Poetry

Poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and syntactical content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose. It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used.


Nature of poetry

Poetry can be differentiated most of the time from prose, which is language meant to convey meaning in a more expansive and less condensed way, frequently using more complete logical or narrative structures than poetry does. A further complication is that prose poetry combines the characteristics of poetry with the superficial appearance of prose. And there is, of course, narrative poetry, not to mention dramatic poetry, both of which are used to tell stories and so resemble novels. However, both these forms of poetry use the specific features of verse composition to make these stories more memorable or to enhance them in some way.

The Greek verb poieo (I make or create), gave rise to three words: poietis (the one who creates), poiesis (the act of creation), and poiema (the thing created). From these we get three English words: poet (the creator), poesy (the creation) and poem (the created). A poet is therefore one who creates, and poetry is what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as maker or creator is not uncommon. For example, in Anglo-Saxon a poet is a scop (shaper or maker) and in Scots makar.



Sound in poetry

Poetry in English and other modern European languages often uses rhyme. However, the use of rhyme is not universal. It did not enter European poetry until the High Middle Ages, when it was adopted from the Arab language. Much modern poetry avoids rhyming, as did, for instance, classical Greek and Latin poetry. However, poetry does tend to place emphasis on the rhythm of the words, frequently arranging them into lines of a particular meter or, in the case of free verse, into looser units of cadence.

In addition to rhyme and rhythm, other sound values of language tend to be important, with devices such as alliteration, assonance, and dissonance commonly used.


Poetry and form

As it is created using language, poetry tends to use formal linguistic units like phrases, sentences and paragraphs. In addition, it uses units of organisation that are purely poetic. The main units that are used are the line, the couplet, the strophe, the stanza, and the verse paragraph.

Lines may be self-contained units of sense, as in the famous To be, or not to be: that is the question. Alternatively a line may end in mid-phrase or sentence: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer. The linguistic unit is generally completed in the next line: The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This technique is called enjambment, and is used to create a sense of expectation in the reader and/or to add a dynamic to the movement of the verse.

Couplets, stanzas, and strophes are generally self-contained units of sense, although a kind of enjambment may also be used across these units. In blank verse, verse paragraphs are employed to indicate natural breaks in the flow of the poem.

In many instances, the effectiveness of a poem derives from the tension between the use of linguistic and formal units. With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the visual presentation of their work. As a result, the use of these formal elements, and of the white space they help create, became an important part of the poet's toolbox. Modernist poetry tends to take this to an extreme, with the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page forming an integral part of the poem's composition. In its most extreme form, this leads to the writing of concrete poetry.



Poetry and rhetoric

Rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor are frequently used in poetry. Indeed, Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor". However, particularly since the rise of Modernism, many poets have opted for reduced use of these devices, preferring rather to attempt the direct presentation of things and experiences.



The history of poetry

Poetry as an art form predates literacy. In pre-literate societies, poetry was frequently employed as a means of recording oral history, storytelling (epic poetry), genealogy, law and other forms of expression or knowledge that modern societies might expect to be handled in prose. Poetry is also often closely identified with liturgy in these societies, as the formal nature of poetry makes it easier to remember priestly incantations or prophecies. The greater part of the world's sacred scriptures are made up of poetry rather than prose.

Some writers believe that poetry has its origins in song. Most of the characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of utterance - rhythm, rhyme, compression, intensity of feeling, the use of refrains - appear to have come about from efforts to fit words to musical forms. However, in the European tradition, the earliest surviving poems, the Homeric and Hesiodic epics, identify themselves poems to be recited or chanted to a musical accompaniment rather than as pure song. Another interpretation, developed from 20th century studies of living Montenegran epic reciters by Milman Parry and others, is that rhythm, refrains, and kennings are essentially paratactic devices that enable the reciter to reconstruct the poem from memory.

In preliterate societies, all these forms of poetry were composed for, and sometimes during, performance. As such, there was a certain degree of fluidity to the exact wording of poems, given this could change from one performance or performer to another. The introduction of writing tended to fix the content of a poem to the version that happened to be written down and survive. Written composition also meant that poets began to compose not for an audience that was sitting in front of them but for an absent reader. Later, the invention of printing tended to accelerate these trends. Poets were now writing more for the eye than for the ear.

