Along the way, the main character, a fictionalized version of the author, encountered condemned figures whose actions have harmed the common good. The tone of the poem emphasizes horror, as the characters are all suffering brutal punishments for their sins.
I couldn’t help but notice the parallels with Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” and the resemblance is no accident. Sale’s epic is an homage to Dante that offers an updated, Protestant rendering of the Italian poet’s original Catholic vision.
Structure and Style
The average length of epic poems in the Western tradition is 10,000 lines. “The English Cantos” is just shy of that, coming in at a little over 9,800 lines. It doesn’t risk fatiguing the reader like Edmund Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” a behemoth of 36,000 lines and the longest great poem in the English language. Spenser’s achievement is epic in the grandest sense, but I have only ever met a few people who have read the entire thing.
“DoorWay” is the shortest of the three volumes, sitting at a little less than 2,800 lines. Sale intentionally made it shorter so that its 9 cantos, or chapters, would add up to a total of 33 cantos over the course of the three books. Each of Dante’s volumes is also 33 cantos, so Sale honors the Italian master by using that number for his own purposes.
Sale honors Dante in another way by using “terza rima,” a scheme involving line groupings that rhyme ABA, BCB, CDC, and so on. This is a remarkable achievement in English, a language poor in perfect rhymes, and Sale pulls it off by using frequent near rhymes. Other than Percy Bysshe Shelley, who employed this rhyme scheme in his unfinished “Triumph of Life,” Sale is the only other English poet I know of who has successfully sustained this form at length.
There is one way, however, that Sale’s epic is quite different from Dante’s. While Dante proceeds from Hell up to Heaven, he remains relatively static as a character, and he never really tells us much about himself. Sale, on the other hand, changes profoundly from volume to volume. His epic isn’t just about what he sees, but about who he becomes. In this respect, “The English Cantos” reflects the psychological development found in modern novels.
There is a clear emotional and spiritual progression across the trilogy. In “StairWell,” the focus is on horror, trauma, and illness. In contrast, “DoorWay” immerses readers in explorations of friendship, love, spiritual fellowship, and the fulfillment of God’s promise.
Beyond his power, love ruled. Love had done it! Compassion for my mortal frame and flaws, And hope great God would lead me rid of it,
Held me so strongly, subject to his law, Obedience was all I wanted in My heart of hearts, and in my soul’s true core.
I understood. No words he spoke me then: Within myself, hard ice, now deliquescent And set to thaw: at last to be a man.
Lots of people out there have strong opinions on what it means to “be a man.” But what is that like, really? Here we learn that becoming a “real man” isn’t about chauvinism or macho qualities, but the exact opposite, to submit to love and obedience.A Poem About Poets
“The English Cantos” has many themes. One of the most central of these is, appropriately, poetry. Throughout the trilogy, Sale encounters a parade of lesser and greater poets who offer both warnings and lessons as to how poetry is essential for our lives. In “HellWard,” he meets one of America’s most renowned poets suffering eternal punishment, whose name is satirically disguised:I looked and saw Wilt Witless yawping hard With sounds barbaric and untranslatably Full, singing self with multitudes of words.
This seems an appropriate fate for the father of free verse, Walt Whitman. As the author of “Song of Myself,” Whitman has probably done more harm to poetry than any other single modern figure, inaugurating a shift away from the divine and beautiful towards a cultural malaise dominated by ugliness and egotism.
“and who was he who stood so high? As if one were six feet, but aura stretched Up, outwards, sixty; but I knew this prize:
One in whom gentleness the cosmos flexed Profoundly in life, but now magnified Celestial levels, though it sounds far-fetched.
What was an acorn’s virtue, long had died, Now Shakespeare’s oak towered all triumphant; But then no less did Dante by his side,
Who since I saw him last had grown a giant Equal in stature”
Here we have it. Sale has come face to face with the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare! What wise words does Will have to tell him?“‘You do look, my son, in a moved sort As if you were dismayed—here’s only mirth And joy, and change—change absent decay And death, which in its stead sustains just growth.”
Shakespeare’s words to Sale seem to mirror lines from a few of the Bard’s plays. In Act V, Scene 1 of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Theseus says:Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. Joy, gentle friends! Joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!
In “The Merchant of Venice,” Gratiano says, “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”In Theseus’s quote, love and happiness are celebrated together with change and renewal. In the second quote, Gratiano emphasizes accepting the aging process with a joyful spirit. But in “DoorWay,” Shakespeare repurposes his own earlier themes. Where he once spoke of mirth and joy on earth despite the inevitability of aging, he now tells Sale that heaven is a place for mirth, joy, and even change, but “absent decay and death.”
A Note on Footnotes
One of the things that signal this as a learned book is that it has endnotes. Great books are very often “heavy” books with a breadth of learning, and this one is no exception. Readers of classic authors like Dante, Milton, and Spenser are probably used to wading through commentaries that help explain those worlds.“The English Cantos” can be enjoyed without the notes. However, they are quite useful for unpacking the astrological signs, Greek mythology, biblical references, and personal acquaintances of Sale that appear throughout the book.
On delving into Canto 1, for example, the first reference is to St. Dismas, who tells Sale about Christ’s mercy and love’s triumph over death. Anyone who hasn’t read the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus is unlikely to know who this saint is. It’s helpful, then, that Sale informs us, “according to tradition, the thief on the cross, St. Dismas, was the ‘Good Thief’ that was crucified at the right-hand side of Jesus.”
In writing “DoorWay,” Sale has achieved several things. He has helped restore classical poetry to life with vital energy. He has reminded us that the long, grand tradition of epic poetry is not dead. And most importantly, he has reaffirmed the Christian faith in an age that is so often referred to as “post-Christian.”
In James Sale’s capable hands, the religious epic breathes again—beautiful, good, and true. Like Dante before him, Sale writes not merely to describe the heavens, but to guide us toward them.
