A Note on Epigrams
Notae I & Epigrammata 35
Epigrams are supposedly, according to certain etymological sources, simply “inscriptions”. By nature they are short poems, meaning that even if they do contain something complex, they are taken in a glance. Primarily it is best to think of the term “epigram” as a “final word”. This word, given that such poems are often about contemporary subjects rather than timeless ones, is often satirical, sardonic, ironic, or dismissive. At the very least, it’s required to take a serious subject lightly, as I often have done. Since most of contemporary discourse in any era is ephemera, destined for dumping in the river of forgetfulness, such words are intended to say something useful (and short!) about a subject that has been noodled on endlessly about.
The instinct to write epigrams is one of contempt, and not of respect, which is often how they are similar to aphorisms, which are largely written by those with some experience and a sense of distance from a circumstance that takes itself and its folderol extremely seriously - the shortness, glibness, smugness, and general parsimony are in contrast to this either instinctually or by calculated intention. It may very well be that in the same way in which dough is kneaded down as it rises, so aphorism-like writing is necessary to knead down the endless churn of logorrhea that mostly constitutes human knowledge and understanding in more literate eras. At the very least, their internal sense of limitation is confrontational.
Epigrams are not a specific form of poetry in the way that something like a Haiku or Sonnet is intended to be, this is because an epigram is more driven by text than by music. However, most writers choose a form and stick to it, simply because a well-chosen form always aids in artistic construction (“the essence of the picture is the frame” - Chesterton) by constraining loose and unruly imaginative possibilities. If writing poetry should teach you anything, it should teach you the important role that form - and thus fixed form - plays in aesthetics. Rather than rejecting it, one should embrace it the way you learn the art of fitting the subject in the frame in photography. Even the length of these notes is so intentionally limited.
Epigram 35, What It Became
I had heard it said the best That there is no future for the West A dead concept at its heart Of Christendom but a part. Alan Watts hated the phrase "live in the present", or so he says But he's not present, having passed; For its becoming, the die is cast Where must you be, when it dies at last?
The best epigrams have turns of phrase in them that are memorable. It is not possible to intentionally produce phrases that will be memorable, this is a fool’s errand. But by intentionally constraining the work you compel parsimony, and turn out a number of impactful phrases even if they are not unique. Sometimes the need to shorten or constrain the phrase results in something that is to you strictly incorrect, but which to others may hit the mark, not reading it in the way that the author did. So it often happens in musical improvisation. Since the techniques of poetry were likely invented mostly to memorialize in eras of oral culture, so it is that the most memorable poetics shine brightest to us even in ignorance. They are as primary poetics.
Epigrams do not need titles. I provide them because I believe in the naming of things, or put a different way, I believe in the importance of the naming of things. Thus attempting to title something is an exercise in naming, and it helps me avoid trying to symbolically arrange the poems numerically (even though they are only numbered for indexing purposes — if you learn anything from Carlyle, learn how important an index is!) The last point to make about an epigram is that it should contain references to contemporary things, and thus provides a form of concentrated cultural memory of events that might be lost (or memory-holed) or of sentiments felt in passing. This note was constrained to 45 lines: five groupings of nine. I pray it was edifying.