The development of literacy gave rise to more personal, shorter poems intended to be sung. These are called lyrics, which derives from the Greek lura or lyre, the instrument that was used to accompany the performance of Greek lyrics from about the seventh century B.C. onward. The Greeks practice of singing hymns in large choruses gave rise, in the sixth century B.C. to dramatic verse, and to the practice of writing poetic plays for performance in their theatres.

In more recent times, the introduction of electronic media and the rise of the poetry reading have led to a resurgence of performance poetry and have resulted in a situation where poetry for the eye and poetry for the ear coexist, sometimes in the same poem.

English poetry

The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in European culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in England (and, by extension, the United Kingdom), or poetry written in English.

The oldest poetry written in the area currently known as England was composed in Anglo-Saxon, a precursor to the English language that is not something a typical modern English-speaker could be expected to be able to read. In addition, there was a tradition of English poets writing also in Latin and classical Greek. Today's multicultural English society is likely to produce some interesting poetry written in a wide range of other languages, although such poetries are proving slow to emerge.

With the growth of British trade and the British Empire, the English language has been widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries, including the poetry of the United States, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly viewed as a separate area of study.

This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born or spending a significant part of their lives in the UK. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets who are not primarily British where appropriate.


The earliest English poetry

The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation written by Cædmon (fl. 658-680), an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This poem marks the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Although the great epic Beowulf has been dated on internal evidence to around 608, the next verifiable event in the history of English poetry is the writing of The Dream of the Rood, parts of which were carved on the Ruthwell Cross around 700. The most notable poems of the 8th century include Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana, all signed by Cynewulf. The second half of the 10th century saw the compilation of four important poetry manuscript volumes; Junius manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf manuscript and the composition of The Battle of Maldon, which tells the story of a battle between the English and the Danes in 991.

In addition to Beowulf and religious verse, Anglo-Saxon poetry encompasses poems of exile such as The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the magnificent elegy on the remains of Roman Bath called The Ruin, riddles and Medical charms. Although most surviving manuscript copies are written out in unbroken prose, scholars have been able to recreate the metrical structure. The poems were written in a particular form of alliterative verse. This form consists of a basic line of four beats or stressed syllables and an irregular number of unstressed ones. The line is broken by a caesura somewhere between the second and third stresses and the alliteration occurs on stressed syllables only.


The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages

With the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1066, the situation of Anglo-Saxon altered for good. The language continued to be spoken and written at least up to the early 15th century, producing such important poems as Layamon's late 12th century epic Brut, the so called Gawain poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and William Langland's magnificent Piers Plowman. However, Norman French became the language of political and legal power and of education. Given this state of affairs, remarkably little in the way of Norman French poetry of any note survives. Instead, the two languages merged over time to produce English and this language soon became the main vehicle for English poetry. In 1362, it also replaced French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law.

A number of early 14th century songs have survived in manuscripts including British Library Harley 2253. The first major poet in the new language was, however, John Gower. Born around 1330, Gower was a near contemporary of Langland. His Confessio Amantis is one of the key poems of the period. Gower's slightly younger contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, was probably the major English poet of the Middle Ages. Along with society of the time, he shared a European world view dominated by the Catholic Church and recently rediscovered Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, as well as Latin Church Fathers including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In the realm of poetry, this landscape was dominated by Virgil and Dante. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is one of the few contemporary poems to bear comparison with Dante's Divine Comedy.

The major English-born poets of the 15th century were John Lydgate, who is now best remembered for two works – Troy Book and The Siege of Thebes, and John Skelton. However, the century really belongs to a group of remarkable Scottish writers. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland. The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Henryson and, especially, Douglas introduced a note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bards, while Douglas' version of Virgil's Aeneid is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism in English.


The Renaissance in England

The Renaissance was slow in coming to insular Britain, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Reformation in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante.

The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of British humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience.

Two other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the Reformation and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the universe which resulted in the theories of Nicolas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler.


Early Renaissance poetry

With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that where transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry VIII, was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt was among the first poets to write sonnets in English.


The Elizabethans

The Elizabethan period in poetry is characterised by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments.



