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Vallance Review 38 October 2004 A Review of Esther Cameron's Article Critiquing
Click the above link for RPO (Representative Poetry Online). Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Defence of Poetry: Part First (1821).
Esther Cameron begins her sweeping new review of Percy Bysshe Shelley's, "The Defence of Poetry, Part the First" (1821), with this telling personal observation, "First of all, a confession: I have only just read Shelley’s, Defence of Poetry." [3] I too must admit that I myself have only recently familiarized myself with Shelley's "Defence", having read it for the first time in my life at around the same time as Esther Cameron did, sometime early in 2003. That being said, I was profoundly struck by the thrust and the import of her synoptic review article on Shelley's Defence in issue # 122 of the Antigonish Review (2003).
Benchmark Criteria for the Evaluation of Critiques of Shelley's "Defence of Poetry" (1821) If we are to properly evaluate the import of Esther Cameron's revelatory article on Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Defence of Poetry" (1821) in our time, the outset of the Third Millennium, and indeed if we are to reasonably assess the contributions made by literary criticism of the "Defence" in any era, certain clearly defined benchmark criteria are needed to gauge the level of relevancy of such critiques. We shall consider each of these criteria in turn, asking ourselves how firmly Cameron's critical review fits into their overall paradigm, and illustrating our analytical approach with relevant textual excerpts from her own article. In this fashion, we hope to be able to establish whether Esther Cameron's critique of the "Defence" meets or even exceeds the standards set by the criteria we outline below. 1. Historical Precedence and Historical Context 1.a Historical Precedence (Sir Philip Sidney, "Defence of Poesie" 1595)
While Percy Bysshe Shelley never once explicitly acknowledges the stamp of Sir Philip Sidney's "Apologie" or "Defence of Poesie" (alternate title) (1595) on his own "Defence" (1821), Shelley's opus is clearly derived in very large part from the philosophical and poetical tenets established over two centuries earlier by his great Renaissance forebear, Sidney. 
In his "Apologie", Sidney identifies and isolates many of the thematic strands Shelley would take up again in his "Defence". For instance, to cite just a few of these, all centred squarely on the same fundamental theme which informs the whole of Shelley's "Defence", viz., the power of the Imagination as the wellspring of creativity in the poet, we find multiple references to "wit", as Sidney so has it, his Renaissance English equivalent term for Shelley's "imagination". I have chosen to deliberately focus on this poetic trope, as it is one of the kingpins of both Sir Philip Sidney's and P.B. Shelley's theses on the genesis of poetry. Here are four keystone references to "wit" (= imagination) from Sidney's earlier "Defence":
Our question here is, to what extent does Esther Cameron acknowledge Shelley's debt in his "Defence" (1821) to Sir Philip Sidney's, "Defence (1595)"? On this moot point, she seems to have singularly failed to acknowledge what is unquestionably one of the two primary sources of Shelley's later "Defence", as there is not a single passing reference to Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence" in her lengthy review of Shelley's. This is perhaps regrettable, but it in no way detracts from the overall impact and impetus of her primary thesis, which is a defence of Shelley's treatise relevant to the poetic landscape of the early Third Millennium. However, I would have felt more at ease with her critical review of Shelley's "Defence", had Esther Cameron acknowledged, however fleetingly, the Romantic poet's profound debt to his great predecessor in the genesis of his own "Defence" (1821). In this light, another recent study, The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1997) directly affirms Shelley's indebtedness to Sir Philip Sidney [5]. In light of the fact that this and other very recent critical sources make much hay over Sidney's contribution to Shelley's "Defence", I sincerely believe that Esther Cameron's critical appraisal of Shelley's "Defence" would have perhaps gained in relevance to our times, had she set it in the context of its primary historical precedent, Sidney's "Defence" (1595). As a critic of poetry myself, I freely admit I am strongly predisposed to the claims of historically based literary criticism upon contemporary poetry criticism, if only for this reason, that it sets modern criticism firmly in the timeline of its historical precedents. This perspective, which I have frequently adopted myself in many Vallance Reviews, will assert itself again in the course of my review of Esther Cameron's critique of Shelley's "Defence". Shelley himself frankly admits, with this often overlooked assertion,"§232 But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of poetry and its influence on society..." [14] that he is no historical critic of poetry in any real sense of the word. But bear in mind that his forebear, Sir Philip Sidney, most certainly was. On the other hand, he clearly recognizes on more than one occasion in his "Defence" that his poetry, along with that of all poets the world has ever known or will ever encounter, must be subjected to the critical scrutiny of future generations: §71 Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be [[impanelled]] in pannelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. [14] In other words, just as Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence" (1595) must have had a formative influence on Shelley's own "Defence" (1821), Shelley's treatise on poetry itself can likewise be seen to cast its shadow over critical appraisals of his own work that are to follow on its heels in later generations. This of course implies that any and all critiques of Shelley's "Defence" in ages to come, right on through to the present day, almost two centuries further on down the road, can be firmly set in the historical context of the evolution of the poetic process. 