For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  Rhyme’s threat to reason safely on the side

  Of lies or nonsense. Poetry they deem

  Unfit to warrant reason’s bona fide

  Enforced by sundry variants on the theme

  Of “logic rules,” in which case woe betide

  The poets, sophists, and their suspect team

  Of word-artificers. Though they replied,

  That other lot, with boosts of self-esteem

  Renaissance or Romantic in their style

  Of counter-claim, the old charge never quite

  Lost its presumptive right to put on trial

  Whatever seeming truths the poet might

  Rhapsodically convey and so beguile

  The reader as to win assent despite

  Their better judgment. Thus the logophile

  Is torn both ways, between the sovereign right

  Of logos—that of reason as the one

  And only self-legitimizing source

  Of truthful speech—and all the logoi spun

  By word-spell weaving poets in the course

  Of that old logomachia once begun

  By Plato versus Homer. So the force

  Of dialectic’s marshalled first to stun

  Its rival, then impose the strict divorce

  That kept the logos properly apart

  From all those errant word-games that betrayed

  The tricksy essence of the poet’s art

  As simply what allowed them to persuade

  The credulous and bid them take to heart

  Some pseudo-truth or argument gainsaid

  By a mere moment’s thought. Yet here we’ll start,

  Perhaps, to wonder if the points thus made

  In reason’s cause by reason’s favoured sorts

  Of argument, especially points scored

  At poetry’s expense, might signal thought’s

  Old hedgehog tendency to take on board

  Whatever prickly strategy purports

  To keep it safely curled up and afford

  Protection when some metaphor distorts

  The proper sense of things. What they ignored,

  Those hard-line literalists, was that which lay

  Within the poets’ gift and might require

  The kind of impropriety that they

  Turned to advantage, yet with no such dire

  Mind-blowing consequences as dismay

  The heirs of Plato whose own texts aspire

  To a plain style whereby to keep at bay

  Poetic language-games. Else these might fire

  Strange passions of the kind that Plato kept,

  Or tried to keep, beneath prosaic wraps

  Yet hidden in plain view because they leapt

  Off every page in metaphors or gaps

  Of reasoning. The heirs find these inept

  Or blame them on some momentary lapse

  From logic’s rule while poet-types accept

  That they’re the sort of word-event that taps

  Into some language-region quite unknown

  To the plain-sense brigade, or into some

  As yet unregimented meaning-zone

  Where echoes of an ancient quarrel come

  Once more to haunt our thoughts. “What must be shown,

  Not said” would surely strike the logos dumb,

  According to Saint Ludwig, though his own

  Vast Nachlass might suggest he failed to plumb

  Such silent depths. The issue takes a whole

  New spin when Socrates, near death, avows

  That poetry and music charm the soul

  More deeply than philosophy allows,

  That maybe logic’s steely thought-control

  Has failed him, and that therefore he’ll espouse,

  In his short time remaining, the new role

  Of one whom flute and poem can arouse

  To heights of ecstasy unglimpsed by those,

  His former self among them, who’d decree

  Such pleasures alien to the sober prose

  Of philosophic discourse. Here we see

  What happens when one language-party goes

  Its own way, touts itself as master-key

  To truth, and claims sole warrant to disclose

  All that’s worth knowing to the devotee

  Of that vocation. Poetry, and they’ll

  Appeal to image, metaphor, and all

  The ways that poems manage to unveil

  Truths that deliver us from logic’s thrall;

