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StairWell Canto 10 extract 2

Context: In the 10th Canto of HellWard we met 4 poets condemned to Hell. Now in the 10th Canto of StairWell, we meet another 4 poets stuck in Purgatory. This extract takes us to meet the fourth poet in the sequence of meetings, which is the famous Anglo-American poet, Thomas Stearns (T.S.) Eliot, arguably the most influential poet in the English language of the C20th, and certainly the architect of poetic modernism. Surprisingly perhaps, Eliot is not—as a devout Anglo-Catholic—to be found in heaven, but still suffers in purgatory. The reasons for this the poem explores and introduces too two surprise poetical guests. We begin with the poet reluctant to leave Lord Rochester …

Reluctant to leave such a one as he,
Yet knowing Dante knew better and best;
Besides, was also king of true poetry;

With Virgil, then, we quit; we’d had our rest,
And now the final passage on this stair
Awaited us—a poet with no nest,

Restless in extreme and being not there,
Macavity-like, always half-way in
That other world or invisible sphere

Which most deny, so compounding their sin;
Not he. Oh! How his suffering’s entrenched
With all the indecision marring men.

Even daring to eat a peach seemed to wrench
His mind in convolutions unspeakable;
Or think of she who died elsewhere—a wench

Committing fornication—at least able
So to do, not paralysed from waist down—
(Unlike Wilmot who there proved so capable).

But Tom now ruminated not alone:
Beside him, austere and gaunt, that giant
Who dwarfed all English poets with his tome,

All shining, light glorious and triumphant.
I gasped—my knees buckled—to see him so:
Lecturing Tom as if watering a plant!

Before my words could leave my throat and go
To the temple in his ear, Dante said, ‘John—
Hail great master of English iambic flow!

I see from heaven, and for this stalled son
You’ve come.’ Then Milton turned, his face a flame,
Like some phalanx of fiery power that stuns

Merely to see. But what he saw—the name
Of Dante standing upright before him.
‘Why praise me so, when my verse seems lame

Beside your own—your heaven truly climbs,
But mine seems not so realised, precise?’
He paused—both laughed—embraced heavenly limbs

In joy at this unexpected surprise:
Meeting so thus. It seemed then, as they did,
No membrane, joint or limb, exclusive bars,

Obscured their mutual love or caused it hid;
Rather, in that instant all soul in soul
Was open, pure and naked, yet still clad!

Wonder to behold, and not in this world
Possible. But soon as done it was over,
As purposes for us resumed control.

Oh! How I wished I too was such a lover,
Could within me give so much to someone;
And I thought of her: my beautiful other …

But then I heard the stern censorious tone
Of Milton dig down in Tom’s blighted root:
‘What kind of line is “April’s cruellest month”?

Why do you blacken life and make it soot?
How can you think to join great Dante in
That paradise where you eat living fruit

When you are lost so far and so alone?’
Here Dante chipped in too: ‘Those women wait,
Still wait, and not for you to signal groans

Of self-pity, or that it is “Too late”,
As if love had limits bounded by our time,
Or with the body knew a sell-by-date.

What folly—like, your self-conscious rhymes,
And lack thereof. You had the models, sure,
Why even Virgil’s here—study his lines!

But you? Listening to Ezra Pound’s obscure,
Unsettled, and frankly crazy agitations,
Posing as advice—floundering on his shore!

You know where he is now: at his lost station
Below where HellWard traps unwary pride,
Those guilty of literary depredations.

See here.’ He raised his left hand from his side;
His index finger wore a ruby ring,
Which seemed so small at first, but then grew wide,

Enlarged as a screen that Tom was studying,
Intent, and the while his face pierced with pain;
Upsurging from below was Ezra’s sting—

Those incoherent languages that strained—
Like ancient Greek or Chinese hieroglyphics –
To be as English verse, but strained in vain,

For all his hyperbole, ego-tricks
That master self-publicist mustered well—
Yet Museless—what else? All proves soporific.

Some image of Pound in his ward of Hell
Filtered up like rising cigarette smoke,
Only not silent but in deafening peals

Of languages no-one wanted or spoke:
Fumes deadened, yet aggravated the while.
‘I see,’ said Tom in tears. ‘Ezra’s a joke?’

‘Yes, one the world’s followed many a mile
And not because any thought his work good,
Or that his mixing languages had style;

Oh no!’ said Dante, ‘the reasons are mad:
Like Nimrod building his own Babel, Pound
Sought deity in making poetry bad;

To be a god beyond Apollo’s bound
Of metrics—what true English is about;
He stamped your faces hard into the ground

With his fascistic, imperial boot;
Sans structure, beauty, form or even line;
And to say my work—mine!—is at his root!’

Here Milton chuckled: ‘Your heavenly design
Besides his diarrhoea and verbal crimes?
For every literal in Hell he’s fined,

No way out! Modernism’s had its time;
But you Tom, now see my sapphire ring:
Its matching sky-blue shows the cosmos rhymes.’

With that, he raised his right index finger
And its glorious ring incandescent—
Light pointing skyward to heaven’s high hangar

There. So that blue with other colours blent,
As if the sky had become a huge screen
And on it one image of what life meant—

At least for Tom: what life for him should mean.
I caught a glimpse in that magic of V—
His wife—whose love had washed him clean

Eventually. Beyond this Purgatory,
The StairWell we were at, she beckoned, prayed;
And Tom could see his own Divine Lady,

The help-meet God at the beginning made:
Through the woman, then, salvation comes.
Tom’s face lit with joy, his past pain erased.

