Well Hello There Byzantium!

          But wait, let me introduce myself. My name is Ryan Miller, and I'm the literary editor for the 2010 - 2011 Wire Harp. Though Derek may stop in from time to time to amaze us with his bearded poetic might, I will be doing most of the babbling on both this blog and the Wire Harp's Facebook page. To counteract the babbling, I will try to (regularly) post poetry, complementary music, articles on things I like and dislike, and anything else that fits in the cracks. Mostly poetry, though, as I don't know how to do half the things I just listed. I'm a social networking Neanderthal, yet am slowly refining my hand axes and beginning to domesticate sheep. If something incomplete (or possibly insulting) finds its way onto either of the Wire Harp's pages, disregard.
          Back to poetry for a moment. I'm a reader, not a writer, and I think this is probably the most important factor in how I'm going to operate as an editor. This isn't to say that I'm going to be lax on submission requests, but I want people to be aware of what poetry has been before they try to make it was it is. I have no fear of poetry's "death", as many in the literary community do, but I do feel that it will sicken if modern writers of poetry write blindly. If all art is inevitably plagiarism, as Harold Bloom puts it, then I would much rather we plagiarize what we find the most beautiful and the most human, even if it is "old". That's that. Let's read some poetry!

Sailing To Byzantium
by W.B. Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

~~~

P.S. Recognize the opening line as a movie/book title? And you thought ol' Cormac came up with that one on his own. See, quasi-plagiarism? Don't worry kids, it only causes cancer in the state of California...

P.P.S. However, only artists get away with plagiarism. Everyone else, cite your sources!