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Vallance Review 50. October 2005 Introduction to Part = Partie A Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), "Locksley Hall" (1837-8)
Elihu Vedder (American, 1836-1923) "The Pleiades" (1885) Click to hear the NPA's musical theme =  Originally called "The Brigade", "The Pleiades" or "La Pléiade", a constellation of seven major French authors and poets of their age, was founded by the poet Pierre de Ronsard in 1553. Don't be surprised if its name reminds you of the mythological Pleiades of the seven daughters of Atlas [5] & [6], the virgin companions of Artemis, who were metamorphosed into a constellation, and even the ancient "Pleiades" of seven Alexandrine poets who wrote in Greek in the 3rd. century B.C. The "Brigade de la Pléiade" was less a school of poetry than a loosely formed group inspired by a common will to renew the poetic forms of classical Antiquity. "La Pléiade" of sixteenth century France was a more or less intimate circle of poets gathered around Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), the "Prince of Poets and the Poet of Princes" of Renaissance France, poets like Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573), Guillaume des Autels (1529-1581, Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), Pontus de Tyard (1525-1605), Rémy Belleau (1528-1577) and Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517-1582). While speaking in defense of the "imitation" of Greco-Roman authors, they stressed even more the great cultural value of the French language itself, as well as establishing the sonnet as a major poetry genre in France as well as in England. One of hallmarks of "La Pléiade" is its concern for subtlety in poetic inspiration, which confers on its poets the advantage of exploring hitherto unexplored avenues in poetry genres. Besides relying on loose imitation of the Ancients, its poets look to "modern" influences for their inspiration. These they put to good use in the service of their "new" language of learning, French, itself constantly evolving, and by wisely reworking the ancient myths. But it would be a mistake to forget the nobility of poetry's new found mission by simply focusing on their poetic experiments. Strongly influenced by Neo Platonism, the poets of la Pléiade saw it as the wellspring of a sort of "divine madness", which exalts poetic expression to a level far above common spoken language. The poet sees himself as an inspired seer or prophet. And Ronsard, who is the guiding light of the poets of La Pléiade , views himself as the first among many. Conscious of the need to embellish the French language, these young poets find, in their "imitation" of the Ancient writers, a real opportunity to reintroduce the classical forms of Greek and Latin literature largely abandoned in the Middle Ages, by reintegrating them into contemporary French poetry, thereby enriching its vocabulary. Not surprisingly, a parallel development occurs in English poetry almost at exactly the same time. In practice, the poets of La Pléiade never indulge in servile "imitation" of the Ancients, but hearken back to their own precursors, none other than the Neo-Latins or the Italians the likes of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374). Petrarch's influence on the poets of La Pléiade was a decisive factor, as it offered them a model for the never ending renewal of the declaration of love in poetry. But over the years his commanding influence waned, as the poets of la Pléiade were more and clearly inclined to devote themselves to expressing their own authentic voices in their own poetry. As Joachim du Bellay frankly tells us, "I have forgotten the art of writing like Petrarch, / I would rather talk frankly about love, / Without flattering you or disguising myself". Finally, in his "Defense and Illustration of the French language" (1549) [3] Joachim Du Bellay, while extoling the imitation of poetry in Ancient Greek and Latin, does not exclude the very real possibility that the French language, as he states, can more than stand its own ground against them. Almost in the same breath he seems to nourish the notion, altogether modern, that civilizations and their literatures are characteristically transient. Yet, in spite of the acknowledged transience of past civilizations, the great Renaissance poets and of La Pléiade in particular have always exerted a powerful influence on literature and poetry ever since the sixteenth century. Today, at the outset of the Third Millennium, we are likely witnessing an altogether new literary phenomenon emerging, which we, the editors of The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, choose to call "The New Pleaides". As we shall see in Section B of this introduction, many of the poets from all around the world contributing to The New Pleiades Anthology share ideals which have at least indirectly evolved from those the French and English Renaissance and Romantic poets alike espoused long before them. Nous présentons d'ailleurs la première section de ce compte rendu en français à l'intention de nos lecteurs francophones qui s'intéressent particulièrement à la grande société littéraire de la Renaissance française, voire la brigade de la Pléiade. Qu'est-ce « La Pléiade »