Time coming when his purgatory was done.
But I myself could not stop other thoughts
Rioting, thinking of that Lady, one

Who’d loved me even though I’d fallen short.
Where was she now? Perhaps an echo heard
As V beckoned Tom—still small voice I caught

Also encouraging me to move upwards,
No more delay. I sensed that Virgil too,
Fed up with Modernism’s dark absurd

Wanted to renew the climb—there’s more to do.
Was it his hand I felt clasp mine to lead
Away? I turned. He winked as schemers do.

‘A third ring must be found,’ his whisper said,
‘If English poetry rises from the dead.’

.

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James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is “HellWard.” For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog

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44 Responses

  1. Michael Pietrack

    Who’d loved me even though I’d fallen short.

    May we all know love like that.

    Thanks James for submitting this! Your work speaks for itself. Dante would be proud.

    Reply
  2. Leland James

    Just a few clarifications, and an observation.

    From the Sale poem:

    “Even daring to eat a peach seemed to wrench
    His mind in convolutions unspeakable;”
    –This is a bit off the mark. It was not Eliot not daring to eat a peach but his character, Prufrock, “a hollow man” and a fair representation and criticism of a type of person quite common then and now–a type of person C.S. Lewis evirates in agreement with Eliot.

    “‘What kind of line is “April’s cruellest month”?
    –This is actually a cogent line, most likely referring to the practice of keeping bodies through winter to bury in spring, when the ground thaws.

    “Why do you blacken life and make it soot?”
    –Eliot did not blacken life and make of it soot, he reflected a dominant mood following WWI, a mood relevant today with the horrors of war prevalent.

    Eliot is not for everyone but his poetry has depth of meaning and a unique rhythm. In readings I always include some Eliot along with poetry of my own. Audiences are fascinated with the sound of his poetry. Robert Frost said of poetry: “The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.” Vitriol, I believe can deafen the ear.

    I agree with the implicit Sale generalization that much of modern poetry is awful, but so was much of classical poetry, with sentimental content and forced meter and rhyme.
    Taking an ideological stand against any poetry that does not conform to classical standards seems to me as bad as the Poetry Magazine, et. al. mentality that all classical poetry is dead. Poetry, for me, is a living thing, and the best—and this includes some great classical poetry, Yeats for instance—refuses to conform to anyone’s hard-and-fast rules.

    Reply
    • ABB

      Within the dramatic context it seems to be the characters of Milton and Dante, not directly Sale, who are taking issue about Eliot’s poetry. Also I would imagine James himself would agree with the dictum that poetry shouldn’t conform to hard-and-fast rules, as his own practice in terms of meter and rhyme bears a somewhat Yeatsian influence.

      Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Leland for your comments: I appreciate them but I have to say on most points you are mistaken. Just to take one, your first: it is not off the mark at all, and there is no confusion between Prufrock and Eliot. As Irene Adler tells Sherlock Holmes in a Scandal in Bohemia: ‘The big problem with a disguise is that however hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait.’ Furthermore, as Ben Jonson observed: ‘Style most shows a man: speak that I may see thee’. Eliot was a dreadful procrastinator who could not make up his mind whether or not to eat a peach! The two women (in between his two marriages) who devoted their lives to him (both ‘peaches’) and had every reasonable expectation that he would marry them were both to be bitterly disappointed – for all their devotion, dedication and love for him. Indeed, his final words to the latter were, ‘It is too late’, and following that – to her utter astonishment – he secretly married Valerie, his erstwhile secretary and a woman some 37 or so years younger than he was. Basically, Eliot was an intellectual high-brow but an emotional dwarf, and since no amount of intellect can overcome the strength of the emotions, then he remained crippled throughout his life: indecision about ‘peaches’ was a consequence of that. Your other points are equally fallacious excepting the fact that Yeats is as you say, and also the greatest poet of the C20th and, as it happens, a big role model for my own work.

      Reply
      • Leland James

        Mr. Sale: I think I see a point of disagreement worth mentioning. You seem, to my mind, to conflate the personality and life of an artist with their work. I see them as standing alone. Eliot certainly treated Viv badly…. I might not like him much either. But I just can’t see criticizing him and his choice of a friend, Pound, in the same breath with his art. James Dickey seems to have hated Robert Frost, and maybe all the bad things he said about him are true. But that doesn’t change Frost’s poems for me.

      • James Sale

        Dear Mr James – first, let me say I do appreciate the gentlemanly way in which you conduct your debate; it is a good thing, a very good thing. Second, I think my point – whilst accepting your caveat – is that that is the problem: the life of Eliot is in the work and also the other way round! It was prescient of him, writing in 1917 or thereabouts and as a young man still, to already be an old one (a Gerontion if you will), as he increasingly adopted the persona of being old – and all the vacillation that goes with it. To be so prescient, of course, is to be prophetic; to be prophetic is to be a poet; but then I think he is one – only not half so good as he thought he was and Modernism and the Nobel Prize committee thought: not half so good as Yeats, anyway. And, of course, that’s why he is in Purgatory, not Hell. I hope you will want to read Canto 10 of my Paradise (DoorWay) when I have written it – there you will meet some truly inspired poets, ones who did dare to eat their peach, and for the moment I think we might find – not to give too much away – GM Hopkins for instance. Regards!

  3. ABB

    Another profound extract, James. How interesting that Eliot is redeemed by his “V.” For myself, women have proved the opposite of salvation, but then—that’s a personal problem! While I am no Eliot expert, I am given to understand that his marriage to Vivienne was somewhat turbulent, though she apparently inspired The Wasteland.

