Tag Archives: Dante

June 23, 2012 · 6:50 am

First Epic Poem in English in 345 Years

At my writing desk, June 21, 2012

At my writing desk, June 21, 2012, working on Book III for the summer serialization.

I believe I have written the first epic poem in English in 345 years, since Milton’s publishing Paradise Lost in 1667. I cordially invite the reader to consider that there is no other subsequent poem in the English language that succeeds in meriting the title of epic, nor comparison with Milton, Dante, Virgil, and Homer. All of the contenders are merely long poems, series and sequences, mock epics, or local epics, if you will, embracing a regional civilization, not the entire globe, not a universal, global epic, with a world-embracing vision. The same is true of all of the traditional epics of other cultures, as with Asia, for instance.

Throughout my adult life, my life-long goal has been to write a universal, global epic, commensurate with our Global Age, to speak to all nations, the many millions. I invite readers to consider and judge whether I have achieved what I began to conceive of, and study for, as early as 1982.

BOOK I, along with the Preface and Introduction, is a FREE DOWNLOAD at https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-Book-I-FREE-Book-I.htm

In my essay “Epopee,” in my book The Grove of the Eumenides, available worldwide in either a printed or ebook edition, I survey ancient and modern epic poetry. https://fglaysher.com/order_books.html

Frederick Glaysher

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June 9, 2012 · 8:38 am

Finished the 7th Draft of The Parliament of Poets

Man on the Moon

On June 6th I finished the 7th Draft of The Parliament of Poets, an epic poem. Tolstoy set the standard for me with his seven drafts of War and Peace. Reading about that years ago, I have never been able to forget it. He, with his wife’s help (much contention around that fact in later years), wrote out the entire manuscript, over 1,000 pages in most editions, by hand, seven times! Awesome just to think of the physical energy expended, let alone the mental, especially after having written by hand my manuscript of a mere 280 pages, five times, puny by comparison! Argh, perhaps in other ways, self-doubt barking, though I dare to think otherwise, while knowing the ultimate judgment resides with readers… as it should.

At least, I tell myself, I have, in my own terms, achieved what I set out to do, as long ago as the early 1980s: Write an epic poem, a serious one, though laden with delight, that attempts to stand with Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, the other great epic poets, East and West, one that confronts, attempts to confront, the fullness of modern life, in all its global complexity, humanity’s many strands, and weave a new, universal vision of epic song. It’s been a long and lonely, arduous journey. Whatever comes of it, whatever readers think, like or detest it, ignore or spurn it, for the first time in over thirty years, it’s not a weight on my consciousness, not one I’ve yet to deliver, but done, setting on my desk.

Read my other reflections on my epic poem in the Epic Category to the right >

Frederick Glaysher

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April 23, 2012 · 3:52 pm

Poetry Reading, Albany Word Fest

My reading from the fifth draft of my epic poem The Parliament of Poets at the Albany Word Fest, Saturday, April 21, 2012, in Albany, New York, at the Albany Public Library. Copyright (c) 2012 Frederick Glaysher. From Book III, still on earth, in the midst of things… the birds and hoopoe, and so forth.

Frederick Glaysher, Albany Word Fest, April 21, 2012

https://youtu.be/CJ_xbSXbN7k

Frederick Glaysher

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December 13, 2011 · 9:34 am

Catalogue of the Ships

Catalogue of Ships

While I had hoped for three more drafts by the end of 2011, I’ve only completed another one, for a total of three. Life, alas, placed many other demands in my way, intervening in the time and peace of mind I needed.

Yet I managed to write a thirty-page essay on Rabindranath Tagore, which I am told will be published this month in India in the journal Rupkatha.com. I began reading Tagore as a very young poet many decades ago and have often thought of writing about him, but dismissed the idea until prodded by the editor, giving me the determination to take a seeming detour into the months of  reading needed to shape my thinking into form. Actually, I had felt for the last year or so that I had to engage with Tagore at a deeper level before finishing The Parliament of Poets, and now feel he has opened further for me a perspective that is highly congruent with what I have already written.

Homer’s catalogue of ships at the end of Book II of the Iliad suggested the third draft of The Parliament of Poets. I was actually quite surprised by the development. As a young writer I had always had an animus against the form. Reading Melville’s Moby Dick, I found his chapters on the history and practice of whaling infuriating. At times I couldn’t control the impatience I felt with his method, wanted to throw the book across the room! A diligent student, I, nevertheless, wasn’t one who could skip chapters, ploughed through them, while salivating for the thread of the plot to return. As an older and perhaps wiser writer, I have made my peace with the form. The catalogue serves a literary and intellectual purpose I’ve come to respect, indeed, come to realize I need, for the good of my story and my reader, though there might be some out there someday annoyed as I once was. I hope they’ll come as I have to respect Homer and Melville’s practice, among other writers who have found similar devices necessary, and consider there are reasons and purposes that only the epic catalogue can fulfill.

Homer recounting in Book X the warriors of his epic, Agamemnon in Book IV reviewing his troops, Virgil in his catalogue of the Latin forces and the Etruscans, Milton that of the fallen angels, all tell us something very important about the epic drama under way. Such devices open out and broaden the scope and elevation of the poem. How much more needed in a global age when we have come to view the earth even from the moon. How much more necessary in an age that embraces so much in terms of human experience.

 Frederick Glaysher

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