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A Prospectus on Abrams' Natural Supernaturalism, April 26, 2010
This review is from: Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (Paperback)
Who seek th'discerning intellect of Man
Will find in Abrams' bosom all they can:
His prose is great, citations do abound,
His breadth of knowledge surely does astound.
He takes Will Wordsworth's cloudy, blankest verse
And from this sow's ear weaves a pretty purse.
So deftly he employs his lit'ry crafts
The poets find themselves to be surpassed.
Selective is his skilled assimilation
Resulting in a "reinterpretation"
Eliminating those who do not fit
(Of graphic arts and music - none of it)
We're left with mostly Wordsworth and his fans,
Ignoring others' complicating hands
(Though Coleridge's work does not induce such schism)
He makes them speak for all Romanticism.
So armed with samples highly exclusivic
He thus reveals the genius of the critic.
(Don't get me wrong - his book's a lovely read,
Quite positive, without invective screed.
His passion'd love for certain poems is clear,
But rather sharply limited, I fear.
Sir Alfred and Sir Walter find we not
Although Romantics were both Tennyson and Scott.)
At times, howe'er, his narrowness of views
Make me suspect I'm taken by some ruse:
Of the "Prospectus", he asserts with force
"That Bard, of course, is Milton." No recourse
To alternate interpretational views;
"That Bard" is he whom Abrams had to choose
To make his theory work; he fits his data
(Like Mind to Nature), eliminates errata,
And citing reams of poetry
Dismisses any ambiguity.
His take on history runs a sim'lar course:
Divergent views are killed without remorse.
With Greek and Christian minds made uniform,
He hides all deviation from the norm.
It's not that I dispute his general claim
That Christian history's more or less the same
But it's a prized, elitist train of thought
That pulls his argument to where it's got.
Augustine, Bacon, Milton, Carlyle, Blake -
These dead, white European men all make
Their case: the Bible's great events are turned
Within each man's own life, thus Heaven's earned.
Until at last the secular's displaced
All Christian sense and faith; these leave their trace
In history and apocalyptic views
That Wordsworth and his coterie re-use,
Refracted by Romanticism's prism,
Into Natural Super-Natur'lism.
The plight of modern man's another thing
About which Abrams makes Will Wordsworth sing.
Divided man (from nature, men and self)
Must be brought by the poet back to health.
In part this problem is an old division
By sex, which calls for a Redemptive vision.
Thus Abrams labors to squeeze what sex he can
From him, who was a rather sexless man.
Yet Abrams knows the perfect texts
Of metaphoric metaphysic sex.
Of the Occult in Abrams, we can find
He has a quite accommodating mind.
Kabbalah helps articulate the theme
That "union" is not quite what it might seem;
Instead it's truly something greater
Than machinations of some guy's prostator.
Thus is Will's lack of "getting some" Redeemed,
"Ein ewig Nichts" becomes the godhead beamed
Into the sex-starved life of Will and friends
Transformed into sublime and happy ends.
`Tis odd, I note, that all this stuff is read
In silence, poems are jailed in one's head;
The sensuous joy of linking tongue to ear
Negated - there is nought a whisper for to hear.
And what of this insanely rash endeavor?
Perhaps I'm simply being far too clever?
To write critiques in rhyming (doggerel) verse,
`How could it', you might think, `get any worse?'
But this is Our High Argument: we must reclaim,
Romantically, the poet-artist's name;
Permitting not the critic's mal-possession
Of artistic Laurels gained by supercession.
Prosaic criticism dies. Now see,
Hear, taste, and touch this sweet illumined poetry!
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