the ire of jealous gods
On land and sea, knocked pell-mell like a doll;
But this is merely prop and scenery,
Superfluous adornment, artifice.
Pray, when you speak of me say this: he was
A soldier and seafaring gentleman.
Forget the empyrean lineage, forget
All talk of body's prowess, strength of sinew,
All incidental by-the-ways that gild
A common story. When you speak of me,
Recall I had a wife, a son. Say this:
He was a simple and self-centered man
Who strove for nothing but his hearth and home.
?/99
The poem was critiqued by Dunc and Bela, and the comments were accurate. Dunc suggested I find a voice rather than borrowing someone else's, and Bela smartly advised: "Dump the superfluous adornment, aim for the plain speech." I took the advice and have been working on writing poems ever since.
Because I have something of a masochistic streak running in me lately, I want to show you three other pieces written from this time period. After getting the advice from Bela and Dunc, and after taking the time to examine what I was doing and seeing how artificial and contrived some of my poems were, I quickly took these three pieces out of my main body of work and put them somewhere dark and secure. I forgot about them for a while but when I was going through my things recently I found them, along with "Lorca" and "Wallace", and I thought it would be neat to put them up here.
I am trying to be humble, despite that by my own definition of that word any attempt at humility has its source in that which is the opposite of humility; but whatever. I no longer think of myself as an Objectivist, although in terms of metaphysics and epistmology there is very little I find disagreeable in that system of thought. I am still an atheist but one who talks with God almost every day: which means I address the only concept of God which I find is deserving of worship: which means my concept of God in all Her supreme beauty, benevolence, and love (I don't use the feminine pronoun as a concession to political correctness at all. It's just that when I was composing a fictional story which delineated my personal concept of God ["Embers of Servetus"], I discovered that my concept of God was overwhelmingly female. I also discovered that the narrator of my story was female during the process of writing it, which wasn't what I initially intended, what with the title and all).
What I didn't know back when I was writing these poems was that there were quite a few Objectivist poets around (refering not to the old "objectivist" school of poets but to Randian Objectivists). I believe that Mike Farmer is one and I spoke of the issue of being an Objectivist poet with him via email. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I've seen from them is pretty lousy. Not nearly as lousy as the three following pieces, but pretty dang lousy.
***
TO ONE WITH ADAM'S CURSE
(They understood that wisdom comes of beggary. - Yeats)
To speak so well of beggars, to applaud
the practice of beggary, albeit Christian,
dilutes the freshets of Pieria, refutes
at once all Apollonian testimony.
That wisdom comes of beggary? Better say
that knowledge is born of ignorance, that light
is born of darkness; let us claim, moreover,
that poetry, rather than an act of making,
is the inactive issue of idleness,
the insipid progeny of indolence.
We would placate the haters of poetry
thereby: irreverent men, the word be-mockers,
and do injustice to what monuments
our kindred made on hallowed Helicon.
That mendicants exist is true; yet though
they are accorded a type of blessedness,
an impotence that ravishes the heart
and frailty akin to piety,
we need not take them as a sign or blessing,
for little or nothing comes of beggary.
4/99
TESTAMENT FOR A DEATH-BED
I would with devils in Abaddon dwell
than hymn forever on green hills in Heaven,
inhabit darkness and, in adamant chains
transfixed, in contemplation think for aeons;
albeit time become irrelevant,
eyes obsolete, and flesh inured to torment,
accosted in bleak perpetuity
by hideous and unconscionable furies,---
and yet a grave were better, or such fire
as turns the sinew to inanimate dust
and makes a paltry powder of the bone.
Better the mercy of oblivion
than be mere parcel of a throng that trills
in sycophantic everlasting. Come,
sweet consummating flames, finish by fire
days lived in joy, untrammeled by hosannas.
4/99
THAT OLD SAW
(And there shall be beautiful things made new... - Keats)
Beautiful things made new? Furnish a sty
with cleanlier muck where swill recidivous swine,
wallowing, slothful, unrepentent beasts?
Better to ford them over Acheron
A succulent fodder for the tines of furies
or supple fat for talons fain to rend.
Our house is built upon a clasping loam
that draws us ever deeper into mire.
Knock the house down, or suffocate in flame
the flagging timber, dress the walls with fire
that they may dance into oblivion
as bright as high-born women at a dance,
resplendent in annihilation. Build
(again, with trowel and sword in either hand:
that old saw. Though you've heard it often enough
it bears repeating) over solid ground.
4/99
I warned ya.....
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