'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy'

When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations, strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise us. An Australian, Clarence Caddell, has published the first issue of The Borough: A Journal of Poetry, and it seems to be written by and for grownups. He takes its title from George Crabbe’s wonderful, largely forgotten poem “The Borough” (1810) and quotes its opening lines: 

“‘Describe the Borough’—though our idle tribe

May love description, can we so describe,

That you shall fairly streets and buildings trace,

And all that gives distinction to a place?”

 

Caddell then quotes Edwin Arlington Robinson’s sonnet “George Crabbe”:

 

“Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,

Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,—

But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still

With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.”

 

Among Caddell’s “manifesto-ish statements” is this: “The Borough is grounded in the deep tradition of English poesy; that is, the one going back to Chaucer and beyond, not the one that started with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and which seems likely to destroy all meaningful literary culture.” You know already you’re not wasting your time.

I’m familiar with some of the poets here – among them, the Americans Maryann Corbett, Aaron Poochigian, Marly Youmans and James Matthew Wilson, and the great Australian Stephen Edgar (read his “Late Brahms”). What does it mean that I find the rare word eschaton in two poems by different poets. Here is A.Z. Foreman’s “Portrait of Alexander German (Russian author turned Romani poet)”:

 

“The past was over. Its last sovereign died

gunned in the chest, the children bayonetted

by sulfurous powers that kept this man indebted

for kindness to those history-mortified

 nomads he loved. Their language, blazed state pride,

nursed his ear. Brass bands in the fresh time’s breeze

seemed heralds to the eschaton of peace

so his verse could lie honestly. He tried

 to speak them civic, mindless how the slow

boils dribbled in the twisting smile of Fate,

how Freedom gaped and simpered from the snow,

 and how Equality would fail a state

maimed on its own myth to an altered throne

that bayonet and gun had made their own.” 

 

And Youmans’ “Jenetta, Blessed”:

 

“A ruined loveliness,

An eschaton of blight,

Reminder that to bless

Is to take flight

 

“From what is merely seen

To revelation’s truth:

No longer laughing queen

Of hearts, you’re ruth

 

“And harrow to men now,

Your essence pulled inside

And wordless, yet somehow

“You still abide,

 

“Your riddling self a thing

Composed of flame and years

And silences that bring

The gift of tears.”

 

As Caddell writes in his introduction:

 

“We don’t mind a bit of personal confession, meditative epiphany or everyday mysticism, but we do acknowledge that other modes are possible and often desirable.”