    Reply
  4. James Sale

    Thanks for this ABB: the allusion to V is, I hope, highly ambiguous as he had two wives and their names were Vivienne and Valerie – aside from any other meanings that we might attach to what V means. Also, thanks for pointing out the obvious – but not for everyone – that just as there is Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim (ie the character within the poet’s poem), so here we have also Sale the poet and Sale the pilgrim – whose opinions may not coincide! Regarding your personal problems: I am sure there is hope for you! Who knows, you could be a poet in paradise?

    Reply
  5. Roy E. Peterson

    I am always fascinated by your continued Cantos and enjoy reading them more than once. From my poet’s perspective they are rich with substance and meaning, as well as being a vehicle for my learning process. Dante’s work has always stuck in my mind, since having to read it as a college freshman. You bring it alive with scintillating vocabulary and deftly constructed lines. Thank you!

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Roy – it’s really great to know another poet can enjoy and learn from these lines; after all, we all do – it was Eliot himself who talked of poets borrowing/plagiarising – and great poets even ‘stealing’ from others. There is nothing new under the sun (hey, who did I steal that from?) but what there is, is a Muse who breathes fresh life into old forms, old ideas and old values, and through that Muse we can all live again.

      Reply
  6. The Mindflayer

    I love the imaginative and “allusive” scope of this. Each line feels buried with meaning, and indeed there is an element of intertextuality here, though not in a pretentious way. There are so many astonishing things in this: the vision of the ring, the descriptions of Milton. But perhaps my favourite line is strangely not one of the grander moments but an almost comedic one: “Lecturing Tom as if watering a plant!” The image is so clear in my mind, and of course it has so many layers of meaning: Eliot’s squandered potential, the role of real poets and thought-leaders, the patience required to nurture goodness within another human being, and more. It’s the very simplicity of the image that strikes to truth.

    Reply
  7. James Sale

    Thanks Mindflayer – weird you should note that line because it happens to be a favourite of mine too, and not the least so because it suggests what the modernists want to deny in advocating Eliot – namely, how inferior Eliot is to Milton. Modernists want to pretend that modernist poetry, especially Eliot’s, is the ‘equivalent in our time’ to what Milton and his ilk (eg Spenser/Shakespeare) wrote back then; but, of course, it’s not. Eliot, consciously or subconsciously knew that, which was why he spent such critical efforts disparaging Milton and helped open up the idiot-school of Leavis and co. to continue the work. The great CS Lewis stood almost alone (though attracting a powerful counter-lobby) in the ’50s in rejecting this absurdity.

    Reply
  8. Brian Yapko

    James, another absorbing canto in the serialized presentation of your StairWell – this one with no dearth of poets to discuss as between you, Virgil, Dante, Eliot, Pound and Milton! I’ve always had a soft spot for T.S. Eliot who I do not think is identical to Prufrock but. rather, is gently mocking of him: “do I dare disturb the universe” and I’ve always been struck by his repeated line “I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.” As for “April is the cruelest month” I’ve always wondered if there was a subtle Chaucer invocation in his opening references to April and dull rain. If he’s in Purgatory I suspect it’s of his own making. I love iambic Milton’s appearance here. Hard for me not to connect his “forbidden fruit” with Prufrock’s peach. And I love the subtle critic’s wit that runs throughout this passage which is ultimately and rightly overshadowed by the pathos of the speaker recalling “ that Lady, one/Who’d loved me even though I’d fallen short.” All wonderful.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Always great to hear your views, Brian – you are a sort of voice of conscience I note. In this case, if I were to confess my sins, it would be that I once was a big Eliot admirer and the thing one cannot deny about him is that he is highly quotable: I cannot think of one quotable line from the last three English poet laureates, but Eliot one cannot stop quoting. That immediately people recognise the peach allusion says it all. And you are right also about the Chaucer: but Chaucer was tapping into the universal feeling/acknowledgement – Proserpina is released from hell for 6-8 months – that spring is good because life is good. Hence my censure: for a classicist he is denying the ‘classics’ in the true mythological sense. Ah! The Lady who loved me … though I’d fallen short. Well, what can I say, only that I hope we can all meet her in Paradise if it be the will of Him who moves all things.

      Reply
  9. Cynthia Erlandson

    Although I can’t claim to understand all of Eliot’s poetry (some of it goes right over my head), I have been deeply affected, and I dare say somewhat influenced, by some of his writing. Since much of it is not metrical nor rhyming, and I love meter and rhyme, I’m not sure I can explain that. But he clearly has a genius for meter and rhyme, which he uses beautifully to express profound thoughts in, for example, the lyric sections of “Four Quartets” (especially IV of “East Coker”, and II and IV of “Little Gidding”). And his choruses from “The Rock” express such profundities, even without traditional form, that I think they should be required reading. That said, I truly enjoyed your poem, and even laughed at the humor in it. It was amusing to imagine Milton lecturing Eliot, and “watering” him (I also love Milton!) And I do wonder why Eliot admired Pound so much (“Like Nimrod building his Babel” is a great line, as is “No way out — Modernism’s had its time”). And I love your scriptural allusion of salvation coming through the woman.

    Reply
  10. James Sale

    Thanks Cynthia – love the fact that you laughed out loud; I laughed myself when I wrote it. Yes, there is a debt to Eliot but this poem is not the place where I am going to put it. But as for women, well, as we approach the holy paradise, then clearly that imperative gets ever stronger to express – with God’s help, I will express it.

    Reply
  11. Joseph S. Salemi

    I believe that Pound was a very gifted poet, but one who was spoiled by a combination of Yankee rambunctiousness and early 20th-century lust for change and revolution.

