I first met Jamison Oughton through an old Facebook group entitled ‘Contemporary Romantic Poetry’ and we have been friends for many years. We connected over our shared enthusiasm for the Romantics and their style of writing, swapped poems and literary critiques, and frequently discussed the meaning of Romanticism and Romantic writing. I wanted Jamison (who I shall refer to as ‘Oughton’ below) to be the first creative writer to be featured in this new series, which is focused on artists and writers who have been directly inspired by the legacy of Romantic writing. There is a lot to unpack in this idea, but ‘Romantic Poets in the Wild’ plays on the double meaning of who counts as a ‘Romantic poet’ and what being ‘in the wild’ really means: are they to be found somewhere in our world, or are we making excursions into theirs through imitation, allusion, and moments of prayer?
It’s my pleasure then to introduce a few of Oughton’s poems to you and to comment briefly on their themes and style. Oughton was born in Abington, Pennsylvania in 1975 and was a founding member of the Dust Poets and the Plus Group in Raleigh, North Carolina. These were radical literary organizations that focused on what Jamison calls the ‘socialization of poetry,’ asking how we could transform our society into a place more suitable for poetry and poets. Such philosophical and revolutionary ideas are notably Shelleyan and we see Oughton attempting to write his way into a position of transcendental critique that strives to set the world into a certain kind of order, an order closely related to his control of poetry’s musical features. Along with Percy Shelley, Oughton considers Byron, Poe, Beddoes, Crowley, Lovecraft, George Darley, Thomas Chatterton, and Thomas Overbury as formative influences.
THE SNAKE AND THE EAGLE
One was the water, when the Sun would touch
The ocean with its fingers, beckoning
A spirit to rise up, a mist, a ghost,
A voice that was a dream when it would sing.
One was the lightning, flashing on the world
An eye that penetrated what we are,
And held the mirror to mankind, and wept
And laughed, at what we could be, and how far
Away we were. The Lightning and the Mist
Mingled in conversation, and could see
The Truth the other saw, and from them came
A scripture that could teach the world to be
The dream which God was weaving when he woke
And breathed the Universe into the air,
The Eden lost within us, if we heed
The prophecy they gave the world in prayer.
In ‘Lines Written Upon the Current Age,’ Oughton laments that we have come to live in a ‘hopeless’ time in which the idea of inspiration has lost its power. Shelley appears, like the titular poet of Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘Milton,’ as a kind of ghost of possibility. But in true Shelleyan fashion, he is invoked not as a spirit of the vanished past, but as a genius of the future. Writing with an intense focus on poetic meter and rhyme, Oughton is able to take a very painful feeling of isolation and alienation–two forces that indeed permeate our age–and weave it into a song-like texture of avowed self-reliance.
LINES WRITTEN UPON THE CURRENT AGE
This age is not poetic—there are things
Of Beauty, yes, and hearts that are alive,
And all the glory of which a poet sings,
But it is hopeless. Wherefore should I strive
To speak, when not one ballad will survive
The breath that lifts it? The inspired pen
No more can change the world. God knows that I’ve
Tried, and it was all in vain, for men
Never shall know, or feel, the golden age again.
They listen not, when some new Shelley claims
That he has seen the Ghost of Poesy;
They laugh at him, and call him lowly names,
They say his Mind is filled with Lunacy,
But he goes on, and struggles hard to see
Magic in all the darkness, and a light
To guide him far beyond the midnight Sea,
Beyond the borders of this Age of Night,
And into some new World, where everything is bright.
They say he is a dreamer, but they know
Nothing about his dreams, for they cannot
See even a shadow of the Thoughts that glow
Within his Mind, and as Prometheus taught
Forgiveness, so has he forever sought
The secret key, the lost Utopian key,
And found it in the Ocean of his Thought,
Down in the darkness of the deep, blue Sea,
Where Truth is always found, and Immortality.
