The Iron Lyre

Poetry, Heavy Metal, and the New Sublime

A Note from the NVR Editor: What better way to get the new year started than with a bold manifesto? I hope that NVR can publish more essays on poetics in the months to come. I suspect this one from the insightful and intrepid Elijah Perseus Blumov will inspire many and perhaps rankle a few. Feel free to send a response essay my way!

This essay will also appear in the Winter 2025 issue of New Verse Review.

“How ineffectually do we now define the decline and decrepitude of the world using arguments drawn from our own inadequacies and decline.” – Michel de Montaigne

“Wimps and posers, leave the hall.” – Manowar

In the first century of this common era, an anonymous Hellenized Jew known to us only as “Pseudo-Longinus” authored a literary-critical work entitled On the Sublime. For Longinus, “the sublime” is that grand, noble, elevated quality of the greatest literature which leads its readers to experience a kind of ecstasy—not merely persuasion, but “transport” out of themselves. To write sublimely, he claimed, required not only a mastery of diction, figuration, and form, but also a fierceness and largeness of soul, as well as a willingness to challenge the greatest writers of the past for supremacy. Given the neurotic, self-obsessed, lily-livered state of contemporary poetry, still shaking with the aftershocks of modernist gloom-mongering, I think it is high time that another Hellenized Jew (less anonymously, me) attempt to pick up where Longinus left off.

In his treatise, Longinus offers many excellent examples of sublime language from the likes of Euripides, Plato, and the Book of Genesis, but his foundational reference point for sublimity is, of course, Homer. I too will begin with Homer, though less as a writer in his own right than as a segue to speak of epic poetry in general.

Throughout world cultures, it has been a general trend that poetry first arises as epic poetry: witness Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata, The Iliad, Popol Vuh. And what do these epics have in common? Heroic deeds. Extreme violence. Dazzling formal technique. Pitiless cosmic forces. Everything a metalhead revels in.

In the course of this essay, one thing I hope to demonstrate is how “metal” the lineage of poetry actually is. For those of you who are confused: yes, Metal is a genre of heavy music, but it is also, as all metalheads will acknowledge, a universal descriptor, an entire mentality. I brought up Longinus because “metalness” and sublimity go hand in hand– both are concerned with what is glorious, beautiful, life-affirming, and terrifying all at once. “Metal” is what is punishing, grotesque, and brutal, but also profound, awe-inspiring, and filled with high adventure. It is what is dearest to human beings who embrace darkness as a path to light; it is the cathartic glee in the acknowledgment that suffering and violence are necessary to the human experience. It is, I think, the great delight and wisdom of pre-modern humankind. How Metal music itself might relate to poetry, I will show later.

Crucial to remark here is that one need not be into Metal music or consciously embrace the Metal mentality to be drawn to what I am calling “Metal” poetry. Let us return to Homer: common readers and mild-mannered scholars alike have reveled in Homer’s grandeur and dark vision for thousands of years, and continue to do so in our time. Indeed, many still consider Homer, due to the majesty of his language and the harrowing power of his storytelling, the greatest poet of all time. How extremely odd it is, then, that we have no one even attempting to write work like his today.

This fact appears an even odder phenomenon when we remember that epic poetry was not simply a stage that poetry went through in its infancy. Until the rise of the novel in the 18th century, epic poetry was considered the highest form of literary art in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. In other words, epic poetry was viewed as the pinnacle of literary achievement for thousands of years, and has only ceded its dominance in the past three hundred—a flicker of an eye, even on the human time scale. During its thousands of years of dominance, epic poetry evolved considerably, but its greatest later triumphs—The Aeneid, Pharsalia, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Divine Comedy, Jerusalem Delivered, Paradise Lost—all retain the old drive toward sublimity, the concern with grandeur, nobility, cosmicism, fantasy, terror, violence: the impulse to be shamelessly metal. I therefore maintain that the literature universally considered the greatest in the Western tradition has always, up until very recently, been metal as hell, and this is not a fact that writers of today have adequately reckoned with.

Let us now turn the screw a bit more. Since the days of Aristotle’s Poetics, it has been traditional to conceive of poetry as encompassing three genres: Epic, Drama, and Lyric. I have already spoken of Epic, so let us briefly turn our attention to Dramatic poetry. Just as Epic poetry in Europe begins with Homer, so does Dramatic poetry begin with the great Athenian playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The first three are the originators of the Tragic tradition, the latter of the Comic tradition. Tragedy has always (and rightly) been held to be the highest form of Dramatic poetry, and so it is Tragedy which I will focus on.

