# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  PoemoftheWeek

## Scheherazade

I would like to read and discuss more poetry (and not only to help someone with their homeworks!  :Wink: ). So shall we try this? We will have a new poem every Monday and discuss it during the following week.

* Please post a new poem only on a Monday (please wait till it is Monday in your corner of the world).

* The same person cannot post another poem within the same month.


Even though it is Tuesday today, I will post the first poem to get things moving:

*Poem of the Week (Sep 26th - Oct 3rd):*


*ANNABEL LEE*

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

by Edgar Allan Poe, 1849

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## Aurora Ariel

Annabel Lee is actually one of my favourite EAP poems and I was sent this in my inbox a few weeks ago.I've actually still got it there and was sent it by the poem hunter website, which I subscribed to and receive a lucky poem everyday.Though sometimes I've had a few when I haven't checked my email and I get some lovely poetic surprizes and some familar ones to!Has anyone else done this and been surprized by receiving one of their favourite poems or opened their email to find a new poem they have never read before?

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## Scheherazade

I grew up hearing this poem from my parents (translated, not in English) and well before I knew who Poe was, I had learnt it by heart. And when I read it in English at university, I was over the moon!

The pure, naive love in the poem and sadness of it, without being soppy, touches my heart every time I read it.

And I learnt what 'sepulchre' means while reading this poem.

Did you know that this is the last poem Poe wrote?

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## chatnoir1311

I read it the first time , and really enjoyed it!!! It's so lovely !

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## Kaltrina

it's really a beautiful poem. I read so many times and whenever i read it I have the same pleasure and the same great feeling as if I am reading it for the first time...  :Biggrin:

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## Rosevn

hi all,

Yes, it's a very beautiful poem that I can't help re-reading it. I also read it for the first time  :Smile: 

I especially like this:




> I was a child and she was a child,
> In this kingdom by the sea;
> But we loved with a love that was more than love-
> I and my Annabel Lee;
> With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
> Coveted her and me.


This Edgar Allan Poe must be a lovable man who was so sweet with his beloved one, right?  :Cool:  

Thank you, Scheherazade!  :Ladysman:

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## Scheherazade

Found a copy of the original manuscript of the poem:

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## Aurora Ariel

Thanks for posting his manuscript.I love seeing old manuscripts.Also in museums and art galleries.Previously I had not seen this one.I have a thing for looking at the poets handwriting;it feels one can get a greater connection and then see for themself that they truely were once alive and their hand brushed along the page.It's quite a strange feeling that can come over you if you have read their poetry before, but in a reproduced text and not having seen their ink writing;which curls around by their own hand in a very personal style.It makes me wonder about the exact moment of creation and poetic inspiration;almost frozen in time to be viewed by future generations.I wonder, with the digital age, what will happen as nowdays most seem to type instead of writing with ink.Is this the end of manuscripts?Maby a poets handwriting and paper and pen will no longer exist?

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## Scheherazade

> I wonder, with the digital age, what will happen as nowdays most seem to type instead of writing with ink.Is this the end of manuscripts?Maby a poets handwriting and paper and pen will no longer exist?


 I agree with you Aurora that seeing a writer/poet's manuscripts (especially with some revisions on them) makes them 'real' to us. Like you, I cannot help wondering what they were feeling/thinking or what led them to that moment when they had the inspritation to write that particular piece. I also try to get an idea about the person who held the pen. Although I understand where your worries are stemming from, I am not sure if it will ever come to the point of making pen and paper obsolete. Like e-books cannot replace the actual printed books, I would like to think that 'the real thing' will survive owing to its personal touch and intimacy.


Since it is another month and no one else has posted another poem, I will do the honour again!  :Biggrin: 

Poem for October 3rd - 10th:


*The World is Too Much With Us*

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,-
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth

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## amuse

i've never read the whole thing; thanks Scher. these lines are beautiful:




> And neither the angels in heaven above,
> Nor the demons down under the sea,
> Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
> Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
> 
> And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
> Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
> In the sepulchre there by the sea,
> In her tomb by the sounding sea.9

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## ADLforApril

To go back to "Annabel Lee," I think that the poem is twisted when you consider the subject and Poe's relationship with her. Knowing that Poe is writing of his 13 year old cousin whom he married and presumably had sexual relations with makes this poem rather creepy.

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## Scheherazade

> *The World is Too Much With Us*
> 
> The World is too much with us; late and soon,
> Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
> Little we see in Nature that is ours;
> We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!


I am sure I have mentioned this somewhere else in the Forum but these lines carry so much depth to me. The whole poem refers to industrialisation but when I read tthe opening lines, I feel some kind of angst, questioning, some kind of Judgement Day reflection. I can very easily say that these are among the lines which have moved most in English poetry (as little as I have read of it).



> This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
> The winds that will be howling at all hours
> And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
> For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
> It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
> A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,-
> So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
> Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
> Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
> Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


The yearning for nature in these latter lines is so strong and so passionate. I have never been someone who had close ties with nature (apart from the sea) but I can almost feel his desperation and resentment and agree with it.

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## Ashen

I wonder, if these poets of old had access to a keyboard, would they have gladly given up the slow and tedious and often inefficient use of pen and paper? I know, it is a romantic thought, to take your pen and paper and write a few lines, watching your ideas flow fluidly from your mind onto the page. 
Im not a complete advocate of a keyboard (laptop in this case) as I do often find myself somewhere with a sudden inspirationk, and my trusty Wordpad program nowhere to be found, wishing I had a scrap of paper and anything to write with. But for the most part, the bulk of my writing is done by pushing keys. I personally find it much easier to pull the ideas from my mind and get them on the page without losing anything. 
S.

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## A Hard Rain

by charles bukowski

love is a dog from hell

feet of chese
coffeepot soul
hands that hate poolsticks
eyes like paperclips
I prefer red wine
I am bored on airliners
I am docile during earthquakes
I am sleepy at funerals
I puke at parades
and am scrificial at chess
and **** and caring
I smell urine in churches
I can no longer read
I can no longer sleep

eyes like paper clips
my green eyes
I prefer white wine

my box of rubers is getting
stale
I take them out
Trojan-Enz
lubricated
for greater sensitivity
I take them out
and put three of them on

the walls of my bedroom are blue

Linda where did you go?
Katherine where did you go?
(and Nina went to England)

I have toenail clippers
and Windex glass cleaner
green eyes
blue bedroom
bright machinegun sun

this whole thing is like a seal
caught on oily rocks
and circled by the Long Beach Marching Band
at 3:36 p.m.

there is a ticking behind me
but no clock
I feel something crawling along 
the left side of my nose: 
memories of airliners

my mother had false teeth
my father had false teeth
and every Saturday of their lives
they took up all the rugs in their house
waxed the hardwood floors
and covered them with rugs again

and Nina is in England
and Irene is on ATD
and I take my green eyes
and lay down in my blue bedroom.

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## Scheherazade

I am not familiar with Bukowski's works... I remember reading one of his poems somewhere here and liking it but... this one, I am afraid, does not do much for me... apart from getting an 'Ugh'. I am probably not deep/intelligent/learned/philosophical enough (delete as appropriate) to appreciate this. I don't mind raw writings but to me this is more than raw... a little unpalatable.

*edit*

Here is the other Bukowski thread

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## blp

> this one, I am afraid, does not do much for me... apart from getting an 'Ugh'. I am probably not deep/intelligent/learned/philosophical enough (delete as appropriate) to appreciate this. I don't mind raw writings but to me this is more than raw... a little unpalatable.


Jeez, Louise. What on earth are you talking about? I can barely find anything offensive in that poem at all. And I think it's often really beautiful.

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## Scheherazade

> Jeez, Louise. What on earth are you talking about? I can barely find anything offensive in that poem at all. And I think it's often really beautiful.


I did not say that I find it offensive but just not 'tasteful' and, bar couple of lines, I can't see the 'poetic beauty' in this poem. He seems to be complaining about a stagnant life but wrote even more stagnant poem.

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## blp

But he found a lot of strong images to express it, and some humour. 

OK! What a very stimulating chat. But now it's time for another...*poem of the week*:

*Dream Song 29* 
_by John Berryman_ 


There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

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## blp

Darn. Oh well. 

Time for another. Who's posting?

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## chmpman

Since it is Wednesday, and no new poem, I'll post one.

The Sun Rises and Sets
by Li Po, translated by Stephen Owen

The sun comes up from its nook in the east,
Seems to rise from beneath the earth,
Passes on through Heaven,
sets once again in the western sea,
And where, oh, where, can its team of six dragons
ever find any rest?
Its daily beginnings and endings,
since ancient times never resting.
And man is not made of its Primal Stuff--
how can he linger beside it long?
Plants feel no thanks for their flowering in spring's wind,
Nor do trees hate losing their leaves
under autumn skies:
Who wields the whip that drives along
four seasons of changes--
The rise and the ending of all things
is just the way things are.

Hsi-ho! Hsi-ho! [goddess who drove sun's carriage]
Why must you always drown yourself
in those wild and reckless waves?
What power had Lu-yang [legendary figure stopped sun's path
to continue a fight]
That he halted your course by shaking his spear?
This perverts the Path of things,
errs from Heaven's will--
So many lies and deceits!
I'll wrap this Mighty Mudball of a world
all up in a bag
And be wild and free like Chaos itself!


[these are much needed side notes]

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## ~Maude~

oops, I just found this and it looks like no one has posted a poem for this week yet so I'll sneek on up even though it's a few days late.

11/2/05-11/7/05 by Margaret Atwood

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song 
that is irresistable:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works everytime.

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## IrishCanadian

Well I too am a few days late, but this week is free. Though not my favorite poet, this is my favorite poem. He seems to be able to introduce with such subtle euphony. and the last line ... well i love it.

SHE WLKS IN BEAUTY by Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

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## ~Maude~

I liked it, very nice. I hope people will start sharing more poems.

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## Darlin

One of my favorite poems.

*THE LABORATORY* by: Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, 
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely, 
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy-- 
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee? 

II

He is with her; and they know that I know 
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow 
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear 
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! -- I am here. 

III

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, 
Pound at thy powder, -- I am not in haste! 
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things, 
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's. 

IV

That in the mortar -- you call it a gum? 
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! 
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, 
Sure to taste sweetly, -- is that poison too? 

V

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, 
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures! 
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, 
A signet, a fan-mount, a filligree-basket! 

VI

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give 
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! 
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head 
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead! 

VII

Quick -- is it finished? The colour's too grim! 
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim? 
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, 
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer! 

VIII

What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me-- 
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free 
The soul from those masculine eyes, -- say, 'no!' 
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. 

IX

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought 
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought 
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, 
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does not all! 

X

Not that I bid you spare her the pain! 
Let death be felt and the proof remain; 
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace-- 
He is sure to remember her dying face! 

XI

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose 
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: 
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee-- 
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me? 

XII

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, 
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! 
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings 
Ere I know it -- next moment I dance at the King's!

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## Virgil

Strange poem. But interesting. My favorite stanza: X

Not that I bid you spare her the pain! 
Let death be felt and the proof remain; 
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace-- 
He is sure to remember her dying face!

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## Darlin

Strange indeed but its full of emotion namely revenge. I dont know, Ive enjoyed this since my high school years. If sounds so conniving and convincing. One of my favorite stanzas is:

He is with her; and they know that I know 
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow 
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear 
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! -- I am here. 

There plotting death! And the last line  hes off to dance at the Kings and to wreak that havoc! *insert evil laugh* Morbid perhaps but well done!  :Biggrin:

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## yellowfeverlime

i know that it is not a monday, and that i am not supposed to do it, but i can't help it! Well, first i wanna ask, can i put one of my own poems up for poem of the week?

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## Scheherazade

YFL,

This thread is for already published and somewhat known poets and poems to give us a chance to discuss those. You can always post your own poems in the Personal Poetry section.

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## yellowfeverlime

I do but i am not really a fan of the layout...

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## Scheherazade

I am sorry that the Forum's layout does not satisfy you. Maybe you can take your suggestions to the Admin at the Literature Network subforum: http://www.online-literature.com/for...isplay.php?f=9

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## michela

I ha ve to say iì'm defenetely agree with Scheherazade,i don't mind raw in poetry 'cause writing has to be different from speaking you know i mean? Anyway i know this is just my opinion and that Bukoswski was a good journalist but being honnest i don't like him.

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## Virgil

I went and checked out his poetry on the web. I don't like him either. Not only is it distasteful, but it's poor. Sorry if I offended anyone. Lawrence Ferlingetti can be distasteful at times, but he's an average or so poet. I didn't feel like Burkoski was even average.

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## Riesa

> I went and checked out his poetry on the web. I don't like him either. Not only is it distasteful, but it's poor. Sorry if I offended anyone. Lawrence Ferlingetti can be distasteful at times, but he's an average or so poet. I didn't feel like Burkoski was even average.


 I think to fully appreciate him, you need to have an affinity for the underworld. There is, to some, something darkly romantic about the lost alcoholic poet. I, for one, can find the tragedy and the humour in him. Bukowski is kind of like Tom Waits' music to me. I love T.W., but he can be disturbing, and in general people either love him or hate him. and if these posts represent how people feel about Bukowski, one either loves him or hates him, too. But enough about him.

A new poem:

*Lying in a Hammock
at William Duffy's Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota*
by James Wright

Over my head, I see the Bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

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## Riesa

:Blush:  oops, I just realized that this is the WEEKLY poem thread, sorry. go back to discussing, THE LABORATORY by: Robert Browning. Pretend I wasn't here.

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## Virgil

> I think to fully appreciate him, you need to have an affinity for the underworld. There is, to some, something darkly romantic about the lost alcoholic poet. I, for one, can find the tragedy and the humour in him.



It's not that he's disturbing that makes him a poor poet to me. He may be darkly romantic. I've known lots of people who might be called darkly romantic. That didn't make them poets. It's his use of language that makes unpoetic to me. It doesn't strike me as being very artful.

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## Riesa

It's his use of language that makes him poetic to me, though. I guess it comes down to individual feeling and interpretation of his poetry. To each his own  :Biggrin:

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## Virgil

I think the week has passed and we can tackle Reisa's poem.




> I think to fully appreciate him, you need to have an affinity for the underworld. There is, to some, something darkly romantic about the lost alcoholic poet. I, for one, can find the tragedy and the humour in him. Bukowski is kind of like Tom Waits' music to me. I love T.W., but he can be disturbing, and in general people either love him or hate him. and if these posts represent how people feel about Bukowski, one either loves him or hates him, too. But enough about him.
> 
> A new poem:
> 
> *Lying in a Hammock
> at William Duffy's Farm
> in Pine Island, Minnesota*
> by James Wright
> 
> ...



Fine poem, Reisa. The capture of just the perfect moment. One question: how do one year old horse's droppings "blaze"? And why "golden stones"?

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## rachel

Virgil,
have you never gone riding and see old droppings on a sunny day. if old they really can shine a strange brown shot thru with gold and when a ray of sunshine strikes across them they do "blaze". for real.
And as far as Bukowski, he did say he wrote to save himself from madness. He never said he was any good!
Browning's poem is very chilling. It glaringly shows what happens when grief or shock is not dealt with quickly in a positive way. to forgive takes an act of the will not any emotions per se and without forgiveness the heart darkens and becomes like stone.
There is a scripture that says" the heart is treacherous and who can know it?"
To step by step plan the demise of anyone is to my mind the blackest of black acts and makes me think of Columbine.
very disturbing to me. I never see any beauty in unkindness. Just cannot and I have tried.

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## Virgil

Thanks Rachel. I've been riding but I never noticed day old droppings. I'll have ask my wife; she's been around horses more than I have. She claims she married a jackass. No, I'm only kidding. She doesn't claim that, but the joke fell to easily off my lips.

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## Virgil

Let me post another poem for the week, one by George Herbert, a 17th century metaphysical poet. Keep in mind he was an Anglican priest (if that's the right term). Most of his poetry has religious themes. This one ("The Collar") I particularly like. It's an expression of his desire to break free of his religious duties. But it has a surprise ending. The collar, of course, refers to the religious collar that he apparently wears but it's a pun as well; the collar as a yoke.


*The Collar*  by George Herbert

I Struck the board, and cried, "No more.
I will abroad.
What ? shall I ever sigh and pine ?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit ?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit ?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me ?
Have I no bays to crown it ?
No flowers, no garlands gay ? all blasted ?
All wasted ?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And you have hands.
Recover all your sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave your cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake your cage,
Your rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to you
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be your law,
While you did wink and would not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in your deaths head there: tie up your fears.
 He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
I thought I heard one calling, "Child !"
And I replied, "My Lord."


Edit: I noticed that it didn't paste in the post as I copied it. He indents in many places for emphasis and for stanza structure. This was lost from the copy/paste. Sorry.

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## rachel

He echos what I have gone thru many times in my walk with God. But he is covenanted as I am and that is a bond stronger than whims and fancies, of h ormones and changing humours thru the passage of years. I love it, I love metaphysical poetry for the most part.
oh and dear Virgil, jackass droppings long sat in the wind and rain and harsh unyielding sun have not the same glitter nor cast. they seem to stubbornly stay dark grey like their owner. jackass indeed. sweet man perhaps but never that. goyim perhaps never jackass.

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## Virgil

> He echos what I have gone thru many times in my walk with God. But he is covenanted as I am and that is a bond stronger than whims and fancies, of h ormones and changing humours thru the passage of years. I love it, I love metaphysical poetry for the most part.
> oh and dear Virgil, jackass droppings long sat in the wind and rain and harsh unyielding sun have not the same glitter nor cast. they seem to stubbornly stay dark grey like their owner. jackass indeed. sweet man perhaps but never that. goyim perhaps never jackass.


  :FRlol:  Thanks, Rachel. You're a dear.

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## Riesa

Hey guys, somehow missed Virgil's question. Rachel is right, of course, what else?  :Smile: 
Horse droppings turn from dark to light with the passage of time, and generally keep their shape, unless disturbed somehow. I always thought of that line as taking something as mundane as waste, and turning it into a precious thing, gold. How small moments or a glance at a winter river (while driving bickering children to school), can catch your eye, and fill your heart and soul with wonder and the joy to be alive. 

also, I take it you two haven't seen a spotted baby jack before? There is sweetness and loveliness in the lowliest creature, (not saying that you are lowly, Virgil  :Smile:  just defending my lovely equine friends) and I'm too distracted to read the above poem, Virgil. I just brought home my new puppy. Check out the animal posts in the near future for some puppy pix.

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## Virgil

Oh, a new puppy!!! I must see pictures.

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## rachel

I think brandi must be THE most loved and cherished of dogs, how blessed she is to have a tender and devoted owner like you Virgil.
Riesa why don't you write a book of poetry. You see things thru the eyes of the Creator and tired hearts and broken minds would find nourishment and peace in your words that come down softly always into my mind like dove's feathers bringing such a hushed and holy quiet feeling.

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## Scheherazade

Last week, Jay and I spent over an hour discussing this poem and would like to hear your interpretations too... Not necessarily what you studied and were told it meant at school but your own thoughts and feelings about the poem.

*The Lake Isle of Innisfree*  

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

-- William Butler Yeats

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## lavendar1

_Several impressions and thoughts..._

Like most poets, Yeats was no doubt a very reflective man. And when I read the name of the isle, I'm thinking of it literally --In - is - free, almost as though Yeats believes that only by getting in touch with his deepest self will he "have some peace." He writes with an almost wistfulness, as if he wishes to convince himself that it could be so simple, so matter-of-fact to get to this 'place': I _will_ arise and _go now."_ 

I know, too, that Yeats (like alot of Irish writers) spent a chunk of his 'writing life' outside Ireland. Perhaps his absence from his homeland made his heart grow fonder of it; his reminiscences of the peaceful places of his times there seem to be coming from "the deep heart's core."

I'm hearing a little of Thoreau's self reliance in the poem, too: Yeats speaks of living alone in a cabin, of taking care of his own needs while he appreciates nature. Thoreau, in fact, wrote a poem called _The Inward Morning_, that (like its name implies) is a morning communion with both his inner self and with nature.

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## Virgil

Scher 

Great choice. I *love*  this poem. There were certain poems I would memorize when I was younger. This was one of them. So I know this extremely well. I'll try not to hog the whole thing up.

Two quick points of literary allusion, one obvious, one not so. The obvious is the reverence for nature and the "peace" that it brings. This echoes Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" where nature is a healing place and religious place. We see this with "midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow" and other lines. The second point, not so obvious, is the allusion to Henry David Thoreau's _Walden Pond_, where Thoreau goes and builds a cabin by a pond for a few years and lives by growing beans. And that's waht the poet narrator does too: "small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:/Nine bean-rows will I have there...And live alone in the bee-loud glade."

Another other important thing I see in this are the repetitions. Words he repeats: "arise" (2x), "go" (3x), "peace" (2x), "dropping" (2x). Still another are nature's sounds that are identified: "bee-loud", "cricket sings", "linnets wings", and the "water lapping with low sounds." And still another are the rhyming vowels, all long, accented vowels: free/bee, made/glade, slow/glow, sings/wings, day/gray, shore/core. 

And finally one last thing that must be pointed out is the repeated phrase, "I will arise and go now" in the first and third stanzas. It serves as a return, a rondo and thereby structures the poem. So much more here, I've left out the central point, but I'll let others add and explain.

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## IrishCanadian

WOW. I always considered this poem as more of a practicle ditty regaurding the land of beauty and freedom (as mentioned by lavendar1: in is free). Yeats did in fact roam natural areas in search of the fairy folk as well as for personal reflsction. But I never thought much of this poem other than a reminiscence of a time he had at the Isle of Innisfree. Cool.

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## Scheherazade

I have to post a disclaimer that I have not studied this poem nor am I familiar with the Thoreau poems mentioned (though I will look them up... _I will arise and go now..._  :Wink: ). 


> Like most poets, Yeats was no doubt a very reflective man. And when I read the name of the isle, I'm thinking of it literally --In - is - free, almost as though Yeats believes that only by getting in touch with his deepest self will he "have some peace." He writes with an almost wistfulness, as if he wishes to convince himself that it could be so simple, so matter-of-fact to get to this 'place': I _will_ arise and _go now."_


I love this interpretation, Lavendar  :Smile:  

Virgil> Thank you very much for highlighting the important references in the poem but I really would like to hear _your_ interpretation of the poem. What does it say to you? What do _you_ think it is about? 

My interpretation is somewhat different...

I consider this poem as an ode to procrastination. The persona in the poem is talking about this lovely, heavenly, out-of-this-world place which, he knows, will bring peace of mind and happiness to him. He is daydreaming about the place 'While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,'... His desire to be there (to find peace?) is so very deep. However, the fact that the poem starts and ends with the line 'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree' tells me that he is still not getting up and going; ie, not taking the actions to reach this peaceful place (might be both physical or metaphorical). If he took the necessary actions, rather than simply musing about them, he will probably find the peace he is longing for but... alas...

We all do this at times, don't we?

 :Smile:

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I love this poem, especially the phrase 'bee-loud glade'. It's a beautiful way of describing a place of peaceful, busy-yet-lazy summer.

I'm not a great one for reading about poems. I prefer to read the things themselves and form my own stupid ideas about what they mean. I'll do my best to describe how I read this one.

I see it as a longing for the unattainable, or rather, longing for the briefly attainable to become permanent. He wants a place of perpetual summer. That the island is within a lake and therefore ringed by land is, I think, significant too. It is surrounded by the world at large but cut off by the lake's water. I think Yeats wants his perfection to be his alone (he says, 'to live alone', in fact). He longs for an escape from the rat-race and hustle (roadways & pavements). A splendid isolation. Bucolic bliss. And I think that he longs as much for a spiritual retreat as a physical one - an escape from fame perhaps - I've never been quite decided if that's the case.

I really like Scheherazade's take on it too. It's not a way I've ever looked at the piece, but it will probably colour my readings from now on (in a nice way). By the way, the name of the island literally means "Isle of heather".

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## IrishCanadian

> I consider this poem as an ode to procrastination. The persona in the poem is talking about this lovely, heavenly, out-of-this-world place which, he knows, will bring peace of mind and happiness to him. He is daydreaming about the place 'While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,'... His desire to be there (to find peace?) is so very deep. However, the fact that the poem 'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree' starts and ends with this line tells me that he is still not getting up and going; ie, not taking the actions to reach this peaceful place (might be both physical or metaphorical). If he took the necessary actions, rather than simply musing about them, he will probably find the peace, he is longing for but... alas...


Very very interesting. Yeats was in love (as you probably know) with a republicanist Maud Gonne (at the time of their life Ireland was in a political and literal war for freedom from British rule). He did his work to "up the rebels" and fought in words agains the Brittish rule. He loved Maud Gonne (partially) because she was very farceably active in this time of political oppression. She did not love him, however, because he only wrote ... no actual actions. Perhaps the sentiments of procastination were shades of his personl life's conflict with his political innaction. ???

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## Virgil

> Virgil> Thank you very much for highlighting the important references in the poem but I really would like to hear _your_ interpretation of the poem. What does it say to you? What do _you_ think it is about?


Ok. I will. 

First kudos to Lavendar for pointing out the noun, "Innisfree" as a place to be free. I for all these years took it as an actual place, and it is an actual place. In the Google Image game, Reisa posted a picture of it. I never thought about it as having meaning. It is a place to be free and Innis, sujests inward or inner, so a place of inner freedom. A bit of serendipity, but who knows the name might have inspired the poem. Xamonas, is Innisfree celtic for Isle of Heather? 


I think everyone else is also on the mark (the isolation, the buccholic setting, even the procrastination). 
The key I think is "I will arise and go now." He's not there. It's all a mental excercise. It's all recall, perhaps all wish. Is it procrastination or just impractical? The poem isn't definitive. He's never in motion, just stands which supports procrastination. Certainly there is stark contrast between the gray pavement and Innisfree. If he could get there he knows he'll get peace, ala Wordsworth in "Tintern Abbey". Do we believe him that he's going to go? I've questioned it, but there's nothing to suggest that he won't. He even gets specific, he's going to build a cabin. 

So, if you force me to stretch myself and articulate my impressions, I think it might be a wish, but an impractical one. He's been there, he's absobed it, it's in his heart's core, but to build a cabin out of clay and wattles (clay?, wattles?, come on) just is impractical. Nature is just too magnificent: midnight all a glimmer, noon a purple glow. Too imaginary. And the fact that he has to tell himself twice to arise and go, coupled that he's never in motion, really does suggest, he ain't getting there. I think it's a wish, it's in his heart, but it's impractical, which by the way would be a break from Wordsworth.

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## Scheherazade

> By the way, the name of the island literally means "Isle of heather".


Very interesting... OK, let's carried away and read too much into it! Does heather have a significant meaning? Language of the flowers kind of way?  :Biggrin:  



> Yeats was in love (as you probably know) with a republicanist Maud Gonne (at the time of their life Ireland was in a political and literal war for freedom from British rule). He did his work to "up the rebels" and fought in words agains the Brittish rule. He loved Maud Gonne (partially) because she was very farceably active in this time of political oppression. She did not love him, however, because he only wrote ... no actual actions. Perhaps the sentiments of procastination were shades of his personl life's conflict with his political innaction. ???


Had no idea and another valid suggestion, I think. 


> I think everyone else is also on the mark (the isolation, the buccholic setting, *even the procrastination*).


Why, _thank you_, Virgil!  :Biggrin:  - On a serious note, thanks for your interpretation, too!  :Smile: 

Like Xamonas, I don't like reading about poems (or other literary works for that matter) unless I am really stuck and/or intrigued and I am very glad we can come up with different interpretations which are all very interesting among ourselves!  :Smile:

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## Riesa

As you wish, Virgil.

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## ktd222

I don't know if anyones picked this out, but for me, the poems less about procrastination and more about 'ability.' The speaker's ability to choose whenever he wants he can go to this place(Innisfree). Uses of phrases, like
_I will_ in stanzas 1 and 3, and _I shall_ in stanza 2 are all showing command--command over when he goes to this place. _Go now_,he says. Total control. 
I agree with Virgil that he has been to this place just by the fact that he gets very detailed as far as describing Innisfree. 
So by the end of the poem, it says _While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core._ Its almost as if he is standing, almost straddling, one leg on the roadway and the other leg on
the pavement, and in between these two places is his body; and 
inside is this place(Innisfree). Connecting him to all of these places, and almost showing you(the reader) his ability to choose, whenever he wants to,
he can go to Innisfree.

Its probably irrelevant, but its kinda freaky that if you take a look at the poem:
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 5 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 10 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core. 

imagine this line:



While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray

visualize the line above as solid mass, and visualize him straddling with one
leg on the phrase _While I stand on the roadway_, and the other leg on 
the phrase _or on the pavements gray_. So his body points upward towards the rest of the poem which just happens to all be description of Innisfree. Look at all the lines devoted to describing Innisfree--The image
come to life. And the importance of sounds of words...its too much. This really is a great poem!

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## Jay

> I agree with Virgil that he has been to this place just by the fact that he gets very detailed as far as describing Innisfree.


I don't think him being very detailed in describing Innisfree means he's ever been there. It could have been any other island. How are you, from that description, to figure out he was talking about Innisfree if he didn't 'hint' that in the title and mention its name in the poem?

I think the poem might be about a dying man. He might be dying for real or from within, I don't think it's of much importance which. His Innisfree might be his picture of heaven. It's peaceful and calm and he seems to be trying to get there for some time and for a reason he can't get there, be it it's too far away (if we're thinking about the actual Innisfree), or out of reach if it's only a dream, an image (a symbol of peace, heaven, whichever you prefer), as if he's dying he won't get there no matter what the location of the island is (that is if you don't believe in an afterlife).

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## IrishCanadian

Have you ever wondered what the poet would say if he were alive today to read this thread?

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## Riesa

> Have you ever wondered what the poet would say if he were alive today to read this thread?


Funny, I was just thinking that exact thing last night.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Xamonas, is Innisfree celtic for Isle of Heather? 
> ....
> but to build a cabin out of clay and wattles (clay?, wattles?, come on) just is impractical.


Yes, it is Irish gaelic - I looked it up in an online Irish dictionary - can't remember which - I went through the google directory / reference / dictionaries / world languages. There are dictionaries for everything from Albanian to Zulu in there, arranged alphabetically - very useful favourite to have in my opinion.

Yeats is referring to traditional, pre-industrial methods of making houses in Ireland. 'Wattle & Daub' is how it's usually termed in English. And, lacking bricks, concrete & an abundance of timber, it's an extremely practical, strong and long-lasting way of constructing houses. See here

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## Scheherazade

I think that is the beauty of poetry - or literary works for that matter - that we all read the same text but interpret them differently and each of these interpretations can be as valid as the other as long as they get enough support from the text. The interpretations of a work is not only what the writer means but also the reader's contribution to that work, drawing from their own experiences and personalities at times; and I believe that the richness of intrepretations is an indicator of author's/poet's success... that they are able to address so many people.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

On the subject of Maud Gonne. Another of my favourite Yeats poems is, 'No Second Troy', where he compares her courage with his own reluctance to take a physically active role in the rebellion. My favourite line is, "Had they but courage equal to desire?", which sums up the image of his reluctance feeling perfectly.

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## ktd222

> I don't think him being very detailed in describing Innisfree means he's ever been there. It could have been any other island. How are you, from that description, to figure out he was talking about Innisfree if he didn't 'hint' that in the title and mention its name in the poem?
> 
> I think the poem might be about a dying man. He might be dying for real or from within, I don't think it's of much importance which. His Innisfree might be his picture of heaven. It's peaceful and calm and he seems to be trying to get there for some time and for a reason he can't get there, be it it's too far away (if we're thinking about the actual Innisfree), or out of reach if it's only a dream, an image (a symbol of peace, heaven, whichever you prefer), as if he's dying he won't get there no matter what the location of the island is (that is if you don't believe in an afterlife).



You are right. It must have been the late hours speaking. But, take a look at
what he wrote about Innisfree, literally. Yeats being from Ireland; there is an island off Ireland named Innisfree; He names it DIRECTLY as Innisfree in the poem; and so I'm just assuming that he is talking about that specific island. Or am I totally off-base?

As for the poems meaning, there is no reference to dying in the poem. No mention or allusion to Heaven or the afterlife. Innisfree is a place just as he describes. A place where he can go to find peace. Its not that he can't get to Innisfree. In the opening phrase of each stanza _I will_, _I shall(can)_, _I will_, each is followed by a description of Innisfree. It is as if when he says these commands--he is there at Innisfree describing it. 

He is there, He has been there, thats why he can describe it so well. There is a tone of command and not delay or inability. A tone that would contrast well
against this poem is T.S. Elliots _The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock_, where he constantly states _there will be time_, _there will be time_. Thats a tone of delay or procrastination or never able to 'get' to a destination.

Holla back!

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## Virgil

> Yes, it is Irish gaelic - I looked it up in an online Irish dictionary - can't remember which - I went through the google directory / reference / dictionaries / world languages. There are dictionaries for everything from Albanian to Zulu in there, arranged alphabetically - very useful favourite to have in my opinion.


Thanks, but I don't know what to make of that. How does it fit?




> Yeats is referring to traditional, pre-industrial methods of making houses in Ireland. 'Wattle & Daub' is how it's usually termed in English. And, lacking bricks, concrete & an abundance of timber, it's an extremely practical, strong and long-lasting way of constructing houses. See here


That was very interesting. I didn't realize that. It's still not practical, though. I mean not practical in the sense that you're just going to get up and go and build this house on impulse: "I will arise and go now". Hmm. Actually it does add a layer of nastalgia, perhaps. This old Irish custom. Perhaps recalls a mythic age, something Yeats was interested in. Double hmm.

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## Virgil

> You are right. It must have been the late hours speaking. But, take a look at
> what he wrote about Innisfree, literally. Yeats being from Ireland; there is an island off Ireland named Innisfree; He names it DIRECTLY as Innisfree in the poem; and so I'm just assuming that he is talking about that specific island. Or am I totally off-base?
> 
> He is there, He has been there, thats why he can describe it so well. There is a tone of command and not delay or inability. A tone that would contrast well
> against this poem is T.S. Elliots _The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock_, where he constantly states _there will be time_, _there will be time_. Thats a tone of delay or procrastination or never able to 'get' to a destination.


I don't think you're off base. How we read the tone is critical. I still don't feel it as a tone of command, as you say. I still feel it's a longing rather than determined.

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## Virgil

> visualize the line above as solid mass, and visualize him straddling with one
> leg on the phrase _While I stand on the roadway_, and the other leg on 
> the phrase _or on the pavements gray_. So his body points upward towards the rest of the poem which just happens to all be description of Innisfree.


That is a really interesting observation.

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## ktd222

Virgil--
Could you please explain to me how a tone of longing would read like?
Use the phrases of _I will_  and _I shall_.
To me it is under his command because the word 'will' is defined *as to order
or direct by his own will or to determine by an act of choice(merriam webster dictionary).*  In this case, then, yeats is exercising his command or will over when he will go to Innisfree.
But I do see your point that the poems about longing as well. Anyways maybe I just like too much to discuss the points of views.

This is really cool that we can discuss poetry in a forum.
Should I post the next poem?

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## Jay

> But, take a look at
> what he wrote about Innisfree, literally. Yeats being from Ireland; there is an island off Ireland named Innisfree; He names it DIRECTLY as Innisfree in the poem; and so I'm just assuming that he is talking about that specific island. Or am I totally off-base?


No, you're not, I was just more seeing the poem as it is, from an annonymous person's POV, not Yeats' (therefore dismissing the idea of Yeats being Irish, probably having visited Innisfree).

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> there is an island off Ireland named Innisfree; He names it DIRECTLY as Innisfree in the poem; and so I'm just assuming that he is talking about that specific island. Or am I totally off-base?


The Innisfree in the poem is not off the coast of Ireland but within a lake in county Sligo. See Riesa's post on the previous page. Innisfree is a common name for an island in Ireland, there are several dotted about. At least one in Canada too.

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## Virgil

> Virgil--
> Could you please explain to me how a tone of longing would read like?
> Use the phrases of _I will_  and _I shall_.
> To me it is under his command because the word 'will' is defined *as to order
> or direct by his own will or to determine by an act of choice(merriam webster dictionary).*  In this case, then, yeats is exercising his command or will over when he will go to Innisfree.
> But I do see your point that the poems about longing as well. Anyways maybe I just like too much to discuss the points of views.
> 
> This is really cool that we can discuss poetry in a forum.
> Should I post the next poem?


ktd - I'll try later tonight. I'll have to think about that for a little while.

For everyone's information, I looked up the poem in my Norton's _Anthology of English Lit_, checking to see if there were any annotations. There were two:
Innisfree - Island in Lough Gill, County Sligo. "My father had read to me some passage out of [Thoreau's] _Walden_, and I planned to live there some day in a cottage on a island called Innisfree"
wattles - Stakes interwoven with twigs or branches.

Perhaps it really was procrastination, because as far as I know, he never built that cottage.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Perhaps it really was procrastination, because as far as I know, he never built that cottage.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:  

Nice point Virgil.