Initialement désignée sous le nom, « La Brigade », « La Pléiade » , une constellation de sept des principaux auteurs et poètes français de l'époque, a été fondée par le poète Pierre de Ronsard en 1553. L'appellation « La Pléiade » n'est pas sans évoquer la Pléiade mythologique des sept filles d'Atlas [5] et [6], les compagnes vierges d'Artémis, métamorphosées en constellation, et surtout la Pléiade antique des sept poètes alexandrins écrivant en grec au IIIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ. À vrai dire, cette Brigade constitue moins une école poétique qu'un groupe, d'ailleurs variable, communément inspiré par la même volonté de rénover les formes poétiques de l'Antiquité classique. La Pléiade du seizième siècle en France était donc un cercle plus ou moins intime de poètes rassemblés autour de Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), le « Prince des poètes et le poète des Princes » de la Renaissance, tels que Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573), Guillaume des Autels (1529-1581, Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), Pontus de Tyard (1525-1605), Rémy Belleau (1528-1577) et Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517-1582). Ils défendaient tout aussi bien l'imitation des auteurs gréco-latins que la grande valeur culturelle de la langue française d'autant plus qu'ils imposaient le sonnet comme genre poétique majeur autant en Angleterre qu'en France. La Pléiade se caractérise par un souci de souplesse dans l'inspiration poétique, qui lui fait privilégier l'exploration de différents genres naguère inexplorés. Alors, à côté d'une libre imitation des Anciens, ces poètes se nourrissent d'influences dites modernes qu'ils mettent au service d'une langue toujours neuve, volontiers érudite, et des mythes antiques savamment remaniés. Ces expérimentations poétiques ne sauraient faire oublier cependant la noblesse de la mission assignée à la poésie. Fortement influencés par le néoplatonisme, les poètes de la Pléiade y voient l'émanation d'une « fureur divine » qui place l'expression exaltée de la poésie bien au-dessus du langage commun. Le poète se reconnaît comme mage inspiré ou prophète. Ronsard, lui qui s'avère le mécène de la La Pléiade, s'y reconnaîtra le premier des poètes du cercle. Conscients de la nécessité d'embellir la langue française, ces jeunes poètes voient dans l'imitation des Anciens une possibilité de réintégrer à la langue française contemporaine des formes classiques des littératures grecque et latine délaissées par le Moyen Âge et ainsi d'en enrichir le vocabulaire. Comme on pourrait s'y attendre, ce développement se réflète quasi simultanément dans le domaine de la poésie anglaise. Car cette pratique de l'imitation, qui n'est jamais servile de la part des membres de « La Pléiade » , s'inspire d'autant plus de leurs propres précurseurs, voire les néo-latins ou les italiens tels que Francesco Pétrarque (1304-1374). L'influence de Pétrarque, qui offre un modèle perpétuellement renouvelé de déclaration amoureuse dans la poésie, est ici déterminante. Mais au cours des années son influence imposante s'est atténuée, et les poètes de la Pléiade s'engagaient de plus en plus vers un souci d'authenticité dans leur propre poésie. « J'ai oublié l'art de pétrarquiser », nous dit franchement Joachim du Bellay, « Je veux d'amour franchement deviser, / Sans vous flatter et sans me déguiser » . Enfin, dans sa « Défense et illustration de la langue française » (1549) [3] Joachim Du Bellay, tout en préconisant l'imitation la poésie grecque et latine de l'Antiquité, n'exclut pourtant pas sa contestation que la langue française rivalise à son avantage avec elles, et, du même coup, il alimente une réflexion déjà moderne sur le caractère fondamentalement transitoire des civilisations et de leurs littératures respectives. En dépit du caractère transitoire des civilisations, reste enfin que les grands poètes de la Renaissance et surtout de La Pléiade ont toujours exercé une influence très considérable sur la littérature et la poésie depuis le seizième siècle. De nos jours, au début du troisième millénaire, voilà qu'émerge un phénomène tout à fait neuf auquel nous, les éditeurs du Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade, assignons l'appellation « La nouvelle Pléiade ». Comme on verra dans la prochaine section de cette introduction [B], bon nombre des poètes collaborateurs au Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade partagent des idéaux découlant de ceux que les poètes français et anglais de la Renaissance et de l'époque romantique avaient pareillement chéris il y a bien longtemps. What is “La nouvelle Pléiade = The New Pleiades” I would like to preface this section of our introduction by clarifying to our readers that all of our premises and our conclusions respecting the evolution of poetry since the Renaissance must, at least superficially, appear to be nothing but sweeping generalizations. Naturally, you should take any such conclusions with a hefty grain of salt. As this is an introduction to a new anthology of international poetry epitomizing emerging trends in early Third Millennium