Just like Epic, Tragedy prioritizes the sublime. It concerns grand, noble characters speaking grand, noble language, confronted with terrifying cosmic forces and circumstances. This is the case not only in the Athenian tragedians, but in nearly all tragic poetry that has been written since: in Seneca, in Marlowe, in Shakespeare, in Webster, in Corneille, in Racine, in Byron, and even in the early Ibsen at the dawn of the 20th century. We are thus confronted with the astounding fact that two out of the three genres of poetry have dedicated their best work to the pursuit of the sublime. Two out of the three genres of poetry have a rich history, spanning thousands of years, of being thoroughly, indubitably, incorrigibly metal.

This of course leaves us with poetry’s outrageously successful problem child: Lyric. To Lyric’s credit, it too has historically partaken of the sublime: Longinus cites both Sappho and Pindar with approval in his essay, and we may treat the choral odes of tragic drama as lyric specimens. However, ever since Horace excused himself from flying at Pindar’s lofty heights, Lyric has largely taken itself to be the genre of (comparatively) minor matters: expressions of romantic love or angst, natural descriptions, and charming or illuminating anecdotes, usually treated in refined yet (again, comparatively) quiet language. Lyric poetry has frequently been popular as an intimate alternative to the more ambitious genres, but the situation we find ourselves in at the present time—where poetry simply means lyric poetry—is unique.

Singular as it is, this phenomenon can be easily explained. Whereas epic poetry gave way to the novel, and dramatic poetry withered away beneath the general term “playwriting,” lyric poetry has never been replaced by another form or term. In practice, of course, it has been just as thoroughly replaced as its hapless cousins—lyric “poems” are now almost all in prose, just as narratives and plays are almost all in prose. But the term “poetry” has, for some reason, stuck. This has led to the absurd situation in which we now find ourselves, where “poetry,” which used to refer to epic, dramatic, and lyric verse, is now used to refer almost exclusively to prose vignettes. A clear-eyed view of the situation reveals that lyric is thriving; poetry, in all genres, is nearly dead. I have argued at significant length elsewhere about the insidious problems with our current poetic terminology, so I will not pursue that subject here. Suffice it to say, however, that we currently suffer from a lyric hegemony in the poetry world—when someone says “poetry,” “lyric” is what they mean.

This is bad news not only for advocates of verse, but for those who treasure the sublime in art. Not only have the two genres which specialize in sublimity, Epic and Drama, been marginalized from what we call “poetry,” but the transition from poetry to prose in all three genres has each time been accompanied by, if you will excuse the term, a bourgeoisification. The epic, tragedy, or sonnet—lofty, humanist, aristocratic—has been replaced by the novel, play, or lyric of shabby middle-class realism. Now, before your elitism sensors go off, let me be clear that I think shabby middle-class realism has its place, and that it is a good thing that we have expanded the boundaries of art to include it—indeed, how could I write about my own experiences without it? What I do find worse than a travesty, however, is that lofty, humanist, aristocratic art—sublime art—has been unnecessarily killed off in this process. In theory, there is no reason why epic and novel, verse drama and play, and metrical and non-metrical lyric could not peacefully co-exist. Instead, epic and verse drama are practically extinct, and the traditional formal lyric is barely hanging on. It is as if the opportunity to write ambitious, sublime poetry has evaporated into thin air. What lackluster, small-souled world is this that I have inherited?

Again, in theory, there is zero reason why a poet today hoping to create the best work possible should not write an epic poem or verse drama, and overwhelming historical precedent encourages him to do so—if you are modeling your poetry after the most ambitious poetry that exists, these are the genres you will draw from. Yet tell someone that you are writing an epic or a tragedy and you will probably be met with derision, confusion, or amused dubiety, because these genres simply do not exist anymore. There is no market for them. But why do they not exist? Why is there no market? A simple explanation about the rise of novels and prose plays and the hegemony of lyric poetry is not a sufficient answer. There is something deeper at work here.

The first thing to acknowledge, which for me is constantly a point of both inspiration and frustration, is that there definitely is a market for epic and tragedy. The catch? It has to be either old or in prose. People still flock to see productions of Shakespeare and Sophocles; they love to read not only The Iliad and Beowulf, but more recent prose “epics” like Blood Meridian, The Lord of the Rings, and Dune (note that each of these is considered “genre fiction,” not literary fiction proper); they fawn over (read: I fawn over) the latest period horror film. But for contemporary epic and tragic poetry as such, there is seemingly no appetite. Again, why?