    It’s one thing to write your own poetry in conformity with your inner aesthetic directives. But it’s quite another to insist that your style of poetry be adopted by the entire English-speaking world. Pound had no problem in making those kinds of demands, and creating a proselytizing movement to make modernism compulsory for everyone. The sheer arrogance of telling highly accomplished poets like W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot that they had to change their styles! It takes one’s breath away.

    Whenever I consider Pound, I think of what Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” Pound certainly loved English poetry and gave the bulk of his life to it. But in many ways he also killed it. He was blessed by the Muses, but he had too many crackpot ideas that he insisted on pushing to the extreme.

    Reply
  12. Evan Mantyk

    Thank you for this, James! What you’ve done is put things into perspective in a way that is truly insightful. April is indeed a cruel month where I live, while spring’s beauty tempts the senses and winter’s grim brooding never quite vanishes, but Eliot does not really illuminate any of that, or the interesting possibilities of dead bodies as Leland James points out. There is not an overall vision, no fire that glows, only the tearing down of beauty endlessly. In the face of Milton and Dante, Eliot is really a joke. That’s not to say that he isn’t very creative in his writing; but is it really poetry? The Whitman-Pound-Eliot strain may not really be poetry at all. I’m reminded of Andrew Benson Brown’s recent review of a book of intriguing and humorous aphorisms by Alex Stein (https://apollogist.wordpress.com/2022/09/11/philosopher-poet-prophet-on-alex-stein-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-15). All that Stein needs is to hit the enter key and spacebar a few more times and he has “poetry” if we take the Whitman-Pound-Eliot strain seriously. In fact, it would make better poetry in many cases.

    Cynthia pointed out a good piece of Eliot’s work, but I don’t think it is quite right to say the rest of Eliot’s work is over one’s head. If a schizophrenic is mumbling nonsense to himself, is this over our heads? No, it is just poorly constructed nonsense.

    Just my two cents here. I know others have studied Eliot more than I have and may make more informed comments.

    Reply
    • Leland James

      A thing strikes me here, and I do not mean this as a personal attack. Why do people I both sides of the free verse, as it were, and classical poetry seem to viscerally hate the other? It seems an extension of the cultural divide we have in our country, generally. I vehemently disagree with one side of the political divide but I do not hate those who espouse there case. Perhaps it is a testament to Eliot’s power that it makes some so angry with him, eliciting personal attacks not on his poety but on his frail human self. I pose this as a question, not an attack on either you or Mr. Sale. I think there is more good classical poetry than modern poetry. But there is good stuff, to my mind, on both sides. I must take the position of opposing absolutist on both sides.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Mr. James, political and cultural divisions today in the West are so absolutely sundering that anyone who writes anything at all is immediately branded either as a FRIEND or an ENEMY.

        In Eliot’s case, today he may be disliked or criticized by some members of the formalist or “classical” camp because of his close association with the modernist movement. But in fact Eliot wrote some stellar poetry in the classical style, and he should be praised for it. And even his more obscure free verse has passages of great beauty and perception. Similarly, his literary criticism is of the highest order. and leagues beyond the meaningless drivel being published as “scholarship” today.

        Ironically, in the past (the 1930s) Eliot was hated and disparaged by the left because of his self-definition as a royalist, a classicist, and an Anglican. The left disregarded his earlier pivotal role in shifting poetry in modernist directions, and instead went into apoplectic fits because of Eliot’s sociopolitical conservatism. His excellent book “After Strange Gods” and his admiration for Charles Maurras were flashpoints for the left-wing’s fury at the poet.

        After a brief hiatus in the late 1940s and the 1950s, when Eliot’s status was deeply respected, in the 1960s hatred of the man metastasized on the left into sheer rage against both him and Ezra Pound — not for any aesthetic reasons, but simply because of the political and cultural views that they had. Furthermore, today what is termed the “high modernism” or “classical modernism” of these men (and others like them such as Stevens) is roundly condemned as elitist, anti-feminist, racist, ethnocentric, Eurocentric, un-diverse, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH… all the usual fecal matter flung by the chimps of our Establishment Culture.

        So poor Eliot has been getting it from both sides of the spectrum. It doesn’t matter, because his greatness is assured no matter what anyone says.

        Besides all this, any literary figure in the public eye who has wife trouble (as Eliot had in spades with Viv) is always going to be the target of feminist bitchery. Look at poor Ted Hughes, or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

      • James Sale

        Just to clarify one thing about the TS Eliot commentary: we have had something similar (though much more vitriolic) before when discussing Walt Whitman. The suggestion then was that one could not criticise his work, much less his life, because his descendants (of which I don’t think there are any!) might be offended! I don’t see what I am doing as offensive at all; on the contrary, I am writing fiction (in the form of epic poetry) imaginatively recreating Eliot’s place in the pantheon. It’s not personal (and even if it were, he’s long dead) as in being just subjective bile; no, I would argue that the reconstruction of where he is has several critical principles underpinning it. One, which Mr James finds difficult to accept, is the idea that Prufrock and Eliot are not that ‘distinct’; they are in fact the same person – hence the situation Eliot finds himself in. Eliot is a great poet; I don’t hate Eliot; Eliot has affected my own writing. But I think when we take a ‘classical’ view of Eliot – if such a thing could be said to exist – he is not in the same league as Dante (or Milton). Indeed, the fact that he wasn’t in the same league as Dante, and that his poetry failed to realise the ‘vision’ was something he was all too aware of, and probably was responsible for the fact that the last 20 years or so of his life was poetry free as he attempted dramatic craft.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        James Sale, I agree with you fully that when one writes a poem any real-life character depicted does not necessarily have to correspond in all details to the actual facts. It’s all up to you as the poet to decide how to deal with him in the poem. And if you the poet also come into the poem as a character or fixture, the depiction you create doesn’t necessarily have to be an accurate, true-to-life image of what you are.