1.b Historical Context: Shelley's "Defence" in the Early Nineteenth Century: Of even greater relevance to the provenance of Shelley's "Defence" are two seminal works on poetic criticism of the early Nineteenth Century. The primary source and impetus for Shelley's "Defence" is, without a shadow of a doubt, Thomas Love Peacock's "The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) (See [9], for the complete text of Peacock's diatribe). The References & Notes to this review provide ample evidence of the fact that Shelley actually intended to write his own "Defence" as a specific counterattack against Peacock's largely unfounded claims about the degeneracy of Romantic English poetry. Indeed, The publication history of A Defense of Poetry highlights Peacock's influence on Shelley's writing and emphasizes that his treatise is a DEFENSE meant to supplement an attack; ... passim... However, the vigorous correspondence between the two writers argues for the pertinence of Four Ages, implying that becoming familiar with Peacock's work may be critical in understanding that of Shelley. (italics mine) You may wish to consult our notes for further background references to Shelley's "Defence" as a reaction to Peacock's inflammatory "Four Ages". [6.1, 6.2] There is also real reason to believe that Shelley, who was a voracious reader, must have also been familiar with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's great seminal work of English poetry criticism, Biographia Literaria (1817) [7], since so many of Coleridge's fundamental tenets underscoring the fundamental role of the poetic Imagination clearly inform the bulk of Shelley's own observations and conclusions relevant to the power of Imagination in the act of poetic creativity. Once again, there is a singular lack of reference to historical context in Esther Cameron's otherwise highly erudite and compelling review of Shelley's "Defence". Not even once in her article does our critic mention either the fact that Shelley actually wrote his "Defence" as an apologia pro poesia sua et aliorum (a defence of his own poetry and that of his contemporaries), and specifically against Sir Thomas Love Peacock's, "The Four Ages of Poetry. Moreover, she fails to mention the likelihood that Chapter XIII of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, where he offers the world his now justly famous definition of "esemplastic imagination", On the imagination, or esemplastic power [8] must also have had some sort of formative influence on his own work. I do not mean to impugn what is otherwise a stellar review of P.B. Shelley's "Defence" (1821). Still, one of my few regrets is that my peer, Esther Cameron, has not mentioned the historical precedence and context which so evidently circumscribed the general thrust of Shelley's seminal treatise on the central role of poetry in the annals of English literature. With this firmly in mind, I sincerely hope that in a possible future addendum to her article on Shelley's "Defence", Esther Cameron will be able to fill this unfortunate lacuna in what is otherwise an outstanding example of contemporary Shelleyian scholarship. 2. Difficulties Inherent to the Interpretation of Shelley's Thought in "The Defence"
Ever since Shelley's "Defence" was first published in 1841, critics have stressed the difficulties inherent to the interpretation of the various trains of Shelley's complex thought, and of the tenets he proposes concerning the genesis of poetry, the fugitive nature of creativity and the subjective qualities of the phenomenon known as poetic Imagination. Shelley was no philosopher. The "Defence" is not actually a philosophical system of the nature of poetry. It is more an apology of the imaginative and creative underpinnings of the poetry of his own Age, namely, the Era of the early Romantics (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and others). In any era, poetry does not admit of easy analysis or explication. In its greatest periods, such as the Renaissance in Italy, France and England, and the early Romantic Period in England, the "essential nature" of poetry, however it may be defined by the critics who struggle to propound theories on it, remains one of the most elusive, the most mysterious of literary phenomena. That Shelley, who was always a profound and highly charged thinker, should have dared tackle a "Defence of Poetry", emulating Sidney's truly noteworthy "Defence" (1595), speaks volumes for him. In his book review of Paul Fry's exegesis of Shelley's "Defence", Michael O'Neill, as recently as 1996, makes the bold claim that "Fry rightly praises this treatise as 'the strongest defense of poetry ever written,' seeing it as pioneering a