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## ktd222

Lets say I believe you all, then, you all need to give me some evidence and explanation to why you believe the poem means what you all think?
How do you know that as your reading the poem, the image of him going there and describing Innisfree isn't happening? For me the _will, shall_  is present tense.

Use exerpts out of the poem  :Wink:  if you want to. Change my mind for me Jay? Virgil? anyone.

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## Virgil

> Virgil--
> Could you please explain to me how a tone of longing would read like?
> Use the phrases of _I will_  and _I shall_.
> To me it is under his command because the word 'will' is defined *as to order
> or direct by his own will or to determine by an act of choice(merriam webster dictionary).*  In this case, then, yeats is exercising his command or will over when he will go to Innisfree.
> But I do see your point that the poems about longing as well. Anyways maybe I just like too much to discuss the points of views.
> 
> This is really cool that we can discuss poetry in a forum.
> Should I post the next poem?


I'll try, but I'm not sure I can put it into words. If a person says I will do that, it is possible by the tone of how he says it to detect a lack of committment. I've done it myself, hearing my own words at work for instance saying I would do something but at the same time realizing the difficulty of doing it and that I probably wouldn't do it. On a page it's harder to really get that across. But I sense it, others do to, I think. The poem is completely static. He doesn't even put it in the present tense; "I will, I shall" are future tense. And everything else is nastalgic reminiscing.

Let's hold off on the next poem for another few days. Perhaps some might still want to add to this discussion.

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## ktd222

> No, you're not, I was just more seeing the poem as it is, from an annonymous person's POV, not Yeats' (therefore dismissing the idea of Yeats being Irish, probably having visited Innisfree).



You are not, because then you wouldn't have reference ideas about a _dying man_ or _heaven_ because there is no mention of those ideas.
If you think you are, use the poem as evidence and tell me why.

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## ktd222

> I'll try, but I'm not sure I can put it into words. If a person says I will do that, it is possible by the tone of how he says it to detect a lack of committment. I've done it myself, hearing my own words at work for instance saying I would do something but at the same time realizing the difficulty of doing it and that I probably wouldn't do it. On a page it's harder to really get that across. But I sense it, others do to, I think. The poem is completely static. He doesn't even put it in the present tense; "I will, I shall" are future tense. And everything else is nastalgic reminiscing.
> 
> Let's hold off on the next poem for another few days. Perhaps some might still want to add to this discussion.


He tells you he _will go_, and specifies by saying _now_. The tone of command comes back to me, again.

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## Virgil

> He tells you he _will go_, and specifies by saying _now_. The tone of command comes back to me, again.


But I had forgotten to mention in that post that the repetitions enforce the static feeling. It's like a person who keeps saying, "i'll get to that, yeah, I'll get to that, really, I'll get to that." You may be right as far as we can catagorically tell. But the lack of action in the poem, the reminicing, the repetitions, the the future tense of "I will", all work for me to undermine the narrator's committment. Even the long vowels that he uses throughout kind of give it a static feeling. There's no action really taken.

Jinshui on another thread of poetry pasted a poem from Wordsworth (similar to "Tintern Abbey") that could have been running through Yeat's mind as he wrote this:

*I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud* by William Wordsworth
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay: 10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood, 20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


It's the last stanza which I think relates to "Innisfree". Is Innisfree in Yeat's mind like the daffodills in Wordsworth's? Wordsworth has visited them in the past, but now lying stationary on a couch they flash back. For Wordsworth they give him "bliss" for Yeats, "peace".

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## IrishCanadian

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was in a childerens anthology when i was younger and it is fully responsible for my love of poetry. This poem basically was my introduction to all poetry! What a great week this week.

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## Scheherazade

> But, take a look at what he wrote about Innisfree, literally. Yeats being from Ireland; there is an island off Ireland named Innisfree; He names it DIRECTLY as Innisfree in the poem; and so I'm just assuming that he is talking about that specific island. Or am I totally off-base?


I have always thought that Innisfree represents an idyllic place; it is of little consequence that it actually exists. The persona might have been there and it might be his idea of of a refuge; a sanctuary (he might be talking about this particular place because it comes really close to his idea of 'sanctuary'?)

As for the line, 'I will...', as I stated in my initial post on the poem too, it shows a willingness and ability but the fact remains that he is not getting up and going. The poem starts and ends with this line, which shows that the persona is not taking the action. He spends his time thinking, dreaming, musing about this wonderful place, which he needs to go to find peace but he simply is not! The constant use of 'will' shows that he is postponing the actual action. 


> Lets say I believe you all, then, you all need to give me some evidence and explanation to why you believe the poem means what you all think?
> How do you know that as your reading the poem, the image of him going there and describing Innisfree isn't happening? For me the will, shall is present tense.
> 
> Use exerpts out of the poem if you want to. Change my mind for me Jay? Virgil? anyone.


The aim of the thread is not to change other people's minds on certain poems or make them agree with us. I am sure those who have been posting will agree with me that we are all here to share our interpretations and hear theirs as a way of expanding our understandings. I can easily say that almost every post here has made me think about the poem again and understand it better. It has become more meaningful and richer owing to these different perspectives even though I do not necessarily agree with every interpretation. 


> Should I post the next poem?


This is how it goes:




> * Please post a new poem only on a Monday.
> 
> * The same person cannot post another poem within the same month.


So please feel free to post the next poem on Monday.  :Smile:

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## ktd222

> But I had forgotten to mention in that post that the repetitions enforce the static feeling. It's like a person who keeps saying, "i'll get to that, yeah, I'll get to that, really, I'll get to that." You may be right as far as we can catagorically tell. But the lack of action in the poem, the reminicing, the repetitions, the the future tense of "I will", all work for me to undermine the narrator's committment. Even the long vowels that he uses throughout kind of give it a static feeling. There's no action really taken.


I disagree. I think these repitions are actually transporting us to this place. And the fact that the transport can be done by a short phrase shows his control of the 'transport' to this place. It is like having a password that permits you to go to this place. So repititon is the necesary password is the transport that will allow him be at Innisfree and continually go back there.

----------


## Scheherazade

> And the fact that the transport can be done by a short phrase shows his control of the 'transport' to this place.


 'Beam me up, Scotty!'???




 :Biggrin:

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## ktd222

She is one of my favorite poets. I chose this poem to showcase some of her many talents: connecting the senses. I hope you enjoy!

At the Fishhouses 
by Elizabeth Bishop 


Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches, 
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined 
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered 
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down 
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me 
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: 
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

I've never read this poem before but I'm glad you posted it. I had two immediate reactions to it. The first being an admiration for the descriptions of the evening. It made me miss cold foggy evenings by the sea with their pungeant smell and taste of salt and fish. Especially the description of everything silvery opaque but with "apparent translucence" perfectly captures the strange quality of such a scene in which every smell and touch has a biting reality, but images seem almost ghostly in the shifting reflected light of water and scales in an atmosphere of mist. I love the way such an ethereal sense is juxtoposed with such earthy descriptions as that of the rust "like dried blood."

In the second place, I was very struck by the end of the poem with its comparison of knowledge and the taste of sea water. So often in poetry a discussion of knowledge is set within either a discussion of learning or reading, or it is concerned with knowledge gained as a result of a specific dramatic experience. Here there seems to be an organic almost instinctive association with knowledge. Knowledge is set within the context of a familiar and perhaps everyday experience for the author. It is bred in the context of existing in and observing a place: watching the hands of the fishermen, singing to the seal, and, most importantly, dipping one's hand into the ocean--the ocean which permeates everything in both the scene and the poem. 

I've probably written too much already, so I'll let someone else address the wonderful "flowing, and flown" of the final line.

----------


## Virgil

ktd
Wow. You picked a fine poem. We must have similar tastes.

As Petrarch points out, the ending with the generalizations of what knowledge is is the climax of the poem and from which I think everything else must be understood. Let me just comment on the first stanza on this post.

One thing I see is just how non-metrical the lines are. If the senstences were reconfigured without lines, it could easily be straight prose. It's highly descriptive and contains a little narrative action of the old fisherman working. Nothing is romanticized. It's all raw, hard, and very real. "The air smells so strong of codfish/it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water." It's a world of nets, pots, wheelbarrows, masts, rocks, tubs, wooden capstan, scales, knife, blade. Great words of hard reality of a place where people aren't into abstract thinking. The closest that any mental process in the stanza is the talk of declining population, and even that is based on raw observation. The whole place seems dishelved, aging. Old man, old buildings, cracked capstan, rusted ironwork, worn shuttle, worn knife blade. One phrase that seems out of place (so it's either very important or a mistake) is "melancholy stains." It's the only place I think that she blatently ascribes an emotional response to an inanimate object. Otherwise, it's all detailed, objective (or at least it feels that way) rendering of a scene and interplay with the old man. Another thing to note is that it is in present tense. 

One literary allusion, I think, and again Wordsworth. If anyone has time, see how this compares with Wordsworth's "The Ruined Cottage." There too an old man set in a decaying cottage becomes the vehicle for knowledge/insight for a woman named Margaret.

Let's comment on this stanza and then move on to the other.

----------


## ktd222

Im just commenting on the first stanza as well.

Starting her poem with _although_ sets up an exception in the scene she is describing. That, in spite of the fact(although) the atmosphere in the evening is _cold--an old man sits netting_.-- The two, I guess you could say sub-scenes, seemingly dont belong in one scene. A curious use of a comma, also, seemingly separates the description of the atmosphere being cold, and descriptions of the old man, and things that are man-made for man use, in the first sentence. 



> "apparent translucence" perfectly captures the strange quality of such a scene in which every smell and touch has a biting reality, but images seem almost ghostly in the shifting reflected light of water and scales in an atmosphere of mist. I love the way such an ethereal sense is juxtoposed





> The whole place seems dishelved, aging. Old man, old buildings, cracked capstan, rusted ironwork, worn shuttle, worn knife blade.


Yes. Two worlds, based on Bishops description of things begin to develop. The dishelved world, as you say Virgil, where everything man, man-made, is susecptable to aging and wearing out. _Old man, worn shuttle, worn knife_  etcAnd the natural world beginning to be described: _beautiful herring with creamy iridescent coats of mail, iridescent flies_. 
And a few times, describing the insolubility of the two worlds: _The air smells so strong of codfish it makes ones nose run and ones eyes water; surface of the sea is opaque, but the silver of the benches, lobster pots, and masts is of apparent translucence_. 



> One phrase that seems out of place (so it's either very important or a mistake) is "melancholy stains." It's the only place I think that she blatently ascribes an emotional response to an inanimate object.


Yes; but I think the former. And you dont know whos blood it is thats melancholy. But a connection of the senses, more than just a perceived sense, but a sense of meaning also begins to develop. _The air smells so strong of codfish it makes ones nose run and ones eyes water ; There are sequins on his vestHe has scraped the scales, the principle beauty, from unnumbered fish_. The scales are described as the principle beauty of fish, but a weird transformation occurs where the sequins on his vest, which are basically fish scales, is talked about as if the scales are just a prized or worn thing to the old man. 
Lots of compare and contrast, layering, transforming, is going on in the first stanza.

----------


## Virgil

> Starting her poem with _although_ sets up an exception in the scene she is describing. That, in spite of the fact(although) the atmosphere in the evening is _cold--an old man sits netting_.-- The two, I guess you could say sub-scenes, seemingly dont belong in one scene. A curious use of a comma, also, seemingly separates the description of the atmosphere being cold, and descriptions of the old man, and things that are man-made for man use, in the first sentence.


Yes, I think you're absolutely right. She is setting up a duality of sorts, initiated with "although" as you say. Good observation. That comma is rather troublesome. Do you think it's a typo? It's grammatically incorrect.




> Yes. Two worlds, based on Bishops description of things begin to develop. The dishelved world, as you say Virgil, where everything man, man-made, is susecptable to aging and wearing out. Old man, worn shuttle, worn knife etcAnd the natural world beginning to be described: beautiful herring with creamy iridescent coats of mail, iridescent flies. 
> And a few times, describing the insolubility of the two worlds: The air smells so strong of codfish it makes ones nose run and ones eyes water; surface of the sea is opaque, but the silver of the benches, lobster pots, and masts is of apparent translucence.


Yes, I didn't pick up on it: iridescent (infinite) nature versuses aging (finite)mortality. Very good.

I don't know what to make of the second stanza. It's so nothing coming between the first and third. She shifts her line of sight to the water's edge and it's still in present tense. And "silver tree trunks" are not very realistic, which fits with iridescent nature. But then she gives a very specific geometric image here, the horizontal trunks laid across the stones at intervals. I'm sure she intends to have this image carry a lot of meaning, but frankly I don't get it. What do you think?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

I agree that the middle stanza somehow seems insignificant, and perhaps a bit puzzling. While I'm not sure I can find anything terribly profound in the lines, I do think that it serves a practical purpose in the poem by serving as a transition between the two longer stanzas, and between the two "worlds" (that of eternal irridecent nature, and that of mortal man) which we seem to be identifying in the poem. I think the "silver tree trunks" Virgil points to are key since they are a part of that "almost translucent" world of nature and at the same time they are trees that have been felled (encountered mortality) to be put to practical use by men. The first stanza seems to me more connected to the world of man-made things and contains a conversation with an old and mortal man, while the third stanza is more about the natural realm, an "element bearable to no mortal" in which one sings to the seals. In the second stanza the tree trunks, evenly spaced every four to five feet, both literally form a path between the actual locations of the place where the fisherman weaves his net and the edge of the water, and figuratively form a path between the two worlds these locations represent in the poem. 

This seems to me the way the way the stanza is functioning on a practical level as a connector between the two parts of the poem. Perhaps someone else has some more enlightening insights into its larger significance?

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## ktd222

> That comma is rather troublesome. Do you think it's a typo? It's grammatically incorrect.


I would hope not. If youve ever read some of her well known works like One Art-- that final rendering took around twenty drafts, to strike a balance with the poems elements(including syntax) with the overall meaning in that poem. 
Plus, dont editors also get a chance at correcting punctuation before poems are published. 
So what if we take what youve identified as syntactically incorrect and put that incorrectness into the context of At the Fishhouses and see if anything happens. Which seems to me: that if you read the opening lines of this poem with the comma after the word evening, you must momentarily pause yourself before continuing on reading the next line--Almost subtly distinguishing those two sub-scene/object descriptions. And, the odd placement of the comma also gives the whole scene--incorrectness--to it, as you say, Virgil. And, as weve all already sensed that there are two worlds and these worlds do not exist in harmony.




> I don't know what to make of the second stanza. It's so nothing coming between the first and third. She shifts her line of sight to the water's edge and it's still in present tense. And "silver tree trunks" are not very realistic, which fits with iridescent nature. But then she gives a very specific geometric image here, the horizontal trunks laid across the stones at intervals. I'm sure she intends to have this image carry a lot of meaning, but frankly I don't get it. What do you think?


I have an idea but I can't explain it in writing, yet. Give me a little time. Petrarch is on to something though.



> I think the "silver tree trunks" Virgil points to are key since they are a part of that "almost translucent" world of nature and at the same time they are trees that have been felled (encountered mortality) to be put to practical use by men.





> figuratively form a path between the two worlds these locations represent in the poem.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I love the image in the last stanza, 

"your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame."

It's a great way of describing erosion, "feeds on stones", it struck me the first time I read it. And the image of a "dark gray flame" is haunting.

Can anyone tell me when the poem was written? It has a very modern feel.

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## ktd222

> I think the "silver tree trunks" Virgil points to are key since they are a part of that "almost translucent" world of nature and at the same time they are trees that have been felled (encountered mortality) to be put to practical use by men.


I agree Petrarch. A naturally grown thing like a tree transforming for human purpose itself(the tree) becomes part of the mortal world. _Silver of the tree trunks goes back to silver of the benches, lobster pots, masts, small old building_. Facing mortality? Wow! It is as though, for me at least, the object begins to sense. Maybe this goes back to the melancholy stains you identified in an earlier post Virgil? The wooden capstan has melancholy feelings about something. Bits and pieces of the reasons for inanimate objects sensing is coming into play.



> But then she gives a very specific geometric image here, the horizontal trunks laid across the stones at intervals. I'm sure she intends to have this image carry a lot of meaning, but frankly I don't get it. What do you think?


The length of stanza 1 & 3 are so long compared to stanza 2. Their might be another element of the poem weve overlooked: direction. If you step back and visualize the three stanzas as wholly making up the scene Bishop is describing:
stanza 1 is mortal world 
stanza 2 transition
stanza 3 natural world. 

Couple this with elements of direction and description, and intent for stanza 2 does seem to be happening.
Maybe the short length of stanza 2 compared with stanzas 1 & 3 develops an ever so slight, but connection nontheless, between the two worlds that are described with such opposite-ness. 
_Haul up the boats_  is directed toward the mortal world. _Horizontally_  lay are the tree trunks which have been transformed for human purpose. No direction. The _silver tree trunks_  match well with _silver of the benches, lobster pots, masts, small old building_ and with _iridescent flies and iridescent herring scales._ The tree trunk is itself transforming before our eyes at intervals of four or five feet at a time. I think a lyric is occurring in the second stanza where the elements weve talked about have set up this thing where transformation is occurring before us.
Like you said Virgil:



> But then she gives a very specific geometric image here, the horizontal trunks laid across the stones at intervals. I'm sure she intends to have this image carry a lot of meaning, but frankly I don't get it. What do you think?


Before stanza 2, the description of objects in the scene has definitive belonging to one world or the other. But, stanza 2 serves as a connectedness between such an opposite described worlds. 


Is there any other opinions of stanza 2 before we move on to stanza 3?

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## Virgil

> The length of stanza 1 & 3 are so long compared to stanza 2. Their might be another element of the poem weve overlooked: direction. If you step back and visualize the three stanzas as wholly making up the scene Bishop is describing:
> stanza 1 is mortal world 
> stanza 2 transition
> stanza 3 natural world. 
> 
> Couple this with elements of direction and description, and intent for stanza 2 does seem to be happening.
> Maybe the short length of stanza 2 compared with stanzas 1 & 3 develops an ever so slight, but connection nontheless, between the two worlds that are described with such opposite-ness.


I agree with everything here except your characterization of stanza 3. Yes it is the natural world, but I think it's a transcendent natural world, a world of God, infinity, ritual, perhaps even transfiguration. She talks to a seal and their shared belief in babtism. But it's the seal that is immersed, not the narrator. There is a barrier between them, the seal can dive into the "cold dark deep and absolutely cear" water, but no mortal. The two cannot meet on the same plane. The seal can submerge below, while at best she can only dip her hand, and even then the consequences could be grave. It's not just the tangible natural world. It is charged with spirituality that mortality cannot fully grasp.

Xamonas is right; what a great sentence this is: "If you should dip your hand in,/your wrist would ache immediately,/your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn/as if the water were a transmutation of fire,/that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame." BTW, this sounds so much like D.H. Lawrence. I wonder if she revered him?

And so it becomes a religious experience, this interaction with nature. It is a babtismal experience, that is an acceptance of a new life, knowledge gained. It projects I think ahead to her death and the old man's death, another transmutation, bitter knowledge. After the word "transmutation" the style too transmutes. Suddenly, abstract concepts come in: imagination, knowledge, free, world, forever, historical. 

For those interested:
The last stanza of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God":

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: Gods truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

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## Petrarch's Love

> It's not just the tangible natural world. It is charged with spirituality that mortality cannot fully grasp.





> And so it becomes a religious experience, this interaction with nature. It is a babtismal experience, that is an acceptance of a new life, knowledge gained. It projects I think ahead to her death and the old man's death, another transmutation, bitter knowledge.


I also like ktd222's summation of the main themes in the three stanzas (very similar to the way I had been schematizing things) but I'm glad that Virgil is pushing us to address stanza three to mean not just nature but some sort of transcendental realm of experience. I think the suggestion that this foreshadows her own death and that of the old man is an interesting one. It certainly expresses what seems to be one aspect of the poignancy of the last line, "our knowledge is historical, flowing and flown." The move in this line from the present to the past tense is as simple and direct as the phrase "here today and gone tomorrow," yet at the same time it really wonderfully poetic and somehow grand. It seems to imply simultaneously that we as individuals are flowing and flown, that history as a whole is flowing and flown, and that, indeed all of human knowledge is flowing and flown--both here and gone--eternally mortal. 

I also think "transmutation" is an important word here, and that it stands at an important turn in the poem. It stood out to me the first time I read it in the way that words sometimes stand out without you really being aware why. Now I'm beginning to see that it might stands ambiguously for the potential to be "transmuted" (changed) by either birth in a kind of baptism, or by death. The distinction between birth and death seems to be blurred, just as the distinction between the elements of fire and water is blurred. At the end of the poem there seems to be a sense of a mortal cycle of birth and death, and of something which, to quote Virgil "mortality cannot fully grasp." Do you feel that in the conclusion there is some way in which we are to understand that it is possible for us to attain that elusive knowledge--perhaps almost by virtue of our own inevitable mortality--or does this ultimate knowledge remain firmly out of our reach--never accessible by any but the creatures of the sea. I wondered what people thought?

----------


## Virgil

> Do you feel that in the conclusion there is some way in which we are to understand that it is possible for us to attain that elusive knowledge--perhaps almost by virtue of our own inevitable mortality--or does this ultimate knowledge remain firmly out of our reach--never accessible by any but the creatures of the sea. I wondered what people thought?


A critical question! I would guess that she feels it's not invitable: "If you tasted it..." with emphasis on "if". Does the old man in the first stanza have this knowledge? I don't know. Does the seal have it? I'm not certain but I would suspect yes. Does the narrator have it? She tastes it, but is that complete knowledge? If knowledge is historical, what about the declining population from the first stanza? Here's a great metaphor: "drawn from the cold hard mouth/of the world". So the world/ocean is envision as a mouth, "derived from the rocky breasts" (mother nature?). The mouth of the world counterpoints the narrator's mouth above it that tastes the bitter brine. Again duality, opposites. 

Lots of other questions: Why in the third stanza does she shift to predominantly past tense? And notice she jumps back to present when she returns to the trees: "Back behind us,/the dignified tall firs begin./Bluish, associating with their shadows,/a million Christmas trees stand/waiting for Christmas." The "firs begin" what? She doesn't complete the sentence. And of course Christmas brings it to another ritual of birth. And then the stanza goes to the subjuntive tense, "If".

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## ktd222

I was just imagining by looking at the whole, not in depth reading the third stanza, yet. I do agree with you Virgil that there is another world of existenceSpiritual. But I didn't know about a spiritual world until reading stanza 3. Arent these three lines odd:

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, 
element bearable to no mortal, 
to fish and to seals

Fish and seals are mortal too, right? So what do fish and seals have that human do not that allows them to live in a place where no mortal can bear? Both seals and the narrator are believers in total immersion. Yet, the seal, and maybe the narrator(I'm not sure), is the only able to immerse in this spiritual world of _cold dark deep and absolutely clear_. I think, apart from the narrator, the difference is humans have a need to know. It seems to me belief in the spiritual world is not enough. We have a need to dissect the wholeness, by breaking it into elements, and studying those elements. 
The seals scene is fluid: _cold dark deep and absolutely clear._ We view the same scene in segments. The _water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stonesabove the stones and then the world_. And in the case at the bottom of stanza 3, the you learnt how the body would respond in this environment:

If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

And unwisely extrapolating over to imagine how scenes unimaginable would look and feel: 

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: 
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

The knowledge is what immerses us. And that knowledge is what develops worlds in which we cannot fully grasp, like the spiritual world. 

Transmutation is a very prevalent theme in this poem. It is the change in function of objects that we see developing throughout. At which viewpoint(for lack of a better word) must certain objects be viewed for their true un-mutated function? In this poems case: not through knowledge immersion can we grasp spiritual immersion.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

It's Monday here, so I'm going to dive in with a new poem.

It's by James Joyce from Pomes Penyeach and it's very short but no less interesting for all that.




> _Tilly
> 
> He travels after a winter sun,
> Urging the cattle along a cold red road,
> Calling to them, a voce they know,
> He drives his beasts above Cabra.
> 
> The voice tells them home is warm.
> They moo and make brute music with their hoofs.
> ...


I was reminded of this because the 'A meditation upon a broomstick' mentioned a torn off branch and there was a lot of talk about Joyce in the overrated authors thread. So I dug it out and posted it. 

The origin of the name is interesting:




> These poems were offered to Ezra Pound in 1926, who said "They belong in the Bible or in the family album with the portraits." In March 1927, though, Archibald MacLeish responded very favorably so Joyce went ahead with publication.
> 
> First published 6 (or 7) July 1927 by Shakespeare & Co, with a pale-green cover (the color of Joyce's favorite 'Caville' apples), selling for a shilling (twelvepence) or twelve francs, according to Ellmann. The lone review was in the 'Daily Herald'.
> 
> Jeffares and Kennelly explain: "This book cost a shilling, so that we might have expected from its title a dozen poems, but Joyce followed an Irish custom in adding a 'tilly' (from Irish tuilleadh, an added measure), a thirteenth poem, the first poem in the book being titled 'Tilly'. He probably had in mind the custom of Dublin milkmen and milkwomen of pouring an extra amount of milk into the purchaser's receptacle from the small, usually pint-sized, tilly can that accompanied a larger can or churn."


I love the idea that the tree that provided the drovers goad is actually the narrator. The rest of the book is interesting too. Short, simple poems with a lot of depth.

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## Virgil

> Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, 
> element bearable to no mortal, 
> to fish and to seals
> 
> Fish and seals are mortal too, right? So what do fish and seals have that human do not that allows them to live in a place where no mortal can bear? Both seals and the narrator are believers in total immersion. Yet, the seal, and maybe the narrator(I'm not sure), is the only able to immerse in this spiritual world of _cold dark deep and absolutely clear_. I think, apart from the narrator, the difference is humans have a need to know.


I took the difference btween humans and seals to be that the seals are immortatal, in the sense that every seal is a continuation of the previous. There are no personality distinctions between them as humans. Therefore they are connected to the infinite, unlike man, who can only reach the infinte through knowledge, ritual, death. I don't know if I'm correct. This is how I read it though.

When I started this, I thought this was a fine poem. Now I think this is a *GREAT*  poem!

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## Virgil

> I was reminded of this because the 'A meditation upon a broomstick' mentioned a torn off branch and there was a lot of talk about Joyce in the overrated authors thread. So I dug it out and posted it.


Xamonas - I didn't read the "Broomstick" thread. But the torn bough here reminds me of Frazier's The Golden Bough. The golden bough was a branch broken from a sacred tree by Aeneas before going into the underworld. Do you think Joyce is alluding to that? I'm not familiar with this poem, so I've got some homework. For instance, where or what is "Cabra?" And what is the significance of the name, "Boor?" And what is a "bond of the herd"?

My first impressions on this is that Joyce is recreating a mythic scene. In addition to the Golden Bough allusion, if that's what it is, cattle were linked to many myths and rituals for the Greeks, Romans, and Celts. This could be a start, or I could be leading you down a wrong path. Other thoughts?

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## ktd222

[QUOTE=Virgil]I took the difference btween humans and seals to be that the seals are immortatal, in the sense that every seal is a continuation of the previous. There are no personality distinctions between them as humans. Therefore they are connected to the infinite, unlike man, who can only reach the infinte through knowledge, ritual, death. I don't know if I'm correct. This is how I read it though.QUOTE]

Your right! I think from our view. But I also think from the seal's perspective, a sense of differentiation exist too.




> One seal particularly
> I have seen here evening after evening.
> He was curious about me. He was interested in music


Out of a population of seals in the sea, the narrator connects with a 'particular' seal with a curious nature. An interest in music. She shows us that personality distinctions exists in all species.

So in a literal sense, both humans and seals are not mortal, but their is some aspect of the sense that the seal knows cannot be used to accurately imagine the spiritual world. 




> Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
> almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
> as if it were against his better *judgment*.


The seal knows better than to take part in the ritual for total immersion. 
So I think she is making a connection with all species. Showing that we all have the capability, and through the use of the wrong senses, are misguided and unable to become totally immersed like the seal.




> Now I think this is a GREAT poem!


I agree!!!
I need another day before even reading another poem.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Now I think this is a GREAT poem!


Took the words right out of my mouth. I really enjoyed discussing it. 

Now on to this week's poem. I'm not quite sure what I think yet. I feel there's some meaning to it that I havn't grasped on my first reading. There were certain lines that struck my fancy. I like the association of the voice with the warmth of home and the making of "brute music with their hooves." 

I also agree that having the narrator turn out to be the tree which is bleeding and bereft of its bough is powerful, but I'm not sure what sort of statement he is trying to make with this. Virgil may be on to something with the golden bough reference. Actually a closer parallel is from earlier in the _Aeneid_ (book three I believe) when Aeneas plucks a bough from a tree only to find that it bleeds. It turns out that the tree is inhabited by the spirit of his fellow Trojan, Polydorus, who speaks to the hero about how he was betrayed and killed. I don't remember that there was any bleeding associated with the later episode of the Golden Bough (although this may just be faulty memory), but its association with the underworld would tie in with the "black stream" mentioned in Joyce's poem. 

Joyce may also have been thinking of a scene from Dante's _Inferno_ which was itself inspired by the Polydorus episode in the Aeneid and would account for both the bleeding tree and a possible reference to the "black stream" of the underworld. In canto 13 Dante encounters a tree which bleeds when he snaps off one of its branches. He then has a conversation with the spirit inside the tree, which is condemned in this way for commiting suicide. There are a few other references to bleeding trees in epics (in Tasso's _Gerusaleme Liberata_ for example) but I think the Dante and the original in the Aeneid are probably the most relevant. 

Cabra is evidently a suburb of Dublin in Ireland. 

I thought Boor was probably the sheep dog who works to "bind" the sheep together, but I could be wrong. Any other suggestions?

Also, what does the "smoke plumming their foreheads" refer to? Is this a reference to rising dust that looks like smoke? I found it a confusing image.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

"Boor" means uneducated oaf or ruffian. It's an insult hurled by the tree. 

I think "bond of the herd" implies that the young man is himself the slave of the cattle, and is another insult, but I may be wrong on that score. 

And I think the "smoke plumming their foreheads" refers to steam rising from them on a cool day.

I like the 'Golden Bough', 'Aeneid' & 'Inferno' connections. I always had the impression that there was something else going on in this poem, and these are all good ideas.

Personally, I absolutely love the way we are led to blithely accept this as a quiet, pastoral sketch, not even considering who the narrator might be, if we think of a narrator at all. But then this is turned on it's head in the last stanza. We are forced to examine our own assumptions - if you like, shown the meta-narrative.

I also like the fact that there is so much crammed into such a short poem. Joyce's writing is always word-rich, full of imagery and subtext. You always feel that there's more going on than the obvious.

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## Virgil

Whoever mentioned Dante's Inferno is probably correct. Here's from a paragraph from Spark Notes:




> Summary: Canto XIII
> In the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante enter a strange wood filled with black and gnarled trees. Dante hears many cries of suffering but cannot see the souls that utter them. Virgil cryptically advises him to snap a twig off of one of the trees. He does so, and the tree cries out in pain, to Dantes amazement. Blood begins to trickle down its bark. The souls in this ringthose who were violent against themselves or their possessions (Suicides and Squanderers, respectively)have been transformed into trees.


And here are the first 6o lines from Canto XIII, Inferno:



> Nessus had not yet reached the other bank 
> When we on this side moved into a wood 
> That was not marked at all by any path: 
> 
> No leaves of green but of a blackish color, 
> 5 No branches smooth but gnarled and tangled up, 
> No fruits were growing, only thorns of poison. 
> 
> No wild beasts, shunning the furrowed farmlands 
> ...


I think that there are four or five streams/rivers in Inferno, but I'm not sure which one is the black stream.

Xamonas - Meta-narrative? I don't see what you mean.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

By meta-narrative, I mean that we only realise at the end that the identity of the narrator has a bearing on the poem; that is important at all. This is a level of the poem that we never usually think about. Do we consider the identity of the narrator in "Ode to Autumn", for example?

We are used to reading bucolic idylls about pastoral scenes and assume this is one more of the same. But the last 2 lines smash that notion. It's a lovely twist. It's like an actor in a film winking at the camera. Or (since I've just finished rereading it) John Fowles's anachronistic asides in "The French Lieutenant's Woman".

Meta-narrative - a layer of meaning above the obvious.

I'm beginning to think that Dante was probably a big influence on this poem too. Although I see it as an inspiration rather than another layer of meaning. Thanks for the quote.

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## Virgil

I still don't get the meta-narrative part. I assume meta-narrative is the same thing as meta-fiction.




> Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own compositional procedures.


 -From _The Art of Fiction_  by David Lodge.




> Do we consider the identity of the narrator in "Ode to Autumn", for example?


Of course we do. Who's actually speaking is critical to understanding any work.

Two possibilities:
(1) An omniscient narrator's voice for the first two stanzas and a different voice for the third.
(2) The voice of the third stanza is far-reaching enough to observe the events of the first two stanzas and then address Boor in the third.

Interestingly the word "voice" is mentioned twice in the poem, and probably is the key to it all. I think the second possiblity is the most likely (although one hesitates with Joyce when it comes to multiple point of views). All in all, given the allusions and this voice shifting, I still don't know what to make of this poem.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Another (and my preferred) possibility - and the reason for my use of the term meta-narrative.
(3) The realisation of the origin of the narrator's voice in the third stanza, forces us to re-examine our feelings / thoughts about the first two.

Consider an example from a completely different artform: You are watching the opening sequence of a film. You see a battleship carving through a calm sea. You can make out sailors on the decks, swapping cigarettes, laughing and joking. The camera pulls back and you realise that you are watching this scene through the periscope of a submarine. You hear the first line of dialogue, "Fire one!"

The poem presents a similar change of POV in my view. The scene is altered by the realisation of the identity of the viewer. At first we (quite naturally, because we are meant to!) assume it is Joyce himself, watching this boy and his cattle pass by above Cabra. The switcheroo takes us by surprise - at least it did me.

PS

The best (worst) thing about this poem is that you can't recapture that moment of realisation. It only happens the _very_ first time you read the poem (unless you have a really bad memory!). After that, your thoughts are coloured from the very start by what you know is coming. (This just occurred to me whilst writing this post and it opens up a whole new level of meaning - It's moments like this that make me realise why I like poetry so much!) 

I wonder if Joyce thought of that when he wrote the thing.

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## Virgil

> Another (and my preferred) possibility - and the reason for my use of the term meta-narrative.
> (3) The realisation of the origin of the narrator's voice in the third stanza, forces us to re-examine our feelings / thoughts about the first two.
> 
> Consider an example from a completely different artform: You are watching the opening sequence of a film. You see a battleship carving through a calm sea. You can make out sailors on the decks, swapping cigarettes, laughing and joking. The camera pulls back and you realise that you are watching this scene through the periscope of a submarine. You hear the first line of dialogue, "Fire one!"


Yes, I agree with you here. Your term meta-narrative threw me off. Do you think that the shift is the whole point of the poem? I get the feeling that there's more to what Joyce is saying, but I can't for the life of me pin it down. All these allusions, to what end?

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## Virgil

Here's some other observations, none of which adds up to an epiphany for me:
The poem starts in day time ("winter sun") and ends at night. Joyce sets up opposing motifs: cold road versus warm home, warm fire. Why is a branch flowering in the winter time? There's a lot of speaking in the poem: He calling, voice they know, cows moo. Perhaps within the context of the collected poems of that book, this one poem may make more sense.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Here's some other observations, none of which adds up to an epiphany for me:
> The poem starts in day time ("winter sun") and ends at night. Joyce sets up opposing motifs: cold road versus warm home, warm fire. Why is a branch flowering in the winter time? There's a lot of speaking in the poem: He calling, voice they know, cows moo. Perhaps within the context of the collected poems of that book, this one poem may make more sense.


Very interesting point about the flowering branch in winter - I hadn't noticed! - So few words and I miss something like that. I suppose it could be late winter, on the cusp of spring? Blackthorn can flower as early as late February, producing white blossom before any leaves. But there may be more to it.

The line is, "He travels _after_ a winter sun". I took this to mean that the poem was set in the twilight. This would fit with cattle being led back to their byres following a day in the pasture, hence talk of home being warm.

I really love short poems. They often have as much to say as long ones and they're much easier to reread many times.

I'm not sure that there is much insight into this particular poem to be gained from the rest of the book. It was written in 1904, the rest variously between 1912 and 1924. There is not any discernable connection in terms of theme, as far as I can see. They are all nice and short though.  :Nod:

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## Virgil

Ok, since it's Monday in some parts of the world, I'm going to post the poem for this week. I'm posting Ezra Pound's Canto XVII from his book _The Cantos_, which he published in parts throughout his lifetime, starting in the mid 1920's. Canto XVII, it says here was published in 1933. The cantos are supposed to be an autobigraphical journey, but a journey in which he morphs (to use a contemporary word) with history and myth. The poem is not as complicated as it might seem, once you get over the allusions. Let me list it up front so people aren't intimidated. Allusions here are Odysseus's journey, that of Jason (of the Golden Fleece), and a ship's entrance into Venice. The names are mostly pagan dieties except for the Italian names, which are of Reniassance craftsmen, who Pound idealized.