        As you point out, fictive mimesis means feigning, imagining, re-designing, and even outright lying if it is aesthetically necessary. I think that today, because of a general collapse in literary training, many people simply cannot deal with a piece of fiction if it does not precisely correspond with “reality” or “truth” or “the actual facts.” They feel offended and cheated and outraged, as if they had uncovered an act of perjury.

      • James Sale

        Thanks Joe for your very important comments on the nature of mimesis and the fictive; you are absolutely right, and the only thing I would add to what you are saying – and which you certainly know – is that for all the ‘actual facts’ that people know or think they know, fiction can be more truthful still. As Albertus Magnus observed, ‘For the poet anticipates understanding and reason by certain fictions’. When you think about it, ‘anticipating understanding and reason’ – repeat that ‘reason’ itself – through fiction is a pretty huge deal!!! That is why – or one reason why – poetry is so important.

    • Leland James

      Oh and one more thing, in context of my disagreement, The Society of Classical Poets–unlike many platforms–has allowed me to speak when I clearly disagree with the editor. And for this I give deserved respect.

      Reply
    • ABB

      It’s funny that you mention Stein and aphorisms, Evan, because I myself had this exact experience recently. I tried submitting a collection of my aphorisms to a literary magazine but it turns out it did not fit their genre requirements. So I just pressed the space bar and hit enter a couple of times for each aphorism, and lo! Poems.

      The problem with most free verse writers today is that they are just bad writers, period. Their prose stinks. Just as they do not spend the time and effort to learn meter/rhyme, they don’t study literary devices either. There are no virtuosic metaphors or wordplay like you would find in, say, the prose of Nabokov, which has a highly political quality though it is not poetry per se. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Elliot and Pound, who were very erudite and wrote poetry in the way that James Joyce wrote prose. There are parts of their work that are brilliant but I am not sure what anything in Finnigan’s Wake means, although his cleverness is evident throughout. Modernism is erudition without resonance. This is why the physicist who discovered the quark took the name for it out of FW, because it was a word without any prior associations.

      Reply
      • James Sale

        Thanks for this Andrew. One cannot deny that certain modernists had a certain talent, but whether any of it adds up to much – as per FW – I am not sure. But certainly thanks for reminding me of the origin of the word Quark – there are uses even for gobbled-gook, but I much prefer Lewis Carroll’s portmanteau words: of which ‘chortle’ is my favourite – a word that needed to be invented!

  14. Leland James

    Mr. Sale: I think I’m getting some clarity here, and see the main points of difference we have–and may come to the point where we can agree to disagree. On the broader scale I don’t agree with conflating characters and authors. Shakespeare was, in my view, not Hamlet and Henry III and Petruchio…. I am not the characters in my short stories. Some of me, some of the time, sure. But not wholesale. Now to the Eliot issue: I don’t think it is accurate to even pair Prufrock with Eliot—Prufrock, by the way, might well be found in Purgatory; that I think would have been a swell idea. But to Eliot. He was a meticulous craftsman, with a phenomenal work ethic. He was well educated, broad and deep. He suffered greatly, in both his personal life and in his conversion to Christianity. Prufrock was a “hollow man,” again what C.S. Lewis calls men without chests. Eliot, indeed, in my view is the antithesis of Prufrock, save for one trait: he had the courage to face his own weakness, struggle with it, and in some ways it seems overcame it. I believe he died a sincere Christian. Oh and Eliot wasn’t Macavity either—just kidding.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Well, Mr James, I think we can agree to disagree. I am not suggesting that Shakespeare is Hamlet – you are now putting words in my mouth. The case of Eliot is special (so, not all authors are so clearly represented by their fictional creations); but I have given good reasons why the analogy between Eliot and Prufrock is particularly apt. But of course it cannot be an exact correspondence (how could it be?), and you do well to point out some sterling characteristics of Eliot’s character. But aren’t we getting miles away from literary criticism when approval of someone’s character seems to morph into meaning that their poetry must therefore be great? Why not look at the lines themselves? Indeed, when you think about it: you have come to these pages not to talk about ‘my poetry’ (which is ostensibly what this page is about) but about your views on TS Eliot. I am happy to talk about Eliot – indeed, was so pleased that the editor wanted to publish and I could see why. It’s highly relevant to the debate we are having with modernism and post-modernism, but let’s not confuse our views about individuals and their character with literary/critical engagement with the text (given, of course, that ‘texts’ have content, which attract or repel us accordingly). Thanks for all the time you’ve taken on this issue – it has been very interesting.

      Reply
  15. BDW

    as per B. S. Eliud Acrewe

    Although I disagree with T. S. Eliot, when he wrote: “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” I do understand his critical point of view; it is breathtaking. No writer of English has mastered Shakespeare intricate depths or Dante’s incandescent clarity. World literature is far too vast and rich, however, for such a simplistic statement. Even Dante placed Homer in hell, and would not allow Vergil into heaven. Nevertheless, I still believe T. S. Eliot is the greatest critic of English literature.

