12/5/2017 9:41:59 PM
Douglas Cate
Posts: 3
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Before I start, before I ask my query, I would like to post all or a portion of this poem that I've tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to post about six times today. Here it is, then:
"This dread disease that has afflicted my home,
This malady, this plague on my house;
This making convertible the former quaintness and provincialism thereof
Into something wholly despicable and disgustingly homogeneous,
Yclept "cosmopolitanism," and "worldliness," and "globalization,"
(Or, perhaps "globalism");
That force of rude power that recognizes no potency but that of itself;
The rising tide of puissant, unfocused destruction that threatens to sweep away all, I damn it herewith And herein!
Let it be damned, forever damned!
It is as a marauding force, the soldiery of a vast empire, invading and occupying
My home, my home! O, my poor, beleaguered, inoffensive home!
Nothing done by it ever to any man, woman or child, but an influx of new citizens
Have poisoned the blood thereof, and the body
And the soul and the mind,
And the now-infected heart!
They eat away at it like some horrid corrosive acid!
These many paths, where once I trod, half of them are gone, stripped of
Their hearty, healthful, verdure and turned into dwelling-places,
Habitations, abodes of the damned for the cosmopolitan hordes who have
Descended en masse upon this once-fair city.
Edifices treasured in my youth are destroyed and swept away,
Leaving behind only the ashen remnant; or else transformed into
Something wholly unrecognizable.
Little wharves that lined the verge of the littoral precincts of the community,
These are now wholly disfigured by the dread, ravenous
Affliction of cosmopolitanism and homogeneity.
Where are the streets I used to tread?
Where are the thoroughfares and climes of my remembrance?
Where the environs I most enjoyed, through the breadth of which I
Rambled and cavorted?
'Twas a working port...a place to indolence unknown, and but
Little visited by the scourge of idleness.
Sparta has become Athens, and yet I do not rejoice over the Attic change! Would that the artistic and Cosmopolitan Athenian would become the
Toilsome, industrious and warlike Spartan again!
(Never did I think I'd e'er utter those words, but yet I have,
And I would fain reiterate them)
The character of the sun has changed, too...evolved into something
Indistinguishable, hidden, darkened, candlelit and moonlighted.
The sun is a potent, overwhelming sidereal body of aureate light and burning gas, and the moon is but a turgid, opaque, lacteal and weak thing.
And yet, which one now reigns o'er all that that once I loved and in
Which once I was proud to yclept my dwelling-place?"
Now, that is my poem, one about the land of my nativity and youth and the homogenizing amid the rigors of cosmopolitanism that are afflicting and prostrating it right now and for the past 19 years. And, I esteem it quite good, if a bit rambling and discursive, which all my (and the very best) poems are.
But the question is this: What is it about this poem that makes it, even with a number of edits and expurgations, erasures and deletions, what is it that makes it so impossible to post? Why do the great and almighty personages and dignitaries at PS have such a hard time endowing to it the boon of life, of liberty and of proliferation, of publicity? Why is this troika of endowments being denied to my mere little species of poetry? Never has this right been refused to any other of my poems, unless it be over some sort of abstruse, minute regulatory points such as number of characters used or something like that; and yet this poem has been denied all those rights that never any of mine hitherto were.
So I reiterate: Why? The whole crucial question here is, why? I simply fail to comprehend why, save perhaps for the lengthiness of the title (which I have since repeatedly shortened to the point, almost, of sheer obscureness and incomprehensibility, and all to no avail), that this poem has not yet been published. Not to mention the fact that it's a good deal more structured and focused than most of my other poetic meanderings. It is cohesive, coherent, affixed to and a component of an abiding and overarching theme and whole. It is, in a word, poetically speaking, almost perfect. Certainly it is a more sublime article of poetry than any others I've yet written on here. So I still fail to understand why it's being denied. There must be a reason, a factor, a point that negates its existence and publishing, but what?
edited by acanticleithinkibe on 12/5/2017
edited by acanticleithinkibe on 12/5/2017
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12/30/2019 10:37:57 PM
J P Marmaro
Posts: 9
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Hi
The problem may be as simple as your use of "damned"-- perhaps the related condemned would be less off-putting. The overall tone is rather angry, but then, lots of poetry is angry... I don't imagine the length by itself is a problem (I've come across longer poems here).
By the bye, yclept is an archaic past participle, still used in Middle English -- Chaucer, for example -- though already it shared the stage with a-clept and cleped -- both of which also are found in Chaucer. (It means "called" or "named"). I don't recall it in later works, such as in Shakespeare, though it may survive yet in one obscure British dialect or another. In any case, it's a tad jarring in a modern English context (though I have nothing against not-too-archaic or so called "obsolete" words, per se). And I am afraid that I must point out that your use of yclept in the final sentence, in any case, is inescapably erroneous-- you'd need to use the infinitive, which would be to clepe. {But I really think you should just say "call" or "name".) (I must confess I feel the same about old-fashioned poetic tropes like o'er -- or e'er, e'en, or 'tis -- unless specifically going for an old-fashioned diction.)
Best wishes for the new year!
JP Marmaro
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