12 Oct 12 First Global, Universal Epic Poem

The First Global, Universal Epic Poem

To clarify, since I have repeatedly met with incredulity, I have stated that my epic poem is the first one in the English language in 345 years, not that it is the best, which is a judgment for readers and critics to make. For it is arguably nothing more than a statement of fact, which has been said by many poets and literary critics through the years and decades, to say that there is no epic poem in the English language worthy of the name since Milton.

Longfellow’s Hiawatha is not an epic, but a narrative poem, while William Cowper’s The Task, Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Dunciad are all mock-epics, as is James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover,  a farcical Ouija board fantasy, a would-be mock-epic, at best, and so on.

I have written a serious epic poem within the Western tradition and English letters, and I draw from the epic traditions of all civilizations, East and West. No poet could write such a poem without realizing it, for the epic requires not a moment of inspiration, like a lyric, but an act of will, over many years, which is one of the reasons why it has rightly been judged as the most demanding literary form.

John Milton, it should be noted, realized what he had written, and was not reluctant to say so, even within the poem itself. His prose, for instance, demonstrates he understood for decades what he was up against and strove to vie with the greatest poets of the epic tradition. It may shock readers today who are habituated to small, personal, postmodern songs of self to hear someone make the claim, as I do, that I have written the first epic poem in the English language in 345 years, but it is merely to lay on the table, so to speak, the manuscript that sets on my desk. It is not something I am dreaming about writing. Those days are at long last, for me, in the past. Now it is time for others to judge. No person who hasn’t read it, however, can make the claim that my epic doesn’t exist.

Derek Walcott’s Omeros is not an epic but basically a novel in sprawling narrative verse. The Prelude is a rambling study of Wordsworth’s own mind, as has often been said; Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book is another narrative story, not an epic properly speaking. G. K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse is a narrative in a ridiculous meter for an epic, with a quaint subject. There are a lot of those since Milton, none of which are epics. Byron never finished Don Juan and famously admitted he had no plot, no epic theme, just sat down and started cranking it out, didn’t know how to end it, and died without finishing it. When writing my master’s thesis on E. A. Robinson, I read several of his book-length narrative poems, as I had for years prior, some of which are masterpieces in their own right, unjustly neglected, but definitely not epic poems. William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, though lovely and evocative, is small potatoes, leaves much to be desired, and yet is not an epic. While I love Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and think it’s one of the greatest books in the English language, one of the models of my own verse, I must concede that it is not an epic, but a retelling of selected portions of the Arthurian myth. The title of Walt Whitman’s poem says it all, no matter how much one emphasizes its symbolic qualities, a mere seventy-five pages in most editions. Having read much of Louis Zukofsky and Charles Olson more than twenty years ago, I assert they do not merit the title, one of which was patched together by a scholar, completely disqualifying it from the running. While many want to laud The Cantos as an epic, Ezra Pound admitted to Donald Hall in a late interview, in one of Hall’s early books, that he had no plot or vision, didn’t make any sense, and the fragments remained unfinished at his death. Robert Southey’s Madoc was plain weird, and, anyway, never stuck to the culture. C. S. Lewis’s adolescent attempt, the Dymer, is not even a contender. Frederick Turner’s subject and structure are fit perhaps for science fiction, but not epic poetry. Anne Waldman’s PC trilogy falls short both in terms of form and theme. There are other odd-ball, would-be epics, none of which qualify, fail to find a way to grapple with modern life and yet evoke and honor the Tradition.

As much as I’ve always delighted in Tolkien’s Trilogy, reading it in its entirety by the fireplace to my own sons when they were young, Tolkien’s “The Fall of Arthur,” which he himself had the good sense never to publish, was derivative. It’s very interesting that he attempted an Arthurian epic prior to writing The Hobbit and his other books, and then put it aside, along with any pretension to poetry. It is a good example of how every scrap of a great writer will eventually be dragged out to the light of day by those of lesser judgment. The opening lines quoted are doggerel. And two hundred pages are not enough to constitute an epic poem, very much a typical narrative length. I doubt many serious serious and capable readers will ever make the mistake of taking Tolkien’s self-rejected attempt at Arthurian legend as an epic, though it doubtlessly helped him to find his real talent as a writer, prose.

That Tolkien wrote a handful of lines of verse in the Triology does not make Tolkien a poet. Note how rare they are in the vast field of his prose. The real poet sustains that, over an entire epic poem and career, not a few scattered lines here and there, much of which is actually children’s verse. Tolkien could not sustain it; he didn’t have the talent, but he did have the vision. I do agree with W. H. Auden’s essay on Tolkien, wherein he makes the point that the Trilogy is the only *positive* vision in modern literature. I would like to think I learnt a lot from Tolkien in that regard, though working in a different form and meter, and that lessons from him run deep into my own epic, in poetry.

