posted on February 4, 2002 01:48:22 PM
Yes, I think it appropriate.
The Cavalier poets, with their Seize the Day philosophy, were Loyalists supporting Charles I in the civil war with the Roundheads, or Puritans. So Lovelace is being both figurative and literal about his imprisonment. Though the Monarchy was still fairly repressive back then, it was nothing compared to the brief totalitarian state that Cromwell and his maniacal Puritans managed to dictate. The English overthrew the Commonwealth and continued to work slowly toward democratic reform.
But I'm becoming boringly didactic again. We all know that poetry is only supposed to be a lot of pretty sounding words which has no significant relationship otherwise to the human condition. In which case reading Saul Bellow's short novel, Seize The Day, would be like looking into a mirror.
I've always loved this piece, and it's mercifully brief:
Haiku Ambulance
Richard Brautigan
A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?
Hey! I'm getting a real education here. In researching the poems etc. I have found so much that I should be reading.
The haiku poem is Magnificent! Abstract haiku, Lol...It's amusing to think about the contradictions between the Haiku, ambulance and the "accident".
And "so what?"...I'm going to etch those two words in my brain. HaHaHa!
posted on February 4, 2002 05:34:26 PM
Isn't the internet tremendous -- whole worlds at your fingertips. But I've been trying to remember this poem which I think is a real chuckle for a couple of days and finally the name Richard Wilbur popped into my mind and then some of the lines so that I could locate it.
Museum Piece
Richard Wilbur
The good gray guardians of art
Patrol the halls on spongy shoes,
Impartially protective, though
Perhaps suspicious of Toulouse.
Here dozes one against the wall,
Disposed upon a funeral chair.
A Degas dancer pirouettes
Upon the parting of his hair.
See how she spins! The grace is there,
But strain as well is plain to see.
Degas loved the two together:
Beauty joined to energy.
Edgar Degas purchased once
A fine El Greco, which he kept
Against the wall beside his bed
To hang his pants on while he slept.
posted on February 4, 2002 07:48:11 PM
Hey! Saabsister
I need you help with these poems. HaHaHa!
Check this analysis out and tell me where I am wrong.
Antiquary,
This is really fun, trying to analyze these poems.
This is a very intricate one. So far, I have noticed the following contrasts.--------------
The guard is sleeping against the wall with no use for the Degas overhead while Degas is sleeping with the El Greco aganist the wall....being used to hang his pants upon.
Degas and El Greco were very different painters. Degas painted beauty and movement while El Greco painted distortion and emotion. This information may be relevant to the meaning of the poem.
I suspect that Degas may not have appreciated the El Greco any more than the guard appreciated the Degas for two reasons. First, Degas used the painting to hang his pants on and also because El Greco may have appeared strange to Degas because of El Greco's distortion and focus on emotion rather than beauty or movement.
posted on February 4, 2002 08:33:32 PM
LOL -- That's fascinating, Helen. I just thought that it was funny myself.
I liked the illustration with the artwork that you did earlier. I was too lazy to do it with Museum Piece, but bowing to peer pressure -- a more serious poem which somewhat vindicates the earlier schools.
Musee des Beaux Arts -- W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
[ edited by antiquary on Feb 5, 2002 07:21 AM ]
posted on February 5, 2002 06:18:56 AM
This has been a fun thread and I've enjoyed all the contributions and the play. Thanks for starting it and playing Helen. And your use of The Blue Guitar and High Toned Woman was brilliant. But now my mood is turning more prosaic.
Though Stephen Crane is much better known for his fiction, he also wrote some pretty good poetry and this one indicates that little change has occurred between the time that he wrote it, almost a century and a half ago and the present, though today it better describes electronic journalism than print.
A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile,
Spreads its curious opinion
To a million merciful and sneering men,
While families cuddle the joys of the fireside
When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
Where his error scores the player victory
While another's skill wins death.
