LXI

Don July 31st, 2009

LXI Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            It’s not just the poets who have landed us in this mess.  They had help.  They were aided and abetted by a large group of accessories to the murder of Poetry, people who ought to have known better—whose job in fact was to know better.  Good luck with that.

 

 

 ARS POETICA:  A Musical Suite in Four Movements

(Continued)

 

 II:  Allegro Stupido  (For Editors, Critics, and Teachers of English) 

The Modern Poets have just said

Why they want the Muses dead.

Shall we then resist this trend

And seek the Muses’ wounds to mend?

Never!  And just cause we’ll show

In the lines that come below.

 

All now confess Modernity

The essence is of quality

And Novelty is the greatest good

That can by man be understood.

Words of beauty, verse that rhymes,

Are not suited to the times.

Rhythm and alliteration

Are a vile abomination.

Like the plague, all now do flee

Metaphor and simile.

If the work makes any sense,

It only proves the poet’s dense

And is a vain and snobbish prig.

For meaning, then, give not a fig!

Only an archaizing fool

Would break this, our most basic rule.

If any such these words should hear,

Let him mark well, have no fear,

His fair, just punishment will be

Never his work in print to see.

No, let him not ask us to read

Aught with messages to heed.

Fractured prose, thoughts torn asunder,

Fill the readers’ hearts with wonder

And leave him them with no ground to tell

The road to Heaven from that to Hell;

And sets us free to fill the nation

With any old interpretation,

Immune from being proven wrong

Or right.  And thus the Muses’ song

Becomes (‘tis our firm resolution)

An instrument of prostitution

Designed to keep us (Aren’t we clever?)

In our tenured jobs forever!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Comments are closed.