To answer this, we must return to modernist gloom-mongering. While Epic has died a long and slow death over centuries without much comment, and has, moreover, transferred some of its key tropes to fiction, the somewhat more recent and more absolute decline of the tragic genre was the subject for much speculation in the 20th century. Though a late addition to the conversation, the conclusive study of and verdict upon this phenomenon appeared in George Steiner’s 1961 book, The Death of Tragedy. Steiner’s argument can be summarized with the following syllogism: 1) Tragedy requires a communally shared set of transcendent moral values and metaphysical beliefs. 2) Such a consensus does not exist in secular, rationalist, bourgeois, individualist modernity. 3) Therefore, tragedy is no longer possible. Absent a conviction in the power of fate and the divine, absent a belief in the innate nobility of certain human actions, we no longer give credibility to the rules by which tragedy operates. What theatre is left to us instead? The absurd, the psychological, the grotesque.

Steiner’s points are keenly observed, and they are not to be dismissed out of hand. After all, tragedy is written a great deal less than it used to be, and Steiner pinpoints compelling reasons why that decline may have occurred. Nevertheless, his argument presents at least two major problems. Firstly, it implies that art cannot be universal or universally appreciated, and this is patently untrue. Tragedy is one of the greatest art forms precisely because it has profound things to say about the human condition as such, and tragic wisdom is something we continue to recognize and appreciate despite the seemingly contrary developments of modern culture. Shakespeare and the Greeks continue to be read and performed not merely out of historical curiosity, but out of a desire to be nourished and entertained by their work. By Steiner’s logic, the tragic literature of the past ought to appear to us quaint, alien, and unrelatable, but it is not, nor do I think it ever will be. If tragedy is not currently seen as a tenable art form, it is not because we have become too culturally distant from it– it is simply because we have decided that such things are not to be attempted anymore.

This brings us to the second problem with Steiner’s argument, which is that it leads him to leap beyond a mere diagnosis of tragedy’s decline to the unjustified proclamation that tragedy can no longer be written. To this claim there is the obvious retort: “If there are people capable of writing tragic poetry, and there are people interested in reading and seeing it, then why the hell can’t it be written?” The “death of tragedy” is not a historical inevitability but a self-fulfilling prophecy, one of many pessimistic self-fulfilling prophecies that modernist thinking has poisoned us with. In discussing the problem as he has, Steiner has become part of the problem. The more we believe we are living in a disillusioned age that is incapable of producing, say, tragic poetry, or beautiful architecture, or grand narratives, the more it shall be true. Which is a great shame, because we are in fact always capable of producing these things. We have been wearing the ruby slippers the whole time—we just have to be convinced that we can click them.

In truth, we are far less different from our ancestors than we make ourselves out to be. Our technologies and our living circumstances are unique, but the fundamental problems we individually wrestle with—problems of meaning, doubt, happiness, evil, cynicism, and the rest—have always been with us. Existentialism is not new—just ask the tragedians themselves. The feeling of literary belatedness is not new—just ask Callimachus. Even poststructuralism is not new—just ask the Sophists. When I read modernists and postmodernists sniveling about how such-and-such art is no longer possible, I think of the woefully naive 19th-century scientists who believed, after the postulation of luminiferous ether, that the endeavor of science was more or less complete. There seems to be, for some people, a psychological need to feel that they are at the historical end of something. Yet so long as we are here at all, our same problems and glorious possibilities follow us. Because we will always seek to understand and experience the beauty, darkness, and mystery of the world, we will always hunger for the sublime—and if contemporary poetry imbecilically refuses to provide it, people will look for it elsewhere.

As I have already hinted, many people today find their fix of the artistic sublime in cinema and various genre fictions, which, because of either their entertainment or outsider status, have been less affected both by bourgeoisification and modernist gloom-mongering than the (ridiculously anti-) “high art” establishment. Save for in the rarest cases, however, neither cinema nor genre fiction attain anything like the grandeur and high seriousness of the greatest epic and tragic poetry. For my own part, when I am not reading the magnificent poetry of the past but still seek an artistically sublime experience, I usually turn to Heavy Metal music.