> *XVII* By Ezra Pound
> So that the vines burst from my fingers
> And the bees weighted with pollen
> More heavily in the vine-shoots:
> Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound,
> And the birds sleepily in the branches.
> ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS.
> With the first pale-clear of the heave
> And the cities set in the hills,
> ...


Edit: Unfortunately the spacing of the lines, which I think has some significance on how you read the line, did not come through in the cut and paste. I can't help that. I don't feel, however, its a huge significance.

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## Scheherazade

For future reference, to give everyone equal chance to post poems:


> * Please post a new poem only on a Monday. (Please wait till it is Monday in your part of the world)
> 
> * The same person cannot post another poem within the same month.


I have never read anything by Ezra Pound. This poem seems full of imagery... Almost too much so; like Virgil suggested, they make the poem seem a little blurred and complicated but once past those... what is there?

Would like to hear your opinions.

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## Virgil

> For future reference, to give everyone equal chance to post poems:
> 
> I have never read anything by Ezra Pound. This poem seems full of imagery... Almost too much so; like Virgil suggested, they make the poem seem a little blurred and complicated but once past those... what is there?
> 
> Would like to hear your opinions.


Sorry if I jumped the gun, Scher.

Funny you should say that about imagery. Ezra Pound was at the forefront of modern poetry, and he believed that a modern poem should just be the setting side by side of imagery. For instance, he gave this little poem as an example:
[


> *In a Station of the Metro* by Ezra Pound
> The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
> Petals on a wet, black bough.


That's it. That's the whole poem. Three images, if you include the title, and from there the reader is to inductively infer his meaning. As to Canto XVII, it is a compiling of images, layered multi-fold. Sorry if the poem is too long, I didn't realize just how long until just layed out.

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## ktd222

Don't worry about posting again Virgil, I don't mind. I'm reading the poem now and do disagree with Scheherazade; I already see something happening in the poem. We will tackle this poem stanza by stanza? I'll have time to respond Monday evening.

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## Scheherazade

> Don't worry about posting again Virgil, I don't mind. I'm reading the poem now and do disagree with Scheherazade


 ktd222, I am really not sure what it is that you disagree with and disagreeing for the sake of disagreement will not do.

-My reminder was not only directed at Virgil but also at people who have joined the Forum recently, like yourself. This Forum is visited by people from all around the world and it is good to have some rules to ensuring that everyone is getting an equal chance; and as a Moderator, I would like to make sure that it is so. I do believe that Virgil's was an honest mistake, which is why his post was not deleted.

- I readily admitted that I had not read any of Pounds' works and I didn't express any opinion apart from the fact that the poem is rich with imagery and asked others' opinion on what they see when those are pushed aside. Do you disagree that imagery is used generously in the poem? Or that they make the poem a little complicated? If that is the case, it is purely a matter of familiarity and taste.


Virgil,

The length of the poem is not an issue at all. After reading again today (it was 1 am when I read it last night and didn't want to make hasty, tired posts about it), I am a little taken with it. The imagery used is -although I still think it is a little on the heavy side- is beautiful and used for a... noble cause. In my eyes, the poem is rich with sexual references (describing a very intimate moment) and the imagery makes a wonderful job of masking those so that it does not seem crude or tasteless. 

I think I would like to re-read it again later on to go through some of the references and imagery.

*edit*



> *In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound*
> 
> The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
> Petals on a wet, black bough.


 I think this is amazing; says so much in two lines and leaves so much to the reader's interpretation as well.

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## Petrarch's Love

Wow, a poem like this might take us a couple weeks to untangle  :FRlol:  . Just from my quick reading of the poem I thought maybe it would be a good idea if we could sort out some of the allusions in the poem, so here are a few glosses I could make right away. Maybe others can contribute more.

I first noticed the line in all caps. "ZAGREUS, IO ZAGREUS." Zagreus is a figure from Greek mythology. He was the son of Zeus and Persephone, but Hera (jealous as usual) had the Titans tear him to pieces and start devouring him. Somehow his heart was saved from the carnage and Zeus swallowed it which led to the creation of Dionysius (I think there's another version where Zeus gives the heart to someone else, but it ends up the same with the heart engendering Dionysus). The Dionysus connection would probably explain the reference to vines in the opening of the poem. I'm not sure, but I believe Zagreus was raised by Apollo before he was torn to pieces. If so, there could be some significance in his transfer from associations with the art of Apollo to the vines of Dionysus. 

Just in terms of language, "Io" is the Italian word for "I" (so he's declaring "I Zagreus"). A use of Italian later in the poem, "i vitrei," refers to glassworkers.

The poem as a whole seems to work around metamorphoses (indeed, the Zagreus story may be in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, I can't remember). The tree trunks of a forest inhabited by mythic figures morph into the marble columns of the buildings in Venice "growing" up out of the water. The water itself goes from being water, to "waters richer than glass," to a discussion of actual glass and glass makers. Both topically and stylistically the poem seems to blur the boundries between images, and especially the boundries between what is artful or man-made, and what is natural. I really enjoy this element of the poem. 

Also, this is the first of Pound's canti I've ever read, and I was wondering if Virgil or anyone else who's read them might comment on how it fits into the rest of the sequence. I feel as though perhaps we're missing out on some significance this context makes clearer?

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## Virgil

> - I readily admitted that I had not read any of Pounds' works and I didn't express any opinion apart from the fact that the poem is rich with imagery and asked others' opinion on what they see when those are pushed aside. Do you disagree that imagery is used generously in the poem? Or that they make the poem a little complicated? If that is the case, it is purely a matter of familiarity and taste.
> 
> 
> Virgil,
> 
> The length of the poem is not an issue at all. After reading again today (it was 1 am when I read it last night and didn't want to make hasty, tired posts about it), I am a little taken with it. The imagery used is -although I still think it is a little on the heavy side- is beautiful and used for a... noble cause. In my eyes, the poem is rich with sexual references (describing a very intimate moment) and the imagery makes a wonderful job of masking those so that it does not seem crude or tasteless. 
> 
> I think I would like to re-read it again later on to go through some of the references and imagery.
> 
> ...


I'm glad people like it. I was a little concerned, since the vague allusions can put readers off. It's almost all descriptive imagery. I don't think he makes any catagorical statements; we are supposed to infer meaning and emotion from the various images and actions he describes. And the rhythm and echoes of the language also very much add to the meaning. You know, as many times I've read this poem, I don't think I've picked up on the sexual imagery. You're right; it's there. Perhaps Scher, you can point it out.




> I first noticed the line in all caps. "ZAGREUS, IO ZAGREUS." Zagreus is a figure from Greek mythology. He was the son of Zeus and Persephone, but Hera (jealous as usual) had the Titans tear him to pieces and start devouring him. Somehow his heart was saved from the carnage and Zeus swallowed it which led to the creation of Dionysius (I think there's another version where Zeus gives the heart to someone else, but it ends up the same with the heart engendering Dionysus). The Dionysus connection would probably explain the reference to vines in the opening of the poem. I'm not sure, but I believe Zagreus was raised by Apollo before he was torn to pieces. If so, there could be some significance in his transfer from associations with the art of Apollo to the vines of Dionysus. 
> 
> Just in terms of language, "Io" is the Italian word for "I" (so he's declaring "I Zagreus"). A use of Italian later in the poem, "i vitrei," refers to glassworkers.


You know, that's ["IO ZAGREUS"] the only catagorical statement. No wait, I found another: "(I) Saw the sun for three days" is another, but I can't find any others. 




> Also, this is the first of Pound's canti I've ever read, and I was wondering if Virgil or anyone else who's read them might comment on how it fits into the rest of the sequence. I feel as though perhaps we're missing out on some significance this context makes clearer?


I'll do a little research on that and summarize it in a post.

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## Scheherazade

> You know, as many times I've read this poem, I don't think I've picked up on the sexual imagery. You're right; it's there. Perhaps Scher, you can point it out.


Really? That is interesting. Like you said, the poem is very descriptive and, to me, it describes a very intimate moment (love making): 'purring sound, heave, the goddess of the fair knees, white hounds leaping about her, Cave of Nerea, Arm laid over my shoulder'... Like you said 'Jason and his ship's entrance to Venice'... So many to count.

Now I am curious to know what your interpretation of the poem is and what made you post this poem. What do you think the imagery is used to describe? To me, from my very first reading, it has been about the decription of a sexual act so I am wondering how others interpret the meaning of the poem as well as the literary references.  :Smile:

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## ktd222

There are three things I noticed:

1)The first sentence-
_So that the vines burst from my fingers
And the bees weighted with pollen
More heavily in the vine-shoots:
Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound,
And the birds sleepily in the branches.
ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS._
Reads almost as an action occurring. _Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound_. But whats more interesting is the action in the sentence above seems enabled because of some other events had happened _So that the vines burst from my fingers_ I do not know of which events, yet. Do you guys get the same sense?
It is as if the poem is beginning in action; and the way the sentence is set up makes that action or sentence dependent.

2)That gets to my next observation: the poems movement seems to going backwards in time, forward to present, then even farther to a time where _The light now, not of the sun_. Starting from the poems first sentence in action, going down stanza 1 we get a lot of placement words coupled with descriptions of a place. 
With the _first pale-clea_r of the heave
And the _cities set in the hills_,
And the _goddess of the fair knees
Moving there_, _with the oak-woods behind her,_
The _green slope, with white hounds
leaping about her_;
And [I]thence[/I*](From that place or time)* down to the creeks mouth, until evening, 
_Flat water before me_*,(Back to the present)*and the trees growing in water, 
_Marble trunks out of stillness,_
On_ past_  the palazzo*,(Back to the past)*_in the stillness,
The light now, not of the sun._And so on
We, the reader, are jumping to all of these places. To the place of Gods; to a place where there is no real light; to a place where no birds cry, nor any noise of wave moving; to a place where the sand is of malachite, and there is no cold.

3)There is also a heavy sound of rrrs in the first sentence. And for me, as Im reading the rest of stanza 1, any word that has an r sound brings me immediately back to the image of sentence one.


---
Maybe this couples with the sexual imagery you see Sher.

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## Virgil

> There are three things I noticed:
> 
> 1)The first sentence-
> _So that the vines burst from my fingers
> And the bees weighted with pollen
> More heavily in the vine-shoots:
> Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound,
> And the birds sleepily in the branches.
> ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS._
> Reads almost as an action occurring. _Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound_. But whats more interesting is the action in the sentence above seems enabled because of some other events had happened _So that the vines burst from my fingers_ I do not know of which events, yet. Do you guys get the same sense?.


Yes, time is jumbled throughout the poem.




> 2)That gets to my next observation: the poems movement seems to going backwards in time, forward to present, then even farther to a time where _The light now, not of the sun_.


 Yes. I think he's morphing diferent myths together with his journey.



> 3)There is also a heavy sound of rrrs in the first sentence. And for me, as Im reading the rest of stanza 1, any word that has an r sound brings me immediately back to the image of sentence one.


Interesting, but where? You make an interesting point. I've never quite understood the "chirr". He is emphasizing the "r" sound but where does he follow up with it?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Personally, I find this full of interesting images but pretty directionless. I can see where Scher is coming from with the sex angle, but a ship entering a harbour is a pretty sexual metaphor at the best of times, so it's only natural that the same metaphorical images would overlap somewhat. But (puts Freud hat on) I sink you vill agree zat most sings come down to ZEX in ze final analyzis, ja?

I've never been a big fan of Pound. I've always seen his work as style heavy and substance light. But I must admit that this is the first time I've read one of his poems several times (so that I could comment fairly) and it did grow on me. I can't see myself rushing out to buy any books full of Ezra though (although I may reread the few poems I've got in compendiums.)

I'm not quite sure where the wooded hills come into it though. Venice is a flat city in a flat environment. Woods there may have been in earlier times, but hills, never. The best of the imagery is definitely that comparing Venice's architecture to trees coming from the water though - that I do like. Unfortunately, there is much that is too abstruse and life's too short to go reading commentaries on every poem I read to find out what the hell they mean. If there's not enough there for me to make up my own mind (right or wrong) I lose interest.

And I like em short too.  :Nod:  

But hey, if we all liked the same poems and they were all that got posted here, it would be a dull thread. (Translates as - "Thanks for posting this pile of ******")  :Wink:

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## lafedra690

I know nothing about a lot of things, now I must say that Annabel Lee is a poem which can put all your senses together to understand it totally ( that is what I had to do!!) and think about your first love,the first time you felt moved by this strange feeling that no one has ever dared to explained.

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## Scheherazade

> Personally, I find this full of interesting images but pretty directionless. I can see where Scher is coming from with the sex angle, but a ship entering a harbour is a pretty sexual metaphor at the best of times, so it's only natural that the same metaphorical images would overlap somewhat. But (puts Freud hat on) I sink you vill agree zat most sings come down to ZEX in ze final analyzis, ja?


 :Biggrin:  :Biggrin:  :Biggrin: 


> I'm not quite sure where the wooded hills come into it though. Venice is a flat city in a flat environment. Woods there may have been in earlier times, but hills, never. The best of the imagery is definitely that comparing Venice's architecture to trees coming from the water though - that I do like.


I have never been to Venice myself (been on my 'TO-DO LIST' forever! :Tongue: ) but I thought 'oak woods behind her' refers to the headboard/frame of the bed and hills to the curves of a woman's body... 


> Unfortunately, there is much that is too abstruse and life's too short to go reading commentaries on every poem I read to find out what the hell they mean. If there's not enough there for me to make up my own mind (right or wrong) I lose interest.


 I agree with this and I like the challenge of coming up with my own interpretations. 

*Virgil>*I am wondering whether you missed my post earlier but I am curious to know why you chose this particular poem to be this week's poem and also what it means to you once you peel away all the references and metaphors and what not.  :Smile:

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## Virgil

> :*Virgil>*I am wondering whether you missed my post earlier but I am curious to know why you chose this particular poem to be this week's poem and also what it means to you once you peel away all the references and metaphors and what not.


No, Scher I haven't forgotten. I've just been busy. I'll try now.

Here are some of the reasons I like this poem; let me just list technical reasons, the craft of it as poetry first:
1. The layering of images; everyone has already commented on it.
2. The way the images just interweave with each other; here's where I've used the word morph. One scene suddenly shifts into another, as if they just grow out of each other. It's really hard to tell when the character is Odysseus, when it's Jason, when it's the Venetians, and when it's himself/narrator. Other poets have done this before, but I'm not sure anyone has doen it to this extent.
3. Each line has such perfect rhythm and breath that if you read them, it sounds like a latin chant. Here, listen:



> Cave of Nerea,
> she like a great shell curved,
> And the boat drawn without sound,
> Without odor of ship-work,
> No bird cry, nor any noise of wave moving,
> Nor splash of porpoise, nor any noise of wave moving,
> Within her cave, Nerea,
> she like a great shell curved
> In the suavity of the rock,
> ...


He even suggests it later: _choros nympharum_, chorus of nymphs. BTW, the foreign language words should be italizised in my copy of the poem; that too didn't convert over in the cut & paste.

Let me try to summarize what I think the poem is about. The cantos are supposed to be the autobiographical development of Pound as a poet. Pound hated modern consumerism (we've heard others rail in other threads about that), but his solution was not socialism/communism (that was just another economic construct). His solution was dictatorship; he sided with Mussolini and Hitler in WWII. The poem is an epiphany that great art exists in cultures like Renaissance Venice, where commerce is (to his understanding) by artisans. He thought Mussolini would recreate Renaissance Venice in the 20th century. (BTW, anyone who thinks great artists have any special insight into society is fooling themselves.) The poem takes the questing hero Odysseus blurs it with his persona, blurs it with the finding of the golden fleece, blurs it with a journey to Venice with famous Ventian artisans, and wraps it with pagan religious imagery. Now I'm not sure how the sexual imagery fits in, except to suggest that pagan religion was mixed with the sexual. 

Got to go for now. My wife is calling me to take the dog out.

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## Petrarch's Love

> 1)The first sentence-
> So that the vines burst from my fingers
> And the bees weighted with pollen
> More heavily in the vine-shoots:
> Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound,
> And the birds sleepily in the branches.
> ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS.
> Reads almost as an action occurring. Chirrchirchir-rikka purring sound. But whats more interesting is the action in the sentence above seems enabled because of some other events had happened So that the vines burst from my fingers I do not know of which events, yet. Do you guys get the same sense?
> It is as if the poem is beginning in action; and the way the sentence is set up makes that action or sentence dependent.


And what's even more interesting is that the first sntence isn't a sentence at all. While "vines burst from my fingers" could be a sentence on its own, the modifying "so that" at the beginning makes it neccessarily dependent upon something that isn't written in here. There is no verb in the rest of the phrase. This unfinished phrase, just hanging at the beginning of the poem is one of the most instantly arresting things about the poem. I think this is what leads to a sense of anticipation or of an action unfinished.



> Let me try to summarize what I think the poem is about. The cantos are supposed to be the autobiographical development of Pound as a poet. Pound hated modern consumerism (we've heard others rail in other threads about that), but his solution was not socialism/communism (that was just another economic construct). His solution was dictatorship; he sided with Mussolini and Hitler in WWII. The poem is an epiphany that great art exists in cultures like Renaissance Venice, where commerce is (to his understanding) by artisans. He thought Mussolini would recreate Renaissance Venice in the 20th century. (BTW, anyone who thinks great artists have any special insight into society is fooling themselves.)


Thanks for posting the background, Virgil. I never knew much about Pound because I've never been deeply interested in his work. What a strange theory. Mussolini recreating Renaissance Venice huh? Did he think he was going to find some great artistic dictator--a type of philosopher king in a hyper idealistic world? 



> I'm not quite sure where the wooded hills come into it though. Venice is a flat city in a flat environment. Woods there may have been in earlier times, but hills, never.


I agree that the "wooded hills" wouldn't make much sense in Venice. I thought this was probably just another instance of the many metamorphoses of one image into another. The wooded hills may belong to the mythic setting in which the story of Zagreus and some of the other gods takes place. This story, and its hilly setting then morphs into the marble trunks of the buildings in Venice. I thought Sher's idea about the headboard was really interesting.

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## Virgil

> Thanks for posting the background, Virgil. I never knew much about Pound because I've never been deeply interested in his work. What a strange theory. Mussolini recreating Renaissance Venice huh?


Something like that.





> Did he think he was going to find some great artistic dictator--a type of philosopher king in a hyper idealistic world?


Yes, and during WWII he preached from Italy over the radio waves to the American soldiers how they were going to lose or something like that. When the Allies took over Italy he was arrested for treason, and I think was spared the death penalty on the claim he was insane. Hemingway I believe vouched for him at his trial. He then spent quite a few years (15 or so?) in an asylem until he was released in the late 50's or early 60's. After being released, he just went silent for the rest of his life, never wrote, never spoke in public, and hardly even in private. I'm going on memory here, so I think what I've described is the general gist, but I could be off on a minor detail or so. If anyone has any further information or clarification, feel free to add.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Virgil,

According to good old Wiki, he continued to write both in the asylum and afterwards in Italy - see here.

I knew he had a reputation as a racist but never the extent of it before. It puts BLP's "London..." in perspective, don't you think?

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## Virgil

> Virgil,
> 
> According to good old Wiki, he continued to write both in the asylum and afterwards in Italy - see here.
> 
> I knew he had a reputation as a racist but never the extent of it before. It puts BLP's "London..." in perspective, don't you think?


Thanks. I guess he did write afterwards. 

BLP is a young fellow who got carried away in his poem. I don't think he's a bad person.

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## Taliesin

We hope it is the correct time to post this:

Secind Coming by Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

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## IrishCanadian

What a great choice Teliesin! This poem gives me the kreeps because it is so close to discribing the world i see around me. And because of this you can really sympathise with the "Spiritus Mundi."

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## Petrarch's Love

A powerful poem. Those first few lines are remarkably haunting and disturbing--the sort of lines that sometimes run through one's head like strains of ominous music in a minor key. The poem is at the same time painfully direct--straightforwardly declaring that "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"--and strangely enigmatic in its sweeping apocalyptic imagery of bloody tides and rough beasts. It's always seemed like a testament to Yeats' power as a writer that one feels there has truly been some sort of revelation, both awful and awe-full, made in this poem, even as the content of the poem seems to be nihilistically denying us any sort of comfort or stability, even in religion.

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## Scheherazade

Does anyone know when Yeats wrote this poem and his religious inclinations?

Love the lines:


> The best lack all conviction, while the worst
> Are full of passionate intensity.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Scher, I was about to quote the same lines. They always have been my favourite. 

I remember seeing this poem first in the preface of a novel (can't remember which, it's been used in many) and it amazed me. I went straight out and bought a cheap collection of Yeats.

The poem was written in 1920, just after the 1st world war and is filled with the despair that Yeats felt after that catastrophe. Also, the 'Easter Rising' had taken place in Ireland in 1916, which moved Yeats deeply (see the poem Easter 1916). Yeats was a supporter of Irish republicanism but took no active part in any uprisings himself (a fact which often troubled him - see No Second Troy). 

He also had unorthodox occult views, the 'gyre' mentioned at the start of the poem refers to his belief in circularity of history (I'm not sure of the complete details, but he wrote at least one book on the subject.).

I would have to put this in my top ten favourite poems - not least because it played a huge part in getting me interested in poetry in the first place.

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## IrishCanadian

Yeats was a religious Chrsitian but he did also (as Chegwe points out) believe in the less orthadox and mythical powers of the historical folk tales of his background. He went through fases. I don't know what fase we was in when he wrote this but his powerful allusion to the weary and tired Second comming can be read on many different levels. Is that beast he speaks of the Second comming? If it were an evil force it would not fit with the mood of the rest of the poem because an evil would thrive while "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." The failior of the Easter Riseing was weaighing heavily on a lot of the Irish rebels dureing this time because home-rule from the English was close but nearly unrealistc. 1921 brought another battle of sorts ... I wish i rememberd more off hand, but I'll have to re-study some of that history.

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## ktd222

Virgil,

I've been gone the passed week. I would like to continue discussing the poem you posted. Is that ok with you?

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## ktd222

I think the poem is about the struggle between believing whole-heartedly in the existence of God and religion, and the 'coming' of the times. Does God exist? Their is to be a time when this Second Coming is suppose to happen. If the Second Coming passes without evidence, then what are we on earth left to believe? Certainly faith in God and religion becomes less believable. 

So the thing(religion) that holds this world together, sane, and survivable, is diminishing as the Second Coming arrives without any evidence that God exist.
_TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_

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## Virgil

> Does anyone know when Yeats wrote this poem and his religious inclinations?


Published in 1920/21. I'll give my thoughts on this poem later this week, but here's what the annotation in my _Norton's Anthology of English Literature_  says on it:




> This poem expresses Yeat's sense of the dissolution of the civilization of his time, the end of one cycle of history and the approach of another. He called each cycle of history a "gyre" (line 1)--literally a circular or spiral turn (Yeats pronouced it with a hard _g_). He imagines a falconer losing control of the falcon which sweeps in ever widening circles around him until it breaks away altogether, and sees this as a symbol of the end of the present gyre of civilization--what he once described as "all our scientific democratic fact-finding heterogenous civilization." The birth of Christ brought to an end the cycle that had lasted from what Yeats called the "Babylonian mathematical starlight" (2000 BC) to the dissolution of Greco-Roman culture. "What if the irrational return?" Yeats asked in the prose work _A Vision_. "What if the circle begin again?" He speculates that "we may be about to accept the most implacable authority the world has known." The new Nativity ("the rough beast" of lines 21-22) is deliberately mysterious, both terrible and regenerative.


Hopefully this didn't take the charm out of the poem. Yeats had a bunch of kooky ideas, and this cycle of history (I think he was wrong about the end of democratic, scientific civilization) is among them. But it's a great poem.

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## chmpman

XC, 
The first few lines of this poem were included as a preface to Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", about the disintegration of African tribal culture in the face of missionaries and the encroachment of European technology. I'm not sure if this is the one you had in mind, but it is the only novel I'm familiar with offhand that quotes this poem.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

chmpman,

No, I believe it was a science fiction novel. But at the time I was reading about 2 or 3 a week, so it really could have been anything. There's a lot to be said for unemployment and a library card when you think about it. Nowadays I'm lucky to manage 2 -3 books in a month.

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## Scheherazade

Thanks everyone who answered my question re.date of the poem and Yeats' religious profile (Virgil, thanks for the extra info as well)  :Smile:  




> The poem was written in 1920, just after the 1st world war and is filled with the despair that Yeats felt after that catastrophe.


I pretty much agree with this. I think the first part of the poem reflects a great disappointment and sense of despair; like Petrarch's Love's said, they are quite disturbing. Not being familiar with Yeats' theory of cycle of history, I thought the falconer = God is losing the control of things in the world, which is signalled by the WWI. After experiencing the war, things don't seem to make sense anymore: the chaos and suffering in the world along with lack of divine justice make people question their faith. The only hope, the Second Coming, does not seem promising or good enough either because the image offered is not a comforting one in the second part of the poem. 

I find the title very poignant. Somehow I expect some hope or promise of something better but the poem does just the opposite. It acutely states that there is no hope. 


> So the thing(religion) that holds this world together, sane, and survivable, is diminishing as the Second Coming arrives without any evidence that God exist.


I agree that the poem indicates that what is good in this world is diminishing fast but I am not sure that the Second Coming has actually happened. I feel there is a sense of expectation: things are so out of hand in the world that it would be a good time for it (even though it will not be a pleasant one).

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## Petrarch's Love

> I agree that the poem indicates that what is good in this world is diminishing fast but I am not sure that the Second Coming has actually happened. I feel there is a sense of expectation: things are so out of hand in the world that it would be a good time for it (even though it will not be a pleasant one).


I agree that the second coming has not yet been realised. A lot of the punch of the poem is that it puts its reader in a state of nervous expectation that "some revelation is at hand...the Second Coming is at hand," and dread in the "rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born." I wonder what people's thoughts are about that "rough beast." As I say, it certainly seems to be an object of dread and fear, and could be interpreted in the most cynical possible light as a sort of commentary on the potential of religion to ironically become the source of great anarchy and violence in religious wars etc. (the birth of the child in Bethlehem figured as the coming of a "rough beast," and tying in with the centuries "vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,"). At the same time, religious thought often invokes a right and worshipful fear or dread of God in His overwhelming power, and it is not unusual to tie birth or generation to pain and upheaval, so I wonder if there might be something to the interpretation cited by Virgil from the Norton, of the beast--and the poem as a whole--as "both terrible and regenerative." Is this poem devoid of hope, or hopeful in a terrifying birth through dramatic destruction kind of way? Thoughts?

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## IrishCanadian

"Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born"

I don't think its devoid of hope. The second comming seems to start off here the way Christ died the first time. In this sence it is litterally a second comming of the same. Being the same Christ that He is there is Love and Joy and all those other capital letter words of goodness. Perhaps the conotation is that this time around the Lord is going to have a tougher time and He knows it. In the mean time He still feels the effects of His last birth and death ... humanity is heavey on His bones. Thus the sad state of affairs which calls Him : "the falcon cannot hear the falconer." I think it is a hope-less poem so to speak but leaves room for hope. The world has once again reached such a a terrible terrible devastating conditioned that the extremity of the second comming is necessary.

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## ktd222

> I am not sure that the Second Coming has actually happened. I feel there is a sense of expectation: things are so out of hand in the world that it would be a good time for it (even though it will not be a pleasant one).


Scher,

I agree. 
_Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep...its hour come round at last,_




> Somehow I expect some hope or promise of something better but the poem does just the opposite. It acutely states that there is no hope


I also agree. The writer is unsure of the Second Coming himself.
_Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born_*?*

There is a question mark missing at the end of this poem. This question mark is important because it adds to the unsure-ness of the writer himself of this Second Coming. Even though he says 'surely'(an expectation) twice to begin this stanza, the writer himself is not fully convinced of it.
_The best lack all conviction_
There is a doubt growing in the writer.

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## Taliesin

We feel that the messiah in that poem is not a benevolent creature, but cruel and indifferent to the suffering of others.(A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun) Comes like a nightmare.
Uncaring how it's coming destroys all the beauty and pain of this world. Just wanting for that final battle. 
We think that one wouldn't want that sort of an apocalyptic battle (even if it is between good and evil and good will probably win) happen in our lifetimes. It would be like the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". One would like to have his ordinary, everyday life to be continued.
Well, we mean something in the style of "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
The author seems to have lost it's belief in God or thinks that it is not benevolent, but indifferent to human suffering.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> There is a question mark missing at the end of this poem. This question mark is important because it adds to the unsure-ness of the writer himself of this Second Coming. Even though he says 'surely'(an expectation) twice to begin this stanza, the writer himself is not fully convinced of it.
> _The best lack all conviction_
> There is a doubt growing in the writer.


I'm not sure about the missing question mark. A question mark would imply that Yeats is _asking_ what kind of beast is slouching towards Bethlehem. But he has spent the stanza describing this beast. I see him as saying not "What rough beast?" but "What (a) rough beast." The 'a' being dropped to preserve rhythm.

Besides that though, it still confuses, hints at much unsaid, and beguiles me as much as it ever did.

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## IrishCanadian

> Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born[/I]*?*
> .


Well I missed the question mark. And to be honesnt I went to my Yeats anthology to see if it really is there. This makes sence to me now, what a depressing poem! And yet that makes perfect sence for him. The circle theme of the book this poem was published in dureing Yeat's life ("Micheal Robartes And The Dancer") would have hit on his fruitless love returning in its cirleing patterns as well as the wars in Europe that seemed to circle around him on the local and global levels. Almost every poem in that book is of political and violent strife. Perhaps then in this poem he is looking or waiting for the second comming to take place knowing that it is high time; but ther is nothing, not even a slouched beast.
Ireland at the time:
"A terrible Beauty is born."

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## Virgil

Oh, I almost forgot to add my thoughts on this poem. 

First, my favorite lines are the openning lines: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer". What an incredible image for disintegration.

The first stanza sets the scene: society has reached a crises of unity, "anarchy" is abounding, some lack "conviction," the "worst are full of intensity." Conviction of what? Hold that thought.

"Surely some revelation is at hand": the "Second Coming is at hand" The collapse of society is linked to Christian ritual, the return of Christ. Society has lost conviction, 20 centuries of Christian faith but now in the 20th century following WWI and the Communist Revolution (there's a annotated note in Nortons that this is the portent that initiates the poem, but later in 1924 yeats generalized it to be all Fascism) a crises in belief in Christianity has occured. "The ceremony (another ritual) of innocence (Christ) is drowned" (perverse babtism).

Again Yeats repeats "The Second Coming", and if you include the title that's three times. Here's a strange line for a poem: "Hardly are those words out /when a vast image..." When does a poet tell you that words are out and that suddenly a new image "troubles" him? He's talking to you. he makes it so immediate, almost in front of your very eyes. _"Spiritus Mundi"_ - the spirit of the universe is visiting him, sort of like the annunciation of Mary. But now it's not the Second Coming, or at least not in the traditional sense that will be born. It is the anti Christ, "the rough beast" who will bring "darkness" and "nightmare". And notice this:



> somewhere in sands of the desert
> A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
> A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
> Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
> Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
> The darkness drops again


Five lines enjambed as a single sentence. It flows as if it bursts out, and then the last five lines are a single sentence too. A shuddering horror!

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## Petrarch's Love

Hi, I just realized that no one's posted a poem yet, and I thought a love poem might be appropriate with Valentine's Day coming tomorrow. This is among my favorites and it's been in my mind a lot of late. I think it contains some of the most perfectly beautiful lines in the corpus of English love poetry. 

THE GOOD MORROW

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

--John Donne

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## Petrarch's Love

Oops..accidently posted twice but can't figure out how to delete this extra post.  :Rolleyes:

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## Virgil

Great pick Petrarch, and not only does it fit with Valentine's Day, but it fits with your reniassance persona!

Let me start. Three stanzas, and I always find that it helps to chart the progression of thought in a John Donne poem. First the setting: the narrator and his love awaken after of night of love.

Stanza 1: The narrator contemplates what life was like before his love.

Stanza 2: The morrow arrives and the narrator asserts that the world (as he now feels it) consists of only the two of them.

Stanza 3: The narrator concludes that the two of them are now one, two havles of a hemisphere.

Some structural observations: three stanzas of seven lines with the rhyme scheme A, B, A, B, C, C, C. Meter is iambic pentemeter, except that Donne is never strict with his iambs. Interestingly the last line of each stanza is 12 not 10 syllables.

I'll let others fill in and point out the internals of each stanza.

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## Dry_Snail

read the next post please .....

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## Dry_Snail

> I am not familiar with Bukowski's works... I remember reading one of his poems somewhere here and liking it but... this one, I am afraid, does not do much for me... apart from getting an 'Ugh'. I am probably not deep/intelligent/learned/philosophical enough (delete as appropriate) to appreciate this. I don't mind raw writings but to me this is more than raw... a little unpalatable.
> 
> *edit*
> 
> Here is the other Bukowski thread


you dont need to be a philospher to understand charles bukowski...you need to be sensitive and capable of realising and empathising to understand him. the etaphors used are way different than you might be used to ...the blue bedroom...green eyes....paperclip eyes....bright machine gun sun...these are the metaphores which bukowski use to intensify the effect of modernism on our sensitivities...read this :

"this whole thing is like a seal
caught on oily rocks
and circled by the Long Beach Marching Band
at 3:36 p.m."

the whole thing is like a seal caught on oily rock ....and da way he gives time "at 3.36 pm" the way we treat every creative aspect of life with the parameters of Time ....how ironically he puts his words to intensify the sarcasm whic is all around you ....

its easy to understand charles bukowski ...you just need to open your eyes ...you might be able relate it to ur life too...

No offense just wanted to clarify ....

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## The Unnamable

> *THE GOOD MORROW*
> 
> I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
> Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
> But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
> Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
> 'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
> If ever any beauty I did see,
> Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
> ...



Look at the poem once more, remembering how it would have appeared in print in the seventeenth century. 


Would anyone else agree that there is also a crude pun in the same line?


Enough of that  here is a fabulous description of what being in love does:

And makes one little room an everywhere.


Great stuff! But heres my contribution to Valentines Day  from Tennyson:

I ran upon life unknowing, without or science or art, 
I found the first pretty maiden but she was a harlot at heart; 
I wandered about the woodland after the melting of snow, 
"Here is the first pretty snowdrop" - and it was the dung of a crow!

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## Petrarch's Love

Yes, Unnamable, there probably is a little double entendre action going on in the third line (although I suppose it's really a double visable since the words don't actually sound the same). It's not an uncommon little pun for the period, although if this was intentional I think it must be there purely as a bit of titilation, since the alternate word you suggest doesn't really seem to make a lot of contextual sense at that point in the poem, at least to me--perhaps you can suggest a briliant new way to read the lines taking Donne's naughty sense of humor into account.  :Brow:  

Thanks for the Tennyson Valentine's Day contribution, or should I say thanks for adding "dung" to the post on Donne (you've gotten me into a punning mood now). Your faith in women is truly touching.  :Rolleyes:

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## Petrarch's Love

Virgil--Thanks for pointing to the prosody of the verse. I suppose it's a bit like a rhyme royal with a Spenserian twist (sounds like some sort of chic literary cocktail), although rhyme royal would technically end bcc rather than ccc. The Spenserian twist being, of course, the alexandrine (12 sylllable) line at the end of each stanza. I've always thought this was one of the most inspired and eloquent ways of ending a line (metrically speaking that is), but then I work a fair amount with Spenser so I may be a bit biased. 

It actually occured to me that two of my favorite lines in this poem happen to be these alexandrine endlines:



> If ever any beauty I did see,
> Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.


and


> Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.


especially the latter, with it's trinity of "one" and the way it plays with them being at once singular individuals and two who are one and the same. 
I always thought these lines attracted me purely because of the sentiments expressed, but I wonder how much the scansion of the lines really played a role in making them stand out in my mind.

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## Virgil

> Look at the poem once more, remembering how it would have appeared in print in the seventeenth century. 
> 
> 
> Would anyone else agree that there is also a crude pun in the same line?


I'm not sure I understand the image that you post. But there is sexual allusion throughout the poem: "sucked," "snorted", "slackened", "die" (in renaissance thought one died a little every time one had sex, or something like that), and of couse the two hiemisphere image is really an image of one body on top of another.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Wasn't the 'f'-like 's' only used as the first of a double letter - eg. in succefs, abbefs, etc?

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## Petrarch's Love

> Wasn't the 'f'-like 's' only used as the first of a double letter - eg. in succefs, abbefs, etc?


No, this wasn't necessarily the case, however I have seen some early books that do have the "f" look only for the first of a double "ss" as you describe. I'm not sure why this is so in some texts but not others, though I suspect it developed about the turn of the 17th century with some publishers slowly phasing in the modern "s" (don't quote me on this explanation however, I'll have to ask a paleographic aquaintance of mine about the history of the double ss). Also, the capital "S" is generally like our modern "s."

Anyway, I went ahead and looked on EEBO (Early English Books Online) at the 1633 edition of John Donne's poems in which "The Good Morrow" was first published, and the "s" Unnamable refers to has a definate "f" like appearance. For those wondering, EEBO is a site--unfortunately only accesible to the students and faculty of certain university libraries--which contains facsimile reproductions of nearly every book published in English between 1473 and 1700. I wanted to import a copy of the page with the poem to show--since it makes Unnamable's point pretty apparent--but there are unfortunately copyright restrictions on the reproductions, and I wouldn't want the archival police coming after me.  :Wink:  .

