Encomium for the First Truly Epic Poem
By M. J. Lewis
This is the best poem you have ever read.
Everybody is saying it. Everyone.
Other poems have tried to be as wonderful,
tried to be honored with the best aesthetics,
struggled to be as tremendous as this
and to get away with things like that—believe me—
but they don’t know how. They’re weak and small;
they whine and fumble and lose all the time,
lose to limericks and haiku, senryu and lays.
But not this poem.
This poem spawns only success, has nothing but victories,
knows nothing of loss or the literature of losing,
can’t keep itself from winning, always, bigly.
There has never been a poem like this one.
Elegies and epithalamiums, idylls and odes,
Sestinas and sonnets and carpe diem canzones—
all have tried and failed to be as terrific as this,
the greatest poem, in the greatest journal,
in the greatest country, in the greatest universe on Earth.
This poem is freedom.
This poem doesn’t hide behind walls: it builds them.
This poem is a leader, a champion of meter,
of measures that beat the best out of everyone.
This poem is faith, the flag, a founding father:
a loaded gun in a good man’s hand.
This poem is the voice of America—the groin
in the bridge to a better tomorrow.
Literature, everywhere, is broken—lies in ruins.
But not this poem. Never.
No one had ever heard of Ozymandias—of might or despair.
But this poem had—and only it has the answers, has a plan.
Only this poem is doing something about the wreckage,
the crumbling rubble that sad, little phonies have left us with.
Only the feet of this poem can stand in the swamp,
Only its passages can get us back on the course.
This poem takes risks (like zeugma) but not you for a fool.
Very fine people know this poem puts them first.
But this poem loves the others too, even critics, even readers.
Some of this poem’s best friends are readers.
This poem is going very well, don’t you think?
It really is amazing. Incredible.
It has all the best words.
It’s already shown you some very important stanzas.
Very important stanzas.
This poem alone knows how welcome you are.
There is just nothing like this poem. Nothing.
And only this epic—really something very special—
can make things better and the better the best.
By simply gazing on such greatness,
you can feel yourself begin
to slide past goodness.
By surveilling and scanning but never quite reading, you
can already feel yourself tired of winning,
can already feel yourselves safer, more similar,
can already feel this poem, like nothing before in history,
through huge epizeuxis and classy anaphora,
making us great again great again great again.
Making us more like this poem.
M.J. Lewis is a critic, cartoonist at www.gapintheatlas.com, and creative writer. He is currently an assistant professor of literature at Al-Quds Bard College in Abu Dis, Palestine.
Photo credot: Internet meme.