[Christine P'legion]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

You all agree with me but insist on writing. This is my confusion. I don't get it.

We agree that Shakespeare is, as the kids say, a ballin' poet. As to the rest of your proposition, I'll let Stephen Fry answer for me, and this will be my last engagement with the topic:

None of these adventures into technique and proficiency will necessarily turn you into a genius or even a proficient craftsman. Your view of Snow on York Minster, whether languishing in the loft or forming the basis of this year's Christmas card doesn't make you Turner, Constable or Monet. Your version of 'Für Elise' on electric piano might not threaten Alfred Brendel, your trumpet blast of 'Basin Street Blues' could be so far from Satchmo that it hurts and your take on 'Lela' may well stand as an eternal reproach to all those with ears to hear. You may not sell a single picture, be invited even once to deputise for the church organist when she goes down with shingles or have any luck at all when you try out for the local Bay City Rollers tribute band. You are neither Great Artist, sessions professional, illustrator or admired amateur.

So what? You are someone who paints a bit, scratches around on the keyboard for fun, gets a kick out of learning a tune or discovering a new way of rendering the face of your beloved in charcoal. You have another life, you have family, work and friends but this is a hobby, a pastime, FUN. Do you give up the Sunday kick-around because you'll never be Thierry Henry? Of course not. That would be pathologically vain. We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it.

And you know, you might be the real thing, or someone with the potential to give as much pleasure to others as you derive yourself. But how will you ever know if you don't try?

As the above is true of painting and music, so it is true of cookery and photography and gardening and interior decoration and chess and poker and skiing and sailing and carpentry and bridge and wine and knitting and brass-rubbing and line-dancing and the hundreds of other activities that enliven the daily toil of getting and spending, mortgages and shopping, school and office. There are rules, conventions, techniques, reserved objects, equipment and paraphernalia, time-honoured modes, forms, jargon and tradition. The average practitioner doesn't expect to win prizes, earn a fortune, become famous or acquire absolute mastery in their art, craft, sport — or as we would say now, their chosen leisure pursuit. It really is enough to have fun.

—Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Traveled, pp. xiii-xiv.

Getting back to the actual thread at hand—

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

Yes, Chaucer is far too recent. And why limit ourselves to English poetry? Quintilian wrote:

“Like his own conception of Ocean, which he says is the source of every river and spring, Homer provides the model and the origin of every department of eloquence. No one surely has surpassed him in sublimity in great themes, or in propriety in small.”

Over the summer I read The Odyssey, I think for the first time straight through, although I know I read bits of it in undergrad and had a general cultural-zeitgeist level of familiarity with the story. It was such a rich reading experience! I have Fagles's translation, which is pretty prosy poetry, but easily carried me right along the whole time.

We're far in time and culture from the world of The Odyssey but I doubt there are many people who haven't felt the same longing for home that Odysseus feels for Ithaca and Penelope, even to the point of giving up everything else to attain it:

"But if only you knew, deep down, what pains
are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore;
you'd stay right here, preside in our house with me [Calypso]
and be immortal. Much as you long to see your wife,
the one you pine for all your days . . . and yet
I just might claim to be nothing less than she,
neither in face nor figure. Hardly right, is it,
for mortal woman to rival immortal goddess?
How, in build? In beauty?"
.............................."Ah great goddess,"
worldly Odysseus answered, "don't be angry with me,
please. All that you say is true, how well I know.
Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you,
your beauty, stature. She is mortal after all
and you, you never age or die . . .
Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total—
bring the trial on!"

It's moving thread to trace throughout the whole poem, and when he finally attains it... well, the whole latter half of Book 23 is just lovely.

Originally Posted by Shaun J. Russell

Topically, I will concede that Milton rarely writes about love on the interpersonal level of many poets...but when he does, it's gutting. Case in point: Sonnet 23.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Shaun, that's a beautiful (and yes, gut-wrenching) sonnet; thank you for posting it. Where would you suggest someone start with Milton?