Author's Preface

GONE are those unblest times...
When Genius, trembling with unmanly fear,
Claim'd not the wreath, which he deserv'd to wear,
Till nine long years had lent their tedious aid,
To touch the forms his magic hand pourtray'd…[i] 

It remains the honorable characteristic of the poetic arts that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the circumstance of homo exterior of today’s society is adapted to the pleasure of traditional poetry. For the result of the presence of those beings has caused the displacement and considerable loss in global populations of homo sapiens which finds precedents, for example, in the Enclosure Act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain, passed during the reign of King George III, which removed the right of access to common lands that had been the laborer’s heritage and source of income for ages gone.
            An English poet, William Wordsworth, extolled the virtues of old Michael and his wife, in their struggle to maintain their patrimonial fields, while the unenclosed commons became largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and to relatively small parts of the lowlands. The result was an upheaval, about which much poetry was written in the Romantic era, that was preserved in a language of conversation idiomatic of the middle and lower classes of society. Compared with today’s colloquial expressions, this language is archaic and unnatural but perhaps homo exterior will excuse the anachronisms, if the book furthermore contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents found in twenty- first century underclass society.
            Yet even if the reader will accept the anachronisms, it is now generally admitted that the Greek and Roman poets, together with those of the Classical tradition in English, who have copied their manner, should no longer be considered as examples for youth of the present day. Those critical compositions, therefore, which in an earlier age were drawn up, either in prose or verse, for the direction of the antiquarian child, since the precepts, which they contain, are derived from the outdated examples, must now be entirely useless, or what is worse, must mislead many into a style of writing, which will defeat their purpose of gaining wide acceptance.

Still, it becomes very desirable, that a book should be arranged, suited to the imposition of the present day; in order that youth, whose genius or inclination leads them to cultivate the art, may not only enjoy having examples to transmute, in the traversal of plentiful poetry by which literature is distinguished, but may also have this representation, to which they may easily refer in cases of doubt and difficulty. This task I have ventured to undertake; and I assure the reader, that however imperfectly in other respects it may be executed, he or she will find the postmodern precepts to be fairly and legitimately deduced from the most popular authorities of the tradition.[ii]
            For, there remains one maxim of the critics, which we still admit to being just; that the rules for writing in verse cannot be laid down by way of previous reasoning, or as the metaphysicians express it, a priori, but must be drawn from poems before, which have been crowned with the greatest success, and which, therefore, we conclude to be the best. Thus Aristotle, in the first art of poetry that was ever written, derives his maxims from the works of Homer; and an English classical poet, Alexander Pope, admits the propriety of this plan in the following lines of his Essay on Criticism, 

Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they deriv’d from Heav’n.

Waving therefore all claim to the invention of a new poetic art, I merely pay myself the credit of collecting and copying some masters, which lie scattered here and there throughout the successful poems of the past remarkable eras. In the posthuman, I abandon much of my claim to authority, and, with a predilection for nostalgia, suppress the satirical impulse for parody, in preference of a pastiche of "dead" styles, to pay homage to famous poets, who are perpetually present, and who shall hopefully outlive our present day.

            Whereas in the schools of our universities every sentiment is no longer discoursed in a learned language, but presently, in English, there remains a fact, that in the school of traditional poetry, it was customary to use only the language of verse, even upon prosaic subjects. And so, they threw into a metrical form their critique of poetry, which might perhaps have been more explicitly and methodically described in prose; and they preferred the imaginative strains of Horace to the philosophical discourses of Aristotle. Hence it is, that, although a discussion in prose, upon principles and rules of what constitutes adaptation, has already been laid before the public many times, I thought it due the discoveries of youth, and indeed the antiquarian child, that, like the English classical poets, they should have (if I may so express myself) this chronicle to which they may refer.

If it was to be expected, that my verse should have been itself an illustration of contemporaneity in the rules which that prescribes, after the manner of Ezra Pound, who yelled “Make it new!” rather the reader will find that, not being able to root entirely from my mind a lingering fondness for the examples upon which my formative judgement was formed, I thought, that both the reader and the antiquarian, if I resemble the English masters in the spirit of my compositions, shall not find null in value, since I left Helvetia.

Iggy, the Dwarf
Toronto

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[i] Leigh Hunt. The Modern Parnassus or the New Art of Poetry, A Poem. 1814.

[ii] See, for example, Cecil Day Lewis, “Come Live with Me and Be My Love”. It is a pastiche of Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to his Mistress.