    As for T. S. Eliot’s poetry, to me it is the most inspiring poetry of the last 100 years. We all make our choices; but, for me, no Modernist, PostModernist, or NewMillennial writer has so influenced my work. Now with Mr. Sale, I do agree that Eliot’s work pales in comparison with Dante’s, and Milton’s. Ironically, though T. S. Eliot disliked Milton’s work, he could not help but be influenced by Milton’s grand and solemn tone. But English poetry after Milton and Dryden has had those very problems that Eliot was acutely aware of himself, which Mr. Sale as well is trying to assail. I do agree with Mr. Sale (and others, like Mr. Sedia) that Modernism’s rich tapestry was, in some senses, a failure (How could it be otherwise?). Still, I am so thankful, T. S. Eliot was there at Modernism’s height, making his observations. They have helped me press forth as well with my own quixotic, shaky lance.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks BDW for your thoughtful responses to my poem extract. Eliot is a highly controversial figure but there is no doubting the power of his influence throughout the C20th. If I could have written these cantos when I was in my 20s I probably would have placed Eliot in my poetry heaven, because I found his poetry and his critical writings extremely compelling (though as a caveat here I have always regarded Dr Johnson as the supreme critic of English literature), but as I have grown older he seems less impressive, and indeed, as you agree, compared with Dante and Milton much less substantial and assured. His dislike of Milton seems not only a supreme error of judgement but also a helpful means by which not to acknowledge (i.e. conceal) a debt – great poets after all, as Eliot observed, do not plagiarise but steal. Thanks again.

      Reply
  16. Margaret Coats

    My favorite line of these, James, is “Hail great master of English iambic flow.” There is no possible way to scan it as iambic! What fun you must have had composing this canto.

    With all you say about Dante and Milton, the double focus stays on Eliot and Pound (seeing that one of Eliot’s major faults is to give any attention to Pound). Your criticisms accord with my difficulty in finding lyrics I like written by either. My approach is clearly different than what most commenters here have said. I have always picked out good poems rather than deciding on good (or poor) poets. And I prefer less massive works. This canto section is quite chatty enough to be entertaining as a short work! It is interesting that here the basic flaw of both Eliot and Pound seems to be egoism. Eliot is repentant, Pound not (and of course both had other issues).

    In my literary studies, I met Eliot everywhere, though I was not required to give him enough attention for him to become an influence on me, either as poet or as critic. Pound is not required reading, which is one of the reasons I chose him for my undergraduate thesis. I limited my attention to Personae. Eliot’s influence on modernism, and beyond, is indeed a fault against poetry. I find younger poets STILL trying to imitate Eliot, without knowing what they are doing. And the problem is, he knew what he was doing and where poetry had come from, while that learning is no longer offered. Students must seek it out without being sure of what they are looking for! I mean, of course, classic literature and poetic traditions and familiarity with language itself, something rarely to be had with knowledge of English only.

    You are clever enough to imagine a way out of “Modernism’s dark absurd” through the rings, and to draw us onward with the one yet to be revealed. Thanks for this intriguing look at where we are now, in both your poem and in the discussion it has inspired.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Margaret thank you so much for your perceptive comments, and they are a welcome refreshment from the Eliot ideology that has infected this thread: you clearly understand what poetry is, and I like your stance: ultimately, it does make more sense to comment on individual poems than on poets, and as I have tried to make clear – there are poets I dislike as personalities or as thinkers, but still they may write good or even great poems. But within the framework of my poem, it is of the essence to place real people, real poets (and the next canto, 11, contains 2 real and famous philosophers in Purgatory) in the topography of the journey the Pilgrim is making towards the heavenly vision.

      I am delighted in particular that you can appreciate ‘what fun’ I had writing this canto; it was a complete joy, especially imagining Milton watering Eliot as one might a plant, or in finding a way to settle my score with Pound and realise that HellWard was still there for him! And as for the impossible scan, you are of course completely right, and I give two reasons for it: the minor one being that Dante himself wouldn’t be fluent in English iambic! But the more serious one being that Milton himself was a great breaker of the rules: the opening line of Paradise Lost is just such an example. “Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit’ is not perfect iambic; the word ‘first’ is an inverted iambic (ie trochee) and so the ‘first disobedience’ itself assumes a metrical – that is, mimetic – form. Clearly, I have stretched it further than that, but I have reasons to do so – but that would take an essay to outline, so I hope you’ll bear with me in the meantime.

      Familiarity with language is of the essence and my favourite quotation to that effect comes from the great Keats from the revised Hyperion:

      … Who alive can say, 
’Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ 
Since every man whose soul is not a clod 
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved 
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

      To be well nurtured in our mother tongue – ah, yes; of course, knowing other languages can seriously help that nurturing, as it did for Dante and Milton, but less so for Shakespeare and Keats himself. One of the problems with Eliot is in knowing six languages he overreached himself: the worst parts of the Wasteland are the pretentious sections written in foreign languages (Pound of course took this to absurd lengths). It was then, in 1922, that the rot set in that swept away the Georgians and all beauty in poetry – and swept away 100,000s of people buying poetry, reading it and enjoying it. Instead, the academic industry began its take-over (on the authority of Eliot as one major source) and ordinary people could no longer read it, understand it or see its relevance. Instead of poetry going into its 24th edition within 18 months, we end up with Faber and Faber in the UK promoting poetic nobodies on the basis of print-runs of or less than 500 books!!

