Alcaeus:
"Now must men get drunk and drink with all their strength, since Myrsilus has died."
"Dionysus, Eater of raw flesh"
Proverbs:
"I want neither the honey nor the bee" [mite moi meli mite melissa]
"Money is the man, and no poor man is good or honourable." attr. to Aristodemus
Aelian Historical Miscellanies:
"Phaon, the most beautiful of mortals, was hidden by Aphrodite among lettuces"
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Stanza from an Irish Ballad
There's a sheep futtin' turf in the bog with a skylark
Who is storing the turf in the beard of a goose
While a water-hen's playing a tune on the jew's harp
And the fox by the fireside is having a snooze.
Who is storing the turf in the beard of a goose
While a water-hen's playing a tune on the jew's harp
And the fox by the fireside is having a snooze.
On Our Baggy Body Suits
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
by Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
"the withness of the body" --Whitehead
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
by Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
"the withness of the body" --Whitehead
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
Crummy
Does anyone else think James Joyce is a mediocre poet? Or am I missing something?
Bahnhofstrasse
The eyes that mock me sign the way
Whereto I pass at eve of day,
Grey way whose violet signals are
The trysting and the twining star.
Ah star of evil! star of pain!
Highhearted youth comes not again
Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know
The signs that mock me as I go.
(from Pomes Penyeach)
Bahnhofstrasse
The eyes that mock me sign the way
Whereto I pass at eve of day,
Grey way whose violet signals are
The trysting and the twining star.
Ah star of evil! star of pain!
Highhearted youth comes not again
Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know
The signs that mock me as I go.
(from Pomes Penyeach)
Dramatick Byrony
A lot of critics dismiss Byron for being 'a snob', but his opinions are often refreshingly honest and admirably immune to the general susceptibility to sentiment or poet-worship.
Here is a letter extract of his on Shakespeare:
"Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales. That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny: but this was all. Suppose any one to have the dramatic handling for the first time of such ready-made stories as Lear, Macbeth, &c. and he would be a sad fellow, indeed, if he did not make something very grand of them. […] You think, no doubt, that A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! is Shakespeare’s. Not a syllable of it. You will find it all in the old nameless dramatist. […] [N]ot one of his is or ever has been acted as he wrote it; and what the pit applauded three hundred years past, is five times out of ten not Shakespeare’s, but Cibber’s." And on Keats: "The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or whatever his names are: why, his is the Onanism of Poetry - something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane."
Here is a letter extract of his on Shakespeare:
"Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales. That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny: but this was all. Suppose any one to have the dramatic handling for the first time of such ready-made stories as Lear, Macbeth, &c. and he would be a sad fellow, indeed, if he did not make something very grand of them. […] You think, no doubt, that A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! is Shakespeare’s. Not a syllable of it. You will find it all in the old nameless dramatist. […] [N]ot one of his is or ever has been acted as he wrote it; and what the pit applauded three hundred years past, is five times out of ten not Shakespeare’s, but Cibber’s." And on Keats: "The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or whatever his names are: why, his is the Onanism of Poetry - something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane."
Elizabeth Daryush
Still Life
Through the open French window the warm sun
lights up the polished breakfast-table, laid
round a bowl of crimson roses, for one —
a service of Worcester porcelain, arrayed
near it a melon, peaches, figs, small hot
rolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,
butter in ice, high silver coffee-pot,
and, heaped on a silver salver, the morning’s post.
She comes over the lawn, the young heiress,
from her early walk in her garden-wood,
feeling that life's a table set to bless
her delicate desires with all that's good,
that even the unopened future lies
like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.
[from The New Penguin Book of English Verse, first published in The Last Man and Other Verses, 1936]
Daryush was the daughter of English poet laureate Robert Bridges. If anyone’s interested, you can read an article about this poet on the poetry magazines website:
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=6381
Through the open French window the warm sun
lights up the polished breakfast-table, laid
round a bowl of crimson roses, for one —
a service of Worcester porcelain, arrayed
near it a melon, peaches, figs, small hot
rolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,
butter in ice, high silver coffee-pot,
and, heaped on a silver salver, the morning’s post.
She comes over the lawn, the young heiress,
from her early walk in her garden-wood,
feeling that life's a table set to bless
her delicate desires with all that's good,
that even the unopened future lies
like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.
