The Egress of Hell

Selections from

The Egress of Hell:

An Epic Poem in Twenty-Four Books

By Edwin Brent Wilcoxson, M.A. (Lit), M.A. (Hist), Ph.D., Litt. D.

(some Time recently deceased)

 

From “The Prologue”

 

Ye Gods and Little Godlets! I had thought

This place to roil in umbrous shadow, burn

With everlasting flames beyond all hope

Or comprehension!

I had not thought to greet

Eternal dullness—walls, as eyeless as

Great Samson Gaza-bound in servile sloth;

Unending paths that dissipate with each

Unending breath, trending nowhere, nowhere

Born; thick, glaucous air that chokes and withers—

Dullness, dullness, nothing bright or light

Or white… except one parchment sheet penned

With sloven haste—as if to speak to me

Were waste of time and space and thoughts and words.

A single leaf, translucent as the outmost

Film of skin that mottles morbid flesh:

“For Egress—Simply write a Perfect Poem .”

(Ll. 1-16 of 666)

From “Canto the First”

 

Of my Captivity in boundless Hell

I sing—or rather shriek!— as though a thousand

Harpies battened on my ectoplasmic

Core were ripping through my essence, starved

For fat and meat and blood-chocked nourishment.

I sing, and as I do I call upon

The ancient, voiceless Gods that once attended

Epic Poetry to aid me in

My thus-far ineffective quest—

To Get me out of Hell! God knows I’ve tried:

Earnest Ballads by the double-score,

Quatrained, heartfelt, broken-hearted songs

Of Love and Loss, Beatitude in country

Lanes, rhymed and timed to excellence—

And to no avail. They earned a memo

Not unlike the first…and I began again.

This time, Sestinas—complex, intricate—

Single, Double, Triple Quatrifold,

Incessant repetons on Death and Hell,

On Justice, Mercy, Love, on Suffering

And Guilt… And Pain— the Pain illimitless

Of standing non-existent hour upon

Non-existent hour at this crude desk

To scratch unworthiness on never-ending

Reams.

The pain… the pain!

Then—wretched—more

And more and more beyond all count in this

Benighted place where Time not only Is,

But Was, and must Become—yet all at once,

All Present, Past; all Future, once-has-been:

Shrill stratum over stratum, till they quash

And suffocate Potential, Faith, and Hope

Without improving Hell. In grief, I turned

To Petrarch’s favored form, his fourteen lines

Of metered verse, with rhyme and constant rhythm

Lush and yet—opposing—capable

Of strict and stern Philosophy. And by

The tens, the scores, the hundreds, I composed

Satanic Sonnets to bemoan, bewail,

Complain, exhort, demand, beseech…in fine,

To end my presence in this damnéd Place,

And in return received one calm command:

“For Egress—Simply Write a Perfect Poem!”

What then was left when else had failed? That last,

That most ambitious, enervating, and

Sublime in all of Poesy: the Epic—

Its majestic sweep; its Fabled Tale; Heroes,

Heroines at once full human, at once

Competitors with Gods Themselves; its Style,

So High and Grand that lesser tongues might only

Look, and speak, and hear, and weep, and wish

(In vain, oh yes, in vain !) that they might merely

Imitate its lowest ranges, foothills

Braced by heights beyond their aspirations,

Forever wreathed in coronets of Fire,

Indwelt by Souls supernal, endlessly.

Of course! The leaden dullness of this Place

Had spread its sluggish tendrils to my brain,

Concealed from me my Task, my Destiny:

That I, an Orpheus Revived, should stand

Before the regnant King of Hell and sing

My freedom, as once Apollo’s Son sang life

For fair Eurydice, should pluck my Lyre and

Draw iron tears down Pluto’s stolid cheek

And make Hell grant what I profoundly seek,

A thing not yet achieved in Prose or Rhyme.

An Epic, then, recounting punishments

Austere, excessive, and unfair for minor

Flaws—no more than foibles , truth be told—

Accountable not mine but of my art,

My talent, genius, and creative grace…

Sufficient to erase my condemnation,

Satisfy my so-obsessive Judge’s

Distorted sense of Wrong and Right. And thus….

 

To begin, I shall declaim the true Descent

Of those I take—invoke—to guide my Words,

My Muses, some unnamed save by the works

They penned; some named by hallowed names that echo

Through high Halls of Immortality;

All elevate by virtue of their strength

Of line, their grandeur and heroic scope.

One by one, from first to last (that would,

Of course, be me ), none left behind in shade,

I shall recite their greatness and their roles

In shaping wayward human Destiny.

 

Say first, thou ancient poet who inscribed

“When From on High” and erst gave form to Earth

And Life and Man through lofty Marduk’s power,

Enûma Eliš, whose thousand lines incised

In clay survive—though by whose hand no scholar

Knows—to chant…

(Ll. 1-90)

‘First Teacher’ Homer, in Virtue first, but later

In chronology, the first to sing

The ancient tales of Greece, and thence to mold

Great Thoughts, through Greater Rome and yet beyond,

The first to sing Achilles’ manic wrath

And Trojan desolation obligate…

(Ll. 5,420-5,426)

From “Canto the Fourth”

 

Mantuan Virgil wrote in perfect verse,

Or so assert staid, bearded scholars from

The Renaissance, who firmly—resolutely—

Brought deadly polish to the living mode,

Obstructed it with “Thus ye must!” and “Thou

Shalt not!” until it seemed as fat and scant

Of breath as I perceive myself to be

In Hell—but that empyreal Poet, Master

Of all Masters-Yet-to-Be (except

For… no, since modesty forfends!) refused

To see perfection in his final Tale,

Instructed that pious Æneas and his ships

And men redeemed by Fate from Troyan fires—

And all his hopes of founding beyond his death

The Glory that was Rome—he, noble Poet,

Gave commands, and all smiles stopped together

When his Testament condemned his words to flames

For want (the tales tell) of proper vowel-quantities

And metered dance. He knew well enough. Now all

That I must do is to out-Virgil Virgil.

