Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival – A Critical Anthology
Dennis Wilson Wise (ed.), Lanham, Maryland: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2023, 407pps., US$65
The phrase ‘alliterative poetry’ immediately connotes archaism, and a literary tradition almost moribund since the mid-fifteenth century. University of Arizona academic Dennis Wilson Wise suggests that the form has been revived almost unnoticed over the last hundred years, and subtly shapes some modern literature, despite the indifference or even opposition of arbiters of taste.
Alliterative poetry today, when it is thought about at all by literary gatekeepers (of the kind John Heath-Stubbs would have called “Poets of Bray”), is seen as broadly belonging to one of two kinds – canonical texts by Anglo-Saxon and Middle English greats, and self-consciously derivative verse, as encountered in modern works of fantasy, science fiction and horror. It suffers from both categorisations – the canonical texts often now seen as elitist and reactionary (maybe even intrinsically ‘racist’), the later homages often seen as pastiches beneath the notice of sophisticated readers. Wise seeks to extricate the form from this double damnification, and show it as infinitely adaptable, perennially relevant and substantive. He includes works from 55 versifiers of greatly varying fame, quality and style to make his case.
As an enthusiast of fantasy fiction, Wise is intimately acquainted with the milieux in which alliterative verse is even now appearing – frequently eccentric and frankly fey worlds where Auden, Lewis, Pound and Tolkien meet pulp fictioneers, neo-pagans, comic-book fans, cosplayers, SF geeks and Gothicists, many of them belonging to organisations with names like the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) or The Troth. It is ironic that it is only in such non-conventional company that this ancient literary form can still find unabashed expression – just as traditionalist artists can often only find openings painting backgrounds for computer games. He opens an interesting and sometimes amusing window onto a universe few “mundanes” (as Creative Anachronists call outsiders) will be aware of, and one immediately intuits why such outlandish characters are usually written off by the academy. It is difficult to take entirely seriously someone like Ron Snow, here described straightfacedly as “a highly popular and deeply respected poet within the SCA kingdom of Ansteorra”, whose “efforts earned him one of that realm’s highest honors: the title Lion of Ansteorra, Defender of the Dream.”
Not even the presence in this ambience of Poetic Edda translator and ‘Age of Anxiety’ author Auden – luckily gay and leftwing to 21st century tastes – elevates the form in academy eyes. Ezra Pound’s ‘Seafarer’ is justly remembered, but his colourful politics have not exactly helped encourage interest in this or any other aspect of his genius. Lewis’s less controversial but still scornfully-regarded Christian conservatism, and Tolkien’s reputation as mere children’s writer, have similarly occluded realisation of their alliterative verse achievements.
Some modern exponents of alliterative (or “speculative adjacent”) verse, like the Danish-American science-fiction writer Poul Anderson, have or had good groundings in medieval literature, which gives their verse at least the semblance of substance, even when enlisted in the service of some story set in outer space or an alternative earth. Unluckily, for many of these writers’ readers the surrounding matter is more immediately arresting than any number of cunningly crafted verses, while those who might appreciate alliterative skills if seen in isolation are generally deterred by ‘swords and sorcery’ or ‘space cowboy’ contexts. The fantastical trappings of such books are of course no more fantastical than the frameworks of the Anglo-Saxon or medieval poets, but the earlier writers have the advantages of earnestness and innocence as well as venerability.
Howsoever chortled at by cultural critics or overlooked by mass-market consumers, the alliterative form still possesses force, because it draws from deep philological wells, and is rooted in immemorial cadences and rhythms. One of the reasons alliterative verse goes largely unnoticed is because it is almost ubiquitous in English poetry, from “Double, double, toil and trouble…” to Auden’s “Opera glasses on the ormolu table / Frock-coated father framed on the wall…” (‘Age of Anxiety’). Alliterative poetry has a reputation for being epic, Germanic, impersonal and long (all reasons for modern spurning), but any time Anglophones wish to be memorable or resonant, we slip instinctively into alliterative idioms, from “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper” to Dylan Thomas’s “…sloeblack slow, black, crowblack, / fishingboatbobbing sea” (‘Under Milk Wood’).
The modern revival had a predecessor between around 1350 and 1450, when after a near-total absence of several centuries, Anglo-Saxon style alliteration re-emerged in texts like Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Norman Conquest was military but also cultural, introducing new modes of speech and countless new words into these islands, and continental conventions about composition.Old English’s stress-initial syllables had loaned themselves to front-rhyming; this was less true for suddenly prestigious French and Latin terms. According to one source cited by Wise, from the 75 years preceding 1350 only 28 lines of alliterative poetry have survived, where the 75 years after 1350 yield more than 40,000. The eventual assimilation of the Normans and emergence of a new national awareness may have unconsciously aroused older modes of expression which had survived in the vernacular.
Assertions of alliterative verse’s continuity in England can be contentious. In his introduction, Wise congratulates himself for not taking sides – then promptly seems to do so, coming down rather severely on one of today’s chief ‘continuitists,’ Rahul Gupta. Wise rightly admires Gupta’s great skills, yet chides him for “cultural nationalism” – although there seems no obvious reason why a poet should not celebrate a particular country. He also disapproves of his “purist sensibility,” and apparent emphasis on Old English poetics above Old Norse and Middle English – although these are surely just a matter of taste. Sometimes, Wise’s definition of alliterative poetry feels almost too wide; as he writes, “The alliterative meter is no longer an inherited tradition; it is a poet’s smorgasbord of options.” Lastly, he reprehends Gupta’s lack of knowledge of some of the often extremely obscure contemporary versifiers included in this volume; yet reading some of these, it is difficult to see this as too grievous a loss.
However, other poems found in this book are extremely enjoyable. Edwin Morgan’s ‘Spacepoem 3: Off Course’ memorably materialises a space exploration mission drifting through desolation, and Joshua Gage’s ‘Demetrius Yardley, Fire Nurse’ glitters with brilliant conceits. P K Page finds striking onomatopoeic comparisons between skalds and crow-calls, and pays technical tribute to the alliterative skills of her compatriot George Johnston. John Myers Myers gives a bravura Beowulf-style treatment of the siege of the Alamo. Beowulf is also channelled by Earle Birney, to forge a striking parallel between mythic dragons and modern pollution. Rahul Gupta’s Viking battlefields, Yuletide mummers and spectral mycology gleam with eldritch light. Carter Revard’s ‘Birch Canoe’ fuses American imagery with Anglo-Saxon, to carve a craft that speaks like the Rood in ‘The Dream.’
Wise’s dogged truffle-hunting across this redolent if sometimes rubbish-strewn terrain has uncovered some real prizes, at least some of which are almost certain to be new to even the most widely read. Hopefully, this welcome academic interest can help bring a degree of coherence to this sadly scattered field, and dedicated new adherents to this ancient art.
This review first appeared in the June 2024 issue of Quadrant, and is reproduced with permission