Ezra Pound – a stirrer up of strife – and my model for writing a Sestina.

I have been reading some poetry by the still contentious American poet Ezra Pound who is regarded as not only one of the fathers of Modernist writers but also as an anti-semite, a foolishly naive supporter of Fascism and an over-inflated egocentric. He, like the unpleasant but inspirational composer, Richard Wagner, may or may not have been a bad guy but he was undoubtedly a great artist. Besides his own revolutionary poems, especially the Cantos, he was also responsible for the publication of everybody’s favourite modern poem,  T.S. Eliot’s Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock and, equally significantly, the serialisation of the greatest modern novel, James Joyce’s Ulysses. In the end, he was, if nothing else, a masterly poet.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been drawn to one of his earlier works, the Sestina: Altaforte where the future revolutionary Modernist draws his inspiration and finds his distinctly angry voice in a strictly traditional poetic form.

I have been trying my hand at the traditional forms of poetry hoping to increase my understanding and, hopefully, improve my writing. Well, I can only try. I started with some Villanelles, discussed in an earlier blog (type Villanelle into the search window above), and now I have moved on to the Sestina, a  formidable form where the poet uses six key words one of which has to end each line of a six line verse in a poem that has to have six verses and a three line epilogue which has to include all six key words. I know this might sound like a lot of over-complex nonsense but stick with it. Oddly enough it works. When you read a Sestina you don’t have to recognise the pattern but it works on you powerfully where the repetitions give a rhythm to the work in the absence of rhyme.

I was scared of trying this but once I had decided on my six key words, I was away and having fun.

Ezra Pound’s Sestina is printed below and you will see that he is being surprizingly obedient to the rules with the key words appearing in the strictly defined order throughout the poem and yet the piece has a wild 20th century ring to it showing that traditional forms can be bent to each individual poet’s voice.

“We shall see battle axes and swords, a-battering colored haumes and a-hacking through shields at entering melee; and many vassals smiting together, whence there run free the horses of the dead and wrecked. And when each man of prowess shall be come into the fray he thinks no more of (merely) breaking heads and arms, for a dead man is worth more than one taken alive.

I tell you that I find no such savor in eating butter and sleeping, as when I hear cried “On them!” and from both sides hear horses neighing through their head-guards, and hear shouted “To aid! To aid!” and see the dead with lance truncheons, the pennants still on them, piercing their sides.

Barons! put in pawn castles, and towns, and cities before anyone makes war on us.

Papiol, be glad to go speedily to “Yea and Nay”, and tell him there’s too much peace about”.