And so the story goes. Mere narratives and novels in verse do not constitute an epic. Nor do sequences, series of poems, pastiche, etc. Redefinitions of what is an epic fall short of the standard and demonstrate merely how desperate of a strait modernity is in, stretching the definition of epic to accommodate the diminished state of affairs, which is not to suggest I believe one must slavishly follow a formula. I draw from all the great epics, creating, I hope, a new, contemporary interpretation and form of the tradition, East and West.

Part of the problem readers have today is that it has been so long since an epic poem has been written that perhaps many no longer know what one is. And, of course, the true epic, in any Age, will redefine for itself and its Age, what in fact the epic is, what constitutes it, will of necessity have to do so, yet, I assert, must honor the Tradition to qualify as such, and not as a mock-epic, but a serious vision of the time. I addressed this problem in an Epic Poetry Workshop I gave at the Austin International Poetry Festival in September, 2012:  http://youtu.be/9vPGP1ygY_s

If there’s one I’ve missed, after over thirty years of studying the epic form, I’d appreciate hearing about it. I’d love to read it. Name it.

My epic poem is finished and sets on my desk. It was serialized throughout the past summer in the manner of Charles Dickens and other 19th Century writers on my ebook site, Earthrise Press eBooks. It will be published in hardcover and as an ebook, in both the Mobi/Kindle and ePub formats, in November.

I survey the epic tradition of Western civilization, both ancient and modern,  in a forty-page essay, “Epopee,” in my book The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture, available worldwide. While I discuss the  fine narratives of Archibald MacLeish, his Conquistadors, and Robert Penn Warren, his Brother to Dragons, they are not epic poems.

The Parliament of Poets is not only the first epic poem in the English language in 345 years, but also the first global, universal epic, one that raises a world-embracing vision for our time. That is what I set out to write as early as 1982. It is up to readers to decide whether or not I have achieved what I set out to accomplish. I state merely what has been my goal for over thirty years and is now available as a printed book and ebook.

During November, 2012, as a foray into the Post-Gutenberg Revolution, download worldwide, for Free, the entire epic poem in PDF at http://books.fglaysher.com/ Or read the sample chapter, BOOK I, for free, along with the Preface and Introduction.

Frederick Glaysher

 

Tags: Beyond Postmodernism, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, global, John Milton, Poet, poetry, song, universal vision

08 Oct 12 Poetry Reading, Epic Poetry Workshop, AIPF

Poetry Reading, Epic Poetry Workshop, AIPF.

Frederick Glaysher reading from the eighth draft of his epic poem The Parliament of Poets, from the very beginning of BOOK I, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, September 29, 2012, Austin, Texas, at the end of his Epic Poetry Workshop. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.

From BOOK I, the very beginning of the epic, published in the *di-verse-city* 2012 Anthology for the Austin International Poetry Festival, 20th Anniversary Celebration Edition.

Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, Epic Poetry, AIPF

Frederick Glaysher

Tags: AIPF, Austin International Poetry Festival, Cervantes, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, John Milton, Parliament of poets, Poet, poetry, Poetry Reading

03 Oct 12 Poetry Reading, Barnes & Noble, AIPF

Poetry Reading, Barnes & Noble, AIPF

Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, at Barnes & Noble, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, AIPF, September 29, 2012. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher.

“I found myself sitting in my study, dozing
over a book, Cervantes’ Don Quixote…”

Frederick Glaysher

http://www.fglaysher.com

Tags: AIPF, Austin International Poetry Festival, Barnes & Noble, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, Homer, John Milton, Parliament of poets, Poet, poetry, Poetry Reading, Workshop

02 Oct 12 Epic Poetry Workshop

An Epic Poetry Workshop, presented by Frederick Glaysher, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, AIPF, September 29, 2012.

“Frederick Glaysher presents a workshop designed to revive the genre of epic poetry. He researched this genre and developed two worksheets with collections of quotations and reflections on epic poetry which helped him develop his own thinking and practice. From the perspective of having now finished the 8th draft of his own epic poem, he finds much more in them and looks forward to talking with people about the genre. Having taught college courses in the past in non-Western literature, the great Asian epics are very important to him, too, and he will explore some aspects of Chinese and Indian epic as well. The workshop combines reading, discussion, thought-provoking questions, and writing practice.” — From the 20th Anniversary Celebration Program for AIPF.