A newspaper is a symbol;
It is feckless life's chronicle,
A collection of loud tales
Concentrating eternal stupidities,
That in remote ages lived unhaltered,
Roaming through a fenceless world.
posted on February 5, 2002 07:00:56 AM
Antiquary
I just read the Auden poem,
Musee des Beaux Arts
This poem seems to be about apathy and general acceptance of suffering. It's interesting that Bruegel's painting was used. This is the only mythological painting that he did. There was a lot of religious conflict during Bruegel's life and he didn't have a religious bone in his body. In fact,
when he was old and dying, he had some of his bitter and satirical works destroyed by his wife....He was afraid of
"Ashcroft". HaHaHaha!!!
I'm on my way out...I'll check the Crane poem out when I get back. This is fun!
posted on February 5, 2002 07:31:20 AM
I just noticed that the link to the image wasn't working, so I substituted and had to remove all those damned <b>'s.
I thought that it would be an amusing juxtapostion to El Greco.
That image is an amusing juxtapostion to El Greco...almost anything is!
There really is not much that is new under the sun. Lol. I just read the Stephen Crane poem about the news business. It seems that we are always in the middle of an information explosion while we are becoming less informed every day.
Wasn't Carl Sandburg a newspaper reporter?
I am the People, the Mob
Carl Sandburg
I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and
clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me
and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons
and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out
and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes
me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history
to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision. The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
TO A CONTEMPORARY BUNKSHOOTER
You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he helped the sick and gave the
people hope.
You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers
over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.
I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't
throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I
know how much you know about Jesus.
He never came near clean people or dirty people but
they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your
crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
of the running.
I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined
up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men
now lined up with you paying your way.
This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened
good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful
from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands
wherever he passed along.
You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human
blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching
about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who
lived a clean life in Galilee.
When are you going to quit making the carpenters build
emergency hospitals for women and girls driven
crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about
Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that
stuff; what do you know about Jesus?
Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash
a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance.
Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your
nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare the
women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat.
I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when
he starts people puking and calling for the doctors.
I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great
original performance, but you--you're only a bug-
house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only
shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this
Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight.
You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it
up all right with them by giving them mansions in
the skies after they're dead and the worms have
eaten 'em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need
is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without
having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of
age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross
and he'll be all right.
You tell poor people they don't need any more money
on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job,
Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta
do is take Jesus the way you say.
I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're
handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers
and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and
murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus
wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with
the big thieves.
I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works
except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory
except the face of the woman on the American
silver dollar.
I ask you to come through and show me where you're
pouring out the blood of your life.
I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha,
where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is
straight it was real blood ran from His hands and
the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red
drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed
in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.
posted on February 5, 2002 05:05:32 PM
I guess that we ought to give El Greco a little slack -- living in a theocracy which gave inquistors free reign would tend to narrow the perspectives. Oops, there's Ashcroft again. Seems to pop up everywhere.
Great selections by Sandburg. I like his Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind if you have time to check it out some time.
In news articles lately I've seen a couple of references to Arthur Miller's [/i]Death of a Salesman[/i]. Those who have been hankerin' for a great national revival might just get their wishes. Hamlet's line, "The play's the thing/Wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king., might play out. If George the Shrub has one, that is.
Wow! This is applicable today! (from your suggestion, Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind) EXCELLENT!
A liar lies to nations. 10
A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
A laugh in his neck,
A lie in his mouth. 15
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
He is straight as a dog’s hind leg.
He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat’s foot at midnight.
The tongue of a man is tied on this, 20
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with ’em all.
To hell with ’em all. 25
It’s a song hard as a riveter’s hammer,
Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot’s gibber.
The liars met where the doors were locked. 30
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told ’em: Go.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions. 35
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
The liars who lie to nations. 40
And now
Out of the butcher’s job
And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let’s go back where we were. 45
Let us run the world again, us, us.
Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we’ll cash in again.
So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
Let the strong men be ready. 50
Let the strong men watch.
Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
Let the liars get their finish,
The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again. 55
So I hear The People tell each other:
Look at to-day and to-morrow.
Fix this clock that nicks off millions
When The Liars say it’s time.
Take things in your own hands. 60
To hell with ’em all,
The liars who lie to nations,
The liars who lie to The People.
posted on February 5, 2002 06:15:28 PM
Sandburg was definitely a poet of the People. I have good old sets, though not firsts, of both of his biographies of Lincoln and I've never read them. Always intended to and think of them once in a while.