genre, the 'critique of Enlightenment' " [10]. His assertion is based on the towering intellectual achievement Shelley's "Defence" represents, and which Esther Cameron likewise celebrates in her more recent synopsis of the "Defence" (2003), where she is quick to realize that Shelley's "high claim for poetry in fact stems from an intuitive sense of its complexity... " [11], a complexity which essentially defies the reductionist claims of mere rationalist interpretation. I for one am strongly inclined to favour both of these critics' reasoned assessments of Shelley's skills as one of the major critics of poetry as a literary medium in the English language. From this perspective, Cameron's article on Shelley is at once emotionally and intellectually balanced, the plain result of her long, arduous and meticulous analysis of the great poet's apology. Her cogent scholarship shines through on every page of her synoptic review of the "Defence". Esther Cameron has really devoted a great deal of attention to isolating and highlighting all the major themes running through Shelley's treatise. For instance, at one critical point in her article, Cameron notes, "As far as known human cultures go, Shelley is a relativist, and very far from affirming that poets directly enunciate absolute truths." This observation is not incidental. It is in fact core to any real understanding of Shelley's apology for poetry as an exalted form of art. While Shelley acknowledges his profound debt to Plato's theories of absolute good and right, Cameron is on the mark when she claims he is, unlike his ancient mentor, a "relativist". This is apparent throughout Shelley's "Defence". Esther Cameron takes great pains to illustrate this point, achieving a just balance in her appreciation of the plasticity innate to Shelley's approach to the nature of poetry. In a word, I cannot fault Esther Cameron's painstaking attention to detail in her highly methodical approach to Shelley's great treatise on poetry, which has yielded plenty of novel insights into the subtle intellectual processes underlying Shelley's well nigh Sibylline grasp of the nature of the processes germane to poetic creativity. 3. New Critical Perspectives on Shelley's "Defence" Arise in Every Generation
Most critics of the 1990's and the early Third Millennium have apparently come full circle to more fully appreciate the profound impact Shelley's "Defence" has had on the evolution, not only of English poetry per se from the date of its first publication in 1841, but on the successive schools of English literary and poetry criticism that have surfaced from the mid-Nineteenth Century right on through to the present day. Sadly, however, Shelleyian criticism has not always been as level-headed. As the citation which opens this review in particular makes quite clear, the many intellectual hurdles critics have had to overcome in their struggles to assess Shelley's "Defence" have driven almost as many of them (critics) to extremes on the one hand of effusive and generally unrealistic praise of his achievement as to supercilious condemnation of everything poetic Shelley represents on the other. With a few notable exceptions, the hallmark of much of the body of criticism of Shelley for most of the nineteenth century was glowing praise. However, Shelley was to become very unpopular with literary critics of the mid-twentieth century. This is not particularly surprising, given that Romantic poetry and formal verse alike were at that time predominantly not in vogue, not "in". They were consequently shunned throughout the better part of the last century, in favour of the more "realistic", though dilute, poetry of angst and alienation which so pervades that era. Neither of these extremes can be said to realistically reflect the true value of Shelley's unique contribution to the field of English poetry criticism. It is only in the last decade, since 1995 or so, that Shelley's "Defence" has begun to garner the somewhat more sober critical appreciation it justly deserves. I have duly noted that, for the most part, the majority of critical appraisals of Shelley's "Defence" in the past few years have finally moved away from the extremes of outright praise or condemnation Shelley's ground breaking treatise (along with most of his poetry) seemed to have elicited in the storm of debate that swirled around him for the better part of the twentieth century. Some of the more balanced and just recent critical approaches to Shelley's "Defence" are embodied in References & Notes below [12.1 & 12.3]. Illustrative of some of the newest approaches to Shelley's Defence is Mark Sandy's book review on Romanticism on the Net (1996), where he notes that, "Shelley's literary legacy is viewed as valuable, in this collection of essays, because his works raise precise questions about value and evaluation which are as salient now as they were in their own time. " [13] Esther Cameron's truly discriminating analysis of Shelley's "Defence" is just one more shining example of the more positive recent developments in the body of critical scholarship vis-à-vis the same. Allow me to illustrate with reference to at least one of the many thoughtful conclusions Esther Cameron draws concerning the literary inheritance Shelley's "Defence" has bequeathed on the world of English poetry since his own era, an inheritance which appears to be more fully appreciated nowadays, at the outset of the Third Millennium, than in any prior era of Shelleyian scholarship. Of Shelley's contribution to the body of English poetry criticism Esther Cameron has this to say:
[Cameron concludes] But Shelley’s accusation, it seems to me, is still intended to express a hope: that if the "creative faculty" could once again be cultivated in proportion to the "mechanical arts," we could set the house of knowledge in order and regain control over a technological and economic process that seems to be running away with us. I don't suppose anyone could have drawn a more apt conclusion concerning the relevance of Shelley's "Defense" to an age of high technological innovation such as our own, the early Third Millennium, an era in which the very forces of Reason, which Shelley is at such pains to discriminate from the more subtle workings of the Imagination, seem almost to run rampant, in spite of the more elusive intellectual demands the process of creativity places squarely on the poet's shoulders. It is this very act of imaginative creativity, as envisioned through the crucible of Paul Celan's poetry that Esther Cameron goes on to elaborate at some length in the second part of her article on Shelley's "Defence". By referencing Shelley's "Defence" to Paul Celan's poetry in part II of her review, Cameron has indeed succeeded, by and large, in making the great English Romantic's treatise on poetry all the more relevant to the poetic scene of our present-day. 4. The Relevancy of Shelley's "Defence" to any Literary Era
From the remarks we have already made about the volatility of Shelleyian research throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, swinging as it did from extremes of effusive praise in the nineteenth to oftentimes outright condemnation of the "Defence" in the twentieth, we may be pardoned for wondering to what degree Shelley's treatise on poetry holds literary relevance for any literary era. Fortunately, as we have also seen from more recent developments in Shelleyian critical research, today the pendulum seems to be swinging far less perilously, and a middle road appears to have been gained. This turn of events speaks as much to the relative degree of politico-social and literary savvy attendant on any particular historical period. It is understandable, of course, that Shelley's poetry and his "Defence" alike should have been held in such high esteem in the nineteenth century, when the Romantics were held in equally high regard. It is also in no way surprising that the highly fractious and volatile atmosphere pervading most of twentieth century poetry and poetry criticism alike should have muddied, if not in some instances actually poisoned, the waters of Shelleyian criticism. Fortunately for us in the early Third Millennium, both the international poetry scene and the thrust of poetry criticism in general have alike settled into a relative medial ground, where Shelley's achievements may perhaps be viewed for the first time in history in their truer light. And in this respect, Esther Cameron's reasoned critique of Shelley's "Defence", like the majority of critical reviews of it since at least the early 1990s, has done much to contribute to a more balanced approach to the body of Shelleyian exegesis. It is to be noted, in passing, that the trend towards more rationally balanced and contextually sound research has indeed spread its tentacles to poetry criticism in general since the last decade of the twentieth century. This is a noteworthy development by any standards. 5. Necessity for Background Research
As a critic who lays particular emphasis on historical context of poetry criticism in general, I am admittedly a real stickler for critics basing their own work on sound background research. Background research is usually classified into two categories: primary and secondary research. Primary research entails careful analysis and synthesis of primary sources. In the case of Shelley's, "Defence", the primary resource is none other than the "Defence" itself. In the optics of primary research, Esther Cameron's review of Shelley's "Defence" is very thoroughgoing indeed. I can find no fault whatsoever with her scrupulous attention to the details, the overarching themes and the thrust of Shelley's core arguments as he has laid them out in his "Defence". If anything, her research at the primary level is both rigorous and judicious. On the other hand, as I have intimated in section 1. of this review (historical precedence and historical context), Esther Cameron appears not to have delved into the historical milieu in which Shelley was steeped, and which was the very fountainhead of his novel treatise on the genesis of poetry as literary and artistic medium. The want of references and notes to her critical review further attests to her lack of attention to historical context. However, to be fair to Esther Cameron, I must admit that I do not particularly believe that it was ever her intention to set Shelley's "Defence" in its historical foundations. Her mission was purely and simply to establish the relevance of great Romantic poet's treatise to the early Third Millennium. And for this she cannot be faulted. In fact, in view of her exhaustive study of the primary source, the "Defence" itself, and of the socio-political and literary currency of her review, her study of Shelley's "Defence" stands head and shoulders over practically all others at the beachhead of early twenty-first century poetry criticism. 6. Is Shelley's Literary Agenda Dated?
