Works in Progress
The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem
"Long choosing, and beginning late." - John Milton, Paradise Lost.
The Argument
I derive this title from both Chaucer and Attar, which suggests my focus is both Western and non-Western human experience. I seek to sift, ponder, and sum up not only American historical experience but the human experience of the major regions of the globe under the impact of modernism.
The Guide leads the Persona on a Journey to meet all the great poets of the nations and to call them to assemble on the moon to debate the meaning of modern nihilism. All the great shades appear at the Apollo landing site in the Sea of Tranquillity: Homer and Virgil from our Greek and Roman foundation; Dante, Spenser, and Milton hail from the Judeo-Christian West; Rumi, Attar, and Hafez step forward from Islam; Tu Fu and Li Po, Basho and Zeami, step forth from China and Japan; the poets of the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana meet on that plain; griots from Africa; shamans from Indonesia and Australia; poets and seers of all ages, bards, troubadours, and minstrels, ancient and modern, major and minor, hail across the halls of time and space. As the Guide shows the Persona crucial sites around the globe, such as Chartres Cathedral and the temples of Nara and Kyoto, the nature of social order and civilization in the regions of the past is explored. Modern twentieth century historical experience in all its glory and all its brutal suffering is fully confronted. The modern movement toward a global civilization is recognized and celebrated for the unprecedented future it opens to human beings. That transcendent rose symbol of our age, the Earth itself viewed from the heavens, one world with no visible boundaries, metaphor of the oneness of the human race, reflects its blue-green light into the darkness of the starry universe.
Undergirding my writing is the gradual, continuing development of international federal institutions. The defeat of communism and the numerous crises since then demonstrate that the slowly, painfully evolving authority of the United Nations remains the only hope for a comparatively peaceful world.
During the last several years I have read well over two hundred books on the League of Nations and the United Nations. For the most part they are dry technical manuals or histories of primary use to diplomats and scholars. Conversely, through the actions of concrete characters, epic poems interpret history. Global social and political conditions have more than sufficiently changed to warrant a fundamental reevaluation of what has become prevailing literary and cultural thinking.
Copyright (c) 2002 Frederick Glaysher
Further details:
Headnotes: The Globe: The Global Age. A Writer’s Online Journal.
"Epopee" in The Grove of the Eumenides: Essays on Literature, Criticism, and Culture.
Beyond Alexandria (Note on Homer and Virgil at bottom of linked page.)
For All Mankind 21 minutes, Mp3
I began writing the poem in the early spring of 2008.
As of January 25, 2010, I’ve completed the rough draft through the Book IX, of the projected twelve books. After two years of actively writing, I’m finding the mundane necessities of life are constantly intervening too much. Given mildly declining health in my mid-fifties, momento mori, I’ve decided, acknowledging the different offices of human nature, to try to remedy the situation, following the example also set by poets of the past, by seeking a Patron who understands the cultural importance of an epic and the reciprocity inherent in a dedication. Times Literary Supplement, January 29, February 5, February 12, and February 19, 2010. The New York Review of Books, March 11, March 25, 2010:
Patron Sought. In the tradition of Maecenas and Can Grande della Scala,
to support poet with global vision, for completion of a universal epic poem.
Details, contact: www.fglaysher.com
As of November 11, 2010, I've finished the rough draft of Book XI, with only the final Twelth Book left to write, set again back on the moon.
February 4, 2011. The Parliament of Poets, Book XII, nearly three full years of writing, after decades, a full rough draft.
June 6, 2011. I’ve revised each book for a second draft through Book VIII.
August 1, 2011. Finished the second draft of the entire epic.
December 13, 2011. Finished the third draft, polishing the epic catalogues.
January 5, 2012. A fourth draft done, concentrating on the motif, "What is woman?"
Frederick Glaysher
Contact
Other Works in Progress
A Commonplace Book
An essay on African literature
"The Poet's Religion of Rabindranath Tagore," forthcoming in Rupkatha.com
A Global Testament of Faith: A Selection of the Prayers and Meditations of Humankind
Confessions