‘On Once More Dipping My Feet in the Lake of Prometheus’ shows how a single act, framed in imagery taken from natural scenes, can become an emblem for the artistic power of creation. Oughton’s versification mirrors the slow, careful movements of the water, and in true sonnet fashion, his poem expresses a single idea striated across its fourteen pentameter lines.
ON ONCE MORE DIPPING MY FEET IN THE LAKE OF PROMETHEUS
“I stand beside a wide, far-reaching lake,
A silent lake, all motionless and still,
The air contains a strange, unnatural chill,
And yet the world of nature is awake.
I sit beside the lake, and let my feet
So softly, slowly, through the surface break,
So slowly, that they almost do not make
Those little vanishing waves of rings complete.
But one small ring is formed, and as it goes
Away into the night, it does not start
To perish, or weaken, but instead it grows,
Like words beneath the subtle hands of Art,
Into a greater circle that outward flows
Away from its original, beating heart.”
Oughton has mentioned to me that he does not know why he puts his poems into quotation marks, except that they sometimes come to him like dialogue that has been overheard.
INSPIRATION
“Inspiration is a devilish thing,
It comes and goes, like moonlight through the trees;
It flees from us, when most we wish to sing,
And turns from one who falls upon his knees—
I bow and beg, sweet Muse, that you will bring
Clothes for these thoughts, which otherwise will freeze
To nothingness, once Time’s cruel winter comes
And every feeling, every passion, numbs.
Clothe my dark dreams with words, and make them speak
To all that care to listen to the song
Of one whose heart is withered and is weak,
And burdened with a history of wrong—
Dress up my thoughts, and if my readers seek
The undressed Truth, then let their search be long,
For I prefer my poems be artistic,
And not the naked mumblings of a mystic.
And so I conjure the Imp of Inspiration,
That Phantom of Fancy, Imagination’s Ghost,
To make my words the music of creation,
And make them mean the meaning that is most
Like lightning, or some like illumination.
It matters not, as long as they can boast
A power and a purity which can charm
The bracelet off of any woman’s arm.
—It’s fading now! I see the embers glowing!
A few quick breaths—now see the flame arise?
Even as it flees, the comet’s tail is flowing
Like a volcano erupting in the skies!
Look up! Look up! For soon it will be going
Where every comet goes before it dies—
The never-ending, eternal Darkness, where
No God or Muse can hear a poet’s prayer.”
Although he is not an overtly political writer, Oughton has recently used poetry as a way to comment on the noticeably divisive political climate in America:
WRITTEN DURING THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 2017
“A Nation, on which the Sun had shown
For centuries, was bathed in shade,
And one, who thought himself alone
The Life-Star, a new chaos made
Of all that was good, and just, and free,
And hearts grew blind that gazed to see.
So was the world, when Heaven grew
Into a symbol of the Times.
And we, the poets, felt and knew
That if we caught the Moon with rhymes,
Then maybe, some, though few, would see
Soon Hate itself eclipsed would be.”
I want to thank Jamison again for being the first writer featured in this new series, and I think he is an exemplary poet ‘in the wild’ who is working in a self-consciously Romantic style while still attempting to cultivate his own voice and literary persona. I think his poetry shows that Romanticism, while sometimes described as a cultural response to disenchantment, can also be a kind of repository for the feelings that don’t fit neatly into our modern lives, with their emphasis on utility, gain, and hierarchical organization. Figures like Percy Shelley–and for me, Samuel Taylor Coleridge–can become like symbols themselves of a different reality that still has the glimmer of a possible future about it.
If you’re wondering if he has published a book, he has! It is titled Songs of the Cleophite and may be a little difficult to find, but it is out there (you could also get in touch with Jamison directly about acquiring a copy). He is currently working on a second volume entitled Vinum Daemonum, rumored to be a collaboration with the hermetic poet Jeffrey Wooley (also a member of the Dust Poets and Plus Group).
I hope that you enjoyed this brief glance into a working poet’s oeuvre. Tune in next time when we will be featuring the writer and poet Colin Harker!
Adam Neikirk
Love this poet, truly one of the best English poets