But that doesn't mean we can't take on antiquity, nor that we shouldn't.
You'll be relieved to know that I'm not going to ask you to translate any of those pieces! You can try that if you like. But I do think we all might benefit from stepping back from our daily cares--our viruses and injustices and politics and economics--to explore the ancient world in a poem. Or to be more precise, to engage with a classical personage.
Here are some guidelines:
- No fictional characters, like Achilles or Athena. Instead find yourself a figure with some historical record, however slight or compromised, someone we know lived. And though you could engage with a fellow poet, you could also take on some other personage like Julius Caesar, or Averroes. Imagine writing a poem in conversation with or about a moment in the life of Sinnecharib, the Abyssinian king (d. 681 BC), or perhaps even more intriguing, his wife, Naqi-a? Was she queen, partner, spouse, all of these?
- The classical period only. This means figures of ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, Alexandria, Peking, Japan, Mayan culture, even Saxons and Celts, Vikings and Visigoths, ancient Palestine. You might have some interest in ancient Eskimos or Ethiopians, but make it "ancient," by which I mean, before Europe and the Ottoman Empire and colonialism.
- You can write a poem that is an address to this person, that seeks to explode some myth about the biography, that invents something about him or her, puts the ancient into a different context (even anachronistically, if you wish). You should try to be faithful to something about the person, to recognize that he or she existed. What I ask you to avoid is writing simple, straight biography: Xerxes lived here and did this, etc. That's just googling. Engage.
How about a poem to Ghengis Khan or Buddha or Sappho? How about a poem in conversation with Aristophanes, Homer, Virgil? Or maybe a poem of Xerxes, the Venerable Bede, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilot, Mary Magdalene, Ruth (was she real?). Forget Plutarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer. Nor does your subject have to be famous; just documented in some way, so that we know the person existed.
For instance, how much do we really know about Jesus? This means, no poems about Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior, but maybe a poem about Jesus the dissident? On this particular subject, you might find Browning's poem "A Death in the Desert" instructive. It's long, as Browning poems often are, especially the dramatic monologues, but this one speaks exactly to what this project addresses--trying to peel back the myths that surround some of our most cherished stories.
Tennyson wrote an almost good poem about Ulysses in his dotage.
Okay, your objective is hopeless. You'll never reveal the real person. You weren't there! But that's not the point of the project. The project is for you to engage with your subject differently than the party line. I've included below some examples of poets engaging in more or less this way, just to get you started. Some deal with recognizable public figures, some with obscure ones. All speak imaginatively to or of their subjects.
The Cucumbers of Praxcilla of Sicyon
--Jack Gilbert
What is the best we leave behind?
Certainly love and form and ourselves.
Surely those. But it is the mornings
that are hard to relinquish, and music
and cucumbers. Rain on trees, empty
piazzas in small towns flooded with sun.
What we are busy with doesn't make us
groan ah! ah! as we will for the nights
and the cucumbers.
Note: Praxcilla of Sicyon was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th Century BC. Only five fragments of her work survive, plus three complete poems that are paraphrases of her work. She invented a form of dactyllic meter later named for her (so she left an impression on the world beyond the fragments and paraphrases!). A dactyl is a metrical sequence of one stressed foot followed by two unstressed feet. "Cucumbers" is dactyllic. In fact, discounting the barely voiced "The" of the title of this lovely poem by Jack Gilbert, the classicist poet, the title is a sequence of dactyls. In honor of an inventor of a variety of them?
Zeno, and his like
--Norman McCaig
When Achilles, furious
for having let himself get mixed up
in such a ridiculous affair,
passed the tortoise with his first stride,
he left behind, also,
stupid philosophy, that's been muttering
And yet . . . nevertheless . . . all the same . . .
ever since.
Note: McCaig, a Scots poet, is not writing about Achilles (out of bounds for our project); rather, he addresses the 5th Century BC philosopher Zeno and "his like," that is, all subsequent philosophers and philosophy in general. Zeno was known for formulating philosophical conundrums, of which the story of a race between Achilles and a tortoise is one. The formulation is this: if Achilles were to race a tortoise, and both were to start out at the same time, Achilles would "nevertheless" never catch up to the tortoise. Why not? Because 1) Achilles and the tortoise can not occupy the same space at the same time; and 2) Achilles and the tortoise each will proceed to only one place or point in the race at one time, and therefore will in the end occupy the same number of places (this is so because for every moment that Achilles is somewhere along the race course, the tortoise is also somewhere along the same course). As the philosopher Bertrand Russell noted, this formula is strictly correct in an axiomatic way, though absurd in any factual way. Thus, like Russell, McCaig thumbs his nose at the philosophers.
