Thanks very much Barbour (david) Bircumshaw (douglas) and Croggon (alison)
Desmond (kevin) havin a larf here, you know, being happy, full of the Joy of
fitting poetic frenzy, the cerebral fizz and jizz mentioned in the text,
which comes from grinding away at the fair nuts of the nine hazels on the
Well of Segais in the Sidhe realm. 

~

The thing about this text is, if (as is logical to assume) it is one of the
most important poetic texts in existence, (as i am discovering) - it is the
perfect primer to underpin one's entire philosophy and lasts for life.

The fact is, it is 7C, attributed to the irish equivalent of Hesiod, in the
sense that it lays out a foundation on which everything else is built.

Hesiod's 1022 line creation myth poem - Theogony (trans. seed of the gods)
is his 8C BC version of Greek myth, on which the entire 500 yr old modern
English poetic tradition is founded and currently rests. Our knowledge of
the lineage of the (Greek) gods, the whole myth system, rests on this one poem. 

When it comes to blathering on Poetry and what it is, traditionally cards
from the Greek myth system have been the only ones dealt and played with in
the poker game that we contemporary poetry-bluffers indulge in.

But what Greek myth hasn't got, (as far as i know) is a text which offers a
definition of what Poetry is. Indeed, the wars we've been fighting for 500
years between the radz and the straights in our various guises, have all
been because there is no text which lays out in black and white, what Poetry is.

All we have had to go on, is personal interpretation, and so whoever the
most eloquent are in any age, they're the ones whose versions end up rising
to the top of consciousness, regardless of what their real impulses may
originate out from.

For example, bores like Pope, a misanthropic midget fuelled by a deep hate
of his competitors and a dreary tight ass who compounded that sneery strand
in English letters which relies on the one-line barb, written not to spread
love and peace, but to shut people up, and which is still a very prevalent
one about today. Indeed, when i first got online and started to play with
the poetic equivalent of my football mates (before i met the more
intellectual and equivalent to my music mates here) - the rules of
engagement were underpinned by this one-line sneery poetic.

Not that i realised it at the time, as i thought anytime i got one, that
maybe i had committed some incredibly obvious faux pas and treasonable
transgression of poetic etiquette kind which showed only i was not the
*real* thing and never could be. That i had been born congenitally unpoetic
and the proof in the one line sneers from one's seniors who were *real*
because they had a book or two out and i was merely a knobhead with a guilty
pleasure, who enjoyed writing but didn't know that i should actually, just
stop right now pack in and never appear again.

Obviously it was just my overactive imagination and a complete absence of
any sense of entightlement, because of my own issues and lack of self worth,
and which Magma's Editor Laurie Smith, in a rather strident bit of blather
written in relation to a what he thinks is a new more edgy dangerous and
just-round-the-corner poetic vitality that is gonna be aonce ina 200 year
event, hits on the head (some would say) in an article titled The New
Imagination, writing that people in England:


"...have been educated to use language as control – to control their own
feelings by denying or minimising them and to control others by suggesting,
through fluency, grammatical precision, irony or accent, that they are
inferior." 

That's how it felt for me as a newb when talking with what passed for the
high-ender (by online standards) lyric normals who knew what they was on
about, in the short exchanges that occured and with the odd flourish now and
again, but with a clearly very rigid pecking order in which there was an
unspoken code that it was implicit everyone should know and follow and to
not follow or trangress was, frightfully bad form and if one went beyond the
pale, upset bores firing off sneery barbs to leave one in no doubt, one was
a rotter and total fraud depsoiling the Craft of being a (what i didn't know
then but do now) - poetic equivalent of the football mate. Lite chat, keep
it simple, no-one really wanna  talks at quantum level, like they do here as
the muso mates more laid back, less stressed with being a winner and getting
that all important R.    

~

Now, most people with any brains (i am guessing) would argue that spreading
love and peace is what all adult poets should be trying to do with their
words generally,  even though we may fail more than we succeed. This is just
common sense because doing the opposite of this leads only to bitterness,
unhappiness and a shit life as an artist.

Better to be a happy crap poet than a brilliant horrid git who is a seething
bag of jealousy and hatred, i would argue.

The Amergin text effectively gives perfectly balanced encouragement, which
offers Hope tempered by realism, and is poised in perfect 50/50 balance,
coming down on the side of nothing or no one but the individual and our
potential for poetic attainment. It's whole conceit says, that anyone born
with the poetic gift, has the potential to go all the way and fulfill that
potential, to become an ollamh (phon. ulav - poetry professor) without any
other living person having to affirm us, because we exist as a poet in our
*own esteem* - as He who needs not naming, the Mossbawn magus - has it.

And he is right, it doesn't matter where we appear, who is our pal, who says
what about us, because we write alone and create only our own poetic
standards and measuring device to calibrate the quality of our own and other
poems. We all set our own bar, and exist, ultimately, in our own esteem.

But how do we go about fulfilling our potential? How do we know if we even
have any?

And this is where Amergin's balancing act begins.

"Where is the root of poetry in a person; in the body or in the soul?" 

- Amergin rhetorically asks, and answers himself by saying well, some say
the soul and others the body, passed down in the DNA - and he ends this
question before moving onto the next part of the lesson, by answering it:

"...the good knowledge in every person's ancestry comes not into everyone,
but comes into every other person."

The good knowledge, poetry, comes not into everyone, but every other one -
50% of us. 

The perfect odds to inspire hope. 

And this is where it significantly diverges with the usual sneer based
English poetic whereby only the top .01% who traditionally have been
courtier-like bods, like Sir Mandy, the priviledged custodians of a noble
art, doing it for a family of seven rather than a nation of 60 mill - like
Poe, like Eliot and Leavis, like the Fugitive/New Critics, like the clever
people who say, me and my very major pals are the real poets and we talk in
the abstract as their is no defining text we all have which lays out general
principles and we are very civilized and refined and sophisticated, and we
sneer about others who are minor, not like us, oh no, because we use fancy
foregin names, bung in a few art-references talk about the composition of
light on the stauary in the Piazzo Pontifcior Del Piaddro in Vincenza and of
Grogormisio the 12C poet-monk i have just rediscovered in a text alluded to
in Dantes fourth circle and Circes of course, was terribly iportant in all
this and - dop you feel inferior yet? 

Amergin dispenses with all this nonesense, by saying, well, it's not .01% of
the Mandy's and Sir ass licks of this world who can become the best, but
anyone if this coin i toss lands - you choose, heads or tails, 50/50 chance
pal that you can be the best in the world one day, if you are born with the
gift, as half of us are, mate. Do you feel Hope with these odds? 

~

I will leave it there for the moment, as this poem is a life-long study in
itself, the more one learns and so the understanding of the poem deepens,
but effectiuvely this is the essence of the poetic. Perfect proportion.
There are four Joys and Sorrows Amergin defines as the primary poetic joys
and sorrows of human life, (with a particular emphasis on the poet's life.

Have a look at the text and lets chat on the Joy, or Sorrow, but i don't
want to waffle to much and put you off, as i am learning how to present
myself now you have been the first to acknoweldge it, please ca i have half
of your recent winnings Croggon, and a pledge for half of any futire monies
from what you do, please Ms and if you agree i will ask the good faeries to
make you Queen Croggon?

ha ha ha ha ha 

http://www.thunderpaw.com/neocelt/poesy.htm