  Philosophy, and likely they’ll avail

  Themselves of some device to reinstall

  Sound logic as thought’s organon and fail-

  Safe method for ensuring one not fall

  Into some latest version of the same

  Linguistic-logical confusions that,

  Conversely, guaranteed one’s language-game

  Turn out nonsensical. Applied off pat

  By partisans each creed distributes blame

  And praise by harking back to the old spat

  Billed “Plato versus Homer” in the name

  Of some high calling destined to fall flat

  On the sharp ears of those whose temperament

  Found ample room not only for the kinds

  Of intellectual stimulus that went

  With exercise of thought for agile minds

  But also for how how poets may invent

  New ways to see beyond whatever blinds

  The stubborn literalist or represent

  New worlds beyond the habitude that binds

  Our dulled perception to the fixed routine

  Of common usage. Yet it’s still a touch

  Too pat, too neat, let’s say, too squeaky-clean

  As well as sub-Hegelian if such

  A happy settling for the in-between

  Of those twin poles becomes a straw to clutch

  Hopefully at for poet-thinkers keen

  That their allegiance seem not over-much

  Committed either way. Perhaps we’d best

  Be less accommodating, more up-front

  Or confrontational if we’re to test

  The poet’s claim to truth and not just shunt

  That issue off into a siding lest

  Those gibes of Plato turn into such blunt

  And heavy instruments that, in the quest

  For virtue, poetry should bear the brunt

  Of every charge that reason ever brought

  Against its foes. They ranged from those it cast

  As idiots or muddle-heads untaught

  In logic’s ways to those it roundly classed

  As gross corruptors of the laws of thought

  And hence—the jury verdict goes—as past

  All hope of somehow learning to comport

  Themselves with more sagacity at last

  Once freed from the delusion that led Keats,

  Absurdly, to promote “beauty is truth,

  Truth beauty” as a formula that meets

  Truth’s minimal demands, or take such sooth-

  Saying twaddle as a dictum that defeats

  The cold abstractions of the logic-sleuth

  By mere word-magic. Yet if this one cheats

  The reader by implying “how uncouth

  To raise such logic-chopping points when there’s

  So much of truth and beauty to be had

  From heartfelt paradox,” the question bears

  More pondering when to Keats’s lines you add

  Celan’s rebuke to anyone who errs

  So far as to metaphorize the bad

  Reality that hits us unawares

  Through facts and dates that leave the reader glad

  To find a refuge in the usual view

  Of poetry as handily dispensed

  From rules of plain truth-telling. So if you

  Take them as less-than-literal or ring-fenced,

  Those passages, by dint of some taboo

  On f
acts in poems you’ll run up against

  His imagery of smoke or ash as true

  In the most metaphorically condensed

  Yet brute or plain-prose sense. Else you’ll have failed

  Celan’s first test of readers well equipped

  To cope with everything that so assailed

  His memory that he must needs encrypt

  Its import not in some discreetly veiled

  Symbolic sense but rather in a script

  Whose chiaroscuro characters entailed

  A more prosaic reading duly stripped

  Of all such poetry as might distract

  Attention from whatever served to fix

  His literal intent. Plain statement backed

  By abstinence from anything that ticks

  The ‘poet’ box would, so he thought, bring fact

  Back with a vengeance and so knock for six

  Those figural contrivances that lacked

  The will to leave behind the bag of tricks

  Called “poetry.” Let exegetes refrain

  From their old pact with poets of a more

  Compliant character whose usual strain

  Of symbol, allegory, or metaphor

  Gives ample scope for comment in a vein

  Accordant with the freedom to explore

  New ways and means of finding some arcane

  Significance. This led them to ignore

  Such details as would tend, if taken straight

  Or strictly à la lettre, to exceed

  In power of utterance all that we equate,

  Us adepts of evasion, with the need

  That metaphor provide a buffer-state

  Between ourselves and things of which we read

  In its glass darkly so as to negate

  The shock of that which otherwise would feed

  Our darkest terrors. Evidence enough,

  You might think, for the prosecution line

  That has a poet like Celan say “Stuff

  Your poetry,” or anyway define

  His purpose as one long attempt to slough

  Off all that preciousness and re-assign

  The poet’s role as not just acting tough,

  Like vandals set to ruin culture’s shrine,

  Or speaking truth to power (though that’s no doubt

  A large part of it), but as what insists

  On writing things down literally without

  The verbal detours or the tropic twists

  That once permitted poetry to flout

  All the fine protocols that truth enlists

  On its side of this immemorial bout

  Of Denker versus Dichter. Though bare fists

  Have now been pocketed we’d better grant

  One point to those of Plato’s heirs for whom

  “Poetic truth” remains a phrase they can’t

  But find oxymoronic. If there’s room

  In poetry for sayings that enchant

  And elevate, still we should not presume

  Too readily that some alternate slant

  On kindred themes won’t conjure thoughts that loom

  Uncomfortably large across the long

  And still unfolding history of wars

  Provoked and waged through poetry and song

  From Homer down. There’s no crusade or cause

  So bad that bards won’t answer like a gong

  Or put their tender consciences on pause,

  Extol the right and castigate the wrong

  As if vouchsafed to them alone by laws

  Of natural justice allied to the gift

  For moral divination that ensures

  They judge aright when others go adrift.

