posted on January 21, 2002 05:24:18 PM
Prufrock rivals Barth's Ebenezer Cooke for indecision. A writer friend and I, both of us procrastinators, often stand in front of the computer graphic books at Barnes and Nobles and play Prufrock and Cooke while trying to decide which books to buy.
More from Prufrock:
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
posted on January 27, 2002 11:40:40 PM
With apologies in advance to today's neoconservatives --
To a Steam Roller
Marianne Moore
The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.
Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
Were not 'impersonal judment in aesthetic
matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you
might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
of one's attending upon you, but to question
the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists
posted on January 28, 2002 09:53:39 AM Janet Waking
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave to her mother.
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
"Old Chucky, old Chucky!" she cried,
Running across the world upon the grass
To Chucky's house, and listening. But alas,
Her Chucky had died.
It was a transmogrifying bee
Came droning down on Chucky's old bald head
And sat and put the poison. It scarely bled,
But how exceedingly
And purply did the knot
Swell with the venom and communicate
It's rigor! Now the poor comb stood up straight
But Chucky did not.
So there was Janet
Kneeling on the wet grass, crying her brown hen
(Translated far beyond the daughters of men)
To rise and walk upon it.
And weeping fast as she had breath
Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!"
And would not be instructed in how deep
Was the forgetful kingdom of death.
posted on January 28, 2002 10:08:11 AM
IMO, Pat, that poem is one of the best in American literature. And it always reminds me of this one which I also like:
Spring and Fall: to a young child
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
posted on January 28, 2002 10:10:55 PM
I'm glad that you liked it, Pat.
We work well together.
The two excerpts from Eliot's Prufrock above are favorites also, the coffee spoons and faces images.
From Eliot's Murder in The Cathedral:
Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
posted on January 28, 2002 10:15:50 PM
Did anyone else have to memorize the prologue to Evangeline?
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like druids of old with voices sad and prophetic. Stand like Harper's hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from the rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
This is the forest primeval, but where are the hearts that beneath it leaped like the roe when he hears in the woodland the voic of the hunter. Where is the thatch-roofed village, home of Acadian farmers, men whose lives glided on like the rivers that water the woodlands. Gone are the . . . something something something. At about that point I forget the rest.
But here's another (writer unknown):
I'd like to write a poem in white
With all this snow around me.
But every time I start to rhyme
Another poem has found me.
Meter and rhyme that are not mine,
And mine unformed and lost.
All I know is the way a crow
Shook down on me another snow
From another tree,
And there I go again, reciting Frost.
I love this one! And so appropriate right now in all this weather. ~Adele
That is really great, Adele...."And mine unformed and lost" ....It brought tears to my eyes, which is very unusual. I think that I may still be frustrated by the Steam Roller.
Antiquary....
I'm still working on the Steam Roller. I found a site on the net, in which someone makes an effort to explain the meaning.
She questions, "Is "impersonal judgement" illustration or application? And then she goes on to suggest, "Working butterflies into your argument, generalize on how going from "parent block" to aesthetic matters" is like leaping from Earth to outer space and note the progressive expansion from words like "particles" to "chips"to "parent block."
If we must have neo-Puritans in high office today, it's unfortunate that they aren't Miltonic ones.
From John Milton's L'Allegro:
But come thou Goddes fair and free,
In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as som Sager sing)
The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring,
Zephir with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a Maying,
There on Beds of Violets blew,
And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew,
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So bucksom, blith, and debonair.
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crue
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
posted on February 1, 2002 12:57:04 PM
I've been offline enjoying the effects of an ice storm. I think that Dante was right about the Seventh Circle of Hell.
It's widely held that the great artists seem to be prophetic, largely because of the ability of many to penetrate contemporary society in order to identify the movements that are emerging, and then sometimes continue to project their unrestrained progression into the future.
W. H. Auden's The Unknown Citizen seems to have accomplished that rather well. With a bit of updating for detail and technological advancement and a mountain of duplicitious propaganda, the poem reflects well the vision for America of the Bushrupt neoconservatives.
(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
posted on February 1, 2002 03:27:11 PM
Great one Antiquary!!!
One that even I can understand LOL!
Along those lines, I was looking for a poem by a Russian poet, Yevtushenko called, "To Incomprehensible Poets". Fortunately for you, I was not able to find it.
posted on February 2, 2002 06:33:36 AM
Hi Antiquary
Actually, I'm enjoying your superb ability to do just that! A poetry thread with a Bushruptcy spin.
Seriously, I can't find a poem that relates to our national Bushruptcy....All the closed doors and cover up of everything from female statues.and calico cats to the worst criminal incompetence in the history of intelligence gathering. Add to that the cover up of a war as a defensive operation which is really a conquest for power and oil......all this, while the country appears brain dead.
I think that we are looking for a poem that needs to be written by a living poet. A dead one has not seen this kind of subject matter.
posted on February 2, 2002 08:08:27 PM
Well, Helen, we may be ready for the great American epic, since as a major world culture we remain without one, unless by default we take one of England's, either the folk epic Beowulf or the literary epic Paradise Lost. With an odd sort of ironic twist, Paradise Lost sounds right in capturing the present, except for the literary part which doesn't quite mesh with a subliterate Busheaucracy.
Alas, Wallace Stevens is deceased or he could have done it. This poem though is begging for a posthumorous dedication to members of the John Ashcroft Society.
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build a haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make it peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.
posted on February 3, 2002 01:27:41 PM
No snows here, nor ice -- blue skies and sunshine.
The last few years, I've thought a lot about the "American Dream," one of those totally worthless habits I acquired long ago and can't seem to quite shake. The early fallout from the Enron scandal brought this poem to mind.
Richard Cory
By Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson -
" The Children Of The Night "
posted on February 3, 2002 07:21:02 PM
ROFL-- Truly wonderful, both of those posts. I think you struck gold. Lol. Those two together are a work of art in themselves.
posted on February 3, 2002 11:14:53 PM
Not the calibre of The Blue Guitar but considering the title of the thread we should give some recognition to the carpe diem school. Who knows, if unchecked, when the OHS reaches full swing, this excerpt from Lovelace might be a new anthem.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
