11 January 21 Ars Poetic #03 YOU GOTTA LOVE A WRITER!

 

And so, we arrive at the third installment of Ars Poetica, Horace’s essay-like epistle wherein he writes about writing. His advice to poets and writers stands in good stead today. Let’s take a moment and revisit the evolutionary definition of Ars Poetica.

Perhaps, Horace considered Ars Poetica “just a letter,” but it’s possible a dash of ego is thrown in as he pontificates about the art of writing. Pontificate? You decide. After you read the excerpt below, you may have enough exposure to Horace to decide for yourself whether or not he considers himself a high-falutin’ expert, or if rather he’s a man of good heart just trying to share what he knows. We can’t ask him, nor peek over his shoulder as he composes. All we can do is read the man’s words, consider the hundreds of poets and other genre writers who have been inspired by his guidance, and if you are a writer or admire some writers, perhaps discover his historical influence on the art. Whatever you think, it’s a fact that Horace’s work is the foundation for the tradition of writing about writing. Dozens of writers across the centuries have taken up the burning brand and made their best efforts to grasp and extend this tradition. You gotta love these writers! (I think I’ve just violated several of Horace’s guidelines.)

But back to a review of the definition promised in the first paragraph. By strict definition, Ars Poetica’s focus is poetry, an explanation of and counsel on “the art of poetry.” The essential element of this skill is the meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem. As for purpose, Horace writes of the importance of delighting and instructing audiences, whereas, today, many poets state strongly that poems should be written for their own sake. This is a familiar saw in artistic circles of all the fine arts. But maybe we don’t gotta love the opinions of these writers?

As mentioned in last week’s post, writing about writing is no small endeavor. Why does a poet even take on such a difficult challenge? Perhaps one reason is that writing in general, and perhaps poetry in particular, are supremely hard, ego-daunting work. One has to have a true passion to make up for the often-related poverty, loneliness, and even depression that haunt those who wield the pen – or pound the keyboard. Is writing ever easy? Joyful? Fulfilling? For me and for the writers I know well, and those writers who have written autobiographies, the answers are “no,” “yes,” and “yes".

That’s why we keep on keepin’ on despite combats with the shadow of the blank page, the obstacles of bringing unity to a piece, and the circle of hell wherein the writer edits and proofs. (This last may be avoided, if one can afford to hire someone, and to trust them to do our work justice.) All that said, most writers – real writers – proficient in their skills or not – cannot not writer. It’s in our bones, our hearts, our choices of how to spend whatever time we can find to practice our beloved gift – a gift because no matter what others’ opinions may be of our work, we sit down – or if you are James Joyce lie down with large sheets of paper and crayons – and we write – for its own sake – for the art. That’s right, isn’t it? 

Third Excerpt from Horace’s Ars Poetica

In the choice of his words, too, the author of the projected poem must be delicate and cautious, he must embrace one and reject another: you will express yourself eminently well, if a dexterous combination should give an air of novelty to a well-known word. If it happens to be necessary to explain some abstruse subjects by new invented terms; it will follow that you must frame words never heard of by the old-fashioned Cethegi[1]: and the license will be granted, if modestly used: and the new and lately-formed words will have authority, if they descend from a Greek source, with a slight deviation. But why should the Romans grant to Plutus and Caecilius[2] a privilege denied to Virgil and Varius?[3]  Why should I be envied, if I have it in my power to acquire a few words, when the language of Cato[4] and Ennius[5] has enriched our native tongue, and produced new names of things? It has been, and ever will be, allowable to coin a word marked with the stamp in present request. As leaves in the woods are changed with the fleeting years; the earliest fall off first: in this manner words perish with old age, and those lately invented nourish and thrive, like men in the time of youth. We, and our works, are doomed to death: Whether Neptune, admitted into the continent, defends our fleet from the north winds, a kingly work; or the lake, for a long time unfertile and fit for oars, now maintains its neighboring cities and feels the heavy plow; or the river, taught to run in a more convenient channel, has changed its course which was so destructive to the fruits. Mortal works must perish: much less can the honor and elegance of language be long-lived. Many words shall revive, which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, if it be the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language.

 

Commentary
Oh, that word! That phrase! It’s right on the tip of my tongue. Unfortunately, the first word or phrase that comes to mind is usually not what we strive for. More likely it is a cliché; language so familiar that it has infiltrated our vocabularies and to an extent blotted out our creativity and facility with words.

As far as inventing words, the writer would do so with great care. In addition, language of an era used too much in that era can make a reader wince. Think of the 1920s: “bees knees” and “butt me",[6] or the 1960s: “cool man” and “bad ass” and “blitzed".

A different wrong turn can be coining new words, but this must be done with meticulous attention to the need for such creations. Words, like all things, are subject to change. This is reminiscent of the Buddhist concept of impermanence, i.e., nothing lasts; what arises will depart; arrivals are the beginning of departures, and so on. So, the fate of words.