  Yet it’s just this self-certainty that lures

  Them way off-course, like modernists who sniffed

  At all proposals save their drastic cures

  For Europe’s malady and gave short shrift

  To wiser, more pacific overtures

  Of truth to power that grasped at neither horn

  Of the old fake dilemma. This demands

  “Under which king, Bezonian?,” holds in scorn

  All thought of compromise, and understands

  By “truth” a mode of discourse either shorn

  Of metaphor or such that it expands

  To fill all history with fictions born

  In those mytho-poetic hinterlands

  Where Yeatsian portents of apocalypse

  And Pound’s cage-rattling Rapallo tirades

  Still echo. So imagination tips

  Too quickly into conjuring the shades

  Of ancient warriors or running clips

  From epic movies till the war-brigades

  Recall some face that launched a thousand ships

  And once again its poetry invades

  Mind, heart and culture. Then the poet’s job

  Is clear enough: keep stoking the old fires,

  Rework those tropes that mobilised the mob,

  Devize whatever myths the age requires,

  And be prepared once in a while to lob

  A metaphoric bombshell that inspires

  The arty types unwilling to hob-knob

  With those whose truth-preservative desires

  Encourage a more literalist approach

  To any narrative of war and its

  Brute consequences. These require we broach

  The matter in a way that closely fits

  The factual evidence lest myth encroach

  On history by deleting all the bits

  That don’t so fit and making sure to coach

  Its adepts with the self-assembly kits

  In fiction’s user-guide. That says: though res

  Gestae should not be mixed up with historia

  Rerum gestarum, still the many ways

  Of plot-construction—from sic transit gloria

  To Whiggish narratives—suggest it pays

  To shop around in various emporia,

  Peruse the range of story-lines, and raise

  The joint claim of poiesis and theoria

  To new-found heights. Then it may well forego

  That quaint idea of segregating what

  Old-style historia takes itself to know

  On factual warrant arduously got

  By long research and what its methods owe

  To all the deft contrivances of plot

  And discourse. Hence the shrewdly managed flow

  Of narrative events that shows we’re not

  Here in the hands of a historian whose

  First obligation is to get things right

  On Clio’s terms, but one for whom the muse

  Of poetry requires that they should write

  Such tales as a skilled dramatist might choose

  So as first to astonish, then delight

  (A classic formula) and thus infuse,

  In good Horatian style, some pleasing flight

  Of fancy into history’s bitter pill

  Of factual discipline. Yet who’ll deny

  The counter-claim: that some war-poets’ skill

  In verse-technique or plentiful supply

  Of metaphor can’t hide the strength of will

  It took to get those poems out and vie

  With other poets’ efforts to instil

  A jingo-creed. This prompted some to die

  Like cattle, and the others first to kill

  Then die like prize-bulls led to slaughter by

  The far from un-poetic power to thrill

  Responsive temperaments in those whose high-

  Toned rhetoric promised swiftly to fulfil

  Their inchoate desires. Although we try,

  Like this, to sort poetic good from ill

  As if the crucial difference must lie

  In some marked feature that the standard drill

  Of Eng Lit Crit should help us to descry

  With reasonable accuracy, still

  The case
is apt to baffle or defy

  (As here) our need to answer it until,

  As theories fail, we’re left to satisfy

  The need for grist to our vexatious mill

  With poems no high tone can overfly.

  A BROKEN MUSIC

  This poem has to do with the disputed place of rhyme and meter in a literary culture routinely doubtful of their continuing claims on the serious attention of anyone alive to the poetic Zeitgeist. It reflects on the uses of off-rhyme, half-rhyme, quasi-rhyme and their sundry relatives in the poetry of anti-war “war poets” like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and suggests—argues!—that rhyme and metre are resources that poetry had better hang on to in however pointedly deviant or off-key a form. The last few stanzas give the briefest of airings to my notion that the turn against them in poetry has a good deal in common with the proclaimed obsolescence of tonality as urged in the more dogmatic quarters of post-Schoenberg musical modernism. On my own principles there shouldn’t be too much difference—certainly not a logic-bending or argument-slackening difference—between getting a case to work out cogently in prose and getting it to work out persuasively in verse. Still there had better be enough difference in the way the two things are done for the verse to count as poetry for at least some of the time.

  “A Broken Music” rather pushes its luck in that respect, not least—in what I’d like to call a piece of large-scale structural irony—by using perfect rather than off- or half-rhymes throughout. This goes, albeit obliquely, to underline the poem’s point: that the latter devices work best (are most strongly motivated and justified) in contexts of extreme conflict, stress, or emotional pressure like that of Owen’s war poetry.

  Sassoon and Owen told it like it was.

  None of your fine uplifting stuff for those

  Who’d been there, seen the worst, and then—because

  Of what they’d seen—wrenched language to expose

  The old lie these two nailed. Stuff your applause,

  Their off-rhymes said, for the false art that goes

  Into a well-bred verse-technique and draws

  High praise for its devices to keep prose,

  Along with factual reportage, at bay,

  So showing its rapt readership (by grace

  Of flawless rhyme and meter) the best way