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## Petrarch's Love

> (in renaissance thought one died a little every time one had sex, or something like that)


Of course all the sexual allusions Virgil points out are quite right. Just thought I'd elaborate, that the Renaissance association of death and sex comes from _le petit mort_, which literally means "the little death" but is also french for orgasm.  :Brow:

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## Virgil

> Virgil--Thanks for pointing to the prosody of the verse. I suppose it's a bit like a rhyme royal with a Spenserian twist (sounds like some sort of chic literary cocktail), although rhyme royal would technically end bcc rather than ccc. The Spenserian twist being, of course, the alexandrine (12 sylllable) line at the end of each stanza. I've always thought this was one of the most inspired and eloquent ways of ending a line (metrically speaking that is), but then I work a fair amount with Spenser so I may be a bit biased. 
> 
> It actually occured to me that two of my favorite lines in this poem happen to be these alexandrine endlines:
> 
> and
> especially the latter, with it's trinity of "one" and the way it plays with them being at once singular individuals and two who are one and the same. 
> I always thought these lines attracted me purely because of the sentiments expressed, but I wonder how much the scansion of the lines really played a role in making them stand out in my mind.


You know, I first felt that the alexandrian lines were awkward, and I just attributed to Donne's unconventional metrics. But reading it again out loud, the last line of the stanzas really nails the meaning of the stanza down, and it is because of the extra syllables. That and the triplet rhyme. It really works very well.

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## Virgil

There are two things I can point out in "The Good-Morrow" that hasn't been discussed so far.

(1) The image of world and hemisphere that runs in the center of the poem is prominant and developed. It runs into several lines, a good portion of the poem:



> Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
> Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
> Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.


And then in the next stanza too. It emphazies the dichotome between the large world outside the "little room" where they wake and the world they've created in this little room with their love.

(2) "Whatever dies was not mixed equally" (line 19) is a line to ponder and leads into the concluding metaphor. Norton's has an annotation on that line: 



> Scholastic philosophy taught that when the elements were imperfectly ("not equally") mixed, matter was mortal and mutable; but when they were perfectly mixed, it was undying and unchanging. The dividing line between these two natures was the sphere of the moon.


And then Donne conludes with "If our two loves be one, or thou and I/Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die." What he's saying is that despite their love making, which should be a little death, since their love is perfectly mixed, it is outside mortality and so not a death.

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## Petrarch's Love

Yes, the world imagery is one of the highlights in this poem and, as you probably know, crops up over and over again in Donne's verse. Another of my favorite "world contracted" moments is at the end of "The Sunne Rising" which ends with him addressing the sun by saying "This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare." Donne lived in the age of exploration when expeditions were setting out to "new worlds" by sea and land, and Donne does a beautiful job of using the terms of the cartographer and the adventurer to explore the uncharted territory of personal relationships.

By chance we happened to be discussing Donne in one of my courses this week and we had a bit of a debate in class centering around the lover's chamber figured as the world. Part of the class felt that this sort of imagery is too contrived and "intellectual," rather than the sort of thing inspired by personal feelings of love. I myself have always felt very much the opposite. While it is obviously a very skillful and carefully thought out presentation of the metaphor, I feel that it was very much inspired by personal emotion. I've always thought this metaphor really beautifully and intensly encapsulates something that has crossed the mind of every pair of lovers--the desire to create an entire world unto themselves. 



> And then Donne conludes with "If our two loves be one, or thou and I/Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die." What he's saying is that despite their love making, which should be a little death, since their love is perfectly mixed, it is outside mortality and so not a death.


Very nicely put--dying and so not dying--typical Donne.

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## Virgil

> By chance we happened to be discussing Donne in one of my courses this week and we had a bit of a debate in class centering around the lover's chamber figured as the world. Part of the class felt that this sort of imagery is too contrived and "intellectual," rather than the sort of thing inspired by personal feelings of love. I myself have always felt very much the opposite. While it is obviously a very skillful and carefully thought out presentation of the metaphor, I feel that it was very much inspired by personal emotion. I've always thought this metaphor really beautifully and intensly encapsulates something that has crossed the mind of every pair of lovers--the desire to create an entire world unto themselves.


I'm with you Petrarch. It is accurate. Even beyond just metaphor. I've been married 14, closer to 15 years, now and this home we've built and live in is our little world. There is almost a psychic dichotome between the outside world and this home we share.

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## Virgil

No one has posted a poem for the week's discussion. I'll give this a bump. Someone who hasn't posted in a month can post one. I've posted already this month. *Is anyone out there that wants to discuss a poem?*

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## The Unnamable

Before you go any further, let me say that when I wrote, Would anyone else agree that there is also a crude pun in the same line?, I was referring to country pleasures in addition to suckd.

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## Virgil

You mean replace the s in sucked with an f? I don't know. It doesn't quite fit into the sentece. And how far back does that f- word go back? I don't have my Oxford dictionary handy.

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## The Unnamable

> You mean replace the s in sucked with an f? I don't know. It doesn't quite fit into the sentece. And how far back does that f- word go back? I don't have my Oxford dictionary handy.


Yes. What do you mean that it doesnt quite fit into the sentence? It looks fine on my screen. What I like about Donne is that he writes the kind of love poetry that I can enjoy without having to disengage my rational faculties. He is, as I see him, honest about love. It includes sex, you know, despite what Auntie Wordsworth might have us believe. So the allusion to what it is about her that he really likes doesnt destroy the poem for me, it adds another dimension, if you like. Besides, I was not harping on about the f, s pun but the country pun as in Hamlets country matters. Please tell me that I dont need to send you a diagram!

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## Petrarch's Love

Ok, I thought maybe a diagram wasn't such a bad idea given that this keeps cropping up. As I said before, I'm not able to import the image of the original text I'm working from, but I've used the seventeenth century "S" Unnamable provided to write the word as it appears in the first publication of the poem (for any concerned monitors, honestly no censoring is neccesary, this is really the way they made the "s" four hundred years ago and the way the word originally appeared).

The "F" word was very much alive during this period. The OED cites the first use as a verb in 1503, though it wasn't used as a noun until 1680 (there's your four letter word trivia for the day  :Wink: ). 

As for the "country pleasures," I think you're right on Unnamable (for anyone who doesn't get this one, just say the "count" part of "country" and think of female anatomy--I don't think the site would let me write that word here). As a matter of fact I'm not the only one who agreees with you on this. I looked up the line in Hamlet you refer to, and the note to that line in the Arden 3 edition refers the reader to "The Good Morrow" as another bawdy use of the term "country."

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## Petrarch's Love

> I'm with you Petrarch. It is accurate. Even beyond just metaphor. I've been married 14, closer to 15 years, now and this home we've built and live in is our little world. There is almost a psychic dichotome between the outside world and this home we share.


On a totally different topic, Virgil, I just wanted to say that is incredibly sweet. It gives a single girl something to look forward to. :Smile: 

Also, I'd like to add my echo to Virgil's question: Is there anyone else out there who wants to POST A POEM?

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## Virgil

> Yes. What do you mean that it doesnt quite fit into the sentence? It looks fine on my screen. What I like about Donne is that he writes the kind of love poetry that I can enjoy without having to disengage my rational faculties. He is, as I see him, honest about love. It includes sex, you know, despite what Auntie Wordsworth might have us believe. So the allusion to what it is about her that he really likes doesnt destroy the poem for me, it adds another dimension, if you like. Besides, I was not harping on about the f, s pun but the country pun as in Hamlets country matters. Please tell me that I dont need to send you a diagram!


OK, between your post here and Petrarch's post following, you've convinced me it is possible, and knowing Donne's personality, at least in his younger days, it's quite possible he did do it intentionally. Yes, the country pun fits better than the "f" substitution. I didn't catch the country pun. 

Are we having fun with language, or what!  :Biggrin:

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## blp

Is now a good time to post a new poem? Or should I have waited until Monday? Perhaps, if I've jumped the gun, we can wait until Monday to start talking about it. 

I'm posting a poem I like, but barely understand:

*Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz*
_by Wallace Stevens_

The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound.

There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows.

Too many waltzes have ended. And then
Theres that mountain-minded Hoon,
For whom desire was never that of the waltz,

Who found all form and order in solitude,
For whom the shapes were never the figures of men.
Now, for him, his forms have vanished.

There is order in neither sea nor sun.
The shapes have lost their glistening.
There are these sudden mobs of men,

These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,

Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.

Too many waltzes have ended. Yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.

Too many waltzesThe epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music

Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows.

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## Virgil

Great blp. I was hoping someone would post. I love Wallace Stevens. He's probably in the top 2 or 3 poets of the 20th century for me. Let me read through this, since I don't recognize it and have some comments tonight.

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## rachel

hi blp I hope your day is good.
I haven't really sunk myself deeply into it yet, but upon skimming it seems to be a rather even blend of french symbolism=music and imagism=sculpture. Very precise and beautiful, it gave me shivers and a dreamy feeling all at the same time. great choice.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> I'm posting a poem I like, but barely understand:


I can see exactly what you mean.

I know Wallace didn't write most of his poetry until later life and there seems to be a theme of looking backwards from age here, "Too many waltzes have ended" starts 2 stanzas and the first 3 words a third. That was my immediate reaction, but I can see that I'm going to have to read it a few more times before I can offer much more.

Thanks for posting it, I'm not familiar with his work so it's completely new to me - I may need to look up some more of his work to build an overview of his themes.

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## blp

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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## blp

Hi Rachel. My day was OK, thanks. I was a bit sleepy for a lot of it. Hope yours was good. 
Can you say a bit more about these symbolism/music, imagism/sculpture relationships?

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## Petrarch's Love

Thanks for posting BLP. Well, I'll have to agree with you and some of the others who posted. I like the sound of this poem but I feel it is dancing around something I can't quite understand. For the moment a few disjointed impressions: Each of the stanzas has three lines, just like the three beat measure of a waltz. Despite this three beat form, the poem insistently, almost nihilistically seems to reject the notion of any form or stability. I find something profoundly chilling about a poem that can regard music as "so much motionless sound." 

And a few questions: I know almost nothing about Steven's life and experiences, but this poem seems to refer to some great change (either personal or social) he experienced. Is it simply the experience of age? Could this poem have been written during the Depression era? Some of the images, such as the crowds of men,



> There are these sudden mobs of men,
> These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
> An immense suppression, freed,
> These voices crying without knowing for what,


make me think of the crowds of displaced and unemployed that must have suddenly arisen in this era just after the up times in the twenties. That sort of broad social change would certainly account for a sudden distrust in the power of art, music, dancing in the face of a harsh reality. Also, who or what is "Hoon"? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about the context of this poem or the life of its poet. 

Just some thoughts. I'll sign off for now and maybe post something more coherent after additional thought.

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## blp

Thanks Petrarch's Love. Your thoughts are similar to some of the so far vague guesswork I've been doing. I was wondering if the three-line stanzas related to the structure of a waltz and was also thinking about how it might relate to history. Don't know exactly when Stevens was writing, but this poem seems to me to have a similar relationship to chaos to that of other works from the first half of the twentieth century, especially Yeats' 'The Second Coming' (things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc.) Another Stevens poem is actually called _Connoisseur of Chaos_ and begins, 'A. A violent order is disorder; and/B. a great disorder is an order. These/Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations)'. I wondered if this sort of tendency might be more to do with Einstein and the sudden, shocking modernity of the twentieth century. But the Depression theory works for me too, maybe better - that bit you quoted is my favourite part of the poem, by the way. 

I wanted to discuss just impressions for a while, but I know, because I stumbled on it when looking for the text of the poem, that there's an essay about it on the web, which may clear a few things up eventually. Glancing at that I found out that Hoon was a philosopher. Other than that, I know that Stevens was an insurance man for a lot of his life - and is therefore known as 'The insurance man of American Letters'.

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## Virgil

I'll use this post to put out what I know of Stevens, and then perhaps tomorrow I'll tackle the poem itself.

Yes, he was an insurance man, and rose to be vice president of the company. He wrote in his spare time and really didn't publish first book until his forties. I had a teacher who told a story that after he had passed away and a biographer went to some of the people who he worked with and they were startled and said something to the effect, "You mean old Wally wrote poems?" There's also a story about him getting into a fight with Hemingway down in the Florida Keys, I think. He lived from 1879-1955. This poem, "Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz" was published in 1936 in a collection he called _Ideas of Order_. I think title of the book reflects a lot of the themes in the poems. The most famous and often anthologized poem from that collection is called "The Idea of Order at Key West." One other note, in terms of reputation, Wallace Stevens is among the top American poets of the 20th century, and in some critics estimation the top American poet, surpassing even T.S. Eliot. He is very conscious of his American language ("mountain-minded Hoon" for instance), and a friend to that other very American poet of his era, William Carlos Williams.

I must say that as much as I love Stevens, and no matter how often I read him and the same poem over and over, I can never fully grasp him. The posts above reacting in this way are common. It's almost like trying to grasp water; it just flows away. And yes, Rachel I believe he was infleuenced by the Symbolists, at least stylistically. 

There are two extreme styles that Stevens uses. One is very sensual (not in the sexual sense, but in the use of tangible hard imagery), spilled over profusely. The other, which is the case with "Sad Strains" is the extreme opposite, sparseness of imagery, almost purely using abstractions. You have to be a great poet writing almost purely with abstract words and get away with it. You almost never see Stevens fail. Even when he does here use tangible nouns, look at how he pushes them away from feeling them: "motionless sound," "empty of shadows," "shapes were never the figures of men," "clouds of faces and arms". The great word in this poem that is so characteristic of Stevens (he just comes up with these things) is "Hoon" and I can't find what the word means. But what's key here is that it's "mountain-minded". I think this means (since I've come across similar in other Stevens poems) is that the poem (or at least part of the poem) is looking through the eyes and mind of Hoon. 

Other things about his work. A constant theme is music, as here. Another is understanding how we piece the outside world together in out minds. He shares that in common with Virginia Woolf, in that respect, but I don't know if he ever read her. There is a lot of color symbolism throughout his work, but none I think in this poem. He uses this three line iambic pentameter stanza (almost like an unrhymed terza rima) very frequently. I've never understood it. But there must be a reason for his format. He's constantly writing about aestheitics, so the shape of his works have to be thought through, but I get baffled by it. Plus he's too good a craftsman of poetry to not think that through. 

As I look at this poem in my _Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose_ I notice that the next poem (I believe laid out in the sequence of the original printing) is a counter piece to "Sad Strains" in the opposing style I mentioned above. It's short enough for me to copy it for your pleasure:




> *Dance of the Macabre Mice*
> 
> In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
> At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
> What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
> Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.
> 
> This dance has no name. It is a hungry dance.
> We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
> ...

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## chmpman

Thanks Virgil.

Another bit about Stevens I would like to add is his interest in different perspectives. I've read a couple Stevens poems that play with the idea of multiple viewpoints (I can't remember the names of two, something about a blackbird, and another about men crossing a bridge; but also The Man with the Blue Guitar).

A reply to Petrarch: Where he mentions "so much motionless sound" I get the impression that he is talking about the waltzes of the past, and so if they are not being played currently there is no motion. This scientific understanding of music interests me, and I always figured Stevens to be influenced by Einstein and modern science, but never really thought about the Depression era influence. Something to think about. In his poem The man with the Blue Guitar, supposedly inspired by a Picasso painting, he is concerned with artistic creation and how this relates to the general society in which the art is created. I think Stevens was influenced by the modern art movement, so much of his work is centered around aesthetics; but also the pre-Existential vein of philosphy.

Also, in The Man with the Blue Guitar Stevens employs the sun, sea, and shadow symbolism. I'll have to get back here with what that means in relation to this poem though.

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## blp

There's a trajectory to it that you can chart via 'shadows' and 'glistening'. We first learn that both have vanished. By the end, there's a promise that they will return. Shadows are seen as a *good thing* - perhaps because they provide definition, absent in the clouds, order required beyond speech etc. in the middle of the poem.

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## The Unnamable

This is extremely complicated and does leave me rather cold to be honest. Its a bit like something that would have been written by a cross between Wittgenstein and TS Eliot. Still, its nice to see a clever American.  :Biggrin:  
Heres how I see it:


1. Music has (for a reason I dont understand) lost some vital quality/purpose that Stevens ascribes to it. It appears that it has simply been reduced to sound, no longer generating the kinds of social interaction that it does when in the form of, say, a waltz. In this sense it is no longer dynamically generating something more than itself. By this, I mean that it isn't just noise/sound but has a social purpose/function. I am assuming that Stevens thinks music should *not* be motionless. This is, presumably, a sad state of affairs. However, there comes a time when we must stop lamenting this loss (I dont mean as in an order  such as You must stop doing that but more as in we must simply get on with our lives). He suggests why later (I think).


2. Is he here expanding on the idea of musics relegation to mere sound? What has been lost from music are those things it signifies beyond the level of mere sound. I assume that to be empty of shadows is a negative thing. Shadows are good because they provide the possibility of nuance and uncertainty, which, as long as they dont become anarchic, are positive things. They are representative of the mysteries that prevent life from being merely mechanical. If we reduce music to sound as a physical phenomenon, as a series of waves (which I suppose it is), then we are left with some impersonal, physical fact. We endow sound with meaning and significance.
Side note - Desire  a longing for something you dont yet have and shadows are a sign of something that is there but not actually present in the shadow itself.


3 and 4. I have no idea who Hoon is. To me, mountain-minded suggests something unchanging, heavy and solid to the point of being impenetrably dense. Hoon is certainly an unusual name (unfortunately, there is a British politician called Geoff Hoon but this is only the second time Ive seen the name). Its almost pseudo-biblical, like Onan, to whom he seems similar. The significant thing about Hoon is that he appears to be utterly self-contained, perhaps even solipsistic. He does seem to be taking part in some search for form and order but for him, desire was never that of the waltz, which I take to mean that his search for form and order doesnt involve social interaction, i.e. other people. This is also why for Hoon, the shapes were never the figures of men. He doesnt register them as an existent other. They are merely shapes in Hoons solipsistic world. The passing of waltzes doesnt affect him. In the past (found) Hoon was able to find order, presumably because his success relied on nothing but himself. 
However, even for Hoon the forms have vanished. Again, I dont know why. To gather that together, neither the narrator, who registers a world beyond the self, nor Hoon, who doesnt, is able to find form and order any longer.


5, 6 and 7 The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. Its as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured. 


8. This is where it gets really hard to understand. I think he is being optimistic (no wonder I m having trouble). I think hes saying that even these mobs of men are searching for form and order and, although its difficult to see it amid the apparent chaos, they do so in a way that is possibly generative of new forms and orders. 


9 and 10 Is the fact that Too many waltzes - is not appended by have ended a suggestion that he is accepting that there have been too many waltzes and now its time for a different mode? The chaos is approaching ever nearer and will soon have dominion (The epic of disbelief/Blares oftener and soon, _will soon be constant_). However, there is hope. Someone who is aware of whats at stake will find a method that enables the dynamic energies of the mobs of men to respond to and be channelled by a new mode of expression. Whether that harmonious skeptic is the poet and the skeptical music his poetry, I dont know. I think I would favour more the idea that its someone or something else.

I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesnt happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end.

As I say, it leaves me rather cold. I can admire it but I cant warm to it. I have read a few of Stevens poems that I like but this was new to me.

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## blp

Good, yes. I think you're right about most of this, but it's funny how exegisis can kill things a bit. There's another Stevens poems that I'd still rank one of my favourites - _The Emperor of Icecream_, but it was spoiled just a little for both me and a friend when his college poetry tutor told him what it was _about_. We'd thought it was all just itself, somehow. 

I think I'll get back to liking this one for its language too and maybe I'll even realise there's more to it than you say, but for the moment a lot of that seems right - and a bit banal. Out of order, chaos, out of chaos, order. Ho hum. Still, the sudden mobs of men take it out of abstraction. They work for me for every historical moment in which such mobs arise and brilliantly evoke something seismic and sublime - in the sense of overwhelming, awe-inspiring and frightening. The reminder of that very chaos' desire for order hits me too. The emotion of this - and that, in relation to the sadness and solitude evoked elsewhere - are what hook me and save the thing from being some humdrum discussion of some eternal cycle. It reminds me a lot of the sound of rioting at the beginning of The Smiths' _Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me_ and, I think, works in a very similar way to the way that plays off the sadness and longing of that song. And already I'm back to liking it. 

Also, Unnamable, unless I've misunderstood you, I think you've missed a tiny bit at the beginning. Isn't the sound motionless simply because the waltzes have ended? As in _All good things_ - love affairs, just politics etc. And, yes, at some point you get used to it - and become skeptical of the Waltz in general.

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## Grumbleguts

I found a reference to 'Hoon' as Stevens' personification of 'Man alone' in a search. But only in one site. I found another that says he is a philosopher, but I can't find a phiolosopher of that name.

Stevens wrote another poem called "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", which is equally impenetrable.

I will keep digging. Who is Hoon really?

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## The Unnamable

> Good, yes. I think you're right about most of this, but it's funny how exegisis can kill things a bit.


I really didnt mean to kill it. Id hoped people would offer different views and some possible answers to the bits I cant get. Still, its early yet. 

What you call exegesis is simply the way I try to make sense of a poem. I assume that it means something rather than anything and also assume that there is some kind of coherence there. Sometimes the poem tries to be anything rather than something and a lack of coherence is deliberate. You make it sound as if Ive made a Papal pronouncement on what the poem means. Ive just explained what _I_ see it as meaning (at least the bits of it that I understand). 




> There's another Stevens poems that I'd still rank one of my favourites - _The Emperor of Icecream_, but it was spoiled just a little for both me and a friend when his college poetry tutor told him what it was _about_. We'd thought it was all just itself, somehow.


I have really mixed feelings about this. Obviously I can sympathise with you. I like _The Emperor of Ice-Cream_ _because_ I know what its about. I dont mean that I feel like one of the select few! I mean that only by knowing that there is reference to a funeral can I appreciate the absurd humour. There wasnt much ice cream at most of the funerals Ive attended.  :FRlol:  This raises a very difficult issue. Do you allow students to generate their own meanings or do you push them in a certain direction? If I dont make them aware of the funeral, then they will miss something that Stevens presumably took the time and effort to include. I know that the author is dead and all but I tend to think that I am not doing justice to the person who wrote it if I allow something that is particularly clever/effective/evocative etc. to go unnoticed. My job as a teacher is to encourage an appreciation of Literature. To do this, I have to demonstrate why certain lines, say, are powerful/effective/clever and so on. My own enthusiasm for what I think is good certainly generates some appreciation. The problem for some people is that they think I am imposing my own readings and to an extent I am. I feel the years of study and reading have given me some degree of authority to do so. People tend to accept this idea when it comes to doctors, lawyers and even many teachers but when it comes to Literature, there is uneasiness.

Often, students will try to hide a lack of basic understanding by offering nebulous suggestions about what certain lines could mean. Im not trying to suggest that you have done this, by the way. These suggestions can be imaginative but when you have a poet like Plath for instance, who writes with almost forensic precision at times, I think similar clarity and precision are needed in the response. You cant appreciate a line of Plaths like the black amnesias of heaven if you think the phrase refers to a dark-petalled flower.




> I think I'll get back to liking this one for its language* too* and maybe I'll even realise there's more to it than you say,


Oh, dear! Of course there is! I havent produced the definitive reading! It hardly amounts to a reading at all. Crushing though it would be, Id now like to see someone dispose of my reading and offer something totally different and far more convincing.

Im not sure what you mean by liking this one for its language too. Do you mean as well as for its meaning? Im sure that even if you are unable to forget my exegesis (not at all likely), you will still encounter the poem time and again with fresh insights. Have you really lost the ability to enjoy _The Emperor of Ice-Cream_? Cant what you know now help you to enjoy it more? Perhaps its more a reflection of the context in which you first encountered it. The experience of discussing it with your friend is what made that particular encounter special in some way. Its as if youve suddenly realised that the girl who was your first love was as ugly as sin and nowhere near as interesting.  :Biggrin:  

Sometimes (actually, quite often) I remember lines that I have heard or read many times, in a particular context. I dont know if you know _Richard III_ but there is a scene when Buckingham asks Richard for the lands he had been promised as a reward for helping him to the throne. Richard is suspicious of Buckingham for responding coolly to a suggestion that the princes should be murdered. He delays giving him the land, as punishment. Buckingham pushes and Richard responds, 

I am not in the giving vein today. 

A student once asked me to buy some flower or something for charity. The line popped into my head and I delivered it. 




> but for the moment a lot of that seems right - and a bit banal.


What I wrote or the poem? If you mean the poem, I dont think its banal and as I said, I can admire it. If you mean, what I wrote, Im sorry.




> some humdrum discussion of some eternal cycle.


I hope thats not how you think I see the poem. You make me feel as if Ive torn out a huge swathe of your childhood. He took my childhood in his stride. Look out, the Grim Reaper is coming!





> It reminds me a lot of the sound of rioting at the beginning of The Smiths' _Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me_ and, I think, works in a very similar way to the way that plays off the sadness and longing of that song. And already I'm back to liking it.


  :Biggrin:   :Wink:  I knew you should have faith in Stevens. I dont like a lot of his stuff but I dont think its in any way bad  just a bit too cold  like Donne would be without the wit.




> Also, Unnamable, unless I've misunderstood you, I think you've missed a tiny bit at the beginning. Isn't the sound motionless simply because the waltzes have ended?


Yes, I agree. I think I dived straight into the bits I found more problematic. 




> As in _All good things_ - love affairs, just politics etc. And, yes, at some point you get used to it - and become skeptical of the Waltz in general.


You make it sound much more like resignation than I think it is. In a way, I think Stevens is celebrating the new as well as lamenting the passing of the old.

PS Love affairs are not one of the "good things" on my list.  :Wink:

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## tn2743

I think this poem is about a woman.

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## The Unnamable

> I think this poem is about a woman.


Her name wouldnt be Matilda, would it?

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## blp

Sorry, Unnamable, I had no intention of implying your reading was definitive, that _you'd_ killed the poem, that what you'd said was banal, that you'd torn out etc. Gah. Oh well. 

All I was trying to say was that I have mixed feelings about the process of interpretation. Sometimes it can be intriguing, sometimes your romantic analogy is more how it feels - but I'd say it's more like realising that someone who'd seemed fascinating is actually quite shallow. I _did_ start to feel something like that (about the _poem_) reading your post, but that was up to me and it was because I agreed with what (I thought) you said. I didn't resent you for saying what you did. I wasn't saying you shouldn't have said it or accusing you of being dull or authoritarian, just commenting on the risk of let down when interpretation demystifies something - but I posted the poem and I knew the risk and I certainly didn't expect people to _not_ interpret it. I was very curious to see what people would say about it. So thanks for your detailed input, honestly. 

No, I still love _The Emperor of Icecream_. The disappointment was not in finding out that it was about a funeral, which seems clear from the 'spread it so as to cover her face' line, but that, specifically, it was about a Mexican funeral - where all the elements described - wenches in such dress as they are used to wear, concupiscent curds, and the emperor of icecream himself, were said by my friend's teacher to be traditional. What we'd thought was Stevens' brilliant invention turned out to be taken from real life. Well, nothing comes from nothing and it may have been naive of us to think it did. 

The thing I said about coming back to the language - no, I don't mean separately from the meaning, but I think on the whole in poetry, the language is what makes the difference. The painter Willem de Kooning said, 'Content is small' and, while it's not a universally applicable statement, it often applies in poetry, where the content can be as small as 'I fancy you', 'I'm sorry you died', 'My dad screwed me up' etc. And the language is the first thing for me with the _Waltz_ poem - as well as the thing that saved it for me when I started to doubt it. Part of that, unsurprisingly, is to do with the meaning it suggests, and in doubting it, I must admit, I started to wonder if it was a smoke and mirrors act - because the poem does a grand job of suggesting that its content might be fairly big and, unfortunately, I really do think now, for now, that it's describing a rather pat transition from order to chaos to order again. I can see there's more to it than that, but just the fact that it's there at all bothers me a little, especially as the thematic structure of the poem. Maybe it's a bit too optimistic for me too. That said, it leaves me with puzzles that are sort of pleasurably troubling. 

Yes, I think there is some resignation in the beginning. It doesn't rule out what you say - the end does seem optimistic, but the hope is said to be in skepticism. Also, even at the beginning, there may be optimism: 'mourn no more' implies this, it's just that it sounds like a hope born out of some loss of illusion. 



> PS Love affairs are not one of the "good things" on my list.


Couldn't be because 'too many have ended' could it?  :Wink:  That's what I was driving at in describing a kind of resignation. 




> I can't find a philosopher of that name.


Mmm. At some point I'll crack and look this up too, but I'm still sticking to my impressions. But yeah, I've never heard of a philosopher called Hoon. 



> I think this poem is about a woman.


Why?

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## tn2743

Hi Unnamable. Why Matilda?

PS. Great analysis on post #179

I found it very interesting that you have analysed it by the construction of each verse. There are, or seem to be, a lot of changes in the tone and rhythm between each verse, which you have identified. I like your analysis of verses 5, 6, and 7 about how form and order are fractured by the change of pace and images.

"I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesnt happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end." p#179

Maybe (it's a big maybe, I won't dare challenging you) this poem does not focus on the changes of form and order so much as focusing on the necessary processes that come with it, including mourning, remorse, and moving on. And maybe simply change isnt enough, but loss, rejection may be more appropriate.

Hoon, I think, is the symbol of the ego, the internal perceptions. Hoon "found all form and order in solitude." But none was external; the orders and forms that Hoon found were never real, "for whom the shapes were never the figures of men." Thats why he is unhappy with the order that he found. Hoon, to me, is very lonely, almost imprisoned and tortured. For I can think of no worse torture than being able to find all form and order (meaning everything, or justice perhaps), but still be unsatisfied. What else can Hoon do? And vice versa. Hoon found the "mode of desire, a mode of revealing desire" of the real world through the waltz, only to find that it is not what he wants at all, and that for him "desire was never that of the waltz." Because he had found order and form in solitude before the waltz even started.

Hoon is torn between mourning an inevitable loss and pride. If he is fine in solitude, why should he mourn? But he does mourn, because Hoon is weaker than reality. Hoon is the embodiment of sorrow. Hoon himself is not sorrow, for he clings on to the waltz and doesn't want it to end. He's afraid of being forgotten when changes will be adapted to. 

Loss, especially an inevitable loss, is unbearable by the lonely mind. But there comes a time when the mind must wake up and interact with the world, whose sceptics 
"Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows."
Hoon is dead then, as is the sorrow of loss and being rejected. It will only happen when the waltz ends, but when it plays again, the inevitable process repeats itself.

Am I making any sense?

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## Virgil

Good observations above. Here are some of my observatuions, of which I can't still put together the overall theme. 

The poem seems to be divided into four parts: 

(1) Up through the first sentence of the third stanza, "...waltzes have ended." Here it there is a postive outlook by the narrator. Unpacked it could read as: The time for mourning over motionless sound is no longer possible; music/waltz is no longer in a mode of desire. Mode is a key word here, and I pun on key. Mode in music usually refers to being in a minor or major key. Another loaded word here is "truth." When a writer tells you "the truth" you better take notice.

(2) The second part starts with "And then..." And here the mode shifts to a minor key, a pessimistic outlook from the point of view of Hoon, all because of his solitude. Forms have vanished. A sort of chaos is percieved, no order in "sea or sun." Alone he cannot formulate the world.

(3) Suddenly, "mobs of men" show up, the opposite of Hoon's solitude, a third shift in point of view. And here it jumps back to a major key, "happy, without knowing how/Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech," an abundance of positive associations. And he ties this back to the first section, "Too many waltzes have ended," linking the narrator with the mob or vice versa.

(4) "Yet..." a signal for another and final transition. Who's point of view here? I think it's back to the narrator. Here he glorifies the voices of the mob, equating it to the waltz ("too, may be/Modes of desire"). What is he doing here at the end? Bringing it back full circle? Ostracizing Hoon? He amputates the rondeau lyric, "Too many waltzes--" and then he starts the next sentence "The epic of disbelief." Disbelief? Who's? He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward) and repeats the word "soon" three times in two lines. Is "soon" an echo back to Hoon? And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"? I think so, but not sure. And he ends the last stanza with the affirmative "Will" three times, each at the beginning of each line. This fourth section seems to tie the themes together.


So, is Hoon, in his solitude, the creator of the poem? "Mountain-minded I think refers to being with a mind in the clouds, away from the mobs of men. Does it take the solitary mountain-minded Hoon, the one who doesn't feel desire in the waltz, to piece together "men and their shapes" and their happiness? 

It's a reading.

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## The Unnamable

> Hi Unnamable. Why Matilda?


I thought you were being humorous when you simply threw in your remark above without explanation. The only woman I could think of with a strong association to waltzes was Waltzing Matilda.




> Maybe this poem does not focus on the changes of form and order so much as focusing on the necessary processes that come with it, including mourning, remorse, and moving on. And maybe simply change isnt enough, but loss, rejection may be more appropriate.


Id happily accept that. The bit of mine you quoted was just a tired attempt to summarise what Id said before. 

Im not sure about your comments on Hoon. I dont think he was unhappy or even unfulfilled in his self-contained world, at least not until the change that the narrator registers occurs.

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## The Unnamable

> specifically, it was about a Mexican funeral.


I dont see this. 

We cannot know what personal events prompted this 1922 poem, apparently set in Key West (so the poet Elizabeth Bishop conjectured, who knew Key West, where Cubans worked at the machines in cigar factories, where blacks always had ice cream at funerals),
From _The Columbia History of American Poetry_ Ed. Jay Parini and Brett C. Miller. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 




> Couldn't be because 'too many have ended' could it?  That's what I was driving at in describing a kind of resignation.


No  its because too many have started.  :Wink: 

Thanks for clearing up the rest.

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## tn2743

Virgil,

I agree that the poem is divided into 4 parts and at the points that you suggested. I like the analysis of the word mode. I think youre right, the reason that it is there is because the author was referring particularly to music. Maybe he is being very specific and does not want the reader to stray off this line of thinking. Maybe he repeats too many waltzes have ended for this purpose.

From your observation, I notice that the author puts a lot of weight on a few words. Besides, as you pointed out, mode and truth and, of course, waltz, I think the words form and order are also important; because they are the only link between Hoon and the mobs of men. Both seek form and order: Hoon found all form and order in solitude and the mobs were Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech. But only Hoon found form and order, the mobs of men tried but in vain. 

The difference between them is that Hoon is alone, and the mobs of men are many. I love the phrase clouds of faces and arms. It seems almost an inhuman description of something that is human. When I read it I imagine a cloud of heads and arms sticking out in random places (childish, I know). The mobs, made up of humans of perfect form and order like Hoon, are together mutated in form and order, which is why they cannot define exactly what they want: These voices crying without know for what. 

I love that you have viewed the poem as a song: the mode shifts to a minor key and it jumps back to a major key. I also thought that the poem should be read in the time frame of the gay waltz. All of this happens during the waltz. 

And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"? I dont think that Hoon is the skeptic. I thought that it is the skeptic who will end Hoon (I think I explained it in my original poster). And the skeptic cannot be the mobs of men, because he will unite these figures of men. Maybe the skeptic is a third party, the musician perhaps. The musician plays another waltz, ending solitude and making sense of the mobs of mens desire. maybe

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## blp

> We cannot know what personal events prompted this 1922 poem, apparently set in Key West (so the poet Elizabeth Bishop conjectured, who knew Key West, where Cubans worked at the machines in cigar factories, where blacks always had ice cream at funerals),
> From _The Columbia History of American Poetry_ Ed. Jay Parini and Brett C. Miller. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.


Seems to have been some Chinese whisper process going on between my friend's tutor, me and, perhaps, my memory of the whole thing. Presumably it was something more like a Cuban funeral. 

I'll read over the rest of what's been going on when i have a bit of time. Looks interesting.

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## Virgil

> And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"? I dont think that Hoon is the skeptic. I thought that it is the skeptic who will end Hoon (I think I explained it in my original poster). And the skeptic cannot be the mobs of men, because he will unite these figures of men. Maybe the skeptic is a third party, the musician perhaps. The musician plays another waltz, ending solitude and making sense of the mobs of mens desire. maybe


Thank you for you comments. I think you're right on everything you say. Hoon may not be the skeptic. So let's count the characters: the narrator, the poet if he is different than the narrator (I'm not sure), Hoon, the mob, and the skeptic. So who is the skeptic? Is he the narrator, the poet, or a separate entity? Is the skeptic part of the mob? I also just noticed that the narrator in the second line positions himself as part of a group, "we can mourn..."

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## The Unnamable

> And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"?


I dont see how this can refer to Hoon, either. The phrase itself perhaps tells us enough. In stanza 8, Stevens uses Yet and may when considering the crowds. He is not certain that they are expressing a rage for order. They could simply be a destructive, anarchic force that cannot be channelled. 