If one were to believe the various rantings and ravings of many a twentieth century critic inveighing against Shelley's "Defence", one would be sorely pressed to believe that it held any particular relevance at all for that era. By relevance, I mean not only literary and poetic, but even social and political. If, on the other hand, we are to lend any credence to the most recent studies of Shelley's "Defence" since the 1990s, we may be readily forgiven for almost leaping to the opposite conclusion. The several references in this review as well as in our notes we have already made to recent critical appraisals of Shelley's "Defence" have indeed fairly illustrated this seemingly unaccountable turn of events. The almost abrupt volte face or "change of heart" in Shelleyian critical research from the mid-to-late twentienth century to the end of that century and the beginning of the Third Millennium is far more a testament to the evolution in socio-political and literary values that has occurred in the last few generations. And in this perspective, Esther Cameron's synopsis of Shelley's "Defence" is no exception. It in fact proves the "rule", as it were. If anything, Cameron has perhaps shed more light on the actual relevance of Shelley's "Defence" to our own day and age than has any other critic of Shelley since the early to late 1990s, bar none. And in this, her review may be said to fairly shine. Not only is this apparent from the citation from her critique of Shelley's "Defence" we have already highlighted in section 3., "New Critical Perspectives" of this review, but she also establishes hitherto unexplored levels and nuances of relevance attributable to Shelley's treatise for our own day and age. Allow me to illustrate with just two references to conclusions Esther Cameron so adroitly draws in section II of her critical review, where she particularly shines, on the pertinence of Shelley's "Defence" to our own socio-political and literary landscape in the early Third Millennium. Perhaps the most telling remark she makes in her entire critique of Shelley's "Defence", the statement which opens the second part of her exhaustive review, is this: Touché. And herein lies the root of so much of the frankly scurrilous criticism of Shelley that seems to have characterized the field for a good part of the twentieth century. But Esther Cameron goes much, much further. She is bold "to go where no one has gone before", and to assert her claim as a Neo-Romantic critic of our day and age that: Well, it is more than apparent to this reviewer at least that it is high time we, in the twenty-first century, did indeed shake off those old inhibitions. The moot question is, with what are we to replace them? And here again, Esther Cameron comes through with flying colours: I have chosen to cite this last passage in toto, not only because it may appear so startling, but also because in actuality it is not, at least in a world where instant communication and the Internet have at last allowed a truly international forum for all poets worldwide to merge and coalesce into a local area human networked community. Esther Cameron has met her mark, and she has struck the moving target head on. This re-evaluation of Shelley's own conclusions regarding the "great poem" really shines. It is as though she has infused new vigour and new life into Shelley's own unabashed assertion that: One could be forgiven for seeing Esther Cameron's refreshing retake on Shelley's "Defence" as shedding a bright new beacon of hope for the violence-exhausted early Third Millennium, on Shelley's own immortalized words here. 7. The Poet as "Prophet" or Seer In one of the most controversial passages in his "Defence" celebrating the role of the poet as seer or prophet, Shelley is at great pains to stress that: §28 Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared were called in the earlier epochs of the world legislators or prophets... §29 For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the forms of the flower and the fruit of latest time. §30 Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can fortell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. §31 A Poet participates in the eternal, the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions of time and place and number are not. [14] I have chosen to cite this passage from the "Defence" in its entirety to minimize the latitude for misinterpretation by literalists and religious fanatics. It is abundantly clear from these sections of the "Defence" what Shelley means by "prophet". He certainly does not mean prophesying events, however inaccurately: he means the poet is endowed with the quasi-divine gift of an intuitive grasp of the future course of humankind, however tragico-comic this may be, as expressed through the medium of the imagery of his poetry. He means, moreover, that the poetic Imagination is the wellspring of all veritable prophecy. It is no mere accident or happenstance that the greatest books of the Old Testament, including Isaiah, The Psalms of David and The Song of Songs were almost entirely composed as poetry by the most inspired and rhapsodic of poets. But the demesne of prophecy does not stop at the borders of religious texts. Far from it. And Shelley was far from being the first poet to have been gifted with the semi-divine gift of poetic prophecy. Two millennia before him, the great bard, Homer, was the first to lay claim to the arcane light of inspiration, when in the very First Book of his greatest of all Western Epics, The Iliad, he boldly announces, in the guise of the person of Calchas, the holy priest of Apollo, the divine overseer of poetry, that: 