      Thank you for seeing that I am imagining a way out of ‘Modernism’s dark absurd’ – exactly what I am trying to do. My son, Joseph Sale, is also trying to do it with his poem Virtue’s End (see my review: https://classicalpoets.org/2022/05/10/re-imagining-spenser-a-review-of-virtues-end-by-joseph-sale/#/); and there are others on this site too who are attempting this through longer narratives: Andrew Benson Brown for one, and I also reviewed him: https://classicalpoets.org/2021/08/18/review-legends-of-liberty-volume-1-by-andrew-benson-brown/#/ But still, like you, I love lyrics and welcome them: the perfectly constructed form of certain lyrics (eg Stopping By woods on a Snowy Evening) give almost inexpressible pleasures. You, Susan Jarvis Bryant, Brian Yapko and some others too have really contributed to that sense of formal and ingenious perfection in writing poetry.

      Finally, then, as I have rambled too long, I hope you continue to follow The English Cantos – I am near the end of StairWell, my version of Purgatory, and then the really difficult part begins: DoorWay, or Paradiso. How imagine that? One thing’s for sure: only through the Muse herself and the faith that sees the Invisible in all manifest things. Regards.

      Reply
  17. BDW

    as per B. S. Eliud Acrewe:

    I disagree completely with Ms. Coats comment: “One of Eliot’s major faults [was] to give any attention to Pound”, since an interesting part of Eliot’s power comes from Pound.

    Like Ms. Coats, I, too, choose individual poems: “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”, “The Wasteland”, “The Hollow Men”, “Journey of the Magi”, “Ash Wednesday”, the “Four Quartets”.

    Reply
  18. Leland James

    To Joseph S. Salemi, September 22, 2022 and, in general, Mr. Sale. I can’t help but reply.

    Yes, in general to what Mr. Salemi said, but not all. First, Mr. Salemi’s assertion:

    “fictive mimesis means feigning, imagining, re-designing, and even outright lying if it is aesthetically necessary.”

    No! Outright lying is not scholarship or advanced education, only poses as such. Poetry should not lie. Lying justified as the means to an apparently good end is antithetical to all the SCP purports to be about. Poetry gets no pass in “lying to tell the truth.” Only those of us less educated and self-elevated, I suppose, fail to understand that this is an appeal to elitism, unworthy of Mr. Salemi’s often insightful comments.

    Now to the general concept of what remains of Mr. Salemi’s assertion:

    ““fictive mimesis means feigning, imagining, re-designing”

    Yes, but then it calls on critics to call out a poetically ideologically—antithetical to poetry in the long run—and personal animosity for an individual, a cheap shot.

    And aping Milton, forced meter and rhyme, does not equal profundity.

    I have not put my credentials as a poet in other posts as any proof of my positions. I only put it forward because Mr. Sale asserted that I did not understand poetry. Mr. Salemi seems to agree. My only point is the general, worldwide readership of poetry has a voice, and Mr. Sale and Mr. Salemi cannot dismiss this voice, and me. As I said, who is he to make such an assessment? And Eliot, by the vote of time, as Mr. Salemi, I believe has conceded, will be a significant force. Mr. Sales making him out as Prufrock long forgotten.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Dear Mr James – I do not need to defend Professor Salemi – he has shown himself more than capable of defending himself on more than one occasion! The more you speak, however, the more you reveal what you do not know: the fictive nature of poetry is everywhere evident and only you – as some sort of literal fundamentalist – seem to want to insist that poetry must tell the ‘truth’. But leaving that aside, what I object to in your post is the virtue-signalling that you have now repeated for a second time: who am I to make such an assessment that you do not understand poetry? Let’s be clear, shall we: who are you to come on my post, tell me that I am wrong about Eliot, tell me that it’s Ok if I substitute Prufrock for Eliot in my canto, and generally tell me that if I screw up my poem following your fallacious advice then that would be much better? Who are you to tell me these things? By what authority do you impose your views on me and others? When you can answer that properly, then I will tell you by whose authority I condemn your knowledge of poetry. Fair enough? And as for the SCP and what it stands for, one thing I can say is that the SCP doesn’t like ‘Woke’ and neither do I, so please drop the virtue-signalling.

      Reply
  19. Joseph S. Salemi

    To Leland James —

    Neither I nor James Sale is trying to silence you or be offensive. We are simply arguing for the freedom of a poet to compose without being subject to any kind of political ideology or philosophical doctrine or religious orthodoxy, and certainly without being forced to be obsequiously respectful of a famous literary figure.

    When you say “Poetry should not lie” you necessarily imply that there is some objective criterion of intellectual perception that every poet has to honor at all times. That may be true for a chemist dealing with the periodic table, or a brain surgeon at work on the operating table, but how can you possibly think that it is true for persons who are producing FICTIVE artifacts? Is The Song of Roland any less valuable as a poem because the author mistakenly substitutes the Moslems for the actual Basque enemies that slaughtered the Frankish rear guard? And suppose the author did it deliberately, for an aesthetic or political purpose, as some scholars think? Is this a crime?

    It would be pointless here to quote endless examples of poems where the truth is altered, finessed, or even distorted. And what of poems where the entire structure of plot or character has been totally fantasized by the writer? These things are “lies” not in the mind of the normal reader, who is well aware that “this is just a story,” or that “it’s all made up.” But there is a certain kind of contemporary reader whose commitment to “Truth” (with a big capital T) drives him to reject any work of fiction that doesn’t jive with his ideological commitments, or his respect for a famous name.

    As I have said, I think Eliot is a very important poet, some of whose work is stellar. But why can’t he be the target of some fun in James Sale’s poem, or conflated with Prufrock if that happens to work aesthetically? Sappho was made fun of by some later Greek writers, and it may have been unfair. But poetry is not required to be “fair.” That is a moral demand. And morality’s writ doesn’t run in the world of fictive mimesis. And when you “call out” someone for taking “a cheap shot” at somebody you happen to like, you are really insisting that poetry not be allowed to upset you personally.