When we look back at a past era, we tend to think of it as having been a more innocent time, a time when we could enjoy simpler pleasures. Today we think everyone is more knowing, less satisfied with the unsophisticated. Obviously each succession generation will come to feel this. (On a banal note, I can remember when I first saw the original Star Wars movie. I was amazed by the special effects. Yet when I watched it with my 12 year old niece last year, she said that she thought it was okay but that some of the special effects were a bit old-fashioned.) I think there is something similar going on here  Stevens is positive and assumes that there is the same need for order in these mobs as that which exists in the rest of us. Therefore future harmony will be possible. What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order. However, he is positive but not blindly optimistic - he is also aware that he could simply be underestimating the destructive force of the mobs so he will need to tread carefully. If we think of some of the mobs of twentieth century history, we can see why. Some of those mobs of men went on to be enlisted by Stalin and Hitler.

If the mobs rage can be brought within some kind of artistic expression, then their shapes/Will glisten again with motion, the music/Will be motion and full of shadows. Stevens believes it can but that it will take someone more aware of the potential for evil than those who provided form and order in the past. They will need to be skeptical in their attempt to restore harmony. It will take a harmonious skeptic producing skeptical music.

The reason I suggested earlier that Stevens might be the harmonious skeptic and his poetry the skeptical music was because of what the mobs are said to be lacking: they cannot describe and order beyond their speech. So the emphasis is on verbal expression.


Interestingly, you like Stevens use of a word that is part of the reason I dont like the poem. 

The definitions of mode include usage in Music (as Virgil pointed out), Philosophy, Logic, Statistics, Mathematics, Geology, Physics and Grammar. Its too impersonal for me  as are his uses of form and order. 

Donne does something similar with his uses of the language of Alchemy, Science, Cartography and Geometry to describe human emotions. However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isnt.

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## Virgil

Unnamable - You make some good points here, but there is one place where I think you're off target. 




> What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order.


Where is that from? "Kill and destroy?" I don't see any suggestion of good/evil association. What I see are distictions of points of view. And the ability of a skeptic, outside the mob, to piece together order, form, and art, while the mob, in it's energy, lacks this ability. 





> However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isnt.


This poem perhaps. But you haven't read all of Stevens. The poem I typed out above that followed this in the collection is very funny. It's comically absurd.

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## The Unnamable

> Unnamable - You make some good points here, but there is one place where I think you're off target.


Managed to find one, then?  :Wink:  




> Where is that from? "Kill and destroy?"


I didnt say that it what they _will_ do but what they _could_ do. I base this on the fact that the word Stevens has used is mob. Does the word itself have any positive or negative connotations? Would you agree that mobs are threatening? Dont you find the sudden appearance of these men also rather threatening? I do. What do you think might happen when an immense suppression is freed? You seem aware of this when you wrote, He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward). Its jarring, discordant  as they are. Think about the connotations of Blares. 

I repeat what I said earlier about stanzas 5, 6 and 7: The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. Its as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured.
The fact that it is the artist (in the form of Stevens the poet) ordering these lines indicates that artistic creation _can_ tame chaos. The lines give the impression of encroaching disorder but he has done that through his use of rhyme, commas, etc.  in other words, through his artistry. The idea of Arts capacity to produce order amid slovenly wilderness is explored in _Anecdote of the Jar_ (which I do like). For Stevens, art is simply order.



> I don't see any suggestion of good/evil association.


It doesnt have to be expressed in those terms  order and disorder will do. However, I dont think that Stevens suggests that the price of disorder is simply confusion. As I said, those lines are menacing. There is something ominous about the mobs directionless energy. Even though I think the poem is unnecessarily cerebral, I dont think it was merely an intellectual exercise (funnily enough, I do feel this with Donne at times). Whatever made Stevens include the mob, I think he perceived some genuine threat in the world around him. 



> What I see are distictions of points of view. 
> And the ability of a skeptic, outside the mob, to piece together order, form, and art, while the mob, in it's energy, lacks this ability.


But isnt what the skeptic _will_ do precisely what Stevens _has_ done here? He has created order (a poem) out of his sense of fracture and loss. This is also consistent with the idea that skeptical music is poetry. 



> However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isnt.
> 
> 
> This poem perhaps. But you haven't read all of Stevens. The poem I typed out above that followed this in the collection is very funny. It's comically absurd.


Come on now, Virgil. I wasnt trying to trash Stevens and enthrone a British poet in his place.  :FRlol:  I did make it perfectly clear that I was only referring to this particular poem. I also said that I like some of his stuff. For you he is one of the top poets of the twentieth century; for me, he isnt. Does it matter? Its not as if Im trying to encourage people to dislike him. Be fair to me; if anything, I have tried hard to help people gain a better understanding of what hes saying and how hes saying it. Whether they then like him or not is up to them and the comments I made should help them have a better foundation on which to base their decision.

And no, I havent read every single Stevens poem. So you got me there!  :Wink: 

PS _The Snowman_ also leaves me cold.  :Biggrin:

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## tn2743

I don't think that the music is referred to here simply as "some kind of artistic expression" (p#193) to describe the mob's rage. I think that the music is the focus of the poem; we shouldn't start to look at a broader meaning of the poem until we have found the very specific points that the author is trying to make.

I do agree that the words 'form' and 'order' may be too impersonal, or not as specific as I'd hope (They dont just refer to music). But they make a solid point. Form and order surely are the essential means of existence. If something lacks either form or order, it will cease to shape (like the desires of the mob).

Virgil. I think you're right to make the skeptic the focus. The last two verses clearly state that the waltzes, "the epic of disbelief", will be made "constant" by the skeptic's skeptical music; so all will be solved by this character, making him a key character.

We are not told who the skeptic is, but we are told that the skeptic is the creator of the music: "Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music..." Perhaps, it was also the skeptic who played the waltz.

I think that, for that reason, the skeptic cannot be the author himself or the narrator, because the author (who I think is the same as the narrator) is passive in relation to the waltz. (unless the author himself was the creator of the music). I think, as you suggested, he is a separate entity. He must be a musician, for he creates music. And (perhaps Im way off line here), because the author refers to him as some skeptic, he is a stranger to the author.

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## Petrarch's Love

Wow, there's been a lot written here since I last checked in. I'm learning a lot about Stevens--super.

I agree with much in the analyses already provided. The thing that keeps bugging me in this poem is why exactly forms have vanished for the Hoon in the third stanza. I somehow feel that this is some key point I am missing. I understand how the passing of the waltz is in some ways the passing of one generation's music soon to be replaced by "some harmonius sceptic soon in some skeptical music" in an "epic of disbelief." But the fact that the forms of the Hoon have vanished as well as the form and order of those who relied on the company of others, seems to indicate not only the loss of the waltz as a social kind of music but the loss of the imagination, almost of music itself. The Hoon did not depend on people, so the loss of the waltz should not affect his forms, which one assumes are the forms created in his own mind. All the same "his forms have vanished." Everything is lost, even the music of the individual? Is this because he has been forced into the company of the mob searching for order? Is he a sort of solitary ivory tower poet whose inward forms have been shattered by the reality of the masses? 

By the way, Unnamable, you've got the song "Waltzing Matilda" stuck in my head now.  :FRlol:  Oh well, before that it was the waltz from Lehar's "The Merry Widow." I'm obviously taking this poem way too literally.

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## Virgil

> Managed to find one, then?  
> Come on now, Virgil. I wasnt trying to trash Stevens and enthrone a British poet in his place.  I did make it perfectly clear that I was only referring to this particular poem. I also said that I like some of his stuff. For you he is one of the top poets of the twentieth century; for me, he isnt. Does it matter? Its not as if Im trying to encourage people to dislike him. Be fair to me; if anything, I have tried hard to help people gain a better understanding of what hes saying and how hes saying it. Whether they then like him or not is up to them and the comments I made should help them have a better foundation on which to base their decision.


Sure, I'm not taking offense, and I certainly wasn't making it an American versus British thing. I understand how some don't take to Stevens. What I admire in Stevens the most is his originality of style. No one has written like him before him that I can think of. Perhaps some of the symbolists do have an echo (albeit a translated echo) in his poetic voice.

BTW, you're critical process of analyzing the poem, piecing together the stanzas and their transitions to arrive at a coherent meaning is very Aristitalian. The old man would be proud.  :Wink:

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## The Unnamable

> I don't think that the music is referred to here simply as "some kind of artistic expression" (p#193) to describe the mob's rage.


I dont believe thats what I said. I referred to it as "some kind of artistic expression" precisely because it neednt be a waltz or even music. Nor did I say that the mobs rage would be described by that art. I said, brought within (which is not very clear, I admit but this is a complex idea). Ill attempt to explain what I mean.

The waltz is enjoyable, exhilarating, fun, etc. but it is also valuable in that it provides extra layers to human experience, layers that are in addition to the merely factual. Its role is similar to a religion in this respect. It imbues existence with qualities that are absent from the merely physical, biological and chemical basis of our being. I am just a collection of atoms but thats not the end of the story. The way that the waltz does this is what I was trying to explain in # 179 above  the bit about the first stanza.

What the artist must attempt to provide is some means for the shapes For which the voices cry, to serve as Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire. At they moment it's just a possibility.




> I think that the music is the focus of the poem; we shouldn't start to look at a broader meaning of the poem until we have found the very specific points that the author is trying to make.


Could you explain what you mean by this? I assume you are suggesting this is what I have done.




> I do agree that the words 'form' and 'order' may be too impersonal, or not as specific as I'd hope (They dont just refer to music). But they make a solid point. Form and order surely are the essential means of existence. If something lacks either form or order, it will cease to shape (like the desires of the mob).


I dont think I've said anything that contradicts that.




> The last two verses clearly state that the waltzes, "the epic of disbelief", will be made "constant" by the skeptic's skeptical music; so all will be solved by this character, making him a key character.


You see "the epic of disbelief" as being the waltzes. Can you explain why? 

Too many waltzesThe epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.

Is the hyphen here used as a sign that what follows is a description of the waltzes? It seems to me as if its more to denote a break On the previous two occasions that the phrase was used, it was completed by have ended. This does set up an expectation. My explanation for this is above in the bit about 9 and 10. As Virgil pointed out, Blares oftener is ugly and dissonant. Perhaps it does refer to the waltz as it sounds now that it is empty of shadows but I think it also refers to what has replaced the waltz. Its the reason we need a new waltz.


This poem has reminded me of Yeatss _Easter 1916_ and _The Second Coming_, especially the lines, 

The best lack all convictions, while the worst 
Are full of passionate intensity.

and 

A terrible beauty is born.

Ill try a comparison now, which might just be nonsense.

Lets assume for a moment that the context of the poem is the 1930s and the mobs are those who will shortly be wearing swastikas (I know this *isnt* the context of Stevens poem but I am trying to explain the idea of the harmonious skeptic). There is an increasing unease among some artists at the time about some emerging and ominous destructive force. (I think _The Second Coming_ demonstrates this feeling) The world is rushing headlong into destruction and carnage (for a change  :Biggrin:  ). Along comes Picasso and paints _Guernica_. The painting is not an exuberant waltz but a terrifying depiction of mechanised mass slaughter. But its a work of high art, a masterpiece that takes the disorder of mass killing and frames it within a form that enables us to see something beyond lumps of charred human flesh. In the act of confronting and giving shape to the horror, the artist has produced order. Picasso is just the sort of figure who could be called a harmonious skeptic. He brings order to disorder while retaining his sense of the darker side of human behaviour. 

I know that Stevens poem doesnt take us into the dark realm but neither motion nor shadows are unambiguously positive.

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## tn2743

When was the

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## The Unnamable

Its Monday here! I knew Asia was a good choice.  :Biggrin:  

Anyway, I wonder if anyone would like to discuss this poem by Philip Larkin? Ive chosen it for a number of reasons:

1.	Hardly anyone recognised him in the pictures of authors thread;
2.	The poem is far more straightforward than a lot of the poems so far posted;
3.	There has been a lot of discussion of faith on the board recently and I thought it might be interesting to read a poem about the contemplation of death by someone who had no faith.
4.	I think its extremely well written;
5.	Its how I feel on a true dark night of the soul, which is about three times a week.


*Aubade*

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring 
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

*Philip Larkin*




> The thing that keeps bugging me in this poem is why exactly forms have vanished for the Hoon in the third stanza. I somehow feel that this is some key point I am missing.


I dont think the explanation can be found in the poem itself. 




> By the way, Unnamable, you've got the song "Waltzing Matilda" stuck in my head now.  Oh well, before that it was the waltz from Lehar's "The Merry Widow." I'm obviously taking this poem way too literally.


This highlights our different cultures. My other possible choice was The Bands _The Last Waltz_.  :Biggrin:

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## Petrarch's Love

> I dont think the explanation can be found in the poem itself.


I'm inclined to agree with you.

So, Unnamable, I thought you were in England somewhere. Since when have you made the timezone switch to Asia? (Or are you just hoping to get by with this so you can get an early start discussing your poem  :Wink:  ). 

Seriously, though, I'm glad you posted the Larkin. It's a good poem, if a wee bit depressing, and I think most of us have probably experienced those dark, doubting, realizing moments "when we are caught without/ People or drink." I had a night like that a few nights back. Luckily I'm agnostic not atheist, so I was able to give myself a little more hope to lean on than poor Larkin here  :Wink: . That last line is really a great one. I'll have to mull this one over a bit and maybe make some more constructive comments later (like maybe when it's actually Monday here  :FRlol:  ).

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## TodHackett

...of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Awake". A lot of the same images occur in that poem.

Wow. I'll have to spend time with this. Thanks for posting it, Unnamable... I don't know that I've read any of Larkin's work.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> ...of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Awake". A lot of the same images occur in that poem.
> 
> Wow. I'll have to spend time with this. Thanks for posting it, Unnamable... I don't know that I've read any of Larkin's work.


Me neither. Didn't he write the one that begins - "They tuck you up, your Mum & Dad"? - something like that anyway.  :Wink: 

I like this one very much though. It's as plain as the Stevens was cryptic. But just as good.

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## Virgil

> I know that Stevens poem doesnt take us into the dark realm but neither motion nor shadows are unambiguously positive.


Good stuff Unnamable. With this qualification I leave quoted I can accept your understanding of Steven's use of "mob." My initial reading of "mob" was in the sense that democracy has sometime been referred to as mob rule. Stevens even uses the word "freed" and I felt that he was after a distinction between those within a social group and those who stand apart from it as artists. I think there is still room in your reading for this too.

Before we leave Stevens, I hope readers here can appreciate his skill as a poet, even from this minor poem: his structuring of complex ideas, their transitions, the repetitions, concentrated images, symbols/emblems to arrive at a higher level of abstraction, word sounds. He's more of a poet's poet, very infleuencial to American poets that followed him (Roethke, A.R. Ammons, others). Appreciating him is like appreciating modern classical atonal music, it's an acquired taste mostly acquired by specialists. There has only been one person I've personally met that was passionate about Stevens, and she was a college professor who specialized in his work. Other professors who I have had that have taught him, never seemed to project passionate appreciation. One famous (famous at least in his mind  :Wink:  ) critic who stands out that does love Stevens' work is Harold Bloom, of all people. If I were to recommend a truely great poem (a little long to post here) of Stevens it would be "The Auroras of Autumn." Perhaps one day I will post the final canto of the poem (Canto X) which to me is sublime.

As to the new poem, fine with me. I do think Scher has some crazy rules about time change and Monday posting. She slapped my hand a few weeks ago. But, at the risk of ticking her off, who cares.  :Biggrin:

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## Whifflingpin

"If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our in our throats and feel cold in our extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business." H.D.T.

I think Larkin has really caught the feeling of cold in our extremities, but, am I wrong to feel that the last verse is a bit of a cheat? We've felt the cold, now let us go about our business? I'd have preferred it if he'd stopped on the line "Death is no different whined at than withstood."

But I'm willing to be convinced.

.

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## blp

> "If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our in our throats and feel cold in our extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business." H.D.T.
> 
> I think Larkin has really caught the feeling of cold in our extremities, but, am I wrong to feel that the last verse is a bit of a cheat? We've felt the cold, now let us go about our business? I'd have preferred it if he'd stopped on the line "Death is no different whined at than withstood."
> 
> But I'm willing to be convinced.


The last stanza is my favourite, especially the postmen like doctors. I think you're reading something as general and philosophical - _we'll die, but in the meantime let's get on with it_ - when actually it's specific and a bit narrativey - _this is what keeps me up at night, or what I think about when I can't sleep; in some ways, these thoughts are associated with this still, empty time of the morning for me; then the day starts again_. This seems necessary to me. It certainly makes the whole thing less abstract.

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## The Unnamable

*Xamonas*, 

You can see Larkins original here: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm
but your version does actually exist. It was written by Adrian Mitchell after he was told that someone had thought your version of the first line was the correct one:

*This Be The Worst*  

They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad 
They read you Peter Rabbit, too. 
They give you all the treats they had 
And add some extra, just for you. 

They were tucked up when they were small, 
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke), 
By those whose kiss healed any fall, 
Whose laughter doubled any joke. 

Man hands on happiness to man. 
It deepens like a coastal shelf. 
So love your parents all you can 
And have some cheerful kids yourself.

*Adrian Mitchell*


*Petrarchs Love,*
I am from the UK but I live and work in Asia. I was back in the UK at Christmas. When I posted the Larkin it really was after midnight here and in one of Schers posts she said Monday in your part of the world, which it was.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I am from the UK but I live and work in Asia. I was back in the UK at Christmas. When I posted the Larkin it really was after midnight here and in one of Schers posts she said Monday in your part of the world, which it was.


Ah, I should have known you would really be playing by the rules. I was a tad confused since I didn't know you were writing from Asia--may I ask which country you're in?

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## chmpman

A professor of mine has us reading "This be the verse" for my Brit. Lit. class. The first day of class he read the first line, to give us a taste of what to expect.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> your version does actually exist. It was written by Adrian Mitchell after he was told that someone had thought your version of the first line was the correct one:
> 
> *This Be The Worst*  
> 
> They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad 
> They read you Peter Rabbit, too. 
> They give you all the treats they had 
> And add some extra, just for you. 
> 
> ...


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:  

A very good pastiche.

I remembered the 'tuck you up' line from a cartoon in the Guardian on the day Larkin died. Funny the things that stick.

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## The Unnamable

Anyone torn off a bit of time, unused? Does anyone else feel that this isnt just a poem about a moment of depression that seizes us all now and again but a moment of absolute clarity replete with truth?

I dont think Larkin is in any way reassuring us in that last stanza. The image of the crouching telephones in locked-up offices is stark. Work has to be done does not register any sudden positive feeling on Larkins behalf  simply a reminder of how we are able to ignore that truth until the next moment of clarity. We surrender to the habitual. As Beckett says in _Waiting for Godot_, habit is a great deadener, which is probably just as well.

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## blp

It seems clear it's not just a moment of depression (or not intended that way - moments of depression are sometimes given spurious philosophical weight by their sufferers). Early in the poem, he talks about seeing 'what's really always there.'

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## Petrarch's Love

> I dont think Larkin is in any way reassuring us in that last stanza. The image of the crouching telephones in locked-up offices is stark. Work has to be done does not register any sudden positive feeling on Larkins behalf  simply a reminder of how we are able to ignore that truth until the next moment of clarity. We surrender to the habitual. As Beckett says in Waiting for Godot, habit is a great deadener, which is probably just as well.


I agree. I don't find anything at all upbeat about the final stanza. There is the definate feeling that there has somehow been, as you say, a "moment of clarity" when we realise that "Most things may never happen: this one will." What is brilliant about the final stanza is that all the things that should seem very real, concrete, and comforting seem sadly ineffectual to dispel the unease awakened by this realization of certain death. The jusxtoposition of the doctors and postmen in the final line brings home the idea of death as the one constant reality in the workings of everyday life. I also like the line "plain as a wardrobe, what we know." It again juxoposes the wardrobe, which we know to be solid and tangible with the idea of death, which the previous lines in the poem have shown to be as real (or possibly even more real than) the familiar wardrobe. 

I also thought I'd bring up the title of the poem, "Aubade." As many of you probably know, an aubade is a specific genre of poetry referring both to poems in general written about the dawn, and to poems about two lovers parting at dawn (a classic example of the Aubade is the exchange between Romeo and Juliet in act 3 scene 5). I wondered if there were any thoughts about the implications of choosing this for a title. Obviously the poem is about a time around dawn. The topic is far from being love. In fact it emphasizes the degree to which the writer is alone, making it somewhat ironic as a title. All the same, the traditional aubade describing the lovers parting also sometimes touches on death. In the Romeo and Juliet passage just mentioned, Juliet prophetically sees Romeo at their parting "As one dead at the bottom of a tomb." Do you think Larkin is trying to make a point by playing with this convention?

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## Virgil

> All the same, the traditional aubade describing the lovers parting also sometimes touches on death. In the Romeo and Juliet passage just mentioned, Juliet prophetically sees Romeo at their parting "As one dead at the bottom of a tomb." Do you think Larkin is trying to make a point by playing with this convention?


I've only just glanced at the poem, so I'm not ready to really comment, but I instantaneously came to the conclusion that the title was in irony. I could be wrong, but I can't imagine how.

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## Virgil

OK, let me start understanding Larkin's "Aubade." Let me first say that I may have read a Larkin poem in the past, but I can't recall. This is a nice intoduction for me to him. I liked it.

First the mechanics of the poem: five stanzas of ten lines each in roughly iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of A-B-A-B-C-C-D-E-E-D. I don't recognize the form, but it's sort of a heroic sestet (the first six lines) with an Italian quatrain as the final four lines. It seems a bit odd, having the couplet in the middle. Has anyone seen this elsewhere? Larkin doesn't seem to use the structure to section off sub-ideas within each stanza. Other than just presenting form, I'm not sure the stanza structure adds anything.

What does add is the way he handles the last two lines of each stanza. The 9th line is shortened to 6 or 7 syllables and the 10th is lengthened to compensate. It seems to have the affect of a stutter step, which seems to emphasize the meaning of the last line and nail down the idea of the stanza.

Each stanza seems to come to a particular realization. He even uses the word "realisation" (Is that a British spelling, with a s instead of a z?). I break the flow of the stanzas down this way:

Stanza 1/realization 1: A new day means one day closer to death.
Stanza 2/realization 2: Death is complete and final extinction.
Stanza 3/realization 3: Complete extinction brings fear.
Stanza 4/realization 4: Death is inevitable.
Stanza 5/realization 5: Each new day requires us to go on.

I'll stop for now and let others point out stuff.

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## genoveva

> *Aubade*
> 
> I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
> Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
> In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
> Till then I see what's really always there:
> Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
> Making all thought impossible but how
> And where and when I shall myself die.
> ...


This is a great poem, the first I've read of Larkin. From what little I have researched about him, I guess this is the last poem he ever wrote!? This definately adds to the moment and theme. Seems like he is sitting in his room/house, maybe been up all night (drinking?), depressed, thinking about his inevitable, future death. The poem literally begins in darkness, and literally, gradually begins to get lighter. He observes the sun rising, and it getting lighter- until it gets light enough to actually see. This literal event is nicely woven into the poem and is likewise symbolic of his dread (realization of? Acceptance of?) of death. At the beginning of the poem he dreads death. And, perhaps in the earlier part of his life too. As the poem progresses (like his life), he accepts and declares (basically) that there's nothing you can do to avoid death. You will die, and as described in the last stanza, life will go on. After he dies, people will still have to get up and go to work! "Work has to be done". The world will not stop when you die.

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## genoveva

[QUOTE]=The Unnamable
_"But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true."_

Oh yeah, and this part is the crux of what he believes happens to him (us?) when he dies- he goes to "emptiness" to "extinction", "lost in always", "not to be here/Not to be anywhere". *sigh* *agnst*

He doesn't go to heaven or hell. He doesn't get reborn into another life. He's gone. Dead. Nothing, nowhere. He know this is a "terrible" thing, but, he believes, nonetheless, that it's "true".

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## Nightshade

TYpical Larkin I had to do his poetryfor A level  :Sick: 
Oh well actually I love the rhyme scheme really. 
"Postmen like doctors" Im sure I think he uses doctors and priests alot. I think Im going to go away and think about it, I just wanted to say I want to be part of this discussion

 :Biggrin:

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## genoveva

> I also thought I'd bring up the title of the poem, "Aubade." As many of you probably know, an aubade is a specific genre of poetry referring both to poems in general written about the dawn, and to poems about two lovers parting at dawn (a classic example of the Aubade is the exchange between Romeo and Juliet in act 3 scene 5). I wondered if there were any thoughts about the implications of choosing this for a title. Obviously the poem is about a time around dawn. The topic is far from being love. In fact it emphasizes the degree to which the writer is alone, making it somewhat ironic as a title. All the same, the traditional aubade describing the lovers parting also sometimes touches on death. In the Romeo and Juliet passage just mentioned, Juliet prophetically sees Romeo at their parting "As one dead at the bottom of a tomb." Do you think Larkin is trying to make a point by playing with this convention?


Hey, thanks for the insight- I never knew that about the word "aubade". It totally fits, then, by your description. Yes, the timing of the poem takes place in relation to a dawning. Maybe it is also about two lovers: The author and life. The author is parting from this life.

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## rachel

I very much admire Philip L. I love that bit he wrote about the black ship I think, it gave me shivers.
I think every human that lives has at least one moment in time realizing that the reality of our fragile mortal selves is going to hit that bleak and hideous concrete wall called death.
And all those emotions are absolutely true. I have felt it, especially when I was given only a month to get my affairs in order because even the famous surgeon that was to do my emergency surgery was only going thru the motions on behalf of me and my children. I had to sign them over to others, my pastor, my friends and my doctor all said their goodbyes to me. So the day before I had the'leisure' ( I call it terror and hysteria, I am not a brave person) I lay there weak and thought about things.The nurse came in a gave me a book to look at with a real patient that goes thru all the stages of preop, operation and after. It was worse than a Stephen King thriller. If ever I wasn't scared before I was then!
And the pretending to be calm and brave part, I did that. I mean what was I supposed to do scream until they sedated me? I totally believe in God and something after. That was not a comfort in the least. I did not wish to stop breathing. I told God that "no offence but I didn't know Him very well and would rather stay here until I did."

I love the scene in "what about Bob" where Bob Wiley, a muli phobic, paralyzed personality has managed to take a bus from New York to New Hampshire to be close to his pyschiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin.
He now is in the shrinks house , in the shrink's son Zigfrieds bedroom, in one of his beds. Ziggie has a morbid fascination and terror of death. they both lie there in the dark and Ziggy says' I am going to die. You are going to die, only in your case a lot sooner. there is no way out of it, after that what more is there to be afraid of?"
Bob looks scared and then smiles. " well there is tourets" he answers.  :Biggrin:

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## The Unnamable

> I very much admire Philip L. I love that bit he wrote about the black ship I think, it gave me shivers.


"Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break."
*Next, Please*

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## rachel

thank dear, I forgot.
Did you happen to read Jill?

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## Virgil

Well, let's get back to the poem at hand. No one is adding anything so I'll finish off my thoughts on it.

Three things to note. 

First the diction: extinction (cold scientific term), "rational being," anaesthetic (euphomism for death), interrogation (instead of soliloquy), _rented_  world (with a pun on rent as a)we only rent the world while we're alive and b)past participle of rend, meaning we are rended, violently removed from the world). 

Second, some really good metaphors:
"The sure extinction that we travel to/And shall be lost in always." To be lost forever, "in always."
"Unresting death" - an odd play of the final rest.
"And so it stays just on the edge of vision,/A small unfocused blur" - referring to the abstract thought of his extinction as being almost visual.
"It [the room] stands plain as a wardrobe" - the room as common as clothing as common as death and as common as the knowledge that we will all die some day.

An aside here, it reminds me of a quote, I believe it's from Churchill, but I could be wrong, that goes to the effect, we all know that everyone has to die someday, but we all secretly hope that God has made one exception, and that it's yourself.

Finally the texture of the poem:
It's a grimy, sad, unheroic, almost claustrophobic feel: Getting "half-drunk at night," not just that particular evening but all evenings; "the mind blanks," "moth-eaten musical bracade," "unfocused blur," "standing chill," "telephones crouch," "locked-up offices," "uncaring...world," "the sky as white as clay, with no sun." He says that he doesn't have remorse, but then he immediately rattles off three things he's remorseful of. He says he's not wretched, but everything in all five stanzas is wretchedness. In the very center of the poem he brings up religion, something that could have alleviated his wretchedness. He can't bring himself to believe. This is no celebration of life, nor of his "rational" realizations. It's a dirty existence. And so obviously the title, "Aubade," is ironic.

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## The Unnamable

What I find interesting about the analyses of this poem is the way they contrast with the blunt, unembellished starkness of Larkin. Perhaps we can deal more easily with what the poem reveals to us if we focus more on how hes saying it? Everything about it says, this is the truth and theres nothing more to be said. In the end, we all die and, in the profoundest sense, we die alone.

PS Rachel, I havent read _Jill_ but I have read every one of his poems. He was an obnoxious man whose personal letters caused quite a stir when they were published after his death. Fabulous poet, though. He has certainly helped me down Cemetery Road.

What do people think of his dismissal of religion as That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/Created to pretend we never die,?

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## rachel

I like his taking apart things like a seamstress does, stitch by stitch and then putting it back again to look somehow different.
Personally for me even if I believed this was all there is I would still love my Lord and want to be with him all I could.
But I had to come to that thru a lot of what Larkin says. I admire him and thank him for being a water troubler. I CANNOT stand it when someone cheerily spouts off stuff-the name it and claim it stuff and then has not a solid thing to say about it. That kind of junk just kills the heart and mind.

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## genoveva

> He says that he doesn't have remorse, but then he immediately rattles off three things he's remorseful of.


Actually, the way I interpretted it was that he is listing three things that *some* people are remorseful of and these are reasons why some people's minds "blank in the glare". But this is not the reason for him.

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## genoveva

> This is a special way of being afraid
> No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
> That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
> Created to pretend we never die,
> And specious stuff that says No rational being
> Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
> That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
> No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
> Nothing to love or link with,
> ...


Yes, the religion thing...
This was one of the most powerful messages in his poem, to me.
When we are confronted with the "Nothingness" after death, it is a "special way of being afraid". Why are we afraid of nothing? It's not "hell" we are afraid of, in this case, but nothing. Larkin is bashing religion here (my take) saying that religion tries to comfort us when we are faced with death. Don't be afraid, you will go to heaven and be with God and all the angels in this wonderful kingdom and live happily ever after... Or, it tries to instill even more fear in us: Obey this law/rule, behave like we tell you or when you die you will go to hell- woooo, scarey place, you better believe what we say and listen to us or be punished forever! Perhaps Larkin uses the past tense "Religion used to try" to suggest that he gave religion a try, and it didn't work for his needs?

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## Virgil

> Actually, the way I interpretted it was that he is listing three things that *some* people are remorseful of and these are reasons why some people's minds "blank in the glare". But this is not the reason for him.


But if there is no remorse, why mention anything. A poem is a condensation of thought. It's only got a few hundred words. Every word has to count. If there is any elaboration, it is open to scrutny. Larkin as an experienced poet knows this.

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## Virgil

> What do people think of his dismissal of religion as That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/Created to pretend we never die,?


I take it as his true feelings toward it. "created to pretend" obviously shows his disbelief. "musical brocade" suggests an elaborate past tradition, of some wonderment and culture. "vast moth-eaten" suggests it has passed its time and no longer applies. I take his tone as he cannot believe in religion, but he's not happy in his disbelief. Like I said, every stanza is a statement of his wretchedness. I keep returning to that first line (which sets the tone) where he's half-drunk every night, and the last stanza where the sky is like clay.

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## Petrarch's Love

> What I find interesting about the analyses of this poem is the way they contrast with the blunt, unembellished starkness of Larkin. Perhaps we can deal more easily with what the poem reveals to us if we focus more on how hes saying it? Everything about it says, this is the truth and theres nothing more to be said. In the end, we all die and, in the profoundest sense, we die alone.


It occured to me on reading this, that one reason I've had relatively little to say on this poem is that it is so "blunt" and "unembellished." I feel as though he's said everything so perfectly and simply in the lines that they speak for themselves in a way I could never speak for them. Of course, isn't that always the way we feel when analyzing really good poems? 




> What do people think of his dismissal of religion as That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/Created to pretend we never die,?


It's funny because that line brings up a very literal image for me of a room in the Museo del'Opera del Duomo in Siena (where I lived for a few months) where they have old antiphonals on display near to elaborately embroidered priestly vestments, hundreds of years old, in glass cases. The old fabric is worn and moth-eaten in many places (though still quite beautiful in its antique way). I used to go there often and it always struck me, the strangeness of this sacred clothing and sacred music preserved in the secular space of a museum (with a three euro charge at the door). It's interesting the way taking these things out of a sacramental context very forcibly makes the point that they are things "Created to pretend" on a certain level.

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## Petrarch's Love

> But if there is no remorse, why mention anything. A poem is a condensation of thought. It's only got a few hundred words. Every word has to count. If there is any elaboration, it is open to scrutny. Larkin as an experienced poet knows this.


Virgil, I agree with you about the regrets. It seems to me too that there is some irony in his denial of any regret and his immediate listing of potential regrets. It shows that they are certainly on his mind. At the same time, I think his point is that, terrible though such regrets might be, they don't really matter at all because nothing matters because all will be nothing in the end. Ultimately even terrible regrets look comforting next to the realization that we "shall be lost in always. Not to be here,/Not to be anywhere,/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true." Cheery stuff that.

----------


## The Unnamable

> But if there is no remorse, why mention anything. A poem is a condensation of thought. It's only got a few hundred words. Every word has to count. If there is any elaboration, it is open to scrutny. *Larkin as an experienced poet knows this*.


I think this fits with my earlier comment. Perhaps this is an example of the art that conceals itself but I see Larkin (or the narrator, if you prefer) in that poem as a man first and a poet later. Its the experienced man and not the experienced poet that I hear first and foremost.

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## The Unnamable

> I feel as though he's said everything so perfectly and simply in the lines that they speak for themselves in a way I could never speak for them. Of course, isn't that always the way we feel when analyzing really good poems?


Id agree up to a point but then I also agree with your observation that It seems to me too that there is some irony in his denial of any regret and his immediate listing of potential regrets. It shows that they are certainly on his mind. At the same time, I think his point is that, terrible though such regrets might be, they don't really matter at all because nothing matters because all will be nothing in the end. Ultimately even terrible regrets look comforting next to the realization that we "shall be lost in always. Not to be here,/Not to be anywhere,/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true." Cheery stuff that.

So your analysis has helped reinforce something important. Instead of taking us away from the starkness of the poem, you make us more aware of it. It reminds me of the scene in _Measure for Measure_ between Isabella and Claudio. Claudio is facing execution. The Duke has just tried to prepare Claudio to face his death with a fairly long speech beginning, 

*DUKE*: 
Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;

These are fine words, in theory but Claudios own apprehension of death is far more immediate and human:

*CLAUDIO*:
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Look at the finality of that second line. Thats what happens to us when we die  we rot. Its worth looking more closely at the differences in the two speeches.

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## Virgil

Funny you should mention that scene from Measure for Measure: I was thinking of the same thing on Thursday and meant to paste it here and forgot. Thanks. 

There are three things Larkin brings up that he dispells, unconvincingly to me: remorse, wretchedness, religion. As to religion, if he doesn't feel something towards it, why bring it up? The tone of the poem suggests to me that it could have changed his life, but he's too rational in this modern age to accept it. But he does bring it up and one must take note of that.

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## Riesa

Monday, time for a new poem:

*Between Going And Staying*
Octavio Paz

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

----------


## blp

Lovely choice, Riesa.

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## Petrarch's Love

I like this poem, Riesa. I'm not familiar with Paz's work, but I like the richness of the imagery here. I think I like these lines best:




> The circular afternoon is now a bay
> where the world in stillness rocks.


The idea of it is very simple but effective, and affecting. I think it's very difficult to write about these sorts of still moments well, but this poem glows.

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## genoveva

> Paper, book, pencil, glass,
> rest in the shade of their names.


*sigh* He is such an artist! Thank you for this! I especially love the above two lines. And, the last "I stay and go: I am a pause."  :Thumbs Up:

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## Virgil

Seems like an interesting poem. I'm always a little wary of diving into a translation. So much depends on the translator. I'm not familiar with Paz, but i'll explore his background and then I'll take a crack at this.

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## Petrarch's Love

I absentmindedly didn't even take into consideration that this was a translation when I first commented (rolls eyes and hits head in amazement at missing obvious  :FRlol:  ). That explains a lot about my initial reaction to the form and sound of the poem. I thought it was enjoyable even translated though, which is a compliment to the translator, and also to the power of the imagery in any language. Could you tell us who the translator was Riesa? For those who know the language (or, like me, have enough of another romance language to get the sense of it), here's the Spanish version. 

Entre irse y quedarse

Entre irse y quedarse duda el día,
enamorado de su transparencia.
La tarde circular es ya bahía:
en su quieto vaivén se mece el mundo.
Todo es visible y todo es elusivo,
todo está cerca y todo es intocable.
Los papeles, el libro, el vaso, el lápiz
reposan a la sombra de sus nombres.
Latir del tiempo que en mi sien repite
la misma terca sílaba de sangre.
La luz hace del muro indiferente
un espectral teatro de reflejos.
En el centro de un ojo me descubro;
no me mira, me miro en su mirada.
Se disipa el instante. Sin moverme,
yo me quedo y me voy: soy una pausa.