And among them uprose Calchas, son of Thestor, who had knowledge of all things that were, and that were to be and that had been before... [Homer, Iliad, I:68-70] Ever since then, Homer's bold assertion that poets are indeed seers has echoed and re-echoed through the annals of poetic history, from Vergil, in his Aeneid, through to William Shakespeare, in his Sonnets, and to Sir Philip Sidney in his own "Defence" (1595), where he gleefully celebrates the remarkable oracular powers of the greatest poets, whom he equates with the Delphic and Sybilline Oracles! so yet serveth it to shew the great reverence those wittes were held in, and altogither not without ground, since both by the Oracles of Delphos and Sybillas prophesies, were wholly delivered in verses, for that same exquisite observing of number and measure in the words, and that high flying libertie of conceit propper to the Poet, did seeme to have some divine force in it. That Sidney's claim should ring uncannily like that Shelley was to make over two centuries later in his own "Defence", namely that, "Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared were called in the earlier epochs of the world legislators or prophets...." should hardly come as a surprise at this point. Shelley is of course indirectly referring here to the "vates" or poet-priests of ancient Greece and Rome, whom he mentions explicitly in other sections of his "Defence". Shelley has clearly drawn his inspiration for his apparently extravagant claims for the poet's prophetic abilities, not only from Sir Philip Sidney's earlier "Defence", but even, it seems, from Homer and Vergil before him. We must recall that Shelley read both Greek and Latin, and was intimately familiar with the texts of both "The Iliad" and "The Aeneid." But the ball does not stop rolling there. It just keeps on rolling. In the course of the nineteenth century, other great poets were to rise to the challenge and to re-assert the very same claims in language which sounds uncannily parallel to that used by Homer, Vergil, Sidney and Shelley before them. Allow me to cite just two examples to more than amply illustrate our point:
Naturally enough, we can expect Esther Cameron to take up this theme with gusto, and naturally enough, she does when she asserts, speaking of modern twenty-first century poets: We as poets need to cooperate to make the "great poem," the "great mind," the implicit order of poetry, visible. We need to create a structure that will house our individual works and wherein they will reinforce and amplify one another rather than cancelling one another out. The present state of the art is chaos, advanced entropy; but order is re-created when new energy is poured into the system. Could an understanding of poetry’s central importance to human welfare supply that energy? [11] "That energy", as Cameron would have it, is the very fountainhead of the individual poet's intuitive capacity for prophecy, but far more significantly, it is the synergistic beacon of prophecy that all poets everywhere in the world, past present and future, participate in as they struggle to elaborate and build upon the "great poem", the prophecy for mankind's ultimate "Fortuna", Fate or Destiny, if you will. 8. Poetic Imagination as the Fountainhead of Creativity Well, we have pretty much come full circle now. There is no need to belabour the obvious at this point in our review of Shelley's "Defence" and of Esther Cameron's critique of it in issue # 122 of The Antigonish Review (Canada). It is should be fairly transparent by now that the source, the wellspring, as it were, of the poet's intuitive gift for timeless prophecy rests squarely in his or her mind. The poet's mind is the fountainhead of his or her imagination. The more vivid and more disciplined the poet's imagination, the greater his or her creativity. This idea is pretty much implicit throughout Shelley's "Defence" (1821) and indeed through the text of Esther Cameron's own review (2003). In the process of the creation of new poetry, the poet's mind is the source, and his or her imagination is the instrument whereby the poet's gift of semi-divine Sybilline prophetic talents are realized and poems are eventually morphed into being. Homer, Sappho, Vergil, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and scores of other world-famous poets in any and all languages have long since recognized the inestimable value of the imagination as the instrument with which they have always striven to compose their most inspired works. The Latin verb, "inspiro" literally means, "I breathe into", implying of course that it is the god (usually Apollo) or the Muses inspiring or "breathing into" the poet the breath of divine inspiration welling up in poetic prophecies. All the world's foremost historical poets have contributed to "the great poem", as the finest poets of our own day and age are bound to do the same. The most poetically and imaginatively attuned of poetry critics, who by the way almost always just happen to be poets in their own right, are also initiates to the arcane mysteries surrounding the genesis of all true poems, and of the "great poem" they constitute as a body. Amongst these great critics we may count the ancient Roman poet, Horace, who penned the illustrious, "Ars poetica", Sir Philip Sidney with his "Defence of Poesie" (1595) and Percy Bysshe Shelley, with his equally provocative, "Defence of Poetry" (1821). I have no doubt whatsoever that Esther Cameron's own ground-breaking review of Shelley's "Defence", published just last year (2003) can only add to the prestigious body of the "ars poetica", itself a cumulative and amalgamated commentary on the act of creativity as embodied in the poetic imagination through the ages. Esther Cameron says as much when as she nears the conclusion of her formative and summative critique of the Art of Poetry, she asserts in language that truly mirrors the aspirations of the poets of the early Third Millennium: A negentropic [16] practice of literature could be encouraged by a literary scholarship aware of "the roads that go from poem to poem" and at work on the "map of understanding." "Intertextual" criticism, certainly, makes a beginning; with less jargon, more adding up of results, it could become a genuine science. I believe that here something like objectivity, or at any rate intersubjective reliability, is possible - that there is a sort of order in our literary experiences which subsequent observations will go on verifying. Needless to say, what Esther Cameron is proposing is a newly-established science of imaginative and creative co-operation between and amongst poets of all nations and I suspect in all languages, in a world where the Internet so readily facilitates the genesis of a worldwide poetry community which is also and indeed a local area human network of poetry and poetry criticism available to literary circles the world over. CONCLUSIONS: Poetry, Creativity and the Living World-Wide Poetic Community
