In music, the difference between major and minor is easy to detect by both sound and structure. In poetry the differences are much more a matter of judgment and scholarly acceptance. In this column and one to follow, I am offering my own judgment, aided in part by an excellent book on minor poets by W.H. Auden, himself a writer of major poetry.
He suggested some guidelines for determining if a poet is major: he/she must write a lot and show a wide range of vision and style. There must be unmistakable originality and a mastery of verse technique.
I prefer to be less rigid. I have always been interested in little-known poets who, regardless of definition, broke through with one or more major poems that the public embraced.
For example, let me introduce a minor English writer named Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883). At one point he was studying Persian poetry and came upon a series of quatrains from the 11th century by Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), a contemplation and celebration of life. Fitzgerald translated the verses with great freedom, creating virtually a new poem, and gave them the name Rubáiyát. This became one of the most renowned poems in Victorian England and still has a great following today. A minor poet with a major achievement. You may recognize these lines.
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
* * *
In my youth, an American, Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943), enjoyed some popularity but has always been considered a minor poet. He did win a Pulitzer Prize for “John Brown’s Body,” but it’s another piece of his called “American Names,” evocative and colorful, that became a major poetic hit and is remembered still for its iconic last line. Here are excerpts.
I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy’s horn,
But I will remember where I was born.
I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy’s Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.
Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman’s Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
* * *
Among other American not-quite-major poets we might note Oliver Wendell Holmes, who trained as a physician but enjoyed writing verse. I think several of his pieces are quite splendid, especially “The Deacon’s Masterpiece,” also known as “The Wonderful One-Hoss-Shay.” Holmes was not as significant or productive as Longfellow, but then Longfellow wasn’t also the Dean of the Harvard Medical School.
One major poem is Holmes’s fiery tribute to the battleship USS Constitution, which in 1830 was scheduled to be dismantled. He called it “Old Ironsides.”
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
O, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every thread-bare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,—
The lightning and the gale!
* * *
* * *
The Canadian John McCrae never had a chance to become a major poet. He died in World War One. Trained as a surgeon, he wrote poems in his spare time. When a dear friend died in the trenches, McCrae composed this most famous of wartime poems. It is still recited at remembrance ceremonies.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
When McCrae volunteered for service in the war, he wrote: “I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience.”
* * *
In the department of instructive inspiration few poems can match “If” by Rudyard Kipling, who is, of course, a major poet. But not far behind is a piece called “Invictus” by a near-forgotten poet and editor named W. E. Henley.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
* * *
On a lighter note, Auden considered W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan to be a minor poet, presumably because he wrote humorous verse for the theater, not a major calling. But Gilbert was a master at versification, and his lyrics are still as admired and performed as when they were written 150 years ago. For skillful rhyming alone, this is a major poem.
I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I am teeming with a lot o’ news
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse
I’m very good at integral and differential calculus
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I know our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s
I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din afore
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform
And tell you ev’ry detail of Caractacus’s uniform
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
I am the very model of a modern Major-General
In fact, when I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a Javelin
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at
And when I know precisely what is meant by “commissariat”
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy
You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee
For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
* * *
* * *
America’s most performed poem, and thus major, is “The Star Spangled Banner,” written by a lawyer and amateur poet named Francis Scott Key. (A fact not widely known is that Key, who extolled “the land of the free,” was a prominent slave-owner. I guess “free” meant “me.”)
In England, A.C. Benson was an educator and occasional author of ghost stories who wrote a Victorian verse called “Land of Hope and Glory.” The text is unremarkable, but when it is combined with the glorious main theme of Sir Edward Elgar’s orchestral piece, “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1,” it becomes a rousing, must-sing anthem beloved by Brits the world over. Consider it a major poem for universality alone.
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!
It would seem that no English international rugby match is complete without a rendering of this anthem, and it accompanies some football teams as well, though often with different words. As a Spurs supporter I somewhat uncharitably recommend:
We hate Nottingham Forest
We hate Arsenal, too.
We hate Manchester United,
But Tottenham we love you.
* * *
Final note. Coming up soon will be a corollary column of Minor Poems by Major Poets. Good fun. Please join us.
VIDEO. The video presents two poems that have been set to music. The first, the above Major General’s song, is done by Martyn Green, generally acknowledged as the all-time greatest Gilbert & Sullivan performer and a person I was privileged to know.
The second is “Land of Hope and Glory” as performed in London at the Last Night of the Proms by a full house in Royal Albert Hall and thousands more in Hyde Park.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: MAJOR POEMS BY MINOR POETS