Octavio Paz

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## Virgil

Well, you see a difference without even reading it. There's no spacing between the couplets. Unless that's an artifact of the cut and paste.

----------


## Riesa

I was wondering if I should post it in Spanish too. It's Eliot Weinberger.

----------


## Riesa

No, the couplets are spaced in my Spanish version.

----------


## Intellectual

you guys know spanish?Cool...so im not alone





 :Tongue:

----------


## The Unnamable

> There are three things Larkin brings up that he dispells, unconvincingly to me: remorse, wretchedness, religion. As to religion, if he doesn't feel something towards it, why bring it up?


What _are_ you talking about, Virgil? He _does_ feel something towards religion. He feels that it's an overblown, worn out piece of useless nonsense.




> The tone of the poem suggests to me that it could have changed his life,


How on earth you can read that from his tone is beyond me. Perhaps _you_ want to believe something more positive, which is fine - but perhaps Larkin didnt.




> but he's too rational in this modern age to accept it. But he does bring it up and one must take note of that.


Evidence?
Larkin has long ceased looking for answers but you try to find some for him. Why do you assume that he _wanted_ to change his life?

----------


## Virgil

> What _are_ you talking about, Virgil? He _does_ feel something towards religion. He feels that it's an overblown, worn out piece of useless nonsense.
> 
> 
> How on earth you can read that from his tone is beyond me. Perhaps _you_ want to believe something more positive, which is fine - but perhaps Larkin didnt.
> 
> 
> Evidence?
> Larkin has long ceased looking for answers but you try to find some for him. Why do you assume that he _wanted_ to change his life?


Why does he get drunk every night (the very first line), why is wretched, why is he in fear of the end. Why does he even mention religion if it is so meanless? This could have been written as a celebration of a life lived, even as an atheist, but he doesn't. To bring something up is not to dispell it in a poem of fifty lines. Just the opposite. It has nothing to do with my beliefs.

bro·cade (br½-k³d) n. A heavy fabric interwoven with a rich, raised design.

Does not "musical brocade" suggest it has an element of beauty and culture. Yes it is "moth-eaten" but he didn't have to call it a musical bracade. He could have said what you just said. But he didn't. I think you're the one projecting your views into the poem.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Why does he get drunk every night (the very first line),


Are you serious? What difference does that make? Are you trying to reduce the poem to a nice, neat little morality tale, where the imbiber of the demon drink is punished for his own self-destructive foolishness? Im sure the speaker, like the rest of us, has his reasons. 




> why is wretched, why is he in fear of the end.


Because thats what life is to him. He doesnt see things the way you do. 




> Why does he even mention religion if it is so meanless?


Come on, Virgil - he mentions it because its relevant to the poem hes written. Its a poem, not a philosophical tract. 




> This could have been written as a celebration of a life lived, even as an atheist, but he doesn't.


So what? Thats his right. He tells us how he _feels_. To criticise him for not having been more positive is to ask him to forget the reality of what hes feeling and replace it with something _youd_ prefer. Do we have the right to ask that of any poet? I prefer authenticity and honesty in my poets, not a recital of John Boy Waltons edifying philosophy. The fact that you write even as an atheist implies that it would be unusual for an atheist to celebrate life. Theres that assumption again. 




> To bring something up is not to dispell it in a poem of fifty lines. Just the opposite.


What are you saying here? My take is that he brought it up (if by it you mean religion) to condemn it for what it is. He is considering death and one of the ways human beings come to terms with death is through religion. Surely, its only to be expected that he would consider the religious take on things? Are you suggesting that he did it to offer _us_ the comfort and reassurance it was unable to provide _him_? 




> bro·cade (br½-k³d) n. A heavy fabric interwoven with a rich, raised design.
> 
> Does not "musical brocade" suggest it has an element of beauty and culture. Yes it is "moth-eaten" but he didn't have to call it a musical bracade. He could have said what you just said. But he didn't. I think you're the one projecting your views into the poem.


Absolutely, Virgil  this poem is a celebration of the beauty of religion, a religion which is "_created_ to _pretend_ we never die." Pretence is a vital quality in any religion.

----------


## Virgil

[QUOTE=The Unnamable]


> Are you serious? What difference does that make? Are you trying to reduce the poem to a nice, neat little morality tale, where the imbiber of the demon drink is punished for his own self-destructive foolishness? Im sure the speaker, like the rest of us, has his reasons. 
> 
> 
> Because thats what life is to him. He doesnt see things the way you do. 
> 
> 
> Come on, Virgil - he mentions it because its relevant to the poem hes written. Its a poem, not a philosophical tract. 
> 
> 
> So what? Thats his right. He tells us how he _feels_. To criticise him for not having been more positive is to ask him to forget the reality of what hes feeling and replace it with something _youd_ prefer. Do we have the right to ask that of any poet? I prefer authenticity and honesty in my poets, not a recital of John Boy Waltons edifying philosophy. The fact that you write even as an atheist implies that it would be unusual for an atheist to celebrate life. Theres that assumption again.


 All your statements above are rediculous. Learn to read poetry. Not philosophical nonsense. Larkin is a poet, and I'm sure he's thinking like a poet. He's not a philosopher.





> Pretence is a vital quality in any religion.


I would agree that Larkin is stating this. But good art has many layers. You don't address why Larkin calls religion a brocade, and then he doubles up on it as adds the adjetive "musical" brocade. Why?

----------


## blp

It seems obvious that the phrase 'moth eaten musical brocade' is meant negatively. The sense of it as musical could be a way of referring to its non-rational mysticism, a pleasing rhythm that carries you along and overrides questions. It could be rather mocking.

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## The Unnamable

> All your statements above are rediculous. Learn to read poetry.


I will try harder, oh master.




> Larkin is a poet, and I'm sure he's thinking like a poet. He's not a philosopher.


Isnt that the point _I_ was making?  :Confused:  I'm not quite sure what "thinking like a poet" means here.

Could you explain any of this, please? _Why_ are all my comments ridiculous? I state that a poet is under no obligation to be positive (as you see it). Am I wrong? 



> You don't address why Larkin calls religion a brocade,


He didnt call it a brocade; he called it That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die,. It seems obvious to me that he is being negative (even in his use of the demonstrative adjective) but he is also being fair. Brocade is not at all common in recent usage; Larkin has chosen a rather old-fashioned word to describe an institution that belongs in the past. Its primary purpose is decorative. It looks and sounds nice. He presents religion in a way that is consistent with poems like _Church Going_ and his comment, "The Bible is a load of balls of course - but very beautiful." He can recognise its fading splendour but still dismisses it as offering nothing more than a delusion. He is no less dismissive of rationalism. There was once and might still be a grandeur about religion but the force of the comment comes from _Created_ and _pretend_. 'Created' does carry positive connotations but the blatant suggestion is that man, not God, has created religion. As for the music, its pretty much what blp suggests its the seductive organ swell of hymns, carrying us along on a tide of religious sentiment.

The title of one of his anthologies is _The Less Deceived_. Time and again, this idea crops up in his poetry. The truth in this poem might be terrifying but its one he faces squarely.

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## Scheherazade

This thread is for the discussion of poems chosen every week and if you have urging personal issues, feel free to deal with those through PMs. 


As for brocade... Brocade is a very heavy material and kind of stiff. I think what Larkin is refering to is the suffocating and unbending nature of religion (or of the religious?). Even though it might look nice from a distance (I don't think brocade even does that but...), it is not comfortable. 

Musical> Like a chorus maybe? The unison in which the supporters of a certain religion vocalize their judgements and opinions.

Moth-eaten> To show the 'holes' in the religious belief systems? They are damaged and far from perfect.

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## Virgil

[QUOTE=The Unnamable]


> Isnt that the point _I_ was making?  I'm not quite sure what "thinking like a poet" means here.


He's thinking like a poet in that he's adding layers of meaning. 





> Could you explain any of this, please? _Why_ are all my comments ridiculous? I state that a poet is under no obligation to be positive (as you see it). Am I wrong?


I never said he was being positive. In fact I said the opposite. What I said was that there is layer of remorse and wretchedness in his core that religion, if he so happened to believe, could have dispelled. But he can't believe because at his core he is completely rational. That feeling of wretchedness is never alleviated. That is not positive.




> He didnt call it a brocade; he called it That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die,. It seems obvious to me that he is being negative


OK, but 



> but he is also being fair.


Here is where you are reading this as a philosophic tract. What's fairness have to do with anything? He was specific in using the trerm "musical bracade." Not and vast-moth eaten rag, not some some broken down empty building of a church. He was specific in his unusual diction. That is significant.




> Brocade is not at all common in recent usage;


Of course.




> Larkin has chosen a rather old-fashioned word to describe an institution that belongs in the past. Its primary purpose is decorative. It looks and sounds nice. He presents religion in a way that is consistent with poems like _Church Going_ and his comment, "The Bible is a load of balls of course - but very beautiful." He can recognise its fading splendour but still dismisses it as offering nothing more than a delusion.


Ok, I don't dispute this. But pain and remorse is part of this poem. I don't know the other poems, but why bring up a subject if it's so meaningless. 




> He is no less dismissive of rationalism. There was once and might still be a grandeur about religion but the force of the comment comes from _Created_ and _pretend_. 'Created' does carry positive connotations but the blatant suggestion is that man, not God, has created religion. As for the music, its pretty much what blp suggests its the seductive organ swell of hymns, carrying us along on a tide of religious sentiment.


I don't disagree. But it is an elaborate image in poem sparsely filled with imagery.

----------


## Virgil

The crux of this disagreement is whether one sees an additional layer to Larkin's poem or one just sees the surface statements. The reading that Unnamable presents is for the most part a sub-set of my reading. I just see more. I have not read any other Larkin. I don't have a feel for his level of poetic skill. If this had been William Shakespeare, or T.S. Eliot, or Wallace Stevens, or William Butler Yeats, or William Blake there would be no doubt in my mind that the poet had added this layer of remorse within the undercurrent of the text. The fact that the entire tone is of wretchedness, initiated in the very first line of being drunk every night, the fact that he protests his remorse, the term "musical brocade" as discussed above, and even more, presents to me an additional layer of meaning. Normally you give the artist the benefit of the doubt and assume he intends these layers of meaning. When meanings can be added, readers attribute to the author. If Larkin really just wrote along the surface meaning, then this is a rather mundane piece. If so, then he may have even lost control of the tone. I don't feel that way. I see craft here.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Well, I was going to agree with Unnamable all the way on this point. I mean, Larkin only introduces the musical brocade image to poke holes in it after all. It doesn't seem as though he has any (even subconcious) feeling that religion is able to save him or anything of that sort. Having read the above post, however, I take your point about a poem having multiple layers. On a certain level what drives this poem is the doubts that he has about all sorts of things, the regrets that come unbidden to even the most decided minds, the contemplation of the "undiscovered country," or in this case the nothingness that awaits us. He considers the "conventional" ways of grappling with the question of death (including religion) and acknowledges the potential attraction of religion. It is important that he include such considerations if he is going to effectively make his point that none of them matter. I think what you are pointing to is something that creates the tension of the poem, the fact that Larkin is able to see the temptations of regrets and the attractions of religion even while he is insistently unable to take this view himself.

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## hastalavictoria

:Biggrin:  I remember having to read that in like middle or elementary school.
I love that poem.
One of my favorites.

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## tn2743

Hi Virgil,

I don't think this was the point that Unamable was disputing (in fact I am not too sure what it is). Because what you have just stated is, I feel, not disputable: every poem must have many layers of meaning. Maybe it is just a misunderstanding. You're right nonetheless. I think any piece of art is the subject of interpretation, and everyone is entitled to have a view and have that view respected. How can any of us know the exact answer?

----------


## The Unnamable

> He's thinking like a poet in that he's adding layers of meaning.


So a poet is similar to a cook, adding a dash of ambiguity here and a pinch of extra meaning there. The creative process is a bit like a recipe, complete with the relevant ingredients. Sorry, but this is not how I think poets work. I said earlier that,  perhaps this is an example of the art that conceals itself but I see Larkin in that poem as a man first and a poet later. Its the experienced man and not the experienced poet that I hear first and foremost. I stand by this. 



> I never said he was being positive. In fact I said the opposite. What I said was that there is layer of remorse and wretchedness in his core that religion, if he so happened to believe, could have dispelled.


Heres the bit that I was referring to: This could have been written as a celebration of a life lived, even as an atheist, but he doesn't. You seem to lament the fact that Larkin has NOT provided us with a celebration. You offer it almost as a lost opportunity. He is under no obligation to offer us anything. He gives us his thoughts and it would be ludicrous of me to complain that those views could have been more life affirming. 

Having taught Larkin a number of times at post-16 level, I have had to battle with students assumptions that Larkins views are those of a miserable pessimist with nothing of value to say. If thats how they want to see him, then thats their right. However, if their outlook depends on the assumption that poetry (or even Literature in general) has to provide us with a celebration of life, then I think their assumptions need to be challenged. Larkins right to his view is no less valid than any other authors right to his or hers.




> But he can't believe because at his core he is completely rational.


Even though, in the poem he makes it clear that rationalism is as flawed and limited as religion?You appear to have overlooked a layer of meaning.  :Biggrin:  

And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Were he rational to the core, he shouldnt be scared.





> That feeling of wretchedness is never alleviated. That is not positive.


No, I dont think it would be seen as positive. To me, there is nothing to be gained by applying a label either way here. The feeling of wretchedness is never alleviated because thats how he feels, not because he has somehow failed as a poet or an artist.




> Here is where you are reading this as a philosophic tract.


Not at all. This is where I see the poets choice of words as generating layers of meaning. Larkins attitude is not so cut and dried as to say simply that religion = bad. He registers some of its positive aspects in the language he uses. He is being faithful to his own perceptions. In his comment about the Bible quoted above, he simultaneously considers it a load of balls and beautiful. As Jack Kerouac said, Walking on water wasn't built in a day. 



> What's fairness have to do with anything? He was specific in using the trerm "musical bracade." Not and vast-moth eaten rag, not some some broken down empty building of a church. He was specific in his unusual diction. *That is significant*.


Of course it is. Im not arguing that it isnt. Im saying that Larkin is not interested in regrets, certainly not in the sense that he thinks things might have been different, if only hed been more life affirming or whatever. I agree with Petrarchs Love, when she says his point is that, terrible though such regrets might be, they don't really matter at all because nothing matters because all will be nothing in the end. Ultimately even terrible regrets look comforting next to the realization that we "shall be lost in always. Not to be here,/Not to be anywhere,/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true."

In _Dockery and Son_, Larkin compares himself with someone he knew who produced a son (the speaker is childless). He asks:

Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from?

This poem ends with the oft quoted:

Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.





> Ok, I don't dispute this. But pain and remorse is part of this poem. I don't know the other poems, but why bring up a subject if it's so meaningless.


This is where you are taking the poem as a piece of philosophical writing. The fact that something is meaningless (your word, not mine by the way) does not mean that someone shouldnt write about it. I thought Id made it perfectly clear why hed brought it up. 




> it is an elaborate image in poem *sparsely filled* with imagery.


  :Confused:  How does that work?

----------


## The Unnamable

> The crux of this disagreement is whether one sees an additional layer to Larkin's poem or one just sees the surface statements.


I love the way you unselfconsciously make the most outrageous statements as if they are the humblest of facts.  :Biggrin:  That statement is both arrogant and misinformed. 

For me the crux of the disagreement resides in your comments above, which feed directly into your perception of what Larkin is doing.

You say:

There are three things Larkin brings up that he dispells, *unconvincingly to me*: remorse, wretchedness, religion. As to religion, if he doesn't feel something towards it, why bring it up? *The tone of the poem suggests to me that it could have changed his life*, but he's too rational in this modern age to accept it.

And you later add:

This could have been written as a celebration of a life lived.

You have entirely missed the point of the poem.




> The reading that Unnamable presents is for the most part a sub-set of my reading. *I just see more*.


Thats the benefit of having a superior intellect, I suppose.  :FRlol:  




> I have not read any other Larkin.


I have. You _see_ more; I _read_ more.  :FRlol:  




> I don't have a feel for his level of poetic skill. If this had been William Shakespeare, or T.S. Eliot, or Wallace Stevens, or William Butler Yeats, or William Blake there would be no doubt in my mind that the poet had added this layer of remorse.


Even if he feels remorse, its dismissed and counts for nothing when faced with the absolute and undeniable reality of death. That is the thrust of the poem  to try to dilute its potency by insisting that this bleakness could have somehow been avoided is to emasculate it. What you are doing here is tactically unfair. You are implying that my reading of the poem depends upon ignoring layers of meaning. It doesnt. It depends on being sensitive to the significance of those layers. Yes, Larkin thinks about the time / Torn off, unused but this is not what terrifies him. Had he focused on it, it might even have helped him to stop seeing "what's really always there:"

Your argument is rather like saying that the best thing about _Hamlet_ is the character of Osric and anyone failing to see that is dealing only in surfaces. Shakespeare must have considered Osric important or he wouldnt have brought him up, right? Perhaps the point is that Hamlet should have been more like Osric? All I can say is, thank God he wasnt. 





> The fact that the entire tone is of wretchedness, initiated in the very first line of being drunk every night, the fact that he protests his remorse, the term "musical brocade" as discussed above, and even more, presents to me an additional layer of meaning.


I have no idea how you acquired the belief that I was saying poems _dont_ have layers of meaning. My disagreement is over the _hierarchy_ of those layers. More than anything else, this is a poem about facing the certainty of extinction.




> Normally you give the artist the benefit of the doubt and assume he intends these layers of meaning. When meanings can be added, readers attribute to the author. If Larkin really just wrote along the surface meaning, then this is a rather mundane piece. If so, then he may have even lost control of the tone. I don't feel that way. *I see craft here*.


And I, of course, was saying there is _no_ craft, especially when I said that it might be an example of the art that conceals itself, which is the craftiest craft of all.

PS Larkin's dying words were, "I am going to the inevitable."

----------


## The Unnamable

> I think what you are pointing to is something that creates the tension of the poem, the fact that Larkin is able to see the temptations of regrets and the attractions of religion even while he is insistently unable to take this view himself.


I think the tension in the poem comes more from our unwillingness to accept Larkins bleak outlook while at the same time registering that he doesnt allow us to see it any other way. I note your use of insistently.




> Well, I was going to agree with Unnamable all the way on this point.


My ambition is to get you to go all the way with me.  :Biggrin:  




> I mean, Larkin only introduces the musical brocade image to poke holes in it after all. It doesn't seem as though he has any (even subconcious) feeling that religion is able to save him or anything of that sort. Having read the above post, however, I take your point about a poem having multiple layers.


Whod have thought a poem had layers of meaning?  :FRlol:  





> On a certain level


Is this your get-out clause?  :Biggrin:  




> what drives this poem is the doubts that he has about all sorts of things, the regrets that come unbidden to even the most decided minds, the contemplation of the "undiscovered country," or in this case the nothingness that awaits us.


I disagree. What drives the poem is not doubt but certainty  The *sure* extinction that we travel to / And *shall* be lost in always. Why did he include sure and why did he use shall when he might have used will? You could argue that even by mentioning sure and using shall, he is forcing the issue and has to do so because he favours certainty over doubt. If the emphasis were placed here, much of the power of the poem would be lost for me and, I believe, for most who love Larkin. Here we see a man utterly devoid of any comforting beliefs, managing his relationship with approaching extinction. In _The Old Fools_ he writes about being old and ends with:

crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

We shall indeed.

----------


## blp

> Monday, time for a new poem:
> 
> *Between Going And Staying*
> Octavio Paz
> 
> Between going and staying the day wavers,
> in love with its own transparency.
> 
> The circular afternoon is now a bay
> ...


Just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, here's _this_ week's poem again. I guess maybe we could hold over the discussion until next week and hope the musical brocade question's neatly tied up with a bow by then.

----------


## Riesa

Thanks blp,  :Biggrin:  I was thinking that next month I would try again with one that might actually get talked about.. :Wink:

----------


## Scheherazade

Can I humbly interject here and remind the discussion which took place a while back  :Biggrin:  :

People do interpret literary works differently and as long as these interpretations are supported by textual 'proof', they are all valid, in my opinion. I know that this argument of mine has taken a lot of bashing from all corners of the world. However, if one takes the time to read this whole thread from the start, it will be apparent that we all have different views on these poems and it only adds to their richness to have these interpretations and meanings. And Larkin's poem is no different. Virgil looks at it from one angle (which is supported by his own cultural background and personal beliefs) and The Unnamable from another (ditto). I think it is beautiful to have these variations and, to me, neither is right or wrong (I _might_ tend to agree with one more than the other, again based on my personal experiences); they are simply different.

----------


## Virgil

> ?


Good God. Did I hit a nerve or what? So sorry. I didn't realize your sensibilities were so delicate. Nor how emotionally attached you are to this poem. How old did you say you were? A little disagreement and your feathers get all bent out of shape? Well, let us just say we agree to disagree.

----------


## ktd222

I Would Like To Post Next Weeks Poem.

----------


## blp

> I Would Like To Post Next Weeks Poem.


Do you think you can wait until the week after next, ktd222? As I said above, I really think it would be good and only fair to give the one Riesa posted a proper airing. Aside from everything else, I really like it.

----------


## ktd222

I don't know if I can. I've got a doozy. But I'll only post if their is no opposition. Can you repost the poem Blp? Are we in agreement Riesas post is what were discussing next?

----------


## tn2743

"Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood."

Could this be a headache? When I have a headache I feel the pulse on my temples clearly, like a clock ticking. Am I way off target?

----------


## Riesa

Like I said before, I'll try again next month, no big deal, by all means, post away ktd222.

----------


## ktd222

Now I'm feeling guilty. Forget what I said, your post before mine is just fine.

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## Riesa

oh, come now. first everyone is yelling at each other, and now everyone is all kissy-kissy.

Whatever happened to the poetry?  :FRlol:

----------


## ktd222

Hey! I wasn't the One yelling before! Maybe later!

----------


## Riesa

that's true, that's why you deserve the chance to post your doozy.

----------


## ktd222

I don't have to wait until Monday? I'm afraid of The Law(Scheherazade).

----------


## Riesa

Well, that's probably not a bad idea.  :Eek:  plus, maybe there are a few around here that haven't _quite_ finished what they want to say.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

So are we discussing the Paz? I'll assume so for the moment (if ktd goes ahead and posts the "doozy" while I'm writing this, then I guess we can go ahead and discuss that). It's really a beautiful little gem of a poem, and I'm interested in the fact that it's the first poem I've seen on this thread that is a translation. This brings up some very interesting questions about what the status of a translation of a poem is. The images of the poet are the same, but the sound of the poetry is obviously altered in its move to another language (is anyone here really good with Spanish and would like to comment on the differences--I can get a sense, but I don't really know the language well). I personally enjoyed the translation of this poem very much, but I wonder how much of my pleasure in the poem is attributable to the ideas the original poet contributed to it, and how much of my reaction to the poem is a result of the way the translator has worded the poem in English. In a way I suppose a translator is a bit of a poet in his own right. I think it would be phenomenally hard to translate poetry well. Here's the poem again in both languages for those who forget easily:

Between Going And Staying
Octavio Paz

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Entre irse y quedarse

Entre irse y quedarse duda el día,
enamorado de su transparencia.
La tarde circular es ya bahía:
en su quieto vaivén se mece el mundo.
Todo es visible y todo es elusivo,
todo está cerca y todo es intocable.
Los papeles, el libro, el vaso, el lápiz
reposan a la sombra de sus nombres.
Latir del tiempo que en mi sien repite
la misma terca sílaba de sangre.
La luz hace del muro indiferente
un espectral teatro de reflejos.
En el centro de un ojo me descubro;
no me mira, me miro en su mirada.
Se disipa el instante. Sin moverme,
yo me quedo y me voy: soy una pausa.

----------


## Virgil

> So are we discussing the Paz? I'll assume so for the moment (if ktd goes ahead and posts the "doozy" while I'm writing this, then I guess we can go ahead and discuss that). It's really a beautiful little gem of a poem, and I'm interested in the fact that it's the first poem I've seen on this thread that is a translation. This brings up some very interesting questions about what the status of a translation of a poem is. The images of the poet are the same, but the sound of the poetry is obviously altered in its move to another language (is anyone here really good with Spanish and would like to comment on the differences--I can get a sense, but I don't really know the language well). I personally enjoyed the translation of this poem very much, but I wonder how much of my pleasure in the poem is attributable to the ideas the original poet contributed to it, and how much of my reaction to the poem is a result of the way the translator has worded the poem in English. In a way I suppose a translator is a bit of a poet in his own right. I think it would be phenomenally hard to translate poetry well. Here's the poem again in both languages for those who forget easily:


One question on translation, Petrarch. Would certain cultural resonances, sort of what we argued over above, be lost in translation? I should say, could. How does a translator handle that?

I was actually ready to dive into riesa's selection, but I've had such a hard day at work today, I've just been too tired this evening. Although I can't say I understand it, I have jotted down some thoughts. I don't wish to ignore it or pass it by.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> "Time throbbing in my temples repeats
> the same unchanging syllable of blood."
> 
> Could this be a headache? When I have a headache I feel the pulse on my temples clearly, like a clock ticking. Am I way off target?


That's an interesting suggestion. It's true that your pulse throbs when you have a headache. It alters the way I had been perceiving the mood of the poem to think of the writer as having a headache. I had been thinking of it as one of those exceedingly still and tranquil moments when everything is so silent that you're intensely aware of the beat of your own pulse, and you feel you can almost hear your heartbeat. 

By the way, for the spanish speakers out there, I was wondering if "sien" actually means "temple" or if the translator is taking liberties? Similar words in French, "sein" and Italian "seno" mean chest or breast, so I was wondering if he was actually referring to a heartbeat.

----------


## ktd222

> I personally enjoyed the translation of this poem very much, but I wonder how much of my pleasure in the poem is attributable to the ideas the original poet contributed to it, and how much of my reaction to the poem is a result of the way the translator has worded the poem in English.


Thats true, Petrach. Translations, for some reason, always brings me back to Rainer Rilke and the poem 'The Panther.' If you read the translations by Stephen Mitchell and Edward Snow--the two translations are comparatively different from each other on word choices and syntax; and that does, to the reader, give each translation a different 'sense.' So I would guess a large part of how we would react to a translated poem is dependent on the translation. How true to the original is this translation--whose to know?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> One question on translation, Petrarch. Would certain cultural resonances, sort of what we argued over above, be lost in translation? I should say, could. How does a translator handle that?


Certainly, as you say, cultural resonances are often lost in translation. Every language has words with a variety of meanings and feelings attached to them that no dictionary can adequately explain, and which have no real correspondence in another language. That is, after all why we use certain foreign expressions even when speaking English, because there's just no other way to express that je ne sais quoi.  :Wink:  And as we've just seen, it's sometimes hard enough to reconcile different cultural/individual perceptions of words within one's native language. I think (after dealing with the change in actual musical sound of the language) it must be one of the hardest jobs of the translator to keep all the connotions of those words alive in a foreign tongue, especially when poets have often chosen that word with extreeme care to convey a particular meaning. 

I suppose there are different attempts to deal with this. Some end up just giving a literal translation and losing the prior feeling of the word. Some translators try to find the closest colloquial equivilent to the word in their own language. Some end up transplanting the poem into their own culture by ignoring the original cultural context, but trying to find the thing that feels most similar in their culture. Of course there are certain words that people generally just don't even try to translate (my favorite of these is "sprezzatura" from the Italian renaissance--it's impossible to define but it basically means you do everything well seemingly effortlessly and applies to the "Renaissance man"--like Leonardo).

----------


## Virgil

> (my favorite of these is "sprezzatura" from the Italian renaissance--it's impossible to define but it basically means you do everything well seemingly effortlessly and applies to the "Renaissance man"--like Leonardo).


I love that word too. I wish I could find more times to use it. I would love to stick it in a technical report one day and watch some of the reactons.  :Biggrin:  You've probably never read technical reports, but it just wouldn't go.  :FRlol:

----------


## Riesa

Notes from the translator, Eliot Weinberger: "twenty years ago, my own collaboration with Paz began....that poet, publisher, and translator have continued to work together all these years is the result of a strange calmness-however full of debate-that has marked what are often rancorous relationships." Which leads me to believe that he might actually have Paz' approval on his translations.
Some background on Paz:

He spent time in New York and San Francisco, taught at Cambirge, University of Texas, and Harvard.
He started publishing poetry at seventeen, was friends with Andre Breton, participated in Surrealist activities, published an anthology of Mexican poetry, (the English version was translated by Samuel Beckett) and was the Mexican Ambassador to India, which led him to immerse himself in Indian art and philosophy.
"Poetry makes things more transparent and clearer and teaches us to respect men and nature," Paz says.

more about Paz

----------


## blp

First Wallace Stevens turns out to have been not just an insurance man, but the company head, now we find that Paz was the Mexican Ambassador to India. For some reason, I love this. I suppose its the assault on the unworldly romantic poet stereotype.




> Between Going And Staying
> Octavio Paz
> 
> Between going and staying the day wavers,
> in love with its own transparency.


This seems to be about twilight. The first line repeats the title and makes it clear it refers to dusk - as a sort of undecidable between day and night. The rest of the poem is a description or elucidation of this. 




> The circular afternoon is now a bay


A circle becoming a semi-circle? And if so, why or how? 



> where the world in stillness rocks.


Apparently paradoxical. Still, stillness could refer to perpetuity. Also to the constantly circling earth on which the poet, seemingly impossibly, is experiencing a moment of stillness. 




> All is visible and all elusive,
> all is near and can't be touched.


As an aside, this reminds me a lot of Villon: 

'In my own country I am in a far off land...

...when I lie down I have a great fear of falling'

But it's not the same; there isn't the same existential unease. This is, I think, the beginning of Paz describing the sort of hallucinatory quality that twilight gives the world - hallucinatory not in the sense of distorting or adding anything, but making one intensely aware of the inherent strangeness of observable phenomena. The light is softer, observation is easier and, at the end of the day, we become less active and prepare for rest. Things fill out their identities and we have a chance to contemplate them. They become both more 'visible' and, in being seen as objects of contemplation rather than utility, more 'elusive' to the understanding. 'Can't be touched'? I'm skeptical. I think he doesn't want to touch them because it's more pleasurable just to look at them, these objects he has been using throughout the day: 



> Paper, book, pencil, glass,


And they



> rest in the shade of their names.


A lovely line, but I'm not sure I understand it. Perhaps it's that the names give a stability to matter that would otherwise be unstable. ? Dunno. 




> Time throbbing in my temples repeats
> the same unchanging syllable of blood.


Doesn't sound like a headache to me. Again, I think it's about being at rest. Sitting quietly at the end of the day, one notices tiny motions such as one's own pulse in certain parts of the body. 'Syllable of blood' - a beat, something that might almost have a sound, the length of one syllable. 




> The light turns the indifferent wall
> into a ghostly theater of reflections.


Again, twilight, the low sun milkily reflected on the wall. 




> I find myself in the middle of an eye,
> watching myself in its blank stare.


Both in the eye and watching oneself from it - he's maybe the reflection of himself in the retina, watching himself in a moment of reflection. Or he looks into an eye and sees finds himself there - reflected. Or the eye is actually the window of his room. 




> The moment scatters. Motionless,
> I stay and go: I am a pause.


The moment scatters - perhaps night falls, taking away the clarity of twilight, even taking away the names of the things in that they become no longer visible. The poet is 'Motionless', but stays and goes - probably because he also disappears in the dark. He is a pause - he identifies himself with the still moment he's been describing, in which he has had an intense sense of the world and himself in it. It's a poet's moment, a moment of both clarity and strangeness and he is a poet. When the moment is gone, so is he. The moment, the pause, is him.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> This seems to be about twilight. The first line repeats the title and makes it clear it refers to dusk - as a sort of undecidable between day and night.


blp--I agree, I definately picture the poem at that sunset/twilight time. Especially the description of "all visible and elusive" conjures up that sort of lighting. I picture him overlooking the ocean for some reason (maybe the use of the word "bay" in the third line gave me that image, or maybe that's just the place where I've most often had similar moments). 





> Quote:
> Originally Posted by Paz
> The circular afternoon is now a bay
> 
> A circle becoming a semi-circle? And if so, why or how?


I thought this was another reference to the time of day. Again, I'm picturing the ocean (though it works anywhere, it's just easiest for me to envision clearly on the water). If you picture that you're in the middle of the ocean, or any other flat place where you can see the horizon easily, at noon or early afternoon the sun is going to be shinning all around and the horizon will be bright around you in a circle. Toward sunset and twilight, the sun has descended to one point in the west, and is only really illuminating a portion of the horizon in a semi-circle or bay shape. That's what I think the line refers to anyway. Could be wrong. 




> Originally Posted by Paz
> where the world in stillness rocks.
> 
> Apparently paradoxical. Still, stillness could refer to perpetuity. Also to the constantly circling earth on which the poet, seemingly impossibly, is experiencing a moment of stillness.


Stillness can also refer to silence, and I think that is the primary meaning here, especially since the Spanish reads "quieto" which I'll assume is akin to the English quiet. Still (hey, yet another way to use this word!), the meaning of "stillness" as something not moving works very nicely in the context of a poem that ends "soy una pausa," as does your gloss of stillness as "perpetuity." I wonder if the Spanish "quieto" has both connotations of non movement and non sound just as the English "still" does? 





> Notes from the translator, Eliot Weinberger: "twenty years ago, my own collaboration with Paz began....that poet, publisher, and translator have continued to work together all these years is the result of a strange calmness-however full of debate-that has marked what are often rancorous relationships." Which leads me to believe that he might actually have Paz' approval on his translations.


Riesa--Thanks for the background material. It's interesting that the translator had such a close collaboration with the poet. I think it shows in this being a remarkably good translation (at least in my opinion). I wonder though, why Paz himself wouldn't have done the translations. His English must have been pretty good if he taught at Cambridge, Harvard and U of T. I suppose it takes a real facility in both languages--knowledge of cultural resonances of language etc.--to be an effective translator, and maybe he didn't feel he had that?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> I love that word too. I wish I could find more times to use it. I would love to stick it in a technical report one day and watch some of the reactons. You've probably never read technical reports, but it just wouldn't go.


Oh, you should just slip it in casually in the middle of one of your reports and then when they ask about it just act suprised that they don't recognize this obvious and simple technical term.  :Biggrin:  You could say something like "What, I thought everyone knew about the sprezzatura principle of engineering! It's pretty fundamental isn't it?" and they'll be too embarassed thinking they should know all about it to ask you to elaborate. I'm sure it could be carried off with the right amount of sprezzatura.  :Wink:  I had a friend once who used to do this all the time with very impressive sounding words she made up. She was very disappointed to run into me, because I regularly make lists of unfamiliar words I run into and look them up in the OED every day, so I caught her at it early on.  :FRlol:

----------


## blp

> blp--I agree, I definately picture the poem at that sunset/twilight time. Especially the description of "all visible and elusive" conjures up that sort of lighting. I picture him overlooking the ocean for some reason (maybe the use of the word "bay" in the third line gave me that image, or maybe that's just the place where I've most often had similar moments).


I picture it the same way and I do think it's the 'bay' reference, but it's a funny effect since that seems to be a metaphor.

----------


## ktd222

I think this poem is all about how light, at different angles, changes how we perceive an object--even to the point of attatching emotions to that object. The light-play off an object may make it feel lovely from one point, and make the object seem repulsive from another. But this is us: We infuse the objects with emotions; otherwise the objects would just be objects--inanimate objects at that. And I think the 'I' in the poem sees that:

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

You can imagine the I looking at the shadow of the I's eye. A blank stare returned from the I's shadow. No emotions invested in the shadow's eye. 

The world that we 'see' using our sense of vision is emotionless.


The last stanza of this poem is the only stanza with two sentences. This is weird to me, because I don't know which of the 'I' is 'I stay and go' and which is 'I am a pause.' Which I is the real person and which I is the I's shadow? 

I also get a weird sense after reading the last stanza and comparing it to the first stanza:

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.

Does this mean only 'the day' can love objects because 'the day' controls how an object looks by aiming light at certain angles off the object? Funny use of syntax: 'the day'--makes the day sound like an object. Is the writer getting at this: only an inanimate object can love an inanimate object?

What do ya'll think?

----------


## Virgil

> I think this poem is all about how light, at different angles, changes how we perceive an object--even to the point of attatching emotions to that object.





> It's a poet's moment, a moment of both clarity and strangeness and he is a poet.


I think both of these statements kind of get at the theme of this inscrutable poem. It seems to be about a moment caught in the mind and where the mind twists and shapes what it senses.

One other motif that I see that has not been already mentioned is that of narcissism: the day wavers,/in love with its own transparency and then later is echoed with watching myself in its blank stare.