 

But think! before the mighty Bard

Dared touch his pen to scroll, before he dared

Approach the August Majesty of Homer’s

Legacy, he first composed his simple

Shepherds’ songs, Bucolics named, to learn…

(Ll. 89-113)

From “Canto the Sixth”

 

To that ancient Isle, from Geatland,

The doughty champion, Beowulf, impelled

His way to meet his tri-fold Destiny—

Grendel, huge of bulk and appetite,

Who slaughtered thirty warriors, just to fall

Before the might of one whose robust grip

Equaled in its strength a matching sum;

Grendel’s Dam, so thirsting for revenge

That she must kill her offspring’s slaughterer

Or be herself by Hruntung ’s edge dispatched;

The Fire-Drake, heinous dragon-shape

That lured the agéd king with burning lust

And golden dreams to leave his honored throne

In quest of greater glory. Oh! that he

Had restrained himself, brought surcease to…

(Ll. 9,987-10,001)

From “Canto the Twelfth”

 

Of him I will not sing, who so illy limned

These straitened corridors, whose hero-Lord

Might take my words amiss…of him, then naught…

(Ll. 6,529-6,531)

From “Canto the Sixteenth”

 

…Which yet again reminds,

“For Egress— Simply Write a Perfect Poem! ”—

Once more my theme encroaches on my thoughts

And I must conjure nearer Muses, nearer

Me in Time and Space, to indicate

The trenched futility of such a charge.

“Write a perfect poem!” indeed! as if

Perfection protocols were scribed on stone

In some forgotten warren I must pierce,

Conventions, Rules, Proprieties to be

Ticked off some Celestial Clipboard till

Each tiny box reports success… voilà

(One might as well resort to Hwæt! or Lo!

Or any other bland banality

Long since used up and cast aside as stale)

A Perfect Poem ! Bah! A waste of Time!

If Time were ought to waste in this vast, gloomy

Pit. More modern masters—evading overt

Epic while aspiring to its magnitude in crippled,

Cryptic lines of Libre Vers— achieved

Their Masterworks to live beyond their deaths:

Eliot’s anti-epic, mocking, brittle;

Mad Pound’s pronouncements, oracular and vague;

Williams’ finely chosen words; and more—

Olson, Jones, Zukofsky, Tolkien, and their

Multiforms in Rhyme and Prose; the other

Williams’ romp through Logres-Land: all

‘Perfect’ in their type… but none has yet

Explained wherein perfection—’completion,’

‘Finishing’—might dwell. And all they had

To lose were worldly plaudits and acclaim.

But I, I have in jeopardy my soul

And where…

(Ll. 456-487)

 

…must not forget the novels

someone is watching me i dont know who

or how or why or where but i can feel a

prickling on my neck it is not HIM

i would know his icy gaze but someone

else and im afraid afraid— Titanic

Tales of other Worlds of other Whens

And Wheres where different Laws and different…

(Ll. 8,720-8,727)

From “Canto the Twentieth”

 

Is anybody there? Does anybody

Care? I write as with my own life’s blood—

It might be so, I can no longer tell—but wonder

From the easy quickness of replies

(“For Egress— Simply Write a Perfect Poem! )

If anybody’s eyes—imagined eyes or real—

Have ever scanned my lines. Do I write

For Him Below to read and think about;

Or Him Above to know already what

And who I am and judge me so? What

Is the point? Why tantalize? Why torture me

With Words, Words, Words, Words and nothing

More…

(Ll. 320-322)

From “Canto the Twenty-Second”

 

…harder and harder and harder

To fill a quarter-million lines. Inane

Ideas keep popping up, like giving names

To every crack on my chamber floor—one looks

Insanely like a “Frederick” and another

Reminds me vaguely of a great-aunt Annie

Who died when I was three—I’m fairly sure

That just a list of names won’t work. Perhaps

A new direction, after all He must

Be just as tired as I am of this stuff.

 

A desperate poet named Brent

Strained his poor brain to invent—

To get out of Hell

He must Poem so well

That the Devil would grant his Ascent.

 

No, probably not. And anyway I

Don’t see how that would lead toward a—ahem!—

Perfect Poem! So I will…

(Ll. 8,752-8,765—or 8,770, I’m not sure.)

From “Canto the Twenty-Fourth”

 

The End The End The End The End The End

The End The End The End The End The End

The End The End The End The End The End

The End The End The End The End The End

The End The End The End The End The End

The End The End The End The End The End

The end the end the end the end the end

The end the end the end the end the end

The end the end the end the end the end

Theendtheendtheendtheendtheend

theendtheendtheendtheendtheend

theendtheendtheendtheendtheend

theendtheendtheendtheendtheend

theendtheendogodtheendtheend

(Ll. 12,614-12,624)

 

[Following Wilcoxson’s submission of his finished epic, this hand-scrawled note appeared on his writing board:

 

For Egress, Simply Write a Perfect Poem!

 

with the addendum:

 

For Hell’s Sake,

Think about it this time!

—The Management]

Canto the Twenty-Fifth

 

How egress Hell? One

White Rose… envelopes its thorns—

A perfect poem

 

[Exit the Poet,

To be a Perfect Poem ]