Now, before I sing the praises of Metal, let me preamble by saying that I do not think that any work of Heavy Metal music, no matter how effective or impressive, is as profound or intellectually stimulating as Homer, Virgil, or Milton. All the same, I have found that Metal music is excellent at providing a feeling akin to the experience of reading great works of “Metal” poetry: a feeling of power, glory, awe, adventure, violence, formal virtuosity, and triumph through the acceptance of darkness. The high wail of an electric guitar puts me in mind of a screaming eagle, Pindaric in its loftiness and dominance; the chugging rhythms, a thousand galloping steeds; the soaring or howling vocals, the voice of some great hero or beast whom the listener becomes in a state of sublime ecstasy. In the throes of metallic rapture, one feels like Achilles, ferociously tearing through a sea of Trojan corpses, or Odysseus, adrift on the endless sea; one feels like the Homeric line, rolling on inexorably, filled with the inexhaustible excellence of itself. When I listen to Doomsword, Fer de Lance, Sig:Ar:Tyr, Grand Magus, Amon Amarth, Primordial, early Manowar, or “Viking” era Bathory, I feel a similar exhilaration to that which I imagine ancient Athenians felt listening to the songs of rhapsodes, or the ancient Norse felt harkening to the lays of skalds.

And what I love about Metal is that it knows exactly what it’s after, and pursues it unapologetically. Self-conscious irony is ignored as the waste of time that it is. Though it depends upon modern electronic technologies to exist, Metal (at least the Metal I listen to) basically acts as if Modernism never happened (musically and thematically, it is closer to traditional Classical music than any modern pop genre, which is why love of Classical music and Metal often go hand in hand). Why listen to songs about urban loneliness or moody navel-gazing when vikings and gods and mortal peril are so much cooler?

It would of course be easy to accuse Metal of being escapist, and doubtless much of it is, but it is also much more than that: it is a reminder that life can be lived in a heroic key, that humankind can imagine and experience glory, and that confronting and processing one’s anger, fear, and grief artistically can lead to catharsis and exaltation. Metal provides much of the experience of Epic, and much of the fruits of Tragedy. Is it any wonder then that it is the musical genre with the most passionate, quasi-religious following in the world?

The great popularity of Metal music (and if you are shocked to hear that Metal is popular, you ought to check out the scene in Europe) is, to me, all the evidence one could ask for that there remains in the modern world a great hunger for epic and tragic art—ambitious art that is unafraid to be grand, archaic, and meaningful. The sublimity that people search for today in Heavy Metal, fantasy novels, historical fictions, and horror films was once found in the greatest poetry that the world had to offer. Today, the desire for the sublime is far from dead—so why should sublime poetry be dead? And if the current “poetry” establishment is not interested in reclaiming the mighty pedigree that belongs to poetry, then those of us who care more about the great tradition of our art form than the ego-massaging production of self-indulgent vignettes must take it upon ourselves to reform the establishment in the image of our ancient forebears, and give the people of our world, so long cheated by modernist inferiority complexes, the deathless songs they deserve.

So, what can the poet of today learn from Heavy Metal? 1) That an unapologetic pursuit of artistic sublimity is just as possible as it ever has been. 2) That there is a vast audience of people interested in what is epic, tragic, formally virtuosic, dark, and powerful. 3) That there is no reason why poetry should let other genres have all the fun with what is, by all historical rights, its own birthright.

As a poet, Metal music inspires me to strive higher in my poetry—to return to ancient ground where my immediate predecessors have feared to tread, and cut a new path to the palace of eternal glory where Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Milton feast forever. I may or may not ever get to knock on the doors of that palace, but I can give my all to the quest, and if you are a poet, you should too. I do not hesitate to speak for my own generation and future generations when I say: Modernism and Postmodernism are played out. We shall not suffer beneath such ridiculous, disease-ridden yokes any longer. We cannot ever return to the past, but we can embrace a future that does justice to the perpetual dignity of humankind and the terrible beauty of life.

Yes, the modern world is bleak and confusing, hollow and mercenary, and most of our lives are spent in various states of hyper-distracted, powerless desperation. Yet it is a fallacy to presume that, in such a world, only small-souled art is acceptable. If anything, such a world calls for more great-souled art than ever—art which can remind us of what life can be and what human beings are capable of. When our very humanity is alienated from us on a daily basis, we must have salutary art which recalls us to what we are; art which reminds us that we are not mere apes, not mere machines, but little less than angels: born to suffer and die, but also to grasp toward the divine. Now is the time for such art to be made again. May Epic and Tragedy rise. May Lyric regain the voice of eagles. Now is the time for a New Sublime.

Elijah Perseus Blumov is a poet, critic, and host of the poetry analysis podcast, Versecraft. His poems have been published by or are forthcoming from periodicals such as Literary Matters, Birmingham Poetry Review, Able Muse Review, Think Journal, and others. He lives in Chicago.

[Editor’s note—here is a link to a “metal” poem that Elijah published in NVR’s Halloween issue.]