An "Earish" poem of my own: sort of

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I've used for my own "Earish" poem the following source-text from Cicero's De Oratore, III. ii. 5-6 (Loeb Classical edition). Having read a fair bit of Cicero in my time & being familiar with the diction, subject-matter and style, I might generate a "heard" poem that satisfies both 'translation' & 'poetry' conditions à la Robert Kelly. It's the poetry, however, I'm hoping to "hear' most of all in the great orator's prose & to do it I will resist the urge to use the more familiar "seen" root-words and other contextual sign-posts. The sampling is small but hopefully illustrative of an important "Earish" principle of composition: that of "listening to the sound of the... poem until you can hear it as English".

Permulta tum vehementissima contentione animi, ingenii, virium ab eo dicta esse constabat; sententiamque eam quam senatus frequens secutus est ornatissimis et gravissimis verbis: 'Ut populo Romano satisfieret, nunquam senatus neque consilium reipublicae neque fidem defuisse,' ab eo dictam; et eundem (id quod in auctoritatibus perscriptis exstat) scribendo adfuisse.

If I rely exclusively on the aural & veer as close to the familiar English as is possible (singling out the most "heard" items), the lines of the Cicero passage can undergo some interesting transformations until a 4-verse poem appears. From a strictly literal, almost syllable-by-syllable translation, the first line may sound roughly to me like

pare moult a tomb weigh him in tea sea my content own nay enemy in gaining he weary him obey a diktat assay

the second line,

cone stab ought sent tent I am quay he am calm see not twos fray gains say cue to/too his or not tea sea mist

the third,

eat growl we see miss where bees hoot pop you low roam on know salty seas ferret noon calm sand not twos neck weigh cone see lea whom

the fourth,

ray poor bleak eye neck way feed him deaf you east say obey oh! addict tomb damned quad or torrid ought sea

and the fifth,

poor scree tossed taut bend doe add deaf you say.

The final poem's the product of a few more intermediary steps, some syntax, diction, tone and generous word-order arrangements, which I won't record here. Without them we'd certainly have what Joseph Hutchison calls 'gibberish', a poem denuded of sense. It's perhaps at this concession to authorial intervention that Kelly and I part company. I don't think you can leave even a "homeophonic" poetry to pure chance, hoping for the most harmonious constellation of sounds on the page: a certain degree of authorial manipulation is necessary in order for a poem to appear.

I'd like to emphasize the necessity of omitting some "heard" items in order to avoid redundancy & the chaos of an entire inventory of "sounds" that won't be shaped into a poem. I'll have considered this a success if a strong sense, at least, of the tenor of what I've extracted by ear from Cicero is discernible. Perhaps something of the excessive & inherently unpredictabile nature of speech sounds & their ability to disclose new poetical rhythms, new energies.

My 'Earish' poem is tentatively titled "Horace on life's brevity" (for Robert Kelly):

Await a tumult, content-weary
obey a diktat, my enemy gaining in him

Gains ought not to stab or consent to stab
his tea mist: I too am calm

on ferret noon. You roam, know not salty sands
where bees tent, you whom seas miss

Obey, poor bleak eye. You, feed him, oh!
tomb or deaf torrid sea,

poor tossed scree. Poor taut doe