Of the eight couplets there is only one that is not wound around in an elaborate metaphor: All is visible and all elusive,/all is near and cant be touched. That is the only flat, sentence in the whole poem. Is that the theme then, being that it boldly stands out? And from whos perspective is that from? I assume the narrator, but the opening lines start from the perspective of the personified day.

The other seven couplets are wrapped in metaphysical conceits, similar if not even more elaborate than the 17th century metaphysical poets. Lets unpack a couple of these. The first couplet: The day between going and staying, I can envision this as the twilight time where the afternoon seems to hang fire. And then he doubles up on it with the day wavers. But then how is the day transparent and how can it love its own transparency? 

The circular afternoon is now a bay/where the world in stillness rocks. How can the afternoon be circular? All time in reality is linear except through a minds perception. (Except perhaps in quantum physics, but I dont think thats relevant here.) And then the afternoon (an abstract notion) is morphed into a bay (a tangible thing). And how can the world a large entity rock in the bay, an entity that is a subset to that larger entity. So the afternoon is a bay from which the world rocks?

The other couplets are not quite as elaborate, though elaborate enough. So is this poem about the mind reshaping the outside world through its power of imagination? Perhaps. Is this poem about the power of the mind to impose its will on the self? Some how all these themes presented by all of us seem to be relevant, but I'm not sure if any of us are actually articulating what Paz is after.

The last couplet is also quite interesting. The moment scatters. Motionless,/I stay and go: I am a pause. Blp has already mentioned how he, the narrator, has become the pause. It also echoes the first line, only inverted. Between going and staying has become I stay and go. Go-stay is now stay-go. And its shifted from the perspective of the day to the perspective of the narrator.

Entertain this notion, if you will. Wallace Stevens in The Snowman starts from the mind of the narrator and ends in the mind of the snowman. Paz starts this poem from the mind of the day and ends in the mind of the narrator. Sort of the opposite of Stevens. A relationship perhaps? Probably not, but interesting to note. The two poets do seem similar in style.

I kind of enjoyed this poem more so now after I've unpacked.

----------


## ktd222

> The moment scatters. Motionless,/I stay and go: I am a pause. Blp has already mentioned how he, the narrator, has become the pause.


Virgil,

How would you interpret these two lines:

1) I am the pause.
2) I am a pause.

----------


## ktd222

> So is this poem about the mind reshaping the outside world through its power of imagination? Perhaps. Is this poem about the power of the mind to impose its will on the self? Some how all these themes presented by all of us seem to be relevant, but I'm not sure if any of us are actually articulating what Paz is after.


Who really can mirror the thoughts of anybody other than themselves. You guys want to tackle this poem line by line?

----------


## chmpman

"Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks."

With the "circular afternoon is now a bay" line I think Paz is setting a tone of seeing an eventual absence and end to the "day". A "circular" afternoon would be infinite, but a "bay" has a definite opening to another larger body. These lines make me feel the poem could be about the span of one's life.


"All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood."

I find the contrast between the tangible nouns present in the first couplet here, compared to the intangiblity of time interesting. Time seems to have a greater affinity with the narrator than the objects that are seen around him. He seems to take pleasure in what cannot be felt within this poem.

"The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections."

Here again the tangible "wall" is referred to as "indifferent", creating a distinction between the narrator and the external world.

"I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare."

This couplet just confuses me.

"The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause."

Here the "moment" of reflection into those intangible mysteries, as the twilight dissipates and everything is no longer in the romantic light of the sunset, disappears as the final rays of the sun "scatter". He is no longer drenched in that intangible light and everything appears as it is, without illumination.

As to the thems, I see a celebration of what cannot be felt and what is left to the imagination.

Great poem by the way, but I'm sure I'm totally off base.

----------


## blp

> Virgil,
> 
> How would you interpret these two lines:
> 
> 1) I am the pause.
> 2) I am a pause.


I know you asked Virgil this question, but I'll have a go. 

I think Paz is identifying himself with _the_ pause he's described throughout the poem and, in doing so, sees himself as, generally, _a_ pause.

----------


## chmpman

I think the pause is something he creates for himself through his imagination. With his human faculties he is able to view the world from the standpoint of "a pause" in a world that doesn't really support the existence of a true lack of motion.

----------


## ktd222

> I think Paz is identifying himself with the pause he's described throughout the poem and, in doing so, sees himself as, generally, a pause


So by Paz stating the 'I' in the poem as being a pause, does that identify the 'I' as being part of 'the pause' he is describing thoughout the poem?

If so, what happens to the poems meaning then?

Is the the description of the 'I' as ' I am a pause' make the 'I' less signifcant(meaning, part of something larger) to 'the pause?'

----------


## Virgil

> So by Paz stating the 'I' in the poem as being a pause, does that identify the 'I' as being part of 'the pause' he is describing thoughout the poem?
> 
> If so, what happens to the poems meaning then?
> 
> Is the the description of the 'I' as ' I am a pause' make the 'I' less signifcant(meaning, part of something larger) to 'the pause?'


My first reacton was along the lines of blp's statement. But now you got me thinking. There could be a difference. But I can't guess at the significance.

----------


## Scheherazade

Poem for the new week:

THE WILL by John Donne 

BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, 
Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath 
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ; 
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
To women, or the sea, my tears ;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.

My constancy I to the planets give ;
My truth to them who at the court do live ;
My ingenuity and openness,
To Jesuits ; to buffoons my pensiveness ;
My silence to any, who abroad hath been ;
My money to a Capuchin :
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics ;
All my good works unto the Schismatics
Of Amsterdam ; my best civility
And courtship to an University ;
My modesty I give to soldiers bare ;
My patience let gamesters share :
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those
Which were my friends ; mine industry to foes ;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness ;
My sickness to physicians, or excess ;
To nature all that I in rhyme have writ ; 
And to my company my wit :
Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her, who begot this love in me before,
Taught'st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but restore.

To him for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
I give my physic books ; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give ;
My brazen medals unto them which live
In want of bread ; to them which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue :
Though, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth ;
And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave :
Thou, Love, taught'st me by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,
To invent, and practise this one way, to annihilate all three.

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## tn2743

My word! It's long! Better get cracking.

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## Grumbleguts

A very entertaining poem. I found myself, after the first couple of verses, trying to guess what the reason for giving was in each one. He was a clever old boy.

And it's not long enough in my opinion. I couldn't stop reading it once started.

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## Scheherazade

I like the few Donne poems I have read. I find the way he puts his ideas through very entertaining. He is very creative and witty, which, I believe, makes this poem fun to read even though it is somewhat long.

I have not 'studied' this poem (only discovered it last year on this Forum) so I thought it would be nice to go through it paying particular attention to all the references like Argus, which is a giant with 100 eyes in mythology and he leaves his eyes to him!  :Biggrin:

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## rachel

> Oh, you should just slip it in casually in the middle of one of your reports and then when they ask about it just act suprised that they don't recognize this obvious and simple technical term.  You could say something like "What, I thought everyone knew about the sprezzatura principle of engineering! It's pretty fundamental isn't it?" and they'll be too embarassed thinking they should know all about it to ask you to elaborate. I'm sure it could be carried off with the right amount of sprezzatura.  I had a friend once who used to do this all the time with very impressive sounding words she made up. She was very disappointed to run into me, because I regularly make lists of unfamiliar words I run into and look them up in the OED every day, so I caught her at it early on.


let me say that merely reading your and blp's thoughts and word pictures about these poems is often to me more beautiful and enriching than the poem itself. So I concede that it is very important for there to be at least someone who takes a work apart and critiques it so that the essences and richness can be appreciated by those who having no time and opportunity can partake of a feast. thank you

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## Petrarch's Love

:FRlol:  Good old JD. Thanks for posting the poem Sher. I'm busy analysing another Donne poem in a paper just now, so I'm going to hold off any analysis of this one until after Tuesday when I turn that in so I don't get hopelessly confused  :Confused: . For now I'd just like to say that it's a very clever little poem and it gave me a nice laugh this morning. 



> let me say that merely reading your and blp's thoughts and word pictures about these poems is often to me more beautiful and enriching than the poem itself. So I concede that it is very important for there to be at least someone who takes a work apart and critiques it so that the essences and richness can be appreciated by those who having no time and opportunity can partake of a feast. thank you


Rachel--  :Blush:  Glad analysis can be worthwhile from time to time. We'd love to hear more of your opinions on the poems here if you ever find the time.

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## ktd222

I couldn't take in the whole poem at once so I'll note the first stanza.

_BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, 
Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath 
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ; 
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
To women, or the sea, my tears ;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as had too much before._

1) 3 entities exists: I, Love, and the her

2) _some legacies_...huh? Maybe the I is deciding what part of the I that Love will inherit--which doesn't seem to be much.

3) Love has taught the I love through making(a sort of force) the I to serve the her(unconditionally?), _who had twenty more_  of what? Twenty more demands in addition to the I as a servant? And ending the stanza with _but such as had too much before_ brings up the question of before what? Probably a reference to the I as a servant to the her is already too much of the I that is being given in the name of learning love. Is the I questioning Love's method of love?

4) The only part of the I that Love inherits here is the I's eyes, but only if the I's eyes are blind. LOL at the reference that Love is inheriting blind eyes. This gives Love the opportunity to experience what Love has taught the I: love being unconditional when 'the her' need is involved. But what about the I's needs? Is a relationship being set up where the I has very little importance? Can love, defined in this way, keep together a relationship?

Nothing is being given to Love in this first stanza except a perspective for Love, to itself, experience. This experience being Love's own teachings.

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## The Unnamable

I dont think its as complicated as that. The legacies here are those things he bequeaths. The recipients have no use for any of the things he leaves to them. They already have more than enough. The woman has already had twenty lovers to serve her. Isn't Donne being a bit cheeky or perhaps tongue-in-cheeky?

----------


## blp

I enjoy it more as philosophy - or even economics - than poetry, though you might say it works philosophically as only a poem can. It's wonderfully slippery - or it revels in the slipperiness of the ideas it's talking about, mostly love and giving. 




> The recipients have no use for any of the things he leaves to them. They already have more than enough.


Presumably, you're only talking about the first stanza. The very next is all about giving to people who don't have enough. (It's like some several centuries prescient dialectic between free market monetarism and socialism!) The tone is cheeky, at least at first, but the different contexts in which he places his themes make it seem like more than mischief. It gets quite tricky. I'll try to find time to comment more later.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Presumably, you're only talking about the first stanza. The very next is all about giving to people who don't have enough.


Yes  I was responding to *ktd222*s comments, which were about just the first stanza. As for the next stanza, I dont think that the point is that they dont have enough but that the recipients this time cannot accept his offerings  he is continuing his dig at the woman:

Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

There is no point in giving truth to those that live at court  their whole existence is based in deceit. Similarly, there is little point in giving pensiveness to buffoons.

The last three lines of each stanza explain the significance of his bequests.

----------


## The Unnamable

Isnt this simply an averagely witty (by Donnes standards) attack on both the woman and Love with a few other targets thrown in to make his mates laugh? The last stanza is very bitter.

----------


## Scheherazade

> 2) _some legacies_...huh? Maybe the I is deciding what part of the I that Love will inherit--which doesn't seem to be much.


I don't think the poem aims to 'honour' the 'Love' with all these legacies but more to criticise her for her shortcomings. So there is no surprise that she doesn't get much from him.


> 3) _who had twenty more_  of what?


 20 other lovers. The lady has already other lovers but insists that he should be his lover too hence teaching him not to give anyone but those who already have more than enough. 'Before'>Before he has given them those things.



> 4) The only part of the I that Love inherits here is the I's eyes, but only if the I's eyes are blind.


Since in this stanza he is leaving things only to those who has already has more than enough, leaving his love 'blind eyes' means she is also blind, ie, to his love. She already has more than enough lovers and does not appreciate his love.

Even though the poem seems like a bitter piece addressed to his lover, I think it also does a very good job of giving away Donne's view of many others, especially in the later stanzas and there is more to this poem than laments of a neglected lover.

----------


## ktd222

Unnamable,

Why don't you give my comments more thought and then respond properly. The things I noted do exist in the poem. You went on a long rampage about that Larkin poem, I'm sure there is more than you are noting here.

----------


## ktd222

> 20 other lovers.


Where does the word lover appear?




> I don't think the poem aims to 'honour' the 'Love' with all these legacies


I never said this. Get your facts straight.

----------


## The Unnamable

*Petrarch*, you seem to have access to resources the rest of us can only dream of. Is the semi-colon in line 6 of the first stanza correct? All the online versions Ive looked at have a semi-colon. Can you (or anyone else) tell me why it isnt a colon? Each subsequent stanza has a colon at the end of the corresponding line and that makes more sense to me. 




> I enjoy it more as philosophy - or even economics - than poetry, though you might say it works philosophically as only a poem can. It's wonderfully slippery - or it revels in the slipperiness of the ideas it's talking about, mostly love and giving.
> 
> (It's like some several centuries prescient dialectic between free market monetarism and socialism!)


Could you explain what you mean here? 




> Unnamable,
> Why don't you give my comments more thought and then respond properly.


I gave them thought. Perhaps _you_ should? What do you mean by properly? To be honest, I didnt really understand a lot of what you said. There, Ive set you up nicely for a damning retort.  :FRlol: 




> The things I noted do exist in the poem.


I was only responding to the first stanza, which is what _you_ discussed. My follow up comments were in response to what *blp* wrote.




> I'm sure there is more than you are noting here.


The best way to persuade everyone would be to demonstrate this, preferably with clarity.

And Scheherazade is right  he means 20 other lovers (or 20 others who have served her, to be precise)  its clearly implied.

Its nice to see aggression similar to that for which I have a reputation. Its not so nice to see it when the same level of informed observation doesnt support it. Nevertheless, Mr. Bennet is always ready to encourage Mr. Collins.  :FRlol: 




> Even though the poem seems like a bitter piece addressed to his lover, I think it also does a very good job of giving away Donne's view of many others, especially in the later stanzas and there is more to this poem than laments of a neglected lover.


_Many others_?  :Confused:  
And yes, there is more to the poem than the laments of a neglected lover. There is wit, erudition, playfulness and so on. But I still believe he is bitter. In the final stanza he says he will die and thus put an end to himself, Love and the woman. Ill say the same to you as I did to *ktd222*; the best way to persuade would be to show. 

As for the blind bit  isnt it primarily simply a reference to blind cupid and the idea that love is blind?

rampage  that did make me laugh.

----------


## Whifflingpin

Scher: "Since in this stanza he is leaving things only to those who has already has more than enough, leaving his love 'blind eyes' means she is also blind, ie, to his love. "

I think that "Love" is Eros, the god of love, who is blind.
"her" is the disdainful beloved one.

Eros (Love) is causing Donne (I) to love "her."

.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Isnt this simply an averagely witty (by Donnes standards) attack on both the woman and Love with a few other targets thrown in to make his mates laugh? The last stanza is very bitter.


Spot on Unnamable, that's exactly how I read it. I enjoy reading the analyses of poetry here (and add a bit from time to time if I feel able) but I really think that a lot of you have gone over the top here, trying to dig out gold from a mountain when it's lying in plain sight in front of you all the time. Some poems really _are_ as simple as they appear. This is one of them, IMHO.  :Nod:

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## Whifflingpin

Xamonas: "Some poems really are as simple as they appear." 
I agree with you, at least in respect of the first five stanzas, but I think I've lost the plot in the last.

Unnamable: "In the final stanza he says he will die and thus put an end to himself, Love and the woman."

He does say that, but in what sense can he mean it? 
She will not be perturbed, as she has twenty others to serve her (Stanza 1,) cannot receive his love (Sta 2,) despises it (Sta 3,) and prefers younger lovers (Sta 5.)
Cupid, doubtless, will continue to shoot his arrows.

So, is it only his world that he will undo by dying, and his love and perception of her beauties and graces?

.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Whifflingpin,

IMHO Donne's saying that her grace and beauty are of no use without someone to love her, himself being that someone. He is being a bit melodramatic at this point (and almost certainly with tongue firmly in cheek) . Read something more into it if you like, I'm not the sharpest critic and never claim to be, but that's all I see there.

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## bluevictim

I thought Donne was talking about Love's grace and beauty. I don't think he addresses "her" in any other line of the poem, and he addresses Love continually. Also, the imagery of unmined gold in a mountain and a sundial in a grave seems to fit because Love will be buried with him.

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## Whifflingpin

Xamonas: "Donne's saying that her grace and beauty are of no use without someone to love her, himself being that someone. He is being a bit melodramatic at this point (and almost certainly with tongue firmly in cheek) ."
OK, I can go with that - a rather more elegant "I'll kill myself and you'll be sorry"

Bluevictim: "I thought Donne was talking about Love's grace and beauty. I don't think he addresses "her" in any other line of the poem, and he addresses Love continually."
It is a bit of a jump, but I think it is her beauties and graces, not Love's. He addresses Love as "thou," but has switched to "you" for these lines. Hence my assumption that he has changed the person he's talking to.

.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> I thought Donne was talking about Love's grace and beauty. I don't think he addresses "her" in any other line of the poem, and he addresses Love continually. Also, the imagery of unmined gold in a mountain and a sundial in a grave seems to fit because Love will be buried with him.


But he talks of all three dying (in some way): himself, the woman and Love. Himself because he physically dies; Love because his love for the woman is a part of him and dies at his death; and the woman because she is now bereft of appreciation by the one that loves her. Melodramatic as hell but I already made that point.




> To invent, and practise this one way, to annihilate *all three*.

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## bluevictim

On second thought, I think he is maybe talking about the world's grace and beauty (possibly including "her"), because, as Whifflington points out, he uses the plural "your" rather than the singular "thy".

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## Whifflingpin

bluevictim: "On second thought, I think he is maybe talking about the world's grace and beauty (possibly including "her"), because, as Whifflington points out, he uses the plural "your" rather than the singular "thy"."

I still think it is her g&b. "you" is formal, rather than plural. I can see why he might wish to address his beloved, (the poem is indirectly addressed to her throughout, is it not?) but I cannot see that he would suddenly want to address the world.

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## bluevictim

Whifflington and Xamonas,

You're probably right, but for some reason I'm still uncomfortable with it. The way I read the poem, the speaker is exasperated with love and the woman, and it seemed to me more like he is giving up (in frustration) rather than trying to stick it to her. He doesn't seem to think that it would make any difference to her if he died. After all, there are at least twenty others who can appreciate her beauty and graces. IMHO, of course.

I really liked the word play in
The world by dying, because love dies too.

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## Whifflingpin

Stanza 2 - "ingenuity" - I had to check. This originally meant ingenuousness (freedom from guile,) not, as it does today, ingeniousness (power of ready invention.) The modern meaning would have meant that the Jesuits belonged in stanza 1, perhaps.


Unnamable: Is the semi-colon in line 6 of the first stanza correct?
In the Penguin book The Metaphysical Poets this semi-colon, and the colons, are all full stops.
In Donnes time, the punctuation would still have been non-existent, would it not? [Edit - no, idiot.]

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Poem for the new week:
> 
> THE WILL by John Donne 
> 
> BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, 
> Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath 
> Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ; 
> If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
> My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
> ...


I just thought I'd bring this delightfully witty but _straightforward_ poem over to the place where the discussion's at. I'm getting fed up of flipping back and forth between pages.

Some poems, like the Wallace Stevens and the Ezra Pound that we have seen here over the last few weeks, are complex, multi-layered creations that have hidden depths which only the most diligent reader will ever find. 

This poem isn't like that. 

It's only "difficulty" comes from the archaic language and old-fashioned allusions (hands up who knows exactly what "the Schismatics of Amsterdam" are?) Read it and enjoy it, trying to find secret meanings and hidden subtexts is pointless imho. It is a satirical dig at a woman, dressed up in a parody of a will; the 17th century equivalent of a comic song such as those penned by Noël Coward, Neil Innes or Eric Idle.

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## bluevictim

The last stanza isn't coming as easily to me as to others here, I guess. I'm still unsure what the scope of "your" is. My first thoughts seem unsatisfactory, and it doesn't quite click for me that it is merely referring to the woman. The imagery is a little confusing to me, as well; the worth/forth couplet suggests a woman, but the have/grave couplet suggests a man.

I can't even figure out the straightforward, plain meaning, let alone secret meanings and subtexts!

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## tn2743

Can someone explain to me "My tongue to Fame" please? Is it because Fame does not need a tongue, like how Argus does not need more eyes? Why is Fame in capital, is it a person? 

I also agree with Unamable about the bitterness. There is bitterness in the last three lines of every stanza.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Can someone explain to me "My tongue to Fame" please? Is it because Fame does not need a tongue, like how Argus does not need more eyes? Why is Fame in capital, is it a person?


I think he's referring to the fact that the famous have no need of one more tongue to praise them. The capitalisation implies a personification of Fame; Donne could have said, "My tongue to praise the famous" or some such but in order to make the words scan he needed to shorten the phrase.

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## Whifflingpin

(hands up who knows exactly what "the Schismatics of Amsterdam" are?)

Sorry to be a prig - they are those who believe in salvation by faith, rather than salvation by good works. Several protestant groups believed this, my immediate guess is that those of Amsterdam were the followers of Arminius.

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## Whifflingpin

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Pheme.html
"Basics about Fame: The sayings and reports, that coming and going among mortals become rumours, are spread by Pheme, regarded by some as a messenger of Zeus. This Pheme, whose eyes are never overcome by Sleep, is a swift creature with countless tongues and ears."

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> (hands up who knows exactly what "the Schismatics of Amsterdam" are?)
> 
> Sorry to be a prig - they are those who believe in salvation by faith, rather than salvation by good works. Several protestant groups believed this, my immediate guess is that those of Amsterdam were the followers of Arminius.


I was working on the assumption that 'there's always one!"




> "Basics about Fame: The sayings and reports, that coming and going among mortals become rumours, are spread by Pheme, regarded by some as a messenger of Zeus. This Pheme, whose eyes are never overcome by Sleep, is a swift creature with countless tongues and ears."


I had a feeling there might be a quote like that around somewhere - just not in any of my books!  :Biggrin:

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## Scheherazade

> Where does the word lover appear?


It is implied in the poem.


> I never said this. Get your facts straight.


When you said '2) some legacies...huh? Maybe the I is deciding what part of the I that Love will inherit--which doesn't seem to be much.', it sounded like there is an expectation for him to leave something to his lover; however, in my opinion, this poem is a way for him to air his bitterness so there are no surprises that what she inherits 'doesn't seem to be much'. If my interpretation of what you said is wrong, I am sorry and it would take very little effort on your behalf to clear up this misunderstanding.

I can handle the difference of opinions and I enjoy them because I don't consider my views final. However, what I have problem is the curt language. If one doesn't like their views to be challenged or questioned, they should consider not posting in the threads, the main purpose of which is to discuss various interpretations.


> I think that "Love" is Eros, the god of love, who is blind."her" is the disdainful beloved one.


I hadn't considered this possibility till you pointed out; thank you!  :Smile: 

I agree with the comments that this poem does not carry different meaning, hidden under many layers. However, due to many references like the Schismatics of Amsterdam, it gets a little blurred for me when I try to analyse it line by line. There is no doubt that the persona in the poem is bitter about the way his love has been treated but what I really like about this poem is the way it lets us see his views about the world around him. We know what he thinks of court officials, academics, Catholics etc. If he had gone on about his lady friend for six stanzas, even with similar wit and tongu-in-cheek attitude, I am not sure we would have found it as interesting.

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## blp

> Could you explain what you mean here?


Well, I may have been mouthing off - and I was being a bit frivolous - but I meant a difference between Freedman's supply side economics, designed to benefit business and socialism's wealth redistribution. 

Other than that, as I say, I'll get back to you.

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## Whifflingpin

Scher: "However, due to many references like the Schismatics of Amsterdam, it gets a little blurred for me when I try to analyse it line by line."

Probably teaching a few grandmothers how to suck eggs, but:

"constancy I to the planets give" Planets were known in Donne's time as "wandering stars," hence inconstant, as opposed to the true fixed stars that kept their appointed places in the zodiac.

Jesuits, to Englishmen, were a byword for deviousness and guile.

Capuchin, a monk of a strict order, vowed to poverty.

Roman Catholics considered Donne's faith, that of the Church of England, to be heretical. (So here he is commenting on what Catholics think about his faith, not what he thinks about theirs. They count his faith indignity, i.e. to be of no worth)

Schismatics of Amsterdam: I've checked my guess, and Arminius was indeed pastor of Amsterdam, prior to becoming a professor at Leyden.

Schoolmen: those who engaged in theological disputes.

Bedlam: Bethlehem Hospital, an institution for the insane.

**

I particularly enjoyed the line "my sickness to physicians." At first this may seem reasonable, for cure? or research? Oh no, because they actually, like excess, cause sickness in the first place.

I also enjoyed the grouping of some ideas within stanzas, not just by the theme of the stanza. For example, the mythological characters, Love, Argus, Fame, all appear in stanza 1; as do the bequests of eyes, tongue, ears and tears. So in other stanzas, there is some link between the bequests, and a deliberate similarity or contrast between the recipients. Not, I would say, in a forced way, so not everything fits into such a pattern, but enough to tighten the poem.

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## ktd222

Unnamable,




> he is continuing his dig at the woman


No need to retort. 
I can't write down what I've observed any clearer. We both see past the obvious to the interaction of the I with Love and the her--this is the level of layering I see just as you do. I'm sorry if you can't follow my denotations; And I'm sorry if my interpretations of the questions I brought up are different from yours. Did you teach this poem to your students?  :Wink: 

How many books of poetry interpretation do you have professor Unnamable?

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## ktd222

Sher,




> however, in my opinion, this poem is a way for him to air his bitterness so there are no surprises that what she inherits 'doesn't seem to be much'.


and I agree with this sense as well.




> However, what I have problem is the curt language. If one doesn't like their views to be challenged or questioned, they should consider not posting in the threads, the main purpose of which is to discuss various interpretations.


Ya, sorry about my rudeness.

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## The Unnamable

> I'm not the sharpest critic and never claim to be, but that's all I see there.


Funny that - in _my_ humble opinion, your reading is the one that most accurately reveals whats there.  It is a satirical dig at a woman, dressed up in a parody of a will;





> I'm sorry if you can't follow my denotations;


Its not your _denotations_  I have a problem with  its your _detonations_.  :Wink:

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch, you seem to have access to resources the rest of us can only dream of. Is the semi-colon in line 6 of the first stanza correct? All the online versions Ive looked at have a semi-colon. Can you (or anyone else) tell me why it isnt a colon? Each subsequent stanza has a colon at the end of the corresponding line and that makes more sense to me.


For a number of reasons I'm absolutely too exhausted to do any sort of critcal analysis whatsoever at the moment, so I'll post actual thoughts on this poem later. Maybe tomorrow. I saw the above, however and figured I wasn't too beat for a little research. 

Unnamable--as you may know, broaching the topic of Renaissance grammer is opening a whole world of confusion. Neither grammer nor spelling were well regulated during Donne's era, and Donne in particular was a poet whose verse was published almost entirely posthumously and therefore he had little to no influence about the punctuation of his poetry (unlike Ben Jonson, say, who was deeply interested in grammer and down at the presses all the time making sure what he wrote was set down just as he wanted). With that in mind, I've made a transcription below of the original 1633 publication of this poem with the grammar and spelling as it appears there. I hope it may be of interest (I wish I could reproduce the original here). The short answer to your question is that it is often a mystery to me why some seventeenth century printers would chose a colon over a semi-colon (or, as you can see, a period rather than a colon). There may be a better explanation out there, but in my experience it seems as though this were often entirely up to the whim of the typesetter. 

The Will.

Before I sigh my last gaspe, let me breath,
Great love, some Lagacies; Here I bequeath
Mine eyes to _Argus,_if mine eyes can see,
If they be blinde, then Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to'Embassadours mine eares;
To women or the sea, my teares;
Thou, Love, hast taught mee heretofore
By making mee serve her who'had twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such, as had too much
(before.

My constancie I to the planets give,
My truth to them, who at the Court doe life;
Mine ingenuity and opennesse,
To Jesuites; to Buffones my pensivenesse;
My silence to any, who abroad hath beene;
My mony to a Capuehin.
Thou Love taught'st me, by appointing mee
To love there, where no love receiv'd can be,
Onely to give to such as have an incapacitie.

My faith I give to Roman Catholiques;
All my good works unto the Schismaticks
Of Amsterdam; my best civility
And Courtship, to an Universitie; 
My modesty I give to souldiers bare;
My patience let gamesters share. 
Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those
Which were my friends; Mine industrie to foes;
To Schoolemen I bequeath my doubtfulnesse;
My sicknesse to Physitians, or excesse; 
To Nature, all that I in Ryme have writ;
And to my company my wit;
Thou love, by making mee adore
Her, who begot this love in mee before, 
Taughtst me to make, as though I gave, when I did but restore.

To him for whom the passing bell next tolls,
I give my physick bookes; my writen rowles
Of Morall counsels, I to Bedlamm give;
My brazen medals, unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which passe among 
All forrainers, mine English tongue.
Thou, Love, by making mee love one
Who thinkes her friendship a fit portion
For yonger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more; But I'll undoe
The world by dying; because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will bee no more worth
Then gold in in Mines, where none doth draw it forth; 
And all your graces no more use shall have 
Then a Sun dyall in a grave,
Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her, who doth neglect both mee and thee,
To invent, and practise this one way, to'annihilate all 
(three.

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## genoveva

> THE WILL by John Donne 
> 
> BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, 
> Great Love, some legacies ; I here bequeath 
> Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ; 
> If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee ;
> My tongue to Fame ; to ambassadors mine ears ;
> To women, or the sea, my tears ;
> Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
> ...


What a nicely written poem. I haven't read Donne for a while, and I was actually, hoping for something a little more romantic from him. Maybe next time.

Anyhow, the discussion here seems to largely revolve around the speaker's "love" for a woman who does not reciprocate it. This is just a tiny bit of the poem, and not at all what the poem is mainly about. It is, exactly as the title suggests, "The Will". This is the speaker's last will and testament. He is giving away all the above listed things, and in the poem he lists who gets what.

----------


## The Unnamable

> I hadn't considered this possibility till you pointed out; thank you!


You could have read my comment directly above the one that helped you and youd have considered it six minutes earlier.  :FRlol:  (Whifflingpin, this is not in any way meant as a criticism). It makes exactly the same point. Eros and Cupid are one and the same. Cupid is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Eros.




> Donne in particular was a poet whose verse was published almost entirely posthumously and therefore he had little to no influence about the punctuation of his poetry.


This supports my earlier comment about Donne writing to make his mates laugh. They were his main audience when he wrote. I consider this relevant. He was a very clever sod and kept his friends amused with coruscating displays of that cleverness. I might have said it elsewhere on this forum but the woman in Donnes poetry seldom exists as a significant entity in her own right. I get a very clear sense of Donne being the one who does all the thinking  the woman simply has to be the object of his thoughts and feelings. 

Another of my tutors was a colleague of the unprepossessing Dame Helen Gardner  who was considered something of a Donne specialist (she edited the Penguin edition to the Metaphysical Poets mentioned above). I met her only once and disliked her almost as much as many on here dislike me (and probably for similar reasons  she was too clever for me  :Biggrin:  ). She said that Donne was a good choice for a set text poet at A Level (post-sixteen level) as he really sorts out the wheat from the chaff. Mind you, she might just have been plugging her book.




> With that in mind, I've made a transcription below of the original 1633 publication of this poem with the grammar and spelling as it appears there. I hope it may be of interest.


Its of interest to me, so thanks  greatly appreciated. There are a few noteworthy things  the first version posted has though instead of thou in the penultimate stanza. The version you have posted restores thou, which makes more sense. The rest can be used to show that the actual structure of the poem is a more useful guide to understanding than the punctuation. I was aware of the grammar and punctuation minefield you mention and was hoping youd have access to early copies  like the one you posted. Its good to see that not everybody lets me down.  :Wink:  My question therefore was more about why modern editors have punctuated it the way they have  but I wanted to check first if it was simply an error in transcription. 




> Did you teach this poem to your students?


No  I taught _better_ ones by Donne. I dont think Id read that poem for over twenty years until I saw it here again. 




> How many books of poetry interpretation do you have professor Unnamable?


Ive no idea  hardly any on Donne and none with me here in Asia. Besides, ownership of books is less important than understanding of them. Are you trying to suggest that I rely on such books for my insights? If so, may I ask if you have _any_ books? 




> This is just a tiny bit of the poem, and not at all what the poem is mainly about.


I disagree. The whole thrust and structure of the poem reinforces the complaint he has- that she doesnt return his love. Would you say that its a poem about love at all? Perhaps Helen Gardner should have only included it in her book of poetry about wills?




> It is, exactly as the title suggests, "The Will".


Is _The Relic_, exactly as the title suggests, about a relic? Is _Twicknam Garden_, exactly as the title suggests, about a garden in Twicknam? Donnes Poetry  does exactly what it says on the tin. Dont you think thats a tad too literal?




> This is the speaker's last will and testament.


I thought it was a poem. 




> He is giving away all the above listed things, and in the poem he lists who gets what.


So, is it merely a coincidence that in listing those things he is compiling a barrage of complaints that are used to make clear that he is wasting his time with her? I agree that they are amusing in their own right but he has ended each stanza with an explicit explanation of the significance of his bequests. Should we simply overlook this?

In 54 lines, Love is mentioned 17 times and adore once. I wonder if Donne realised that.



PS Is there any similarity between Donnes lines:

And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave:

and Andrew Marvells

The grave's a fine and private place, 
But none, I think, do there embrace.?

----------


## Scheherazade

> Probably teaching a few grandmothers how to suck eggs, but:
> 
> "constancy I to the planets give" Planets were known in Donne's time as "wandering stars," hence inconstant, as opposed to the true fixed stars that kept their appointed places in the zodiac.
> 
> Jesuits, to Englishmen, were a byword for deviousness and guile.
> 
> Capuchin, a monk of a strict order, vowed to poverty.
> 
> Roman Catholics considered Donne's faith, that of the Church of England, to be heretical. (So here he is commenting on what Catholics think about his faith, not what he thinks about theirs. They count his faith indignity, i.e. to be of no worth)
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to provide this list, Whiffling!  :Smile: 

I agree with you that the careful way things are grouped in the poem is very nice. The second stanza is my favorite: 'to buffoons my pensiveness'!  :Biggrin: 

*genoveva>* I agree with you that the poem lets us see how Donne felt about various things/people but I think its main aim is to criticise his lady friend and her attitude towards love. His commentary on the others make the poem fun and interesting to read but do you think he would have written it at all if it weren't for the Lady?

----------


## genoveva

> The woman has already had twenty lovers to serve her.


Or, perhaps, has twenty other lovers. Could his muse be a prostitute?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

My! I'm amazed at the amount of discussion that's been produced out of this poem. Forgive me if I accidently repeat anything that's been covered elsewhere. I've tried to read over all the thread but I may have missed some things. Here are a few comments that came to mind right off:

It seems as though no one has explicitly commented on the way in this poem Donne is playing off the conventions of love poetry in the period. Each stanza ends with the same three line formula, revealing the significance of that stanza's contents, and in which he describes what it is that Love has taught him and how he is then applying that to situations other than love. In the first stanza, for example, he has served a mistress who has many lovers, making him superflous. He facetiously applies this lesson Love taught him about giving what someone has too much of to other situations like giving eyes to argus. The next stanza's lesson is about offering gifts where they won't be welcome, learned from the situation of the unrequited lover but applied to bringing money to a Capuchin (who's vowed poverty). Of course along the way he uses his examples satirically as with the dig implying that women have too many tears, or that the court won't welcome truth.

By the end of the poem he's built up to the ultimate satircal moment in taking the lessons of love literally, by saying that he's going to up and die. The conceit in love poetry is that the lover is dying from his devotion to his love, but he's going to apply it to a real situation by actually dying. This brings us back to the pretence of writing the poem in the first place, making his will. It also is an opportunity to get back at love and his mistress (who can be somewhat equated with love, since she is the one who actually taught him love's lessons). I think the line about the sun-dial demonstrates the turn he is making very nicely. It's a bit tricky when you first read it because the speaker is supposed to be the one in the grave because he's dead. During life while under the spell of love/the mistress, he was like the sundial, moving according to his mistress (the sun, according to common poetic conceit). So at first glance it seems as though the sun dial should refer to the dead poet. Yet the actuall comparison being made is between her graces and the sun dial. The import of the metaphor is that her graces are no longer effective, but in fact become buried with him. It's a neat little flip, because it also, by implication, repositions him as the sun which the sun dial needs to fulfill it's purpose. He's now getting the last laugh. Death conquers all.

----------


## genoveva

> do you think he would have written it at all if it weren't for the Lady?


You're right. After re-reading it this morning, it is obvious that this woman's lack of returning his "love" is the reason for the speaker's lamentation. And yes, I agree, if the whole poem focused on the woman it probably wouldn't be as entertaining.

----------


## blp

> Could you explain what you mean here?


Er...I can't go on, no. 

I'll go on: like some bifurcated aboriginal, I went off half-cocked, reading in haste, commenting in haste. It does provoke broader thoughts in me on the ironies of giving to people who don't need, don't want or can't use - something that seems to happen a lot. But I can see now the poem's not really about this.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> My question therefore was more about why modern editors have punctuated it the way they have  but I wanted to check first if it was simply an error in transcription.



