More Youtube fooling around brought me to the Sacred Harp videos. I love this kind of singing because it takes me back to the roots of American poetry–and especially to one source: Charles Wesley’s hymns. If you want to understand the default mode for much of Emily Dickinson (certainly her prosody!) and for the melancholy in American poetry of even the most “hopeful” sort, as well as the use of the plain, but apt word in American prosody, look no further than the Methodist hymnal–and to Charles Wesley–one of the greatest English lyric poets. Type the title of this posting into the search function of YouTube and it will take you to several incredible performances of this lyric. I love the line “unpierced by human thought.”

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown -
A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought,
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot?

Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be;
Waked by the trumpet’s sound,
I from my grave shall rise,
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies,
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies.

Here is certainly one of the souces of ED’s comment that real poetry “takes the top of [your] head off.” There’s also, of course, that terrible apocalyptic burden that the West has been saddled with since the Book of Revelations was included as part of the official gospels. While this vision has given us a shoehorn into the sublime, it’s also helped to unleash the black and white vision of the world that has tainted so much of recent American culture and politics.