NOW WE’RE READY, MR POPE


With public poetry which sets out to record, confront, and influence the external world, one must ask what is the structure of society the poet is dealing with; where does the poet stand in relation to the world of politics, religion and the broad base of values and beliefs; what channels of communication and social definition are available to the poet; in what ways is social change affecting his position and his poetic response to society and how does the personal and professional life of the poet affect his place in the poetic order and in the wider flux of life in society. -Ron Price with thanks to Isabel Rivers, The Poetry of Conservatism: 1600-1745, A Study of Poets and Public Affairs from Jonson to Pope, Rivers Press, Cambridge, 1973, p.ix.

An understanding of disorder,
images of the ideal,
essential for the public poet
who must state truths
which are perennial
but not archaic,
whose poetry flows
from some core of goodness
and its relationship to a vast complex
of processes within which
he constantly tries to define
and so create himself.

Dedication and training
can not be avoided,
nor the workings of time
and Providence
which are only partly comprehensible
as these “last days”
spin their unpredictable way
through the cosmos of our days
and this new myth and metaphor
is given the living tissue of vision
in a synthesis that is poetry-my poetry-
and a unity within the most ambitious
ethical system on earth:

Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised
But as the world, harmoniously confused.
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.1

Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace
This country next, and next all human race.2

Such were the fine sentiments then in this early
modern age; now we’re ready, finally, to free the cage.1

1 While the old world system of politics goes on, a new one is born, develops and becomes ready when the old, the moribund old, is ready for the bone-yard.

Ron Price
22 October 1996

1 Isabel Rivers quotes Alexander Pope, The Poetry of Conservatism, p.178.
2 ibid., p.186.

your poem makes a lot of sense to me, you say things that i have been saying and coming to new understandings about a lot lately. if only people could understand, gain, and spread their power in the manner in which you suggest in your poem, then the world could become strong, peaceful, united. but instead we branch ourselves out from weak roots, we remain weak, the people around us remain weak, and our lives are wasted, humanity keeps running headlong, madly and blindly off a cliff, destroying everything in its path. but it's good to know that there are people out there like you who are not part of the big machine, maybe someday there will be enough to turn the machine around.
thank you for spreading your wisdom.