If you’re searching for some deeper meaning in this poem
Don’t bother, Dear Reader, everything’s right here on the surface
Like the 18th-Century novel, as a friend said to me
“Which makes them boring to plow through,” she went on
“You get what you see, there’s nothing you need ‘interpret’
They’re as plain as vanilla, just a cursory scanning endurance race”
To which I replied, “Well, in my humble opinion,
May I offer another viewpoint about novels from that period”
Continuing to point out that their tending to huge size
Signaled a gear-shift in writing that continued to thrive
In works from Dickens, Melville, and Joyce to many more
This prodigious length that might be a long slog for some
Represents a dawning characteristic that deserves a few words
About the notion of ‘compendium’ in the Age of Johnson
Who himself, you’ll recall, attempted penning a comprehensive dictionary
And to reach beyond the Novel genre as well
You could look to the aggregating urge of someone like Walt Whitman
This style that develops post-Restoration
Is what I’d term ‘ornate’, perhaps even ‘baroque’
Like trimming a Christmas tree from top to bottom
With everyting from lights, to ornaments, to creche and snow village scenes
All this effort carried on even further with lawn and house decorations
Now this inclination toward containing ‘everything possible’
Is part of a movement I’d call ‘Humanistic Exuberance’
Where traditional didactic dictates regarding subject matter for literature
Were breaking down like the walls of Jericho when Joshua blew his horn
It was the dawn of an age where you could write about anything imaginable
From goldfish to accidental circumcision, to whoring, and beyond
As you see this steps beyond the general historical high-minded
And high-toned accepted restrictive subject selection
“So although you think,” I said, “there’s no grist for the interpretation mill
There’s a great deal that can be said about this freeing explosion
Of licenses to write about any and every darn thing
And that, Dear Reader, reminding you this is just one man’s opinion
Is why the rise of these whales of tales came bursting on the scene
If you look at them that way, there’s a sea’s worth of critical inspection”
In closing, I’d like to add, that I didn’t say everything I might have about this
Very much like those Enlightenment Age writers who could only pack so much in
And just as my friend dismisses them as unreadable without reading them
I’ve probably lost anyone who would trudge through what I’ve thrown up here
Lanning Lee 