Your question about the method behind the madness of modern editors prompted me to make a comparison of the seven 17th century editions of this poem available in facsimile through EEBO (I adore this resource! I wish it could be made universally accessible), since modern editors often are following a particular edition of the poem that they feel is most accurate. In this case, the modern editor seems to be following his/her own judgement more than following a single original text, since none of the punctuation and word choice of the 17th century texts really follows what is shown here. For example, the "though" you pointed to in stanza five is a "thou" in all the 17th century editions of the poem. I have no idea what the logic behind that change would be unless it's just a typo.

I did find that Donne's Early Modern editors made just as little sense, however. They change spelling and grammar all over the place from one edition to another. The 1649 edition puts colons in place of semi-colons just about anywhere possible, and the 1669 edition (the latest of those I consulted) actually changes the wording in the final line of stanza 2 from "such as have an incapacity" to read "such as have no good capacity." I'd love to know why, especially as this is after six previous editions when one doubts they had to rely on oral transmition or faulty memory to reproduce the poem. The most interesting change between the editions however, is the order of the poems. The first edition (1633) very piously groups all the religious poetry at the front and pushes the erotic/love poetry as far back as possible, while subsequent editions put the racy stuff up front  :Brow: . I guess they figured out what sells.

----------


## Gringoire

> I grew up hearing this poem from my parents (translated, not in English) and well before I knew who Poe was, I had learnt it by heart. And when I read it in English at university, I was over the moon!
> 
> The pure, naive love in the poem and sadness of it, without being soppy, touches my heart every time I read it.
> 
> And I learnt what 'sepulchre' means while reading this poem.
> 
> Did you know that this is the last poem Poe wrote?



I didn't know that!
This has to be my favourite of Poe's poems as well. 
Dark, and a longing that will never be met. It has the feel of Michael Crawford's phantom from "Phantom of the Opera".

----------


## Gringoire

> Last week, Jay and I spent over an hour discussing this poem and would like to hear your interpretations too... Not necessarily what you studied and were told it meant at school but your own thoughts and feelings about the poem.
> 
> *The Lake Isle of Innisfree*  
> 
> I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
> And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
> Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
> And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
> 
> ...


I don't really have anything to add, just that I have never heard this poem before.
Absolutely stunning!
Gringoire

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## Virgil

> I don't really have anything to add, just that I have never heard this poem before.
> Absolutely stunning!
> Gringoire


Gringoire, you will find that William Butler Yeats has many poems that are absolutely stunning.

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## rachel

that does not surprise me that you like Arthurian tales which I love. all true babymen love them, it is part of the romantic that is always pushing its way up past the hip, now, modern sophisticated man that doesn't need that sort of thing in his mind or heart.

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## Gringoire

> Gringoire, you will find that William Butler Yeats has many poems that are absolutely stunning.



Thank you! I'll be sure to check more of him out!

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## blp

Time for another poem. Don't all rush at once.

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## Riesa

Where's ktd222's doozy?

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## blp

That's what I was wondering.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

If nobody else is going to bother. How's about taking a stab at this Ted Hughes Poem?




> *Crow Tyrannosaurus*
> 
> Creation quaked voices--
> It was a cortege
> Of mourning and lament
> Crow could hear and he looked around fearfully.
> 
> The swift's body fled past
> Pulsating 
> ...

----------


## blp

The title takes the point of view of the grubs.

----------


## Virgil

> If nobody else is going to bother. How's about taking a stab at this Ted Hughes Poem?


Oh, great, XC. I'll read it and comment on it this week. I have the Hughs "Crow" poems somewhere. I don't remember this one.

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## genoveva

What a gruesome image this poem conjurs up! I don't remember any of Ted Hughes's poems. I tried to read some of his stuff after discovering Sylvia Plath, but his poetry just didn't appeal to me then. Maybe I should try again.

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## tn2743

Is this poem about a crow eating a body?

----------


## The Unnamable

> Is this poem about a crow eating a body?


Not quite. Crow (not just _a_ crow) sees three animals passing  a swift, a cat and a dog. They have all feasted on creatures they have killed. Crow also considers Man (a walking/ Abattoir) and sees the same thing he sees in the animals mentioned  a creature that must kill to survive. Crow is also aware that he himself is no different and he appears to feel some hesitation in continuing with his killing. Alas suggests his sense of regret at being a creature that kills to survive:

ought I 
To stop eating
And try to become the light?

However, even as he considers this, instinct takes over and his head, trapsprung, stabbed. He even weeps as he is killing the grubs but he is not able to desist from killing them. His own life is only sustained through such acts.

The difficult part is the ending: 

Thus came the eye's
roundness
the ear's
deafness.

Any suggestions before I offer my own? 

Even by Hughes standards, this is quite a dark poem.

----------


## tn2743

Wow. Thank you Unamable for the explanation. Please offer your suggestions.

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## The Unnamable

I will later - give others an opportunity to say what they think first.

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## tn2743

Maybe it was that he was eating and stabbing, and weeping at the same time. So his eyes are wide open from his own violence and cruelty, his soul acknowledging them, but his ears are deaf as to his own weeping...?

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## The Unnamable

Id go along with this  I think that the deafness is vital to survival  Crow (and by implication, humans?) must simply ignore the suffering caused by killing for food.

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## blp

The end seems to me to be foreshadowed in the line about man's 'brain incinerating their [those he has eaten's] outcry'. 

I was confused a bit by the round eyes since I took the end to be a description of denial and would have expected closed eyes to go with deaf ears. But on reflection, I think people I take to be in denial do have a way of staring fixedly with widened eyes while being deaf to the subjects they can't face.

----------


## The Unnamable

> The end seems to me to be foreshadowed in the line about man's 'brain incinerating their [those he has eaten's] outcry'.


Its hard to read the word incinerating in a poem like this without thinking of the literal incineration of the Holocaust. Interestingly, when Hughes is referring to Man, he uses the word Abattoir  so its not just killing for immediate appeasing of hunger but mass, mechanised killing. He also chooses the word, innocents, which is different from when he mentioned the victims of the other predators. There appears to be a hierarchy. At first the prey is merely insects. The cats is described as incoming death-struggles. The dogs sounds more human  their screeching finales. By the time we get to Man, the prey is innocents. This pattern is also repeated in the food chain. 

Crow cant stop himself from weeping at those he eats any more than he can stop eating them;  that word trapsrung is a good one to suggest the way that instinct sets off the trap in a moment. Man doesnt seem to weep so much as try to obliterate the cries of those who would cause him to weep. So even though Crow seems human, there are some significant differences. The more I think about this poem, the darker it gets. Perhaps mans murderous cruelty is the same instinct that exists in all creatures that kill, only at a more chronologically advanced stage of evolution. No wonder Sylvia killed herself - living with a bloke like that.




> I was confused a bit by the round eyes since I took the end to be a description of denial and would have expected closed eyes to go with deaf ears. But on reflection, I think people I take to be in denial do have a way of staring fixedly with widened eyes while being deaf to the subjects they can't face.


Is anyone/anything in denial in the poem?

----------


## blp

> Is anyone/anything in denial in the poem?


Well, while I was put in mind of the holocaust by 'incinerating' too, what's incinerated is the innocents' _outcry_. After that, crow is described as 'listening and hearing' weeping as he eats the grubs - the weeping of the grubs, which then becomes crow's weeping. This is said to result in the eyes' roundness and the ears' deafness. I'm not insisting on the denial reading, but why do you think this happens? It seemed to me the deafness was in response to the outcry and the weeping - sounds that couldn't be born and the pain of which couldn't be assuaged by more weeping. 

Meanwhile, ever since I read the poem, I've had the walrus and the carpenter's oyster feast at the back of my mind:

'I weep for you," the Walrus said:
'I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes. 

I also keep thinking of a line from Shakespeare about, I think, even the smallest beatle feeling the death of one of its fellows as keenly as we feel the death of one of ours. Don't suppose you know what I mean. That's the nearest I can remember.

----------


## The Unnamable

First of all my question was simply that  a question. I wasnt asking in order to challenge your reading. I read what you wrote in that last paragraph above and wondered what you had in mind when you said, being deaf to the subjects they can't face. This made me wonder if you saw the poem in terms of someone not wanting to face the consequences of his or her own actions.




> Well, while I was put in mind of the holocaust by 'incinerating' too, what's incinerated is the innocents' outcry.


Im not sure I understand the distinction here. I know the line isnt literal, which is why I included that word above. The fact that it is the outcry and not the victims themselves that is incinerated makes the act worse. The thing that is actually being burned away to nothing is the _impact_ of the agony of the sufferers, not the actual sufferers or even their agony. By using the word incinerated, the Holocaust can be suggested while the primary meaning remains intact. Hughes, like most good poets, can make his words do a great deal of work. 




> After that, crow is described as 'listening and hearing' weeping as he eats the grubs - the weeping of the grubs, which then becomes crow's weeping. This is said to result in the eyes' roundness and the ears' deafness. I'm not insisting on the denial reading, but why do you think this happens?


Why do I think _what_ happens? I think I need to understand more clearly the way that Thus is being used here. Does it relate solely to the story of Crow and his weeping grubs or to the whole pattern of _killing as necessity_ that the poem has outlined? The last four lines seem to serve almost as a comment on the whole evolutionary process.

Part of what makes it less than straightforward is that the two parts arent symmetrical  he doesnt make the eyes blindness balance with the ears deafness. As the issue with which hes dealing is far less than straightforward, there is no reason why he should make things simpler. Perhaps hes using the eye primarily for its sensory qualities in enabling predators to secure prey and the ear more in a figurative sense  deafness being a metaphoric rather than a literal deafness. He could have done it the other way  blindness is often used to denote a spiritual rather than physical lack of sight and a bat's ear is one of the wonders of evolution.

Weeping he walked and stabbed suggests the nature of Crows dilemma. He simply goes on both weeping and stabbing. This is how Evolution has created us. If we go back to the hierarchy I mentioned, then we can see that the means of killing becomes increasingly violent and on a larger scale. Correspondingly, our awareness of the preys suffering increases. The position for Man, therefore, is that he is at a stage of Evolution where he is the most efficient predator, can cause the most widespread pain and suffering and also has the ability to see and feel the torment he causes more vividly than any other creature. So the eyes roundness would be emphasising the miraculous aspects of the evolutionary process  the development of this fantastically impressive organ of sight - and the ears deafness the only way we can compensate for what our animal instincts make us do. 




> It seemed to me the deafness was in response to the outcry and the weeping 


Do you mean by this that deafness is necessary? Crow has a certain degree of deafness in the sense that he might hear the suffering but he continues to cause it. He _needs_ enough deafness to continue to kill. Mans needs here are more complex. Perhaps he is as unable as Crow to stop killing but his greater awareness makes the subsequent suffering unbearable, so he becomes deaf to it. For me, the horrible suggestion is that this isnt a moral choice but a way of dealing with instincts we have no way of eradicating.




> sounds that couldn't be born and the pain of which couldn't be assuaged by more weeping.


Im not sure that the weeping serves any role in assuaging. Its simply the necessary corollary of killing: Weeping he walked and stabbed  thats life.




> Meanwhile, ever since I read the poem, I've had the walrus and the carpenter's oyster feast at the back of my mind:
> 
> 'I weep for you," the Walrus said:
> 'I deeply sympathize.'
> With sobs and tears he sorted out
> Those of the largest size,
> Holding his pocket-handkerchief
> Before his streaming eyes.


I can see why. Im sure Hughes would have known that poem so why not? It seems relevant.




> I also keep thinking of a line from Shakespeare about, I think, even the smallest beatle feeling the death of one of its fellows as keenly as we feel the death of one of ours. Don't suppose you know what I mean. That's the nearest I can remember.


Nothing comes to mind yet.

----------


## blp

> First of all my question was simply that  a question. I wasnt asking in order to challenge your reading. I read what you wrote in that last paragraph above and wondered what you had in mind when you said, being deaf to the subjects they can't face. This made me wonder if you saw the poem in terms of someone not wanting to face the consequences of his or her own actions.


My questions were simply questions too. From the start I wasn't sure about the denial reading, though I'm warming to it. In a way, I see the whole poem as a temporary eruption of the truth of daily killing out of its usual denial - an eruption that will subside back into denial equally quickly. The description of carnivorous bodies as containers of death is _probably_ not the one most of us go around perceiving most of the time. To be a bit pedantic, I wouldn't say it's about facing consequences - the consequence of killing for the carnivores described is simply to be able to stay alive. It's more about facing the unpleasantness of this necessary act. 




> Im not sure I understand the distinction here. I know the line isnt literal, which is why I included that word above. The fact that it is the outcry and not the victims themselves that is incinerated makes the act worse. The thing that is actually being burned away to nothing is the _impact_ of the agony of the sufferers, not the actual sufferers or even their agony. By using the word incinerated, the Holocaust can be suggested while the primary meaning remains intact. Hughes, like most good poets, can make his words do a great deal of work.


Sure, all good. I'm just positing that one of the jobs being done here is the suggestion that, in destroying the audible distress of the innocents, mankind denies the suffering. The deaf ears at the end seemed to me to be part of the same process. 




> Why do I think _what_ happens? I think I need to understand more clearly the way that Thus is being used here. Does it relate solely to the story of Crow and his weeping grubs or to the whole pattern of _killing as necessity_ that the poem has outlined?


Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant, why does the weeping turn to round eyes and deaf ears. To me it seemed that this condition must be what eventually replaced the weeping. 

I agree that the 'Thus' is tricky, but I think that, rather as Crow is neither humankind nor an ordinary crow, the 'Thus' can refer both to him and to humankind. 




> The last four lines seem to serve almost as a comment on the whole evolutionary process.


How so? 




> Part of what makes it less than straightforward is that the two parts arent symmetrical  he doesnt make the eyes blindness balance with the ears deafness. As the issue with which hes dealing is far less than straightforward, there is no reason why he should make things simpler.


No, definitely. Anyway, I think by not doing so, specifically in regard to this question of symmetry, he gives us a lot more to chew over. 




> For me, the horrible suggestion is that this isnt a moral choice but a way of dealing with instincts we have no way of eradicating.


That's pretty much what I had in mind in talking about denial. I also think there's a suggestion of frozenness about the final description that makes the deaf ears and round eyes tally. The awful irony would be that, in freezing out the truth of our destructive behavior and its necessity for keeping us alive, we become partially dead. 




> Im not sure that the weeping serves any role in assuaging. Its simply the necessary corollary of killing: Weeping he walked and stabbed  thats life.


Ah, perhaps we're diverging a little again. My point is that the weeping is not the condition of life, it's a temporary awakening to something we can't bear most of the time. The awareness of all this destruction, or the weeping it engenders perhaps, is too much and we end by freezing it out.

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## tn2743

I was wondering: who is Crow Tyrannosaurus, if he is not man? Evolution has not created a creature that is higher than man in the food chain, yet Crow is watching over everything even man himself. And, as Unamable said, there is a clear distingtion between man and Crow. Perhaps Crow represents Evolution itself, or God? The phrase "be the Light" kind of reminds me of the Bible.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

Here's an interesting article I found while looking for a full text of the poem online (I didn't fancy copying the whole thing out by hand). It provides a bit of background on the Crow poems as a whole but alas no insight into the "round eye / deaf ear" dichotomy, which I must admit has always baffled me. 

I nearly posted "Crow's account of St George" btw. Now that really _is_ dark, by anyone's standards.

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## tn2743

It's all clear now. Thanks. I should have done a little research of my own before asking questions. So this poem has more to do with religion than Evolution.

Although I don't like the idea that Crow is neither good nor evil, but is responsible for both. This does not distinguish Crow from man, because that is what man is. It is the presence of evil that separates God and man, not the lack of good. Crow should have been chosen as the representitive of man, in this light, and not as someone who observes man. 

Furthermore, the analysis on this page doesn't seem to focus on eating. I agree with Unamable that this poem is about the need to eat to survive. The Tyrannosaurus is a famous predator. So maybe Crow only represents this particular need of man, and this poem is strictly about ...well, eating.

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## chmpman

I think that the word "Tyrannosaurus" in the title may be used in it's literal meaning "great lizard". I contrast this reptilian image to whatever it is that gains the rounded eyes. I see a level of evolution here but I need more time to sift through my ideas.

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## jackyyyy

I enjoyed this poem. I imagined it was similar to 'Crow' the film, but after reading it, I was left thinking more of Darwin than the Devil. Crow has been popularized in his never ending mission to 'stop himself', kind of like a seriously failed chain smoker, or more like a chain murderer. Having read Poe and others, it makes similar chills, however, not the same way. When Men eat Men, I cringe, when Men eat meat, I don't. Thats just how I am.

The film depicts Crow 'decided' between Good and Evil, its not a debate in his head as he goes at it. In this poem he is decided, however it shows me nothing of evil, and instead, Crow's mental struggle with existence. And, we are no different, as we bite on our McDonalds. We cannot face it was once moving, we forget, or we throw up.

I will sway a bit on one part. The only line I saw (correct me here) where he infers some other 'force' is:




> To stop eating
> And try to become the light?'


What is the light?

Crow is to grub, as Tyrannosaurus is to plant-eating dinosaurs. He must eat to survive, and he must feed his young, else why does he exist, he asks himself. To not, would mean to cease to exist, and how did he arrive to be created except by this acceptance of eating that which is less than him.

He is fearful because he knows he is a grub to his larger brother.




> The swift's body fled past 
> Pulsating With insects


It catches them in the air.




> The cat gagging on its victim


A cat appears to choke as it swallows, the live food still struggling.

The dog...

And finally man...




> Even man when he is walking


When man is walking, he is seeking food.




> His brain incinerating their outcry.
> Crow thought 'Alas
> Alas ought I
> To stop eating
> And try to become the light?'


The brain is blocking out what it cannot handle.

I am asking myself why he has a conscience, because he is doing what he only can, and food eats food, and he is the next food. Crow is gripped with absolute terror, until he eats. I think this is when he finds an actual moment of relief. Those eyes round with hardened fear, and tears make the eyes wide and round, and the ears are deafened - switched off. It conjures up images of soldiers ordered to kill or be killed, or face hanging for desertion, no choice. 

And with no choice, its manslaughter - innocent predators?

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## tn2743

Crow Tyrannosaurus is not food, neither is man. At least they are not killed to become food of another predator (unless Crow eats man) - he is never a victim. It is the killing that is focused on here. Crow does not fear or weep the fact that "he is grub to his larger brother"; he weeps only the outcry of the innocents that he is stabbing in order to eat.

"It conjures up images of soldiers ordered to kill or be killed, or face hanging for desertion, no choice." 
I don't think Crow Tyrannosaurus fears anything. He is a ruthless predator with a conscience, which never prevails over his killing instinct. Many soldiers would choose not to kill. Many people eat plants. Crow's conscience is not man's.

"The swift's body fled past 
Pulsating With insects "

- I don't think this means necessarily that the swift catches the insects in the air.

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## Virgil

I see I'm late to this discussion. Kudos to all who have contributed; I think everyone has added to the understanding of this poem: the ravenous appetite of animals to survive, the association with man and his moral nature, and the linking between evolution and a spiritual dimension. I think it's all in there. I think one thing we should keep in mind, and which that article suggests, is that the Crow poems are set in a context of a particular collection, and so, while one can read them individually, may cross link with other poems in the collection.An interesting observation, and it is only that because Hughes could not have possibly known at the time, is that birds, we now know as of a only a few years, are the direct descendants of dinosuars. Birds are living dinosuars; crow really is tyrannosaurus! As I re-read during the rest of the week this poem perhaps I can contribute more.

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## The Unnamable

> How so?


I dont know if I can explain this but Ill have a go.

Hughes has set up a series of examples of predation but the hierarchy is significant. Each time we sort of go up a level, both in terms of the food chain position of the predator and in terms of the preys capacity to move us. The prey is also evolving  the killing becomes increasingly unacceptable. I dont have any hesitation killing an insect, especially a mosquito. Hughes mentions their anguish but what is the anguish of a gnat? Then we have incoming death-struggles, which is not a pleasant phrase but it keeps the prey abstract. Worse though, is the way the dogs prey is described. Its still not human but it is capable of screeching and now has a voice. What does blort suggest? A blended blurting out of lots of cries of pain? The killing certainly sounds more brutal each time. Mans prey is innocents. The difference now is that the prey is seen in exclusively moral terms (at first, then that word incinerating appears and you are reminded of what a phrase like slaughter of the innocents actually entails). So, as the evolutionary process runs its course, we reach a stage where there is a moral dimension to killing. Really though, this might be no different from the bird and the insect. The pattern is the same -the killing remains constant; what changes is the nature of the killing and the fact that we now have concepts of right and wrong. 

If we take Thus to refer to the whole process that has gone before, then those last four lines can sum up the end result of that process. As a result of the predation arms race, the weapons become more efficient and the most efficient weapon of all is mans sight in both the physical sense and in the sense of what he is capable of seeing. (Doesnt most of our perception of the world come via the sense of sight?) The eyes roundness would suggest a sense of fullness  as if the predatory efficiency of Man is almost the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Roundness conveys a sense of completion and perfection. The ear becoming deaf is a necessary part of that same evolutionary process. Killing is a part of what sustains us and so we develop a deafness to that fact. We have to its concomitant with the development of our intelligence. Thats what enables us to remain at the pinnacle.

This is not a pleasant thought and one that can be used to justify acceptance of any mass atrocity. Perhaps this is why some critics have pretty much accused Hughes of being a fascist. Interestingly, Sylvia Plath describes Hughes in _Daddy_ as:

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.


This is the image I have of him most of the time. I still like a lot of his stuff, though.

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## blp

How interesting. I've just re-read _Daddy_ and seen what you're talking about - Hughes as the 'model' she makes of her Daddy, to whom she says, 'I do'. I can't believe I never noticed this before. 

Still, whatever his personal behaviour, I think it's unfair - I know you're not saying this yourself - to accuse Hughes of making an argument for fascism here. Pointing out the tragic inevitability of some killing doesn't automatically translate into justifying all brutal and murderous oppression. 

There's still something a little contradictory in this interpretation of the deafness - though it may be a contradiction that's in the poem. On the one hand, there's a suggestion that with humankind's superior killing ability comes a superior awareness of the victims' suffering. You're saying that the deafness to that suffering is what allows the position of superiority to be maintained. I see it slightly differently - and, so far, I've taken the poem as seeing it differently too - a description of a predicament, humankind's intensely discomfitting duality, superior in that it's aware of its own destructiveness but, mostly, unable to face up to it, hence self deafened, but not really to any practical end at all.

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## jackyyyy

> a description of a predicament


I agree with this from BLP. 

However,I don't see how Humankind is being singled out as different in the food chain. Is it right or wrong to eat?

We seem to be focused on certain words/expressions, as giving out clues that we need to unravel. To me it follows a logical sequence, the first word is "Creation".

Incinerate - to destroy, leaving least trace.

Blort - a full stomach exhort, like a gas emission. Some animals never stop eating, and they just puke it up.

Round eyes - have you ever been hyper alert, and then in this state for days - like after a car accident? I see Crow's whole life in this state. The deer, as its been chased for its life by the lion, has very large eyes.

I haven't read 'Daddy', but I already think Ted Hughes has a very "Cold Eye".

I will read it again in 24 hours, I am not seeing something.

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## blp

> However,I don't see how Humankind is being singled out as different in the food chain.


Well, humans eat 'innocents' and incinerate their outcry. They're aware of inflicting pain where the other animals are probably not, but they deny it. Isn't that different?




> Is it right or wrong to eat?


 Right or wrong hardly seems to be the point. Necessary but horrific seems to be the point. 

I think you alluded earlier to the possibility of vegetarianism, jackyyy. I can't help feeling this is a sort of lacuna in the poem - and it makes me a little more receptive to the fascism argument, as if Hughes is making a very selective argument that humankind is inherently destructive, using the example of meat eating as if it's all encompassing, in denial himself about the option taken by many of not eating meat. Why in denial? Well, if you buy the fascism argument, perhaps because it suits his purposes to insist that human beings are locked into a struggle for domination whether they like it or not - which might be true, but the argument isn't quite made here.

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## jackyyyy

Crow could have tried to become the light, a vegetarian. Maybe this was not an option for Hughes, as he was intending something else. Certainly, refusing to eat was not an option. Here is where I really think he was heading:

With whose perspective is it horrific... since man can predate man, a lion can predate man, a disease can predate man (even without a brain). And top of the food tree is *Creation*, which is where Hughes starts it all.

Hughes points out: *Even man* when he walks.

Hughes elected Crow (the Crow with a brain), to be the weeper for this predicament, and a 'black' Crow is a fitting subject because of its implied connection to death. Technically, the weeper could just as easily have been the bird, the cat, or the insect, except they are not as symbolic. In anycase, same as man, they were all made by Creation.

*LIFE*, given and taken away by Creation, and Crow sees LIFE for what it really is. He does not seem at all confounded with it. Rather, he is sensitive to it, which is what makes him weep.... then carry on stabbing.


I am just throwing this up onto the page, I got to read it again.

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## Virgil

This would be a simpler poem if the word "incinerating" was not there. Without that word, the poem is fairly straight forward: the inherent rapacity of carnivores as a need to live, and that rapcity linked to an evolutionary process, tied to a natural transcendentalism all the way back to creation. It is a natural process to go from Tyrannosaurus to crow to man. However, throw in that word incinerating, post world war two, you have a moral dimension beyond what I've just summarized. In the animal world that Hughes describes you do not have any suggestion of intra-species fratricide. One animal kills a different species for survival. The calling up of a halocaust imagery transcends the animal imagery of nature "red in tooth and claw". The killing here is not for survival but for political reasons. The only implication I can draw here is that Hughes is saying that the energy (or shall I use the word libido, or Freudian, id) required for survival can be transmuted into a homicidal drive. But only that energy. There is a tremendous distinction (moral or otherwise) between killing animals to eat and killing jews for extermination.

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## genoveva

> Here's an interesting article I found while looking for a full text of the poem online


Hey, this link wasn't working for me.  :Confused:  Maybe I'll try again later.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Hey, this link wasn't working for me.  Maybe I'll try again later.


It still works for me - it's pdf format, can your browser cope?

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## The Unnamable

> Still, whatever his personal behaviour, I think it's unfair - I know you're not saying this yourself - to accuse Hughes of making an argument for fascism here. Pointing out the tragic inevitability of some killing doesn't automatically translate into justifying all brutal and murderous oppression.


While I am not saying that Hughes was a fascist (I know you didnt say I did), I can see why he could be accused of holding a viewpoint that does smell of Übermensch. What unsettles me about this poem is the possibility that there is little real difference between a swift eating an insect and a man killing a man. Its as if both acts are simply instinctive and fundamental to our behaviour as living creatures. In other words, the killing cannot be stopped whether we face our duality or not. Virgil has talked about killing for different reasons. I think the main reason I find the poem so disconcerting is that it suggests all creatures simply kill to live. Its nothing more than a survival instinct. Concepts of good and evil might disguise this basic fact but they cant eradicate it  its genetically encoded. 




> There's still something a little contradictory in this interpretation of the deafness - though it may be a contradiction that's in the poem.


Yes, in order to try to explain what I think might be suggested by those last lines, I have had to overstate the case. I dont think my response is the primary one the poem generates. I do however, think that the deafness is necessary. Even if we just think of Crow, the weeping must not stop him from killing or hell starve. He must learn to ignore it. The supreme predator is the one that doesnt have to _ignore_ the cries because he doesnt even hear them. 




> On the one hand, there's a suggestion that with humankind's superior killing ability comes a superior awareness of the victims' suffering. You're saying that the deafness to that suffering is what allows the position of superiority to be maintained.


Sort of. It might be simply that evolution _simultaneously_ produces the superior killing ability and the deafness. The one is dependent on the other. As I said above, the supreme predator is utterly ruthless.




> Technically, the weeper could just as easily have been the bird, the cat, or the insect, except they are not as symbolic.


I disagree. The weeper is not _a_ crow but Crow. He is endowed with some degree of conscience that the other animals dont have. The grubs weep but only for themselves in pain. Crow weeps for his prey. Or did you mean that the prey weeping in pain for itself could easily have been the bird, the cat or the insect?

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## jackyyyy

'Incinerating' is a sensitive word, but did Hughes really slide that in to direct us? I try to not assume anything, looking at the plain words of it.

You're right, the 'weeper' is Crow, not crow, and Hughes could have picked 'a' bird, cat, or insect (technically, but not as emotionally poignant, except in maybe Orwell's case), my mistake. I see Crow weeping for both his prey's and his own mortality (eyes round in both terrific fear and pity/sorrow/regret). I guess I picked up on 'any species' because of the title, and Crow here is Tyrannosaurus, but Creation is above Crow in the food tree,, and I am now left wondering if Darwin was fascist or scientist.

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## The Unnamable

> 'Incinerating' is a sensitive word, but did Hughes really slide that in to direct us? I try to not assume anything, looking at the plain words of it.


Obviously there is no way of knowing and its probably pointless to speculate but I cant believe that the man married to Plath wasnt aware of the effect of that word. I also read it in the context of Abattoir, with the implications I mentioned above. Virgil said that, This would be a simpler poem if the word "incinerating" was not there. It might do but it would, for me, make it a less interesting poem.

The interesting thing about creation is that what it immediately gives rise to (in the poem) is a funeral. Creation and destruction come as a pair. 




> and I am now left wondering if Darwin was fascist or scientist.


  :FRlol:  What about Hughes?  :Biggrin:  

Im also left wondering. Must be a good poem, then.

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## blp

> Even if we just think of Crow, the weeping must not stop him from killing or hell starve. He must learn to ignore it. The supreme predator is the one that doesnt have to _ignore_ the cries because he doesnt even hear them.


I see, except my slightly finicky point is that humanity, as supreme predator (at least in this scheme of things) also has to learn to ignore the cries. Plenty of 'lesser' creatures can kill without empathy (microbes that make us ill, for instance) and this does _not_ make them superior (though it's fun to imagine them feeling remorese). Humanity is more like Crow - conflicted, weeping while killing; and the link is made between humanity and Crow with the 'thus' that takes us from weeping to round eyes and deaf ears and the way that echoes the incineration - the deliberate destruction not inherent deafness - of the innocents' outcry.

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## jackyyyy

One word, enough to sink a thousand ships and raise a thousand dead.

Plath is the culprit, eh.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I'm glad this poem stirred up so much debate. I've had a copy of the Crow series for about 10 years and I've always loved them but never really analysed them quite as deeply as this. I may post another in a month or two.

As I see it, Crow is used in Hughes poems both as an observer of mankind and simultaneously as a metaphor for mankind; a killer with a conscience. 

The juxtaposition of invented mythology and pseudo-biblical language with modern references (not so evident in this example) is what first attracted me to the book. I once played in a band that had a name taken from a line in a Hughes poem and so, when I found a copy of Crow going cheap, I took a look, liked what I saw, and bought it.

I like Unnamable's ideas about the meaning of the round eye & deaf ear, as I said above, these have always confused me. I believe he is right; a predator needs a keen eye for prey combined with the ability to disregard that prey's screams.

I also agree with Virgil, in that in the case of mankind, Hughes is not limiting his observations to killing for food but is also referring to warfare and other killing - the same kinds of eyes and ears are required in both cases (although, I'm not sure if he's saying that we _are_ like this and so killing is inevitable and natural, or that we need to _become_ like this, if we 'have' to kill). 

One last point. This poem was written in 1970, a time when the worlds first technicolor, televised war was at it's height in Vietnam; incineration could just as easily refer to the use of Napalm on civilians as to Hitler's ovens, don't you think?

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## jackyyyy

> This poem was written in 1970


and his wife, Plath, ended it in 63, by gas. There is a lot to speculate.
Thanks, Xamonas.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I really must compare a few of Hughes's poems from before Sylvia's death with what came after. I find it hard to believe that it had no effect. I bought Plath's "collected Poems" recently. Hughes provided the introduction and steadfastly steers clear of any autobiographical references. The nearest that he comes is to say, "until she was overtaken by the inspiration that produced the poems of the last six months of her life." Although, I admit to being surprised that he agreed to write it at all. It must have been traumatic for him.

I wonder if Hughes ever blamed himself for Plath's suicide. I can't believe that he never did but neither can I believe that he always did. She did make several attempts earlier in life and showed early signs of mental instability. The Unnamable states that Hughes must have been difficult to live with; I would offer that Plath was probably not much easier.

It's strange that I've been reading Hughes's poetry for years but only started reading Plath since signing up to this forum. I have to thank those that posted her poetry here for that. I must admit to falling into the, "she's only read by neurotic, suicidal females" camp - what the **** was I thinking?

Thank for putting me straight, The Unnamable and others

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## The Unnamable

> I see, except my slightly finicky point is that humanity, as supreme predator (at least in this scheme of things) also has to learn to ignore the cries.


Yes, of course  but I dont mean it to be a _literal_ outlining of evolution. Dont forget that even before they have to learn to ignore the cries, they have to evolve the ability to hear them in the first place, -in the way Crow or we do. Perhaps I should have said that man _no longer_ hears the cries rather than doesnt its the next stage on from Crows.




> Plenty of 'lesser' creatures can kill without empathy (microbes that make us ill, for instance) and this does not make them superior (though it's fun to imagine them feeling remorese).


These do _everything_  without empathy  its not something of which they are capable, full stop. I also assume they dont have any conscious awareness.
There is an interesting parallel with a scene from _Apocalypse Now_, when Kurtz talks about the North Vietnamese going into a village and cutting off the inoculated arms of young children:

Kurtz: These were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres, these men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who were filled with love. But they had the strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment--without judgment--because it's judgment that defeats us.

Perhaps what Hughes is reflecting on really is the Heart of Darkness. 




> Humanity is more like Crow - conflicted, weeping while killing;


Some of humanity is  but some have moved on to the next stage. The Nazi extermination depended upon the dehumanising of the Jews. Many of the perpetrators simply didnt see their victims as beings with the same feelings, passions, fears etc. as their own.




> and the link is made between humanity and Crow with the 'thus' that takes us from weeping to round eyes and deaf ears and the way that echoes the incineration - the deliberate destruction not inherent deafness - of the innocents' outcry.


Incineration here is the ultimate negation  it physically removes, leaving hardly a trace but the method is mechanised and en masse. It treats human beings as if they were simply so many cubic tonnes of waste mater to be disposed of. Mass murder as an industrial process (this is hinted at in Abattoir). And they did _process_ the victims  taking hair, skin, fat and so on as by-products of that process. A few more Plath lines come to mind  from _Lady Lazarus_:

my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,


Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Do you think someone might post a more cheerful poem for this week?  :Biggrin:

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## Virgil

> Do you think someone might post a more cheerful poem for this week?


  :FRlol:  That's odd, comng from you. I always get the feeling that if a work doesn't end with someone sticking their head in an oven, you seem disappointed.  :Nod:

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## tn2743

That did sound kind of odd.  :Smile:  But it might be because darker poems tend to be deeper. If someone could post a cheerful poem that's also deep and can confuse the hell out of me at the first readings, that'd be great. But you're right Unnamable, we've had at least 4 depressing poems in a row.

PS. I just realised I've been spelling 'Unnamable' wrongly for the past three weeks, sorry.

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## jackyyyy

It provoked the discussion, and for me to research it more and more. What was really inside Hughes, and when/how are all the events in their lives? While I have a habit of seeing black and white on the paper of it.. I really want to see the colour, which is where Unnamable takes it, and good stuff. I still question what people derive from this word 'Incinerated', in fairness to Hughes, and although yes, he used 'abattoir' in the same breathe, and but so what - in the meat making business, its normal stuff. Why didn't someone home in on GOD, since the word, Creation,, and we'd have 1000 comments for sure..

I read up on Plath last night, and 'Daddy'.. and I am now seeing one of those deep/dark psychological life dramas. The real life of Plath and Hughes is far more interesting to me than how I now consider Crow, so I want more Crow than 'nice' stuff, please.

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## The Unnamable

First of all, Virgil was right to be surprised. I do gravitate towards the darker stuff  it tends to be more interesting to me. I like Austen as much as Beckett and _Henry IV Part One_ is one my favourite Shakespeare plays. I hadnt read _Crow Tyrannosaurus_ for twenty years  I go for the earlier Hughes, although I remember really liking that anthology he brought out about his time with Plath, _Birthday Letters_. If XC hadnt posted it, I might never have read it again. Its not pleasant to think that there are great poems (that I know) that Ill never read again. Well, theres one that Ive given due thought to for a few days. 




> yes, he used 'abattoir' in the same breathe, and but so what - in the meat making business, its normal stuff.


Hughes wasnt in the meat making business, though  he was in the word grinding business and, no less than those who can kill a cow with the swing of a sledgehammer, he uses his tools with skill and precision, even if its to crack open skulls. The point about abattoir is, firstly, that Hughes could have used a different word but didnt; secondly, the purpose of an abattoir is to kill for food but as part of a mechanised process. This introduces, even if only partly consciously, the idea of production line slaughter. Why do so if that isnt the effect he is after?

You might like to look at Hughes _Thