A Beginner's Dive into Modern Lyric Poetry: Casual Friday, Lost treasures, Parrots and an Invitation to sail
The Banquet Modern, Ed. 1
Welcome All and Sundry,
What place does poetry have in the modern world?
In this Banquet, we will begin by offering a justification for poetry in our own time. Sure, poetry may have had its purpose before religion, and drugs, and electric guitars, but now? The air is crowded with sound—audio, radio, video, music, noise—if poetry has a place in all that, surely it is a minor one: a cricket on Noah’s Ark, hardly to be noticed.
Can poetry be vital today if it isn’t viral?
We’ll see if we can answer that question! Today you’ll find:
A (somewhat subjective) definition of works we will consider Modern
The degradation of the written word
Interlarded Parrots!
The false war between Poetry and the Vernacular
Have we missed the poetic boat?
Ulysses by Tennyson
Has the metaphor of “diving in” ever been more appropriate? Let’s!
We will begin our plunge into the Great Works of the Modern era with poetry, but perhaps first we should define our time. Works created between the literarily significant year of 1850 and our general ending year of 1950 (with a few considerations of works beyond that period)—these will be the cuisine that will define the Modern table at The Banquet.
Why?
Because in 1850 or roundabouts, literature on both sides of the pond hit an inflection point—the Enlightenment’s naively optimistic, shiny chrome materialism merged with Romanticism’s wild mysticism and nature worship, and somewhere in the tumults of failed revolts and Byronic deaths, Western Civilization started to try to combine the fragments that remained into a new whole— a machine along scientific principles, but with the soul of a nature spirit, (Think HAL, or Brave New World, or Jurassic Park). Whatever it was, the bizarre conglomeration of scientific hubris and philosophical psycho-spiritualism gained momentum and barreled ahead before plunging into the abyss of world war I, crawling back out for a decade of decadence, then plunging again into a depression and World War II. It even ended with a Manhattan Project-sponsored bang.
But before we got there, we were trying to make sense of Romanticism’s collapse, and yet try to fill the hole it identified at the heart of Materialism. We were becoming Victorians.
Two figures in English literature one, in poetry, one in prose, will bridge the Revolutionary and the Modern periods, with one foot on the edge of the Romantic age and the other on the opening of the Victorian: Tennyson and Dickens. Today, since poetry is our theme, we will put Dickens back on the shelf. It will be a poem of Tennyson’s that we shall begin with. Eventually.
We are Not Used to Poetry
Whenever I have taught a class involving poetry, invariably at some point a student, in the throes of intellectual malaise will exclaim:
“Why doesn’t he just speak normally?”
Almost invariably the verb chosen by the student is “speak” not “write”. This is telling. Speech has come to dominate how words are used, even as our dominant art forms have shifted away from those of a literate culture to those of an audiovisual culture.
Since the advent of the radio, and the subsequent invention of the tv and, alas, the rise of streaming services, we ingest words far less often than we used to, and when we do, we ingest them far more through our ears than through our eyes. We use our eyes more for images, not for words. Movies, shows, and the various forms of filmed ephemera on social media platforms like Tiktok compete to communicate an emotional jolt in the most direct way possible.
When we do read words, we read them in disjointed fragments—texts and such. This writing is a mere parrot of our speech, and we interlard even these with hieroglyphs meant to portray our feelings: emojis. We encounter long prose occasionally, but for the student that usually happens in English class or history. The student often much prefers his interlarded parrots.
We have lost our sense that the written word is more formal than speech and is distinct from it. The printed word is where the laws that govern our language are preserved. In the rough and ready world of speech, where convenience and expedience often trump clarity or precision, a word coupled with the necessary intonation expresses all that is required. Our language, like our culture, is in perpetual Casual Friday mode.
We are Out of Shape
This entropic effect has meant that language no longer answers as readily to the call when we wish it to perform at the highest level. Just as in peacetime, the Greeks practiced those athletic arts that would preserve them in time of war to keep their hoplites at their physical peak, so poetry exercises language at its most vibrant, most muscular, most brilliant, to preserve it for the times when that standard is demanded. And, crucially, to preserve in us the habit of reading language at that high standard. (Ironically, if we preserve the habit, poetry slips into our vernacular, and our vernacular, if wielded with a steady hand and an unerring ear, can become poetry. Witness the cadences of Robert Frost, the burr of Burns or the voiced characterization in the dramatic monologues of Browning.)
