Historical Poems #

In a new unpublished anthology of poems Tony Page revives the past to show what we can learn from it. Several poems reveal Tony Page is a master of his craft.

Ezra Pound, influenced by Gertrude Stein’s modernism, in turn influenced T.S. Eliot in linking poetry to the past through quotes and allusions to create aesthetic objects.

Ezra Pound’s advice to

“revive the past but make it new”.

We can extent the past by renewal and continuity. The past can be reembodied in order to preserve it or to denounce it.

We imitate our forbears through honouring their power or by mocking them, thereby subverting their power.

Shelley’s Ozymandias, ridicules the overweening pride of a Pharaoh’s statue crumbling into sand.

Roman General #

Tony Page, Melbourne, Australia

The Republic’s gone to the dogs.
Attend me and we will stop the rot.
Spurn Luxury. Embrace the old virtues.
If our borders are to expand, take
delight in discipline. Is it worth
squandering our inheritance on debate?
Away with the rhetoric, that’s for layabouts
who suborn the Senate as a marketplace.
Nothing but brute force from now on,
a bitter pill for perilous times. You may
chafe under my rod, but I promise glory.
Who knows - an empire for the taking?

Rita Dove, a former American poet laureate wrote: “poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful,”

Page’s virtuoisty in Roman General succeeds paring down to the bone, like no other.

It takes Livy’s 142 books, Shakespeare’s Roman trilogies of 500 years or Edward Gibbons’ six volumes, and compresses them to 12 lines - about 84 words.

Talk about distillation to the essence.

Great poetry uses the best words in the right places. Seamus Heaney claims:

“The poet’s skill lies in the summoning and semantic energies of words.”

“It relies on nuances, suggestion, the multiples meanings of words and the inferences we all choose to draw”.

Tony Page manages to mingle the vernacular with the formal terminology - gone to the dogs, or rot for corruption, to succinctly illustrate how a democracy succumbs to tyranny. The demotive nature of the language undercuts the pomposity and high profile of a vaunted leader.

The General could be, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar or Augustus, as all had a hand in destroying the republic. Caesar was mentored by Sulla, learning quickly how to survive in “kill or be killed” politics. Sulla initiated proscriptions, eliminating enemies and appropriating their assets.

The major expansion had taken place under Pompey and Caesar.

I prefer the latter, Augustus as he boasted that he,

“found Rome a city of mud and left it a city of marble”.

The imperious tone of “Attend me” apes the commanding aura of “princeps senatus” first among equals, pontifex maximus, Chief Priest - beyond questioning.

Within 18 months of Antony, Lepidus and Augustus seizing power, hundreds of senators and their families were proscribed - they and their families killed (murdered) and properties confiscated.

Augustus also attempted to tackle moral decadence (the rot). Though his second wife, Livia, provided him with attractive prostitutes (luxury), adultery, he hypocritically, attempted to legislate against the human heart.

Ovid’s Ars Amatoria made a mockery of his moral reforms. Not one for frolic, ten years later, Augustus had Ovid banished to Tomis, where no one spoke Latin.

The old virtues, could refer to Coriolanus, who espoused “valour” as the highest, and what Horace satirised as “sweet and becoming it is to die for one’s country”.

The Greeks had already demonstrated that democracy founders under “debate” and division. Demagogues were able to appeal to our most primal base instincts as populists. The use of three word slogans promise simple solutions to complex problems. Most elections are won by foul means.

Socrates had argued for a dialectic, coming together constructively to search for truth.

Brute force was used by Sulla onward.

The final promise of glory could be rephrased as “Make Rome Great Again”!

The choice of words like brute force, perilous times, and chafe, imply an undermining of authority.

This is an outstanding poem as it fulfills Aristotle’s claim that,

“The superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness”.