The Writing of:“Sir Gawain and the Ghost of the Green Knight” and "The Soldiers of Nirut" (Two Epics
About these two epic poems in the book, “Sir Gawain and the Ghost of the Green Knight,” and “The Soldiers of Nirut,” for those who have been following this series of events in the two epics I’ve written, which may or may not be put into a forth coming book, may wish to know about how I was feeling when I wrote these poems (or perhaps we can call them stories, for they have themes, plots and insight to them).
In the complete series of each story, which makes them a whole store once put together, which are two epics, about 65% of each story is of a poetic nature: form, structure, genre, the rest in prose, with a combination stylistic narrations, I wanted to create a complete story with the first attempt, or sketch or story. Which I did: that is to say, if you read the first main tale of either epic, you get a full story. If you read on, you get histories (events, adventures, Linking Vignettes, Interlude Campaigns, etc.)
Much of epics are internally interwoven with what I call common types of figurative meanings (metaphor; i.e., ‘…rusted nails’ meaning an image for a nail for the image of the woman, etc), trying to be more descriptive and explanatory.
I could have, but I didn’t smooth everything into a two story book, linking the stories together like chapters, except for the first parts of each story, the reason being, that is not how the story came to me, came into my head. It came in blocks, blotch or at times in the middle of the night, afternoon while resting on the platform, or while resting at home watching TV. These building blocks came one by one and I built the stories like that. It seemed the Green Knight series came first, and abruptly stopped, and then Nirut came tumbling down on top of me, and wouldn’t stop. Some in poet prose, some in dramatic prose, or dialogue and so for and so on. So the two epics are as they came, and all most in the same order, although I had to stick the campaigns of Nirut in the middle of his epic, where it really was came at the end of it.
The two epics, the first—dealing with the Green Knight, I wanted three things: romance, a courtly background, and adventure, which I got. The second, “Nirut…” I wanted a hero of sorts, in the cosmic vastness of a dark galaxy, one that could consume all the Cadaverous Planets I had previously written about to include the ‘Tiamat,’ the ‘Port of Poseidonia,’ (and the creative planets I wrote, such as Moiromma, Ice-cap, Cibara, and SSARG; plus the new one I added Lihterb). But I wanted a background, a history, and a spark of kindness in Nirut; his father, the Blue King was just really another character in the background for me, but somehow he emerged to be a little more, but we are a product of our environment, and so his father was necessary to rebuild, and he became a prototype of him, as often we do, perhaps he could be linked to my grandfather if indeed I was to claim I was Nirut, and I do not claim that. And all his romances are really second in line to his conquests of planets, and perhaps, they are both similar, women and planets.
(For those who wish to know who my aspirators were, there were many. George Sterling, Ezra Pound, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Bly, Robert E. Howard, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox, and Homer of the Iliad, an E.V. Gordon and his translations of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (1955 Middle English Translation), and the mighty internet where I did research, and Excerpts from J.R.R. Tolkens’s 1979, Translations of “Sir Gawain…” and the works of “Perceval,” dating from 1190 to 1980, translations. Also, Middle English translations on Sir Orfeo (and synopsis for the internet), originally unpublished by J.R.R. Tolkien, and published after his death by his son Christopher Tolkien; all this plus much more, many of my writings influenced my writings on these two epics, for as I read my imagination soared. Do not get me wrong, we are all fed by what we take in, like it or not we are influenced, and that is the only reason I give the folks above, inspirational credit, other than that I do not. Most all the characters are taken from my previous stories or books, like Marduk, or several other demonic forces or characters I use, even Sinned, from my previous ‘Tiamat…’ trilogy. Information used also from the book “The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury,” which I wrote some years ago. Now back to the poetry essay :)
In Nirut, it is a stirring story of war, rage, gripping the reader, if she or he reads it through and through. Perhaps women will not be too happy with Nirut; he is a predisposed creature to say the least.
In both epics I try to make the scenes as vividly as I can with the lesser of works, not too violent, but to fit the relentlessness of the characters, for the Green Knight, Gawain, and Nirut are all out of the same mold, sort of.
All the words are filled with energy and imagination, at times the metric meter, is evoking and I try to induce an impact, or effect with them, or so it was my goal to, feeling that is the ultimate of poetry, to get an effect, the one you want, that is also I do believe why the Bible is written in prose and poetry, one to evoke emotions the other to provoke ones thinking.
The epics, in each segment have its own outline, and poetic resources, I do believe. We have what an epic demands, heroic figures engaged in historical events, mythical yes. And for the most part, we have a narrative poem—internally interweaving (and monologue and dialogue, with first and third person narrations, and report narrations from the author, a combination.) In a like manner, we have a dramatic poem, written in a dialogue and monologue voice, of characters created by the poet. I do not care to have an argument abut the overall effect and function of this, for the careful reader it will not present a problem. In many sections of the story, you will read and see the background research, and it will explain the historical circumstances of the poem, or writings; for that is what it was meant to do. I do this also with most of my other writings, so to me it is not new, although it may be to the reader.
We see for the most part poetic prose, a form of free verse but with other elements used, depending on what section of the 36,700 word book you shift to, that is both epics consist of that amount of words, along with the index and other gathers. I also use personification, or figure of speech in the text, this helps me explain or show what I mean, which is important to me. All in all, what is import I think in the story, besides the theme, which we may have more than one, if you wish to take the story in sections, is evolution, mostly in Nirut, and partly with the Green Knight?
What was the purpose of the basic outlines? You may ask, what sort of statement the epics make, in both cases, a fair question. First one needs to look at the details of the story, poem, the big picture, with little questions. Does it teach you something in life? Is there interesting data? Have you read the Epic attentively, slowly, if so you will find these other elements? (They are there, as William Faulkner said in so many words during his speech for his Nobel Prize: there should be an ethical insight in what a person writes, or so I’ve translated his speech to mean.) I do believe you will be able to pick these out of both epics.
Description, feelings and imagination; the poetry fills the gap I need for feelings, and of course adjectives help, and I draw off of my experiences, travels, and my studies in psychology, which I’ve used for thirty-years. The imagination for this book I suppose some of it comes from my eleven years in the Army, which helps the description part for Nirut, and my interest in astronomy and archeology, and my adventures, liken to the Green Knight, again, we can add the soldier part of my lfie, in on this also.
I try, like most writers try, that is to fit or refer to things in the physical world into words, with poetry, you get feelings and confession, and at times confusion, but that is the price you have to pay for intimacy. Prose is quite different.
I did try hard to pay attention to density in these two epics, and put in the language of intensity and imagery.
I do not wish to talk about the meter in particular—not at the cost of a lest interesting story, I feel it is less important here, the pattern created in a line (s) to create sounds and stress on syllables, is not paramount to this project, yet it is there if you look for it. Each line contains its own levels of meaning, as it should (and each line was looked at carefully), and in the overall structure of each segments throughout the writings of the two epics, it was important to the understanding of the poetry, with this in mind, I have tried to keep it simple.
Written 7-18-2007, and revised 7-19-2007, in Huancayo, Peru at my apartment
In the complete series of each story, which makes them a whole store once put together, which are two epics, about 65% of each story is of a poetic nature: form, structure, genre, the rest in prose, with a combination stylistic narrations, I wanted to create a complete story with the first attempt, or sketch or story. Which I did: that is to say, if you read the first main tale of either epic, you get a full story. If you read on, you get histories (events, adventures, Linking Vignettes, Interlude Campaigns, etc.)
Much of epics are internally interwoven with what I call common types of figurative meanings (metaphor; i.e., ‘…rusted nails’ meaning an image for a nail for the image of the woman, etc), trying to be more descriptive and explanatory.
I could have, but I didn’t smooth everything into a two story book, linking the stories together like chapters, except for the first parts of each story, the reason being, that is not how the story came to me, came into my head. It came in blocks, blotch or at times in the middle of the night, afternoon while resting on the platform, or while resting at home watching TV. These building blocks came one by one and I built the stories like that. It seemed the Green Knight series came first, and abruptly stopped, and then Nirut came tumbling down on top of me, and wouldn’t stop. Some in poet prose, some in dramatic prose, or dialogue and so for and so on. So the two epics are as they came, and all most in the same order, although I had to stick the campaigns of Nirut in the middle of his epic, where it really was came at the end of it.
The two epics, the first—dealing with the Green Knight, I wanted three things: romance, a courtly background, and adventure, which I got. The second, “Nirut…” I wanted a hero of sorts, in the cosmic vastness of a dark galaxy, one that could consume all the Cadaverous Planets I had previously written about to include the ‘Tiamat,’ the ‘Port of Poseidonia,’ (and the creative planets I wrote, such as Moiromma, Ice-cap, Cibara, and SSARG; plus the new one I added Lihterb). But I wanted a background, a history, and a spark of kindness in Nirut; his father, the Blue King was just really another character in the background for me, but somehow he emerged to be a little more, but we are a product of our environment, and so his father was necessary to rebuild, and he became a prototype of him, as often we do, perhaps he could be linked to my grandfather if indeed I was to claim I was Nirut, and I do not claim that. And all his romances are really second in line to his conquests of planets, and perhaps, they are both similar, women and planets.