Frederick Glaysher

Tags: Cervantes, Dante, Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, Homer, Indian epic poetry, John Milton, Parliament of poets, poetry, Robert Hayden, Tulsidas, Valmiki, Virgil, Vyasa

21 Sep 12 Notes Over My Writing Desk

Notes Over My Writing Desk, from top left down to right:

“The heart of so great a mystery cannot ever be reached by following one road only.” – Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345 – 402), a Roman statesman, orator, and man of letters, quoted by Augustine from exchange with St. Ambrose. Quoted by Arnold Toynbee in his Gifford Lecture.

“The passionate love of the artist for his subject is the soul of art. Without love no work of art is possible.” –Tolstoy, Letter, September 1889.

Virgil– write it out in prose. “No day without its line.” [Apocryphal? It shouldn't be...]

“For the artist, however, a worldview is a tool and instrument, like a hammer in the hands of a stonemason.” –Mandelstam, from “The Morning of Acmeism,” quoted by Saul Bellow in Summations (The Bennington Chapbooks in Literature, 1987).

“Get the work out.” –Robert Hayden, to me once in conversation.

From top right, down:

“Long choosing, and beginning late.” — John Milton, Paradise Lost, BOOK IX

“Make the works.” — Walt Whitman, on a type of name plate reportedly on his desk

“I think we’re in danger of seeing a new dark age come over the mental life of the country. It is a very serious matter.” — Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December (1982).

“And the honour of virtue consists in contending, not in winning.” — Montaigne

“Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.” — Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” 1850.

“The supreme test of a book is that we should find some unusual intelligence working behind the words.” — Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” 1850.

Bottom, right, from a dream, August 30, 2008:

“This is the structure, this is the theme”: Sacrifice thyself for the good of others. Serve them. Lead them to the Light. Accept and bear thy load of suffering and pain for their sake, for the sake of God, the Absolute Reality. Oneness of God. Oneness of the Prophets. Oneness of humanity. “Radiant acquiescence.”

Frederick Glaysher

Tags: Epic, epic poetry, Frederick Glaysher, John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Melville, poetry, Robert Hayden, Saul Bellow, universality, Virgil, Walt Whitman

05 Aug 12 BOOK VIII and IX Summer Serialization

BOOK VIII and IX Summer Serialization

BOOK VIII, THE ARGUMENT, online:

“Dante guides the Persona to Chartres Cathedral. Through the labyrinth, the Queen of Heaven. Europe, a hallowed tale, in colored glass. Erasmus returns to London, with the Persona, to outside Westminster Abbey. Browning’s poem “Christmas Eve” opens the door. Tennyson, a cordial reception and then a dressing down. The Federation of the World. Blake and Milton stroll over from St. Margaret’s Church. Milton guides the Persona to what Blake called, so rightly, “Englands green & pleasant land.” A simple parish church, surrounding graves, a church perhaps Thomas Hardy had restored, in need again of his services. A prayer. And the Lady of the Lake. Excalibur. Arthur returns. An inscription on the shining blade. Wainamoinen, along with Sigurd, Beowulf, and the Valkyries, lift the Persona from the Isle of green to a grove of green, turning toward early fall, as through a swirling tunnel of time, to a birch bench. Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy, along the path, discusses his beliefs, mourns his mistakes, grieves for Russia’s collapse into the crevasse. Two young poets swept away into the gulag emerge to carry the Persona from Russia, with Hadji Murad, heading south.”

http://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-Book-VIII-Book-VIII.htm

BOOK IX, THE ARGUMENT:

“A house in Konya, Turkey, ancient Iconium, where St. Paul preached the Gospel. Around and around. Ethereal music and chanting. Another world. Rumi longing for the Beloved, the scent of her tresses, through fields of flowers to a riverbank of reeds. Attar and a soaring flock of birds fly the Persona, from the plain of Konya, that Valley of Search, to another plane, through Seven Valleys of the Soul, down into India and the plain of Agra. Leaving the Persona in Emperor Akbar’s city of Fatehpur Sikri, before the Ibadat Khana, the House of Worship, on the Pachisi Courtyard. Akbar’s court poet Faizi receives the Persona, along with many poet mystics and Sufis of India. Persuaded by Tagore, given the trials of the time, Rahman Baba, an Afghan Pashtun, comes down from his mountain village to confer with the Poet of the Moon. Evoking the majesty of human history, Lord Alfred Tennyson extols Akbar’s dream. The many oceans mingle. The dancing girls on the Pachisi Courtyard.”

http://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-Book-IX-Book-IX.htm 

Frederick Glaysher

Tags: Attar, Dante, Epic, epic poetry, Erasmus, Fatehpur Sikri, John Milton, Parliament of poets, Poet, poetry, Rumi