All this of course leads us inexorably to our conclusion, which is this: in an increasingly smaller and smaller planet where the Internet has opened up myriad new avenues of expression and of publication to poets the world over, avenues which have never before in recorded human history been open to any writer, let alone poets, both the opportunities and the impetus to bring poets together into a co-operative international network have never been greater. This impetus has now grown so strong that it has begun to fritter away at the twentieth century's marked tendency to isolate poets and their poetry, leaving them scrambling around in a dark void where so much of their poetry was bound to reflect that all-pervasive sense of alienation and loneliness, the Angst that riddled so much of their work in the last century. Esther Cameron puts her finger squarely on this phenomenon of poetic isolation: Yes, it is glaringly obvious that, in an age of rampant international Terrorism and unbounded cruelty and violence such as ours, that the sense of alienation, the fear of loneliness and the Angst that so pervaded most of twentieth century literature and poetry still prevails, and in droves. But, at the same time, there has now surfaced a really influential negentropic countercurrent (EC's word, "negentropic" is entirely apropos). So many poets all over the world are quite simply getting fed up with the knee-jerk reliance on highly individualized creativity blissfully ignoring the even stronger cross currents of the social and cultural global village now sprouting all around us. The time has indeed come for poets worldwide to at least make valiant efforts to work together, in tandem, cooperatively and in creative unison. That was one of the bellwether themes coursing through Shelley's "Defence" (1821), a theme which Esther Cameron has taken up and renewed with a vitality and a gusto befitting the most courageous of poets and poetry critics of our day and age. What Esther Cameron has accomplished, in essence, is this: she has put a fresh new face on Shelley's "Defence" (1821). She has catapulted his treatise right onto centre stage, in the here and now, in the twenty-first century. And she has done so with much foresight and a real sense of the literary consequences of the truly remarkable proposals she has made in her review of Shelley's "Defence". I leave it to you, the reader, to discover for yourself the full import and the full potential of her prescriptions for Shelley's "Defence" as these clearly relate, not to his era, the early Romantic period, but to ours, the turn of the Third Millennium. And on that note, I leave you with one last tantalizing feeler Esther Cameron puts out for us "modern" poets to tickle our imaginations, as we look forward to our own neighbourly contributions to one another's poetry, and to "the great poem" all poetry through all historical time constitutes, and shall continue to embody into the future of humankind. Addressing the notion of poets worldwide coming together and working cooperatively to bring into being, to bring to fruition a new anthology to be shared by all alike, our critic concludes: Now, I for one suppose it can be no mere accident of history that it just so happens we ourselves will very soon be publishing just such an anthology, namely; The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade, 2005 [17], an international compendium the likes of which the world has not yet witnessed in the history of poetry. This international anthology indeed embodies, at least for our day and age, the very ideals Shelley enunciates in his Defence, fittingly reasserted by Esther Cameron's review, where she also extols the virtues of "the great poem". This multimedia anthology (another relative "first" in the world of poetry publication) is to feature some 500 poems by no less than 30 poets from 8 nations, writing in at least 7 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Japanese and Turkish. Amongst the contributors to this stellar new anthology, to be released by Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, NV., in the summer of 2005 are none other than Esther Cameron and Richard Vallance themselves, in the esteemed company of a host of rising new stars, including such poets as Joseph Armstead, Jim Dunlap, Carmen Ruggero, C.S. Snow and Sondra Ball of the USA; Richard Doiron, Eric Linden, Helga Ross and the all-new young poet, Bradley Alexander Bucsis (age 16) of Canada; Sara Russell and Robin Ouzman Hislop of the UK; Shigeki Matsumura of Japan and the now internationally acclaimed Turkish-French poet, Üzeyir Lokman Çayci. And where, pray tell, did we glean their poetry from? --- from the World Wide Web, where else? For this is truly an international co-operative poetry anthology for the Third Millennium and for the world at large. It is surely bound to open up ever wider avenues and circles of poetic inspiration well into the twenty-first century. Thus Shelley's "Defence" and Esther Cameron's well-rounded review of his great treatise on poetic creativity may very well have made a truly significant contribution to the apparent upsurge in poetic inspiration now sweeping the planet. © by Richard Vallance September 24 2004, with the editorial assistance of Helga Ross (Canada); and Jim Dunlap and Carmen Ruggero (USA). REFERENCES & NOTES: [2] Woodings, R.B., ed. Shelley: Modern Judgements. Toronto: MacMillan and Co. Ltd., © 1968. 289 pp. This citation is from page 12 (Introduction) [3] Cameron, Esther, op. cit. 1., para. 1 [4] Renascence Editions. Defence of Poesie (Posonby, 1595). Sir Philip Sidney [5] The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1997) Because Sidney in his Defence of Poetry (1595) set out, as Shelley did, to defend a poetry that had fallen "from almost the highest estimation of learning . . . to be the laughing-stock of children" (74), Shelley found in Sidney's exposition a chief support for his own argument. Shelley's "Defence" may therefore be partially described as an intertextual reading of Sidney's essay, ...passim ... The poet's task is to prevent this "great poem" from hardening into a fixed system of belief. Drawing upon Sidney, Shelley argues that the poet creates by "feigning"; the poet is, Sidney says, like the child, free to play, "freely ranging only in the zodiac of his own wit".