Apollonius of Tyana in Rhodes
--C. P. Cavafy
Apollonius was talking about proper
education and conduct with a young man
who was constructing a luxurious house
in Rhodes. "As for me," the Tyanian said in the end,
"when I enter a temple, however little it
may be, I would much rather look at
a statue made of ivory and gold,
than see, in a large temple, a vulgar statue of clay."
The "clay" and the "vulgar," the detestable,
that already knowingly deceive a good many
(without enough training). The "clay" and the "vulgar."
Note: Apollonius was a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, whose story paralleled or mimicked the Christ stories. Like Jesus, Apollonius apparently counseled poverty and humility, and scolded riches, power, and pomp. Unlike Jesus, Apollonius was not worshipped or made into a god, but instead revered as an all-knowing philosopher. This didn't prevent the Roman powers from comparing the two, with Apollonius always coming out the better and more "Roman," as no doubt he was. Cavafy's poem picks up on this tension between good works and "proper" tradition, in which Apollonius represents the status quo. Behind this, of course, lies the story of Jesus, the destabilizer.
Liu Ch'e
--Ezra Pound
The rustling of the silk is discontinued,
Dust drifts over the court-yard,
There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves
Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:
A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
Note: Liu Che lived around 167 BCE and was Emperor Wu of Han, during one of the longest reigns and greatest expansions of Chinese dynastic history. Beyond expanding the borders of empire, Lui Che is noted for establishing Confucianism as a "state" philosophy or religion (i.e., set of beliefs and rules for living), and for supporting the arts, poetry and music especially. What's interesting about the Pound poem is that it doesn't address Liu Che or tell us anything about him, but rather creates a charged image of the artistic sensibility Liu Che made possible. The poem is all sound and motion, smell and touch.
The Man Who Married Magdalene
--Louis Simpson
The man who married Magdalene
Had not forgiven her.
God might pardon every sin . . .
Love is no pardoner.
Her hands were hollow, pale and blue,
Her mouth like watered wine.
He watched to see if she were true
And waited for a sign.
It was old harlotry, he guessed,
That drained her strength away,
So gladly for the dark she dressed,
So sadly for the day.
Their quarrels made her dull and weak
And soon a man might fit
A penny in the hollow cheek
And never notice it.
At last, as they exhausted slept,
Death granted the divorce,
And nakedly the woman leapt
Upon that narrow horse.
But when he woke and woke alone
He wept and would deny
The loose behavior of the bone
And the immodest thigh.
Note: this strange, atmospheric poem may or may not tell the "after-story" of Mary Magdalene, the woman who traveled with and supported Jesus' ministry, was among the first to discover his empty tomb, and the first to witness the resurrection. Historically, the name Magdalene (which comes from Mary's provenance--her father was King Cyrus of Magdala), has meant "reformed prostitute." Since Simpson places the name in the title and the first line, the various associations seem invited and obvious. The form of the poem is ballad, that is, narrative storytelling in rhymed quatrains, a form which Simpson excelled at partly for its possibilities for irony and social comment, which seems to be the case here.
A Grand Pact
--Clark Holtzman
Two a.m. Give up, get up, pad
into the library for something to read.
On a wall the pennant imprinted
with a Du Mu poem, circa 850,
from a Guangzhou tourist shop
about going up the hill to some small
assignment or other, up the ravines,
up the treacherous riprap to here--
the summit of a man.
Du Mu, once a licensed snoop
and censor, once Rectifier
of the Omission of the Left, once Vice
Director of the Catering Bureau,
once Director of Merit Titles: always
minor functionary, failure.
Going up that hill, read frost
on the wispy beard, read the litter
for hire rocking monotonously
side to side, and read bemusement
at the oaths of the mulish porters.
Up, into the red-leaved maples
and cold clouds.
Du Mu ponders the sum:
if not these unpromising things
and the poem already trying
to assert itself, what?
Satisfaction crawls a thigh
like a cold bead of sweat, like a flea.
Du Mu decides the summit
was never going to be anything
but this and the poem.
Under the weight of the clock
ticking on a bookshelf, I decide
something, too--we're simpatico,
this poet and I, and say softly
so as not to wake the sleeping,
you made it this far, at least,
up the hill as you should,
and that's saying something--
then pad back to bed.
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