The 16th century poem that is a genuine poem

The anti-academies of the West have created and fostered an anti-tradition in poetry. What has been passed off over the past 100 years as poetry has not been poetry, but something else. I call it Blather.

It has none of the indicia of poetry: no form or bad form, no rhyme, no meter or ugly meter, rules usually transgressed by incompetents; and unlike the best blank verse, no music in the language. The meaning is generally obscure and often gibberish. They like to play hide the sausage. (These are people who don’t use James Joyce’s Ulysses as a doorstop as I do.). But the sausage they hide is foul. Scholarship has gone the same road.

Of course, there are exceptions in scholarship and poetry, and just recently, I came across two genuine poets, both on Substack. Hallelujah! A discovery more valuable than the napkin.

This short poem by Richard Lovelace (1618 - 1657) evinces all the indicia to prove it is a poem. And a damn good one, which delighted and yet moved me.

Read it aloud, and you will hear that it is as conversational as any of the anti-poetry claim to be, as being more “real” and “life-like,” two terms employed by hacks to make it seem as if they possess the rare ability to actually write a genuine poem. It reads trippingly on the tongue with the same haste the soldier himself must feel as he has drawn away from his faithful bride to fight for his honor and religion, ultimately for her respect. His language is as beautiful as she must be to him.

Somewhere east of Luling, Texas. Photo by the author. Copyright © Richard Kuslan, 2025. All rights reserved.