    Robert Browning took “a cheap shot” at Catholic monastic life in his “Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister,” and many Catholics like Patmore and Chesterton were enraged by the poem. But in fact the poem is absolutely brilliant and funny and quotable, even if it treated monks unfairly. So what?

    It is a mistake, in my opinion, to think that the kind of “classical” poetry championed and encouraged by the SCP is necessarily tied to “Truth, Justice, Goodness, and the American Way,” like Superman in the old TV series. That is actually what the Woke, politically correct Left wants, as James Sale has noted. It’s a poetry under the thumb of good manners and ideology.

    Reply
    • Leland James

      Yes, to be clear–and I think I was not–poetry may (let’s get rid of “lie”) transform for artistic purposes. In that I think we might come to agreement. I am simply, in the end, calling out that the transformation in Mr. Sales poem is “dishonest,” arrogant, and poor poetry, tone-deaf–an arrogant ugly cheap shot, of Eliot. However, by positive values inspired.

      The larger issue here is conservatism: it is not in my view coats and ties, as it were, powdered wigs. Eliot, poetically, wore neither. Nor do I. I have bridged the current divide, internationally, publishing in both the leaning left, as it were, and the right. But when a venue becomes ideologically, one or the other, one side bad guys, some of them yes, on both sides, but not generally I think. I part company, as I have done with the likes of Poetry Magazine. I fear SCPs has become a mirror image of Poetry Magazine. So much partisan (to which I generally agree) poety, so much forced, aping of past forms, becoming at times “Hallmark cards” vs Poetry Magazines mindless complication and opaqueness. I’m not of either bubble, don’t want to be within either.

      Reply
      • Leland James

        Oh and one more point: I find the argument that those who favor the conservative are just more mature, this within Mr. Sales argument, though he denies this. Another cheap shot. “I once listened to Brubeck, but now I am older and wiser.”
        There ought to be, perhaps there is and I don’t know it, a debate fallacy for this. I supposes all who make these claims are Paul the Apodoses.
        And wise old men we should be ruled by.

  20. Joseph S. Salemi

    To Leland James —

    I don’t want to say anything more that might inflame the discussion further. Let me just offer a few observations, which I beg you not to take as any kind of attack or polemical slap. There really is no reason for you leave the SCP, especially over a matter of different tastes.

    There is no logical fallacy in having different tastes, or in the fact that a reader’s tastes in poetry may change over the years. That’s just a phenomenon of life. Not all the poems at the SCP are to my taste all the time, but that’s because very few persons attempt to write “classical” poetry, and as a result there is a limited amount of material to choose from. Mr Mantyk does a labor-intensive task every day, choosing poems to publish and setting them up with brilliantly appropriate illustrations. Sure, some poems are “Hallmark-y”, but keep in mind that this is an educational site as well as a showcase for more experienced writers. Should we not be encouraging young student writers who want to learn the traditional tools of the trade?

    As for the strong conservatism here, why not? This is, in fact, the only “safe space” for rightist and conservative poets on the internet. If every little self-identified group in academia and elsewhere can sequester itself in total segregation, why can’t we? As a matter of fact we don’t, since anyone who wants to submit a metrically regular and/or rhymed poem is encouraged to do so, and there is no political litmus test that he has to pass. That is certainly NOT the case at left-liberal websites or chatrooms.

    But as you say, there is a larger issue here. You seem to be an old-fashioned middle-of-the-road liberal, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. We all have our different bumper stickers. Nonetheless, liberals have a strong tendency to cry “Peace, peace”” when there is no peace. The divisions today in society are so savage, so close to bitter alienation, so relentlessly on the edge of violence, that the old-fashioned middle-of-the-road liberalism you long for is now basically obsolete. It doesn’t work anymore. In point of fact it is now merely a polite way of surrendering to the activist Left, and paving its path to power. And I’ll admit that the same is true for middle-of-the-road mainstream conservatism, which no longer has anything significant to say to anybody.

    I agree that it is a shame that politics has infected the world of poetry and now forced us all to get into combat gear. But it has happened, and there is no escape from it. You have left Poetry Magazine. If you leave the SCP, where is there to go? You won’t avoid this war no matter where you turn, because nobody on the planet will remain untouched by it.

    Please stay.

    Reply
    • Leland James

      Well, thank you for the reasoned reply.

      In reply: I do not agree that SCP is open to other than an ideology of poetry. I have submitted poems that have been triple-published across three countries (maybe some measure, though certainly not absolute). Rejected. Only those poems, which many of mind do, conform to, forgive me, mindlessly strict, are accepted. There is an absolutist ideology–bad/good–at play. Mr. James poem epitopes this ethos. SCP publishes–I do give credit to my SCP essay, opened to but not listened to–there is more to poety than polemic scans. I come back to–you are not, I assume from comments not an attack the less-than-metrically and rhymed classical to the poems that speak to the world, and are in essence a bridge; always rejected. SCP is, a large part, Hallmark, no ear, with some great exceptions. SCP has picked an ideologically–which can never work, politics and powdered wigs and poetry. And by the way, I am not a middle road literal. Check out my novel of earlier times, under my own name: The Redtape Letter, unmasking the evil in modern-day liberalism. Many positive reviews from still recognizable conservatives. Look out for the good ‘ole boys and girls phenomenon in SCP. The norm becoming gushing upon each other. “Oh, thanks Joe.” Don’t we know we are outsiders.

      Goodbye and good luck.

      Reply

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