[6.1] World Wide School. Chapter II Principal Writings (P.B. Shelley, Defence of Poetry) (2003/2004?) [Peacock] "had at any rate the merit of stinging Shelley to action. 'The Defence of Poetry' was his reply. People like Peacock treat poetry, and art generally, as an adventitious seasoning of life--ornamental perhaps, but rather out of place in a progressive and practical age. Shelley undermines the whole position by asserting that poetry--a name which includes for him all serious art--is the very stuff out of which all that is valuable and real in life is made. "A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth."[6.2] Ashes Sparks & Hypertext, Phillipson/ UC Berkeley 2000. A Defence of Poetry: A Study of the Relationship Between Percy Shelley and Thomas Love Peacock, by Kate Macdonald With The Four Ages of Poetry, Peacock criticized Shelley's contemporaries outright, writing "To read the promiscuous rubbish of the present time, to the exclusion of the select treasures of the past, is to substitute the worse for the better variety of the same mode of enjoyment."... passim... Peacock's language was extremely inflammatory and directed towards contemporary poetry in general. Shelley's reaction to this provoking writing was both immediate and vigorous. He sent a letter to James and Charles Ollier (Peacock and Shelley's mutual publishers) containing a complete summary of Peacock's Four Ages as well as attacks upon it. This initial letter referred to Peacock's treatise as an "impious daring attempt to extinguish Imagination" and a "parricidal and self-murdering attempt."(7) Between February 22 and March 12, 1821, while sick with fever, Shelley wrote several drafts of Defense. While early copies contained extensive references to Peacock, later drafts reduced these to nine. All of the allusions were eventually cut out by editor John Hunt... passim... after Shelley's death in July of 1822, Mrs. Shelley was extremely adamant about securing all of her late husband's manuscripts for her own possession... passim... manuscripts of A Defence of Poetry were eventually returned to Mary Shelley. In 1840 she subsequently printed Defence in her own edition of Shelley's Essays and Letters from Abroad keeping the changes made by Hunt. Mrs. Shelley later reprinted various editions of the text in 1845, 1847, and 1852, all lacking mention of Peacock.[7] Lectures on the Harvard Classics. 1909-1914. Criticism and the Essay. III. Theories of Poetry. Prof. Bliss Perry "The influence of Coleridge is traceable throughout Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” (1821). Shelley rides into the lists with as high a heart as Sidney, to repel the attack, not of the “moralists” but of the utilitarians." [8] Representative Poetry Online. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Biographia Literaria. Vol. 1 (1817). Chapter XVIII. On the imagination, or esemplastic power [9] Thomas Love Peacock. The Four Ages of Poetry [10] Looksmart. findarticles. Michael O'Neill. A Defense of Poetry: Reflections on the Occasion of Writing. - book reviews. © 1996 Wayne State University Press; © 2004 Gale Group [11] This reference and all subsequent citations from Esther Cameron's critique of Shelley's "Defence" will be referenced with this footnote no. = [11] for the remainder of this review. Readers may wish to Google her review of Shelley's "Defence", as referenced in [1] above, to find each citation in its exact context (RV). [12.1] World Wide School. Chapter II Principal Writings (P.B. Shelley, Defence of Poetry) (2003/2004?) , concludes: Other poets besides Shelley have" (been equally visionary)... "and others have felt that the freedom from self, which is attained in the vision, is supremely good. What is peculiar to him, and distinguishes him from the poets of religious mysticism, is that he reflected rationally on his vision, brought it more or less into harmony with a [poetico]-philosophical system, and, in embracing it, always had in view the improvement of mankind." (italics mine)[12.2] See [13] below, Mark Sandy, who also affirms, in the same document, "Rzepka's essay on 'God, and King, and Law' interprets A Defence of Poetry as laying the foundations for establishing a skeptical canon, which tries to guard against prescriptive and dogmatic canon-formation." (Mark Sandy, 1996) [13] Romanticism on the Net. Evaluating Values Timothy Clark and Jerrold E. Hogle, eds. Evaluating Shelley. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0748608435. (reviewed by Mark Sandy) [14] RPO (Representative Poetry Online). Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Defence of Poetry: Part First (1821) [15] The quotations from Emerson and Whitman are derived from this online source: Columbia University Press. Classic Writings on Poetry. Harmon, William, ed. © 2003 ISBN 0-231-12370-1 560 pp. [16] "entropy", from: Dictionary.com: entry, "entropy" is variously defined as (amongst other things) "1. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system. 2. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message. 2. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society." Hence, "negentropy" and its adjective "negentropic" is the exact reverse of this phenomenon. Negentropy implies the coalescence of energy, the formation and creation of new forms and ideals, and the accelerated evolution of creativity (RV). [17] For more information on The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade, 2005, ISBN 1-878431-52-8 (Las Vegas, NV.: Kedco Studios), please consult the following page, Poesie's laissez-faire Faire Foire: Publications: Books = Livres The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. To read the current issue or any back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here: 
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