poetry, the best we can hope to do is sketch our own impressions, scanty and blinkered as they are by the fact that we are in the thick of things, and can’t really “see the forest for the trees”. By as early as the third decade of this century, around 2030, future generations of poets and critics will surely be able to provide not only those of us still alive, but the world with greater insight into the nature of early twenty-first century poetry, and what it epitomizes. Meantime, no poet or critic in his right mind could possibly swallow whole all of the sweeping remarks we make here in our introduction. The historical trends and vicissitudes in the evolution of Western poetry we outline below are meant to be taken merely as sign-posts or indicators of tectonic shifts in socio-cultural and literary values mirrored through the poetry of successive eras. I suppose we could say “The New Pleiades”, like its forbear of sixteenth century Renaissance France, is a constellation of early twenty-first century poets espousing a new set of literary ideals. There are, of course, vast differences between the ideals and modes of poetic expression by and large espoused by La Pléiade of Renaissance France and those championed by many of the poets contributing to this anthology. The intervention of some five to six centuries has given plenty of impetus to novel expressiveness in poetry as it constantly evolves. Poetic style and modes of expression shifted dramatically from the Renaissance to the Neo-Classical or “Augustan” Age, and again in the Romantic Era and in Victorian poetry. The latter eventually gave way to Edwardian poetry, which in its turn was swept off in the tide of angst and alienation suffusing most poetry of the twentieth century. All of these metamorphoses in the general historical landscape of poetry have left their marks, overt or covert, on the poetry of all early twenty-first century poets. Certain poets of our age persist in clinging to the socially alienated and frankly depressing values embraced by all too many twentieth century poets. Far more significantly, plenty of others seem to be in revolt against the apparent loss of values and humanity that so infected much of the poetry of the previous century. The majority of the 33 poets and artists who contribute to The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry represent a real desire for poetic renewal in our generation. The history of poetry since the Renaissance has been characterized by successive swings of the pendulum, usually from more vivid and imaginative poetry to less and back again. These historical changes have usually been subtle at first, and then more and more sharply defined. The elaborately stylized poetry of Renaissance Italy, France and England, so splendidly exemplified by some of the more finely nuanced poetry of La Pléiade itself and of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare and several other prominent poets of Elizabethan England, soon gave way to the more remote metaphysical poetry of the early 17th. century, of which John Donne (1572-1631) was the most striking exemplar. Metaphysical poetry in turn was eclipsed by the lighter society verse of the Cavalier poets the likes of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). It was but one more step and a small leap of faith for poets of the latter seventeenth century to meld the artful ironies of the Cavalier salon style with the wittier, more rational poetry of the Neo-Classical Age of eighteenth century France and England, epitomized in the highly erudite, though somewhat drier, poetry of such greats as Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Yet, as early as the mid-eighteenth century, restless new stirrings of a far more radically personal and imaginative wave of poetry began to assert themselves in such ground-breaking and deeply personal poems as Thomas Gray’s (1716-1771) “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1742). This trend eventually burst to the surface as the great literary movement we now call by convention, for lack of a better term, Romanticism. English Romantic Poetry as we know it was the birth child of the famous Lake Poets, William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), John Keats (1795-1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), all of whom the editor of this Anthology holds in high esteem. Apart from the Renaissance itself, the Romantic Era is by and large still considered by most critics of poetry as one of the high water marks of European poetry right up to the present day. Hard on the heels of the Romantic Era came the Victorian in England, and the Symbolist Movement in France. Victorian Poetry tended to be more formal and artificial, and more socially conscious than Romantic, while French Symbolism has bequeathed an abiding legacy to all “modern” poetry ever since, incuding that of our own era. In fact, many French critics assume the Symbolist poetry of the Parnasse, of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), of Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and the more refined, purist poetry of the great French poet and critic, Paul Valéry (1871-1945) to be the wellsprings of all true “modern” poetry. Indeed, the impact of symbolism on twentieth and early twenty-first century poetry is so all-pervasive it cannot safely be ignored. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, there was a temporary return to what one might expediently call, again for lack of a better term, “Neo-Romanticism”, at least amongst a few English, American and Irish poets, exemplified by none other than the brilliant Irish poet, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the “War Poets” of WW I, clustered around poets like Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Alan Seeger (1888-1916), and later on by poets such as Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1892-1950), whose lyrical poems and sonnets alike bear many of the hallmarks of Romanticism. However, this first Neo-Romantic blip was not to last very long. In around the 1930’s or 40’s, there was a powerful backlash against such idealized poetry. By and large, this revolt was very likely precipitated by the Great Depression and the horrific events of World War II, which left WW I in the dust. Manifesting itself subtly in the beginning in such great works as T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, the shift in social and literary consciousness towards a distinctly darker and more nihilistic view of humanity was evidenced early on in the rapid popularization of the “film noir” in the related field of the cinematic arts. The “film noir” would reach its zenith by the late 1940s, though it was to persist with the Cold War well into the 1960s. In sync with the socially symptomatic angst and sense of profound fear aroused by the film noir and similar bleak developments in painting, the plastic arts and photography, the poetry of the age became more and more anxiety-ridden and suffused with the hopelessness of the age (ca. 1930-1970). The poisoning erosion of social and humanistic values became a staple of “modern” and “post-modern” poetry. This backlash against the brief surge of Neo-Romantic poetry in the early twentieth century swung in almost the diametrically opposite direction as the poetry of the Age of Enlightenment in the eigthteenth century. The major poets of that century felt they had neatly rendered the poetic traditions and values of the Renaissance obsolete by their truly enlightened verse, firmly based, as they saw it, on the primacy of Reason over passion. Whereas eighteenth century poetry had by and large espoused the tenets of rationalism and human enlightment as its torch bearers, the Bleak House poets of the twentieth century reacted against the Romantic Era’s lofty poetic ideals of individual humanism and the primacy of the Imagination and intuition with a viscerally negative, often pointedly irrational, fervour. The almost inevitable result of this mass revolt against the loftier ideals of Romanticism was that much of the poetry of the mid- to latter twentieth century, with plenty of happy exceptions, slipped into a morass of profound despair and social disillusionment the likes of which had never before been witnessed in the entire history of Western poetry, right from the ancient Greek and Roman eras on down. Witness, for instance, the poetry of Silvia Plath, where her schizophrenic tendencies loom large in spite of her obvious genius. Now, the highly personalized manner in which Plath manifested her genius was bound to compromise her effectiveness as a poet, at least if we are to take Samuel Taylor Coleridge seriously, where he makes the startling, though true, declaration concerning poetic genius: A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At least I have found, that where the subject is taken immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. [7] Furthermore, Coleridge empathically asserts that poetic Imagination, at its most sublime, must be able to reconcile “opposite or discordant qualities... the individual, with the representative” [8]. Sylvia Plath, her own fragmented personality as an individual broken by life’s cruelties, seemed unable to make this reconciliation. And she was not alone in sharing a disintegrating nexus of genius. Sadly, this somewhat noxious trend in poetic expression was more evidenced in American poetry than in the poetry of other English speaking nations, almost all of which belonged to the former British Empire and were now members of The Commonwealth of Nations. The legacy of the more stable history of British poetry, and especially the new Romantic theory of poetics advanced by none other than Samuel Tayler Coleridge himself, has left its indelible mark more on these nations than on American poetry and criticism down to the present day. Paralleling the spread of socially disillusioned verse, much of it substantially without rhyme or reason, let alone any readily recognizable metrical virtues, there arose the phenomenon of so-called “academic verse”, which was to permeate so much of the poetry scene, notably in America, throughout most of the latter half of the twentieth century. All too many otherwise highly erudite poets wrote their abstruse verses in the comfort and seclusion of the Ivory Towers of academia, with the inevitable result that their poetry, along with their “schools” of