But if we rarely or never practice this habit, we lose the knack for it; our language grows flabby and out of shape. Sadly, the intellect that our language is meant to reflect also loses a step or two. If an entire culture loses the knack for reading and writing at a high level, if it puts off exercise for easier entertainment, one day it looks down and realizes it can no longer see its toes.
We live in a culture that can no longer see its toes.
But we need Poetry!
But words don’t go to war, I hear my dear Sundry exclaim, as he sucks in his gut. When do we need language to perform this way?
When we engage in Philosophy and Theology, surely, we want our language to be whip smart, no? What about in law, economics, science? The list goes on. Language must be agile, supple, coordinated. We cannot write a creed, a treaty, or an opinion of the court in the language of everyday speech. Like a well-laid wooden deck, we want our words to be firm, to resist buckling or warping under excessive moisture; we want them to last. We want them to bear the weight of thought.
Poetry in its density and nuance equals the rigor demanded of these disciplines but does so in play—good carpentry in a great treehouse, or precise coordination in a juggler tossing flaming chainsaws while walking a tightrope. It is work and serious work, but it is also serious play, as all good play is, and at times, as Robert Frost says in his Two Tramps at Mud Time, it is “play for mortal stakes.”
“Well”, dear Sundry interjects, “I have read what passes for poetry in the Hallmark section of the local pharmacy, and if those are words at play, I think I’d rather choose a different skill.”
Despite examples of bad lyric poetry in our own day, some will allow that there have been great works written in poetry (and, dear Sundry-there are many, many great works). Some will even recognize that there is a great wealth of beauty and thought preserved in poetry.
But few were taught how to access poetry, and even those few who took a creative writing class had the tools of rhyme, meter, and alliteration put in their hands hastily and without much example or instruction. Being able to identify a chisel and hammer does not give us the ability to recognize their many uses in great sculpture. We needed more and were not given it.
But Has the Boat sailed?
And now it’s too late-it’s too hard, and we doubt whether it will be worth the effort. Poetry remains a suspected treasure at the bottom of the sea. It’s the bitcoin purse we have forgotten the key to.
“But why is poetry worth the trouble?” I hear dear Sundry interject. “We are busy, life is short, our iphones are distracting, and prose is difficult enough. We can find treasure in other, easier places, can’t we?”
Why, indeed? It may be necessary to begin with a defense of its necessity. Why spend the money for the underwater salvage if you’re not sure those sunken chests contain gold?
Let’s take a dive into one of my favorites to kick off Modern—Tennyson’s Ulysses. This poem dates to slightly before my beginning date, but don’t let that bother you too much. It isn’t going to bother me.
In Tennyson’s Ulysses, we have a specimen particularly fitting for The Banquet, because not only does it introduce themes that will undergird the works to come, but it does so in communication with much of what has come before.
Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus, and the one preserved later in the works of Dante) both is and is not the Odysseus of Homer. The Odysseus of Homer returns to Ithaka and is given the guarantee of a prophecy that puts his death far from the sea. He, his wife, his son, and his dog live if not happily ever after, at least together in peace for the foreseeable future.
Dante, not having the benefit of having read Homer, but knowing of Odysseus from Virgil and others, doesn’t know the canonical end of Odysseus’ life, and so invents one of his own—he has Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he is now called) venture once more onto the deeps to seek the edge of this world, and the beginning of the next one. For his hubris, he is drowned, but not before catching a glimpse of a mountain that may or may not be Purgatory.
Whatever the case, Ulysses meets a fitting end, and for the brash lies that get his former crewmates to sail to their deaths (to say nothing of that whole Trojan Horse ruse) he is placed deep in Hell with the False Counselors.
Tennyson picks up here—or rather he rewinds the story and gives us a dramatic monologue. It is Ulysses, now aged, speaking most likely to his old crew. It is a stirring speech often quoted, and quite moving, with never a word unweighted for gravity and purpose. But it is, dear Sundry, the very speech that gets his crew to sail to their doom. It is the very act for which he, in the Inferno, is damned.
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
That Which We Are, We Are…
The ambivalence of the poem is noteworthy—is it a thumbing of the human nose at the Divine which made it? Or is it a dry commentary on the waywardness of the insatiable human intellect and the naive human heart? Whatever it is, it is masterful, and the reader wants it to be both—we want to affirm our human dignity, and simultaneously pity our human frailty.
Would you follow him, dear Sundry? Does your intellect warn you, or is your heart swayed?