The 20th century

The first three decades

The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into the new. These were Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Yeats, although not a modernist, was to learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his writing to the new circumstances. Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions, especially from the 1950s onwards.


The Thirties

The poets who began to emerge in the 1930s had two things in common; they had all been born too late to have any real experience of the pre-World War One world and they grew up in a period of social, economic and political turmoil. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts, themes of community, social (in)justice and war seem to dominate the poetry of the decade.


The Forties

The war poets

The 1940s opened with Britain at war and a new generation of war poets emerged in response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T. Prince. As with the poets of the First World War, the work of these writers can be seen as something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting.


The Fifties

The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, The Movement, The Group and a number of poets that gathered around the label Extremist Art.



The 1960s and 1970s

In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Ireland, with the emergence of Heaney, Tom Paulin, Paul Muldoon and others. In Britain, the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous models.


English poetry now

The last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings such as the Martians. There was a growth in interest in women's writing and in poetry from Britain's ethnic groupings, especially the West Indian community. poets who emerged include Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Craig Raine, Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Blake Morrison, Grace Lake, Liz Lockhead, Grace Lake, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah. There was also a growth in performance poetry fuelled by the Poetry Slam movement. A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in the wake of the Revival grouping.

Despite all of this activity, major publishers dropped their poetry lists and both young and established writers became increasingly reliant on small and medium sized presses, generally dependent on State funding. As of 2004, it appears that a still thriving literature is faced with an ever-decreasing audience.

Old English poetry

Old English poetry is based upon one system of verse construction which was used for all poems. The system consisted of five permutations on a base verse scheme; any one of the five types could be used in any verse. The system is founded upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. The system was inherited and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic languages; it is generally called alliterative verse.

It should be borne in mind that poetry of the time was primarily oral, and much has been lost through time since it went unrecorded. The poet, referred to as a Scop, was frequently accompanied by a harp in the process of declamation.



Accent

A line of poetry in Old English consists of two half-lines or verses, distichs, with a pause or caesura in the middle of the line. Each half-line has two accented syllables. The following example from The Battle of Maldon (poem), spoken by the warrior Byrhtwold shows this:

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,

mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað

Translated Courage must be the greater, heart the bolder, Spirit the greater, the more our strength is diminished.


Alliteration

Alliteration is the principal binding agent of Old English poetry. Two syllables alliterate when they begin with the same sound; all vowels alliterate together, but the consonant clusters st-, sp- and sc- are treated as separate sounds (so st- does not alliterate with s- or sp-).

The first stressed syllable of the off-verse, or second half-line, usually alliterates with one or both of the stressed syllables of the on-verse, or first half-line. The second stressed syllable of the off-verse does not usually alliterate with the others.


Other features common in Old English poetry

Kennings, figurative phrases, often formulaic, describe something in terms of another, e.g. in Beowulf, the sea is called the swan's road. Litotes, a figure of speech which is dramatically understated, is frequently employed, often with ironic intent and effect.


The Old English poetic corpus

The longest, and most important, Old English poem is Beowulf, which survived in a single damaged manuscript. It tells the story of the legendary Geatish hero who is the title character. The story is set in Scandinavia, in either Sweden or Denmark, and the tale likewise probably is of Scandinavian origin. The story sets the tone for much of the rest of Old English poetry, as the hero knows that he is doomed to die in one last battle, yet marches off to meet his fate. The complex interplay between this Germanic heroic warrior ethos and the new religion of Christianity is a theme that is touched on many times in Old English poetry.

In addition to Beowulf, other Old English heroic verse exists in fragments. The tale of the Battle of Maldon likewise tells of the last stand of Byrhtnoth and his band of doomed warriors. Within Beowulf itself, the tale of the Fight at Finnsburg is told as a digression. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserves a poem on the Battle of Brunanburh.

Related to the heroic tales are the elegies for the fallen and the foredoomed from the Exeter Book. Most closely related to the heroic genre is Widsith, which contains a catalogue of names and places associated with valiant deeds. More consistenly gloomy or contemplative in mood are The Ruin, which tells of the decay of a once glorious city of Roman Britain (Britain fell into decline after the Romans departed in the early 5th c.), and The Wanderer, in which an older man talks about an attack that happened in his youth, where his close friends and kin were all killed; memories of the slaughter have remained with him all his life. He questions the wisdom of the impetuous decision to engage a possibly superior fighting force: the wise man engages in warfare to preserve civil society, and must not rush into battle but seek out allies when the odds may be against him. This poet finds little glory in bravery for bravery's sake.