criticism, particulary the “new criticism” and “post-modernism”, became more and more intellectually and psychically detached from the more nitty-gritty poetry of mainstream society. Is it any wonder in our North American and European societies where violence and brutality were growing ever more endemic? Unfortunately, the penchant of some twentieth century poets for more erudite poetry, particularly in America, was itself a backlash against the angst and alienation that pervaded the “other” world of poetry, street poetry. By shutting themselves up in their Ivory Towers, the academic poets succeeded all too well in alienating themselves, not only from the more down-to-earth street poetry of the last century, but from the mainstream of society and literature itself. Twice removed, twice sterile. However, by as early as 1985 or 1990, the wind distinctly began to shift yet again, in an altogether familiar direction we have seen surface in the history of poetry at least twice before. PART B of The Introduction to The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade ISBN 1-878431-52-8 © 2005 (CD multimedia) to be continued in Vallance Review 52, December 2005. Coming next month, Vallance Review 51, November 2005 Eric Linden's Garland of Sonnets, "Halifax Explosion 1917" To commemorate Remembrance Day 2005, we will be reviewing Eric Linden's Garland of Sonnets [10], "Halifax Explosion 1917", previously published in the last ever e-zine issue of SONNETTO POESIA, Vol. 4 no. 1, winter = hiver 2005, and again in the first ever quarterly issue of SONNETTO POESIA, Vol. 4 no. 2, spring = printemps 2005 (pp. 1-16). Garlands of sonnets are a rare phenomenon in sonnet literature, as they require the most painstaking attention to detail if they are to be composed with any finesse. Eric Linden's historical documentary garland of 15 sonnets tells the heartrending story of one of the most horrific of wartime tragedies in Canadian History, the Halifax explosion of December 6 1917. That morning, the French munitions ship, SS Mont Blanc, inbound from New York City, and loaded to the gunwhales with munitions and explosives, rammed the Norwegian merchant marine ship, the IMO. The resultant explosion ripped through Halifax harbour and leveled a huge swath of the city, killing some 2,000 people, and leaving a trail of thousands more injured. This explosion was the worst of its kind in the history of humankind prior to the destruction of Hiroshima by the first atomic bomb dropped on August 6 1945. The only real difference between the two explosions was not in their intensity (the Halifax explosion producing a mushroom cloud almost as immense as Hiroshima's), but merely by virtue of the fact that the 1917 explosion was mercifully not atomic. Had it been, Halifax would have been wiped off the face of the earth, and the casualties would have mounted into the tens of thousands. What is more, the Halifax explosion of December 1917 was an entirely preventable accident caused by human carelessness, just like the Titanic disaster 5 years before. And, like the Titanic's sinking, which was commemorated in the greatest of all Titanic poems, E.J. Pratt's, "Titanic" (1935), the "Halifax Explosion 1917" garland of sonnets is also a documentary poetical work related in a Canadian poetic oeuvre of striking merit. As I shall amply illustrate in the November 2005 Vallance Review, both of these quasi-epic poetic oeuvres fall squarely into the tradition of historical documentary maritime Canadian poetry, a tradition not duplicated in the literature of any other English speaking nation in the entire world. The same review will also preview Richard Vallance's sonnet on the Titanic, "Iceberg Dead Ahead!", which naturally enough is in the same historic vein so characteristic of much of Canadian poetry and sonnets. Eric Linden's garland of sonnets, "Halifax Explosion 1917" has left its indelible mark on Canadian history, since it is already archived in the library collection of The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, N.S. As I will demonstrate in Vallance Review 51, November 2005, the thematic and stylistic parallels between E.J. Pratt's shattering epic length poem, "Titanic" (1935), Richard Vallance's "Iceberg Dead Ahead!" (2003) and Eric Linden's "Halifax Explosion 1917" are so numerous and striking as to be impossible to ignore. These poems are all hallmarks of what we Canadians call "Canlit", or Canadian Literature, and, in this instance, the realm of Canadian poetry. © Richard Vallance, Sept. 27 2005: Editor-in-Chief, The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade © 2005 References & Notes: [1] La Pléiade
Richard Vallance is the author of: Canadian Federation of Poets: Poetry Lessons: Lesson & Exercise - Week 18 SONNETS in The Canadian Federation of Poets weekly Poetry Progress Lessons & Exercises series SONNETTO POESIA is published quarterly in print & is advertised on the front page of the current issue of Poetry Life and Times. To subscribe to SONNETTO POESIA, contact the editor, Richard Vallance. To read the earlier e-zine back issues, visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here: 
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