“I think truly, that of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar – and though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar.”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Astronomer
Geometrician
Measure the stars
Physician
Drug Dealer
Medicine soothed
Historian
Sweet Muses
Circle the mind
But the poet must plough
in imaginative ground-plots
Of profitable invention.
“First, to the first [imputation]. That a man might better spend is time [on more fruitful knowledges rather than poetry] is a reason indeed, but it doth, as they say, but petere principium. For of it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and conclusion manifest, that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed. And certainly, though a man should grant their first assumption, it should follow (methinks) very unwillingly that good is not good because better is better. But I still and utterly deny that there is sprung out of the earth a more fruitful knowledge.”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Tree of truth
Knowledge’s pear
Nurse of abuse
Mother of lies
Pestilent lust
Siren’s sweet song
Softening us
Martial and strong
Sleepily lull
Cast out
“Since then poetry is of all human learnings the most ancient, and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so universal that no learned nation doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it; since both Roman and Greck gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of making, and that indeed that name of making is fit for him, considering that where all other arts retain themselves within their subject, and receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet, only, only bringeth his own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of a matter but maketh matter for a conceit; since, neither his description nor end containing any evil, the thing described cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach goodness and to delight the learners; since therein (namely in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges) he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well nigh comparable to the philosopher, for moving leaves him behind him; since the Holy Scripture (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it; since all his kinds are not only in their united forms but in their severed dissections fully commendable – I think (and think I think rightly) the laurel crown appointed for triumphant captains doth worthily of all other learnings honour the poet’s triumph.”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
The pauper shepherd’s tune of people’s misery
Lies underneath the pretty tales of wolves and sheep
All while that wailing and lamenting elegy
Can stir the kindest heart from blame to pity keep.
From bitter steps a trumpet blast of villainy
Or tickled by the satire’s feather into burst
With comedy’s guffaw sees virtuous beauty
As clear as all that could be called man’s very worst.
The saddest tale came flowing sweet as spilled blood tastes
To enervate with learning what horror can gain
And throbbing with truly tuned harmonics of grace
Close like a tightly insulated window pane
For as the image of each action moves the mind
The hero knows them to be worthy, wise, and kind.
“Now therein of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only sow the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it…”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Beginning not with definitions dim obscure
which blur the margent shading edge with track marks deep
And load the memory with fear and doubt impure,
Instead to give delightful words enchanting keep.
As music sets the beat and melody and key
Upon this just a tale arrests children from play
And old men from the chimney corner are not free
To ‘scape the hold and confines of the story’s ray.
As all that may be good for you but bitter tastes
Can wrapped in honey be and sweetest sugar cane
So doth Hercules, Cyrus and Aeneas wastes
Away revealing wisdom valour ‘neath the slain.
As virtue is the most excellent resting place
For learning, poet’s work from masks make truest face.
“But the history, being captived to the truth of a foolish world, is many times a terror from well-doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness.”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
For see we not valiant Miltiades rot
A fall from grace to cage and punish Marathon
Though you may cry green bubble, Athens hears you not,
Descend like traitors Socrates and Phocion.
Severus prospers, another Severus slain
And Sulla, Marius, Pompey and Cicero,
Dishonest tyranny will anchor in the brain
The ides and knife-sharp words of Caesar and Cato.
No more of Cypselus and Periander’s wrath
Nor Phalaris and Dionysius’s rage
No more to prosper sanguinarine brim-full bath
Abominable injustice usurped off-stage.
For all with knowledge furnishing with gold the mind
Accounting good and goodness never left behind.
“Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.”– Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
The schoolmaster of rank abuse goes on and on
Only quelled by songs of Astrophil and Stella
And still he won’t admit when oh so clearly wrong
Philip is a hero, gent, and lovely fella
Now school is out, we learn by imitating song
Magpie, thrush, and warbler conversate in solfa
And thus the goodness for which we must always long
Plants its roots inside our soul’s unfurled umbrella
And this makes me the witness of the ages past
Truth’s light, life of mem’ry’s cobwebbed attic mistress
Ventriloquising pictures: that will make them last
Teaching and delighting, distract all from distress
For all the brittle bricks in Kath Hekaston’s wall
Must crack and tremble at the great Katholou’s call
“… following the Peripatetics, I say, as they believe, that the arts and sciences derive their true and real distinctions from objects, not insofar as they are things, but insofar as they are (forgive me, all you strictly Tuscan writers, the necessity of this word) knowable [scibili] and, if one can speak so, artificiable. … And whoever looks for the reason why the poet is obligated at the very least in his storytelling to use this mode of the credible may rest content with the following reason: because the poet must speak to the people, among whom are many rude and uneducated men, and If he were to discuss knowable things in a mode appropriate to the sciences, they would not understand. And so he treats his subject in a credible mode, that is, instructing by means of comparisons and similitudes taken from sensible things, and the people, who understand that in sensible things truth resides in a way that is revealed by the poet, easily believe for this reason that the same is true of intelligible things. From this we are able to conclude that it is not denied to the poet to treat things pertinent to the sciences and the speculative intellect, but he treats them in a credible manner making idols and poetic images, as Dante, with intellectual nature and the intelligible world itself with idols and images most beautifully to all eyes.”– Giacopo Mazzoni (1548-1598)
I
Observable and harmonic idea
Of the credible impossible.
The comic artisan laughs:
Poetry is an art made with verse, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitative of the credible marvelous, and invented by the human intellect to represent the images of things suitably.
II
Fabricable numbered work
Both incredible and possible
The heroic soldier roars:
Poetry is a game made with verse, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitating the credible marvelous, and invented by the human intellect in order to delight.
III
Imitable metered idol,
Marvelous Dante
The tragic magistrate cries:
Poetry is a game made with verses, number, and harmony, singly or together, imitating the credible marvelous and invented by the civil faculty to delight the people in a useful way.
“He who wishes to fly through the hands and lips of men must long dwell in his study. And he who desires to live in the memory of posterity must, as though dead unto himself, often sweat and tremble and, just as our courtier poets drink, eat, and sleep at their ease, endure hunger, thirst, and long vigils. These are the wings by which the writings of men soar to heaven.”– Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560)
invent, elocute, dispose, remember, pronounce
genius, guardian, genus, garden
wild plants in uncultivated earth can be tamed and
become
in a cultivation of copied abundance
copious
“First then, O future Poet, read and reread.”– Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560)
The tower fell
and all the horses and men of the brigade
could not rebuild but only
scatter with split tongues
rubbled bricks in constellations
amongst the stars
following their sextants and spice-steered sniffers
from Paris to Port-au-Prince
“I should not be accused of madness, arrogance, or pretentiousness in that I, a woman, dared to criticize such a skilled author and to diminish the praise of his work, when he alone dared to defame and to insult, without exception, an entire sex.”– Christine de Pizan (1365-1429)
In forbidden
Pursuit,
Knowing,
Tomes spread all around me
Like skirt-fan in the wind
Amused by lamentation
And then dumbfounded
As to why so many men seem compelled
To utter awful damning things about
Women and their ways.
And so, God-forsaken,
I take the burden to build
The City of Ladies
Upon the Field of Letters
Founded on the clear spring
Of Reason, strong and true,
To last for all eternity.
And as I plunge and pull my sharp spade
In and out the fertile earth
You counsel me that good intensions
Are no shield for sheer stupidity.
Denouncing fire.
Denying light.
Inside my city, there is no room
For such and other horrible, ugly, misshapen stones.
Let me be the first to
Cast them out.
stuartjamestaylor 