Paul Elisha: An Ancestral Ode

In a recent issue of the ‘American Poetry Review,’ a revered teacher of this commentator wrote of the proclivity of many notable poets for revising their work, after finding imperfections.  These, according to one anthropologist, were mischievously inserted by spirits of Nordic origin, to bedevil the poets into re-examinations.  In recent years, he claimed, there were fewer of these episodes, because poets had stopped believing in the spirits.  A dedicated poet, at heart, this commentator has found several verses among his own published works that might well benefit from such attention; not so much the result of folkloric mischief but changing times and ideas, that compel public attention.  This explains the following revision of several pertinent poems, now set in combined form and revised from (“SWASH” by Paul Elisha):