[from The New Penguin Book of English Verse, first published in The Last Man and Other Verses, 1936]
Daryush was the daughter of English poet laureate Robert Bridges. If anyone’s interested, you can read an article about this poet on the poetry magazines website:
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=6381
TS Eliot the Phrenologist
When Eliot writes about Byron his head goes gooey:
"I [...] suggest considering Byron as a Scottish poet -- I say 'Scottish' and not 'Scots' since he wrote in English. The one poet of his time with whom he could be considered to be in competition, a poet of whom he spoke invariably with the highest respect, was Sir Walter Scott. I have always seen, or imagined that I saw, in busts of the two poets, a certain resemblance in the shape of the head. The comparison does honour to Byron, and when you examine the two faces there is no further resemblance. Were one a person who liked to have busts about, a bust of Scott would be something one could live with. There is an air of nobility about that head, an air of magnanimity, and of that inner and perhaps unconscious serenity that belongs to great writers who are also great men. But Byron -- that pudgy face suggesting a tendency to corpulence, that weakly sensual mouth, that restless triviality of expression, and worst of all that blind look of the self-conscious beauty; the bust of Byron is that of a man who was every inch the touring tragedian."
Come off it. Byron was politically and personally more courageous than all the other Romantics put together. It sounds like Eliot is just sucking up to the English establishment's worst prejudices.
"I [...] suggest considering Byron as a Scottish poet -- I say 'Scottish' and not 'Scots' since he wrote in English. The one poet of his time with whom he could be considered to be in competition, a poet of whom he spoke invariably with the highest respect, was Sir Walter Scott. I have always seen, or imagined that I saw, in busts of the two poets, a certain resemblance in the shape of the head. The comparison does honour to Byron, and when you examine the two faces there is no further resemblance. Were one a person who liked to have busts about, a bust of Scott would be something one could live with. There is an air of nobility about that head, an air of magnanimity, and of that inner and perhaps unconscious serenity that belongs to great writers who are also great men. But Byron -- that pudgy face suggesting a tendency to corpulence, that weakly sensual mouth, that restless triviality of expression, and worst of all that blind look of the self-conscious beauty; the bust of Byron is that of a man who was every inch the touring tragedian."
Come off it. Byron was politically and personally more courageous than all the other Romantics put together. It sounds like Eliot is just sucking up to the English establishment's worst prejudices.
Required Reading: The Vision of Judgement
George Gordon, Lord Byron, hallowed be thy name! Reasons why he's great: he can rhyme and still seem casual, he's at least as politically brave as Rochester, he's funny and he TELLS THE TRUTH. For example, read "The Vision of Judgement", which is (among other things) a beautiful parody of Paradise Lost.
Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion,
And accurate as any other vision.
Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion,
And accurate as any other vision.
Vernacular Verse
The main purpose of this blog is to communicate with other people who are interested in reading and writing poetry.
At the moment I'm reading The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse edited by Tom Paulin. It includes folk rhyme, graffiti, popular songs and riddles as well as canonical verse. You will get an idea of the range from these four poems:
Wooden belly
iron back
fire in th' hole
goes off with a crack*
Thenmy of liff decayer of all kynde
that with his cold wythers away the grene
this othre nyght me in my bed did fynde
and offered me to rid my fiever clene
and I did graunt so did dispayre me blynde
he drewe his bowe with arrowe sharp and kene
and strake the place where love had hit before
and drave the first dart deper more and more
[I worship Wyatt]
"Scribbled at a Cabinet Meeting"
by Sir Edward Carson
(Lloyd George speaks)
I curse the optimistic views of Haig -- I don't believe'm
I curse the pessimistic views of Jellicoe -- relieve him
Let Gough be sacked and Haig be damned
On justice let the door be slammed
Let gossip rule instead of law I'll rule the services by jaw
and
Grasshopper is a Burden [I’m guessing about the linebreaks in this one]
by D.H. Lawrence
Desire has failed, desire has failed
and the critical grasshopper
has come down on the heart
in a burden of locusts
and stripped it bare.
*the answer to the riddle is 'rifle'
At the moment I'm reading The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse edited by Tom Paulin. It includes folk rhyme, graffiti, popular songs and riddles as well as canonical verse. You will get an idea of the range from these four poems:
Wooden belly
iron back
fire in th' hole
goes off with a crack*
Thenmy of liff decayer of all kynde
that with his cold wythers away the grene
this othre nyght me in my bed did fynde
and offered me to rid my fiever clene
and I did graunt so did dispayre me blynde
he drewe his bowe with arrowe sharp and kene
and strake the place where love had hit before
and drave the first dart deper more and more
[I worship Wyatt]
"Scribbled at a Cabinet Meeting"
by Sir Edward Carson
(Lloyd George speaks)
I curse the optimistic views of Haig -- I don't believe'm
I curse the pessimistic views of Jellicoe -- relieve him
Let Gough be sacked and Haig be damned
On justice let the door be slammed
Let gossip rule instead of law I'll rule the services by jaw
and
Grasshopper is a Burden [I’m guessing about the linebreaks in this one]
by D.H. Lawrence
Desire has failed, desire has failed
and the critical grasshopper
has come down on the heart
in a burden of locusts
and stripped it bare.
*the answer to the riddle is 'rifle'
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