(For those who wish to know who my aspirators were, there were many. George Sterling, Ezra Pound, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Bly, Robert E. Howard, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox, and Homer of the Iliad, an E.V. Gordon and his translations of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (1955 Middle English Translation), and the mighty internet where I did research, and Excerpts from J.R.R. Tolkens’s 1979, Translations of “Sir Gawain…” and the works of “Perceval,” dating from 1190 to 1980, translations. Also, Middle English translations on Sir Orfeo (and synopsis for the internet), originally unpublished by J.R.R. Tolkien, and published after his death by his son Christopher Tolkien; all this plus much more, many of my writings influenced my writings on these two epics, for as I read my imagination soared. Do not get me wrong, we are all fed by what we take in, like it or not we are influenced, and that is the only reason I give the folks above, inspirational credit, other than that I do not. Most all the characters are taken from my previous stories or books, like Marduk, or several other demonic forces or characters I use, even Sinned, from my previous ‘Tiamat…’ trilogy. Information used also from the book “The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury,” which I wrote some years ago. Now back to the poetry essay :)
In Nirut, it is a stirring story of war, rage, gripping the reader, if she or he reads it through and through. Perhaps women will not be too happy with Nirut; he is a predisposed creature to say the least.
In both epics I try to make the scenes as vividly as I can with the lesser of works, not too violent, but to fit the relentlessness of the characters, for the Green Knight, Gawain, and Nirut are all out of the same mold, sort of.
All the words are filled with energy and imagination, at times the metric meter, is evoking and I try to induce an impact, or effect with them, or so it was my goal to, feeling that is the ultimate of poetry, to get an effect, the one you want, that is also I do believe why the Bible is written in prose and poetry, one to evoke emotions the other to provoke ones thinking.
The epics, in each segment have its own outline, and poetic resources, I do believe. We have what an epic demands, heroic figures engaged in historical events, mythical yes. And for the most part, we have a narrative poem—internally interweaving (and monologue and dialogue, with first and third person narrations, and report narrations from the author, a combination.) In a like manner, we have a dramatic poem, written in a dialogue and monologue voice, of characters created by the poet. I do not care to have an argument abut the overall effect and function of this, for the careful reader it will not present a problem. In many sections of the story, you will read and see the background research, and it will explain the historical circumstances of the poem, or writings; for that is what it was meant to do. I do this also with most of my other writings, so to me it is not new, although it may be to the reader.
We see for the most part poetic prose, a form of free verse but with other elements used, depending on what section of the 36,700 word book you shift to, that is both epics consist of that amount of words, along with the index and other gathers. I also use personification, or figure of speech in the text, this helps me explain or show what I mean, which is important to me. All in all, what is import I think in the story, besides the theme, which we may have more than one, if you wish to take the story in sections, is evolution, mostly in Nirut, and partly with the Green Knight?
What was the purpose of the basic outlines? You may ask, what sort of statement the epics make, in both cases, a fair question. First one needs to look at the details of the story, poem, the big picture, with little questions. Does it teach you something in life? Is there interesting data? Have you read the Epic attentively, slowly, if so you will find these other elements? (They are there, as William Faulkner said in so many words during his speech for his Nobel Prize: there should be an ethical insight in what a person writes, or so I’ve translated his speech to mean.) I do believe you will be able to pick these out of both epics.
Description, feelings and imagination; the poetry fills the gap I need for feelings, and of course adjectives help, and I draw off of my experiences, travels, and my studies in psychology, which I’ve used for thirty-years. The imagination for this book I suppose some of it comes from my eleven years in the Army, which helps the description part for Nirut, and my interest in astronomy and archeology, and my adventures, liken to the Green Knight, again, we can add the soldier part of my lfie, in on this also.
I try, like most writers try, that is to fit or refer to things in the physical world into words, with poetry, you get feelings and confession, and at times confusion, but that is the price you have to pay for intimacy. Prose is quite different.
I did try hard to pay attention to density in these two epics, and put in the language of intensity and imagery.
I do not wish to talk about the meter in particular—not at the cost of a lest interesting story, I feel it is less important here, the pattern created in a line (s) to create sounds and stress on syllables, is not paramount to this project, yet it is there if you look for it. Each line contains its own levels of meaning, as it should (and each line was looked at carefully), and in the overall structure of each segments throughout the writings of the two epics, it was important to the understanding of the poetry, with this in mind, I have tried to keep it simple.
Written 7-18-2007, and revised 7-19-2007, in Huancayo, Peru at my apartment
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