 

ARS POETICA
Mónica Gomery

Whatever it was
I thought the end of my twenties

would amount to, I was wrong
about that. The end

of my twenties are about
death and the way death drapes

itself sparkling over our lives.
People are falling away

from us, people are peeling
and tumbling away.

The ground calls our names
in its sweet soil voice, the song

of our names rising up
from the ground like the smell

of hot bread lifting
out of its crust.

People are falling away
from us and I have come

to love the darkness of night
like I loved you, like a lover

whose eyes carve me
into the shape of myself

when they look. Everything
extraneous is burning away

but it is not graceful
it is a gift of sharp blade

the end of my twenties
is the surgeon survival

of death cutting back
what I no longer need.

Someone told me to speak
from my scars, not my wounds

which feels true when my body
leans away from the people

whose loved ones
are dying because I am

breathless when death
touches death in the night.

Is a wound too raw
to speak from?

I am sorry
your loved ones are peeling away

but really I
am not sorry.

At the end of my twenties I learned
that one single night can be as long

as a handful of years
that a wound is a story

that stories have names
and when I catalogue it

this night
will bear your name

alongside an index called
Kinds of Crying, which include:

Ecstatic, Furious, Longing,
Disbelief. Someone told me

to speak from my scars
not my wounds, which might explain why

I am not ready to converse with
the newly bereaved, because

when I bump into them in this long
crackling darkness my wound

heaves its great fist over my
tongue and only my eyes tell

the truth. When I catalogue it
this night will be called The End

Of My Childhood and
it will be called Our Beauty and Terror

it will be called
What We're Here To Do.

I'm not sure though if I agree
about the scars and the wounds

because at the end of my twenties
it is my hand reaching

into the mouth of the wound
to pull forth each word

to place it against the blank page
where it cools and solidifies

and isn't that maybe the way a scar
forms? And the sweet song

of the earth
beckoning

all of us
back.
 

Background
Mónica Gomery is a rabbi and poet, raised by her Venezuelan Jewish family in Boston and Caracas, and now living in Philadelphia. Her work explores queerness, diaspora, ancestry, theology, and cultivating courageous hearts. She is the author of Here is the Night and the Night on the Road (Cooper Dillon Books, 2018), and the chapbook Of Darkness and Tumbling (YesYes Books, 2017). Her poem “A poem with two memories of Venezuela” won the 2020 Minola Review Poetry Contest, judged by Doyali Islam. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist in the Cutthroat Journal Joy Harjo Poetry Contest. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including most recently Frontier, Foglifter, Ninth Letter, Interim, Tinderbox, and Canthius.
 

Exploration 1: What do you think of the idea that a poem should be written for its own sake and not for any particular audience?

Exploration 2: “As leaves in the woods are changed with the fleeting years; the earliest fall off first: in this manner words perish with old age, and those lately invented nourish and thrive, like men in the time of youth.” This is one of three examples of metaphor from today’s Horace excerpt. Think about his use and the effect of using such metaphors.

Exploration 3: What phrases and lines in Mónica Gomery’s work appear to be about the writer addressing her writing, and in the process, discussing the relationship between writer and writing. The first is objective; the second is subjective.

Exploration 4: Gomery says:

that a wound is a story

that stories have names                                                                                                                                 and when I catalogue it

this night                                                                                                                                                       will bear your name” 

How can a wound be a story? 

What is she cataloguing, and what will “bear your name”?

 

NOTES:

1. Cethegi – none of my Latin dictionaries carry this word’s definition; they admit its existence but do not give any synonyms or definitions for it.
2. Plutus, which is the Latin spelling of Ploutos, is the god of wealth.  Caecilius: Quintus Caecilius Metellus (c. 250 BC – 175 BC) served as a Legate in the army of Gaius Claudius Nero and fought in the war against Hannibal. He was also distinguished as an orator, being counted among his best speeches the elegy given at his father's funeral.
3. Lucius Varius Rufus (74 – 14 BC) was a Roman poet of the early Augustan age. He was a friend of Virgil, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca prepared the Aeneid for publication, and of Horace for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction to Maecenas. Horace spoke of him as a master of epic. His biography is worth reading.
4. Cato was and remains famous as an author and historian, the first Latin prose writer of any importance, and the first author of a history of Italy in Latin. Some have argued that if it were not for the impact of Cato's writing, Latin might have been supplanted by Greek as the literary language of Rome. He was also one of the very few early Latin authors who could claim Latin as a native language.
5. Quintus Ennius was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry.
6. Give me a cigarette.

NEXT TIME: In what measure may the achievements of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written. This inquiry promises to be as relevant to today’s presidents, generals, and to modern warfare whether by negotiation, trial by champions (elections), or invasion. In addition, I may throw out one of my poems that writes about writing.