Beowulf as Instruction for Living
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
If only life, our stuttered lives, were like
Sestinas or like Anglo Saxon lines
Of poetry, each unseen ghostly spike
Of caesuras that runs up through the spines
In oldest English verse. This backbone holds
The poetry’s invisible, firm strength
That binds alliteration as it molds
Heroic epithets. An epic’s length
Is thus sustained by rigid rules and forms.
Traditions helped the bards to fight against
Life’s shapelessness. A bat escaping storms
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Hangs rigidly like these creations fenced
And bolstered. Centuries will not make weak
Such beasts. The parallels are not oblique.