Old English poetry, along with other early Germanic literatures, often seeks to recast the tales of Christianity into the older heroic ethos. The fit was not always perfect, but the very tension between the two visions lends depth to both of them. Chief among these is the Dream of the Rood, which displays the passion of Jesus Christ in a manner that may owe much to the depiction of Odin in the Old Norse Hávamál. Other long poems in this genre include the Andreas, Juliana, and Elene, which depict the lives of various saints. A hagiography of Saint Guthlac is also given a poetic treatment. The corpus also includes poetic paraphrases of the Book of Daniel, Exodus, and the apocryphal tale of Judith.

In addition to these long poems, there are a number of collections of shorter poems. There are many Old English poetic riddles; these are important also because they shed light on the kennings used in Germanic literatures generally. The curious dialogue between Solomon and Saturn belongs among these as well; the two ancient characters discuss much curious lore, including the runic alphabet. There are also a number of magic charms preserved in the literature, a metaphorical poem about the Phoenix, and Alfred the Great's translation of the Meters by Boethius. Caedmon's nine-line hymn of creation is the oldest surviving text in English.

List of Old Poems and Poetry

A

* Aeneid - Virgil (1st century BC)
* The Age of Anxiety - W. H. Auden (1948)
* The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797 -1798)
* And did those feet in ancient time - William Blake
* Aniara (Verse novel) - Harry Martinson (1956)
* Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen (1917)
* Argonautica - Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC)

B

* Battle of Maldon (10th century)
* - John Keats (1819)
* Beowulf (10th century)

C

* Cad Goddeu - attrib. Taliesin (6th century)
* Casey at the Bat - Ernest Thayer (1888)
* Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning (1855)
* The Conqueror Worm - Edgar Allan Poe

D

* Dies Irae (Hymn) - Thomas of Celaeno (13th century)
* The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri (1307-1321)
* Don Juan - Lord Byron (1821)
* Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold (1867)
* Dream of the Rood
* Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen (1917)

E

* ''Endymion (1818)
* Eugene Onegin (Verse novel) - Alexander Pushkin

F

* The Faerie Queene - Edmund Spenser
* Fata Morgana - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
* Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas
* On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - John Keats
* ''Flen flyys Anon. fifteenth century

G

* Gayatrimantra (Verse from hymn)
* Epic of Gilgamesh
* Gododdin - Aneirin
* The Golden Gate (Verse novel) - Vikram Seth
* Grimnismal - attrib. Saemund
* Grogaldr

H

* ''Hadda be Playin' on a Jukebox - Allen Ginsberg
* Havamal
* Hiawatha - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855)
* ''High Flight - John Gillespie Magee, Junior
* The House On The Hill (poem) - Edwin Arlington Robinson 1922
* Howl - Allen Ginsberg (1955)
* The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll
* Hyperion (poem) - John Keats
* Hymn to Proserpine - Algernon Swinburne (1866)

I

* I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth
* Idylls of the King - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
* If - - Rudyard Kipling (C.1895)
* Iliad - attrib Homer (c. 850 BC)
* In a Station of the Metro - Ezra Pound (1913)
* In Flanders Fields - John McCrae

J

* Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll (1871)
* Book of Job
* ''John Gilpin - William Cowper
* Judith - anon. Old English

K

* Kalevala - Elias Lönnrot (19th century)

L

* The Last Rose of Summer - Thomas Moore (c.1807)
* ''Leda and the Swan - William Butler Yeats (1929)
* Lenore - Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
* Lokasenna - attrib. Saemund
* The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (1917)

M

* Mahabharata
* The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake (1790-1793)
* Metamorphoses - Ovid (1 AD)

N

* On the Nature of Things - Lucretius
* Nibelungenlied - Anon (13th century)

O

* Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats
* Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats (1819)
* Odyssey - attrib Homer
* - Nikos Kazantzakis (1938)
* Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto (1516)
* Orlando Innamorato - Matteo Maria Boiardo (1486)
* Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

P

* Pale Fire (Verse novel) - Vladimir Nabokov
* Pange Lingua (Hymn) - Thomas Aquinas
* Paradise Lost - John Milton
* Paradise Regained - John Milton
* Parlement of Foules -Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century)
* The Passionate Shepherd to His Love - Christopher Marlowe
* Pearl
* The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Robert Browning 1849
* Piers Plowman - William Langland (versions 1360-[1399]])
* ''Plutonian Ode - Allen Ginsberg
* The Prelude - William Wordsworth (posthumous publication in 1850)

R

* Ramayana - Valmiki (c.250 BC)
* ''Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope
* The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
* The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scott-Heron
* ''Roman de la Rose - Guillaume de Loris (c.1230), Jean de Meun (c.1275)

S

* ''The Second Coming - W. B. Yeats
* Skirnismal attrib. Saemund
* Song of Myself - Walt Whitman - (1855)
* The Song of Roland - Roland
* Song of Solomon - Solomon
* The Shahnameh - Ferdowsi (1000)
* Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
* Sir Orfeo - anon. c.1300
* Solomon and Saturn

T

* Theogony - Hesiod
* Thrymskvitha - attrib. Saemund
* The Tiger - William Blake, c.1793
* Tintern Abbey - William Wordsworth
* To a Louse - Robert Burns
* To Autumn - John Keats (1819)
* To His Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvell
* The Triumph of Time

V

* Vafthruthnismal attrib. Saemund
* Voluspa attrib. Saemund

W

* The Wanderings of Oisin - William Butler Yeats (1889)
* The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot (1922)

Example of Old Poetry and Poems

AFTER RAMAYANA

try those singular muscles, the easy ones first
just a few simple ideas - use small words -
don't worry about the spittle - see how they sit on paper
nobody's seen you do it, so go ahead
unembarrassed

don't worry overmuch
if you have nothing to say. did you ever
when you could never stop?
try a story!

what story?
any story. don't you know any stories?

I knew many. they were stories once. then they became real.
what's wrong with that?

how can you tell a story different from the way it happened?
and they all happened messily -
no storyline even by the time they finished
they bored even those who lived them
what's left in them?

you are left
awakening from long paralysis
won't it be fun to leap and wrestle
muscle words into shapes they would never accept?

I remember first when words were given to me
I used them to curse one who had destroyed
(what I thought) was supreme nature in
(what I thought) was momentary callousness
and exultance of power.
I killed then, not the first time I killed
and was overheard

- September 4,1986

umashankar manthravadi





RAMAYANA (the Jersey Version)

A few thousand years ago,
In a land no longer found,
The poet Valmiki climbed out of an ant hill,
And wrote the first poetic sound.

Twenty-five thousand verses long,
The poem's still going strong;
An epic allegory for human display,
Called 'Ramayana, '
Rama's Way.

Rama's King Father wanted Rama to be King;
Rama was to rule everything,
But be it illusion, or be it real,
The Dharma wheel is stronger than steel.

And the Bears would sing:
We fight that's all;
We fight worse than ever;
We will fight til we die,
And feel no pain.

We fight that's all,
We fight worse than ever;
We fight til we die;
There's no surrender.

Rama was exiled fourteen years;
His coronation turned to tears,
Cos his Daddy made a deal a long time ago,
Push came to shove,
And Rama had to go.

His brother went with him;
So did his wife,
His brother, his defender,
And Sita, the love of his life.

I'm not going into all the names,
But a lot of heroes went up in flames,
Brought on by a war that should never have been,
The result of Ravana's sin.

Ravana,
Ravana -the Demon King.

Ravana, who was no friend of Time,
With his Empire in Lanka,
His riches, women and wine,
With his armies,
With his weapons,
And his magic in the mix,
He took out Heaven,
Just for kicks.

And to Ravana, Sita was,
A ten mind bender,
With her breasts so full,
Waist so slender,
With eyes so dark,
Skin so gold,
Her Mother was Earth,
Or so it's told.

His ten heads thought Sita a must,
So he kidnapped the Goddess;
He did it for lust.

Ravana made a deal with the Gods long ago;
He used to lop off his heads,
Just to give 'em a show;
They blessed him and told him,
He couldn't be killed,
By any other God,
Which gave him the thrill,
Of wiping out Heavenly Hosts by hand;
To retalliate,
The Gods sent Rama,
As a man.

'Ramayana, ' Rama's Way.

Valmiki's war version
Took thousands of pages,
Full of majesty, miracles,
Monkeys and sages,
But the bridge to the tale,
From darkness to light,
Was Hanuman, Son of the Wind,
A Monkey of White.

Hanuman, Son of the Wind.

Leaping the sea, like eternaty,
Hanuman, Son of the Wind,
Leaping to Lanka,
Discovering Sita,
And there the war would begin.

An animal army of Monkeys and Bears
Against a Demon Army with all their wares.

We fight
That's all,
We fight worse than ever;
We fight til we die,
And we feel no pain...

Truth upholds this earth;
Truth makes fire burn;
Truth upholds our birth,
And Death, as we turn;
Truth makes the sunshine,
Makes the ocean kiss the shore;
Lies... lies make war.

So as the sun rose
With all its charms,
Monkeys and Bears
Died in each other's arms,

And Demons by the millions
Also died in the sun;
Such was the price
For the war to be won.

And the North wind swirled,
And it blew out the light,
As Gods gathered
To witness the fight.

Ravana in armor
Woven in black,
Readied himself,
For Rama's attack.

A brief history of Rama:
Before he was a guy,
He was the God Vishnu.
You could tell he was different,
His color was blue.

Ravana used rain,
As part of his attack.
If you cut off his head,
He'd just grow it on back.

Rockets collided
With Ravana's mace,
Till Rama pulled out
A bamboo case.

Inside was a God sent arrow alone,
One that could rend gateways to stone;
Rama thought, 'Kill him I curse, '
The bow string rang the whole universe,
And the arrow stuck in Ravana's heart,
And there, flesh and spirit tore apart.

All was still...
No one said a word...
No tide in the ocean...
Nothing stirred,
And nothing
Was left,
Worth fighting for,
And so,
Ended
The wreckage...
Of the war.

Now it gets a little checkered and dicey at the end,
Everybody figured Ram and Sita were friends,
But he abandoned her one day in the weeds.
He did it for the people;
He did it for their needs.

And that's where Valmiki, the Poet comes in,
Climbing out of his ant hill,
He saved Sita then;
He kept the girl from jumping
Into the water by the shore;
He took care of her,
And the twins she bore.

And he taught those twins to sing
His twenty-five thousand verse song;
They sang it to Rama,
At a gig that took a year;
Everyone gathered 'round for the 'Ramayana Song'
And to Hanuman, the Song brought a tear;
He was thinking about Sita... Sita.

Rama figured out those twins had to be his,
So he sent for Sita at a moment of bliss;
She showed up at the gig for what it was worth,
And then she dropped out of sight,
With her old Mother Earth.

Everybody thought it was a little bit strange
To see Rama smile;
Everybody thought it was a little bit strange,
To see him take a cup of wine,
But he knew he would see her after a while;
He knew it was just a matter of time,

Because Sita was a form of Lakshmi,
And Rama was Vishnu too,
Eternally together, forever intertwined,
Doin' them things:
Gods and Goddesses do.

He knew as the clock ticks away,
He and lovely Sita,
Would be together someday.

And we...

We fight, that's all;
We fight worse than ever;
We fight till we die,
And feel no pain.

We fight;
That's all;
We fight worse than ever
We fight til we die,
There's no surrender.

richard jarboe



MAHABHARATA

The world wanders in ruins -
Evanescent wonders seven - incessantly inundated
By tortous roars
The seven seas converge at the edge
Of apocalypse

Pulse on the waves to the
Indestructible edifice
Where in the ancient temple
The scroll is unrolled
I will cruise on the pursuit
To the sacred ganges
Where the river will gurgle the eternal songs.

Decked with epic grandeur
I have to wander from shore to shore
I have to plunge into strange depths
Be blinded by alien motes
For the voice etched on rocks.

Kojo Owusu



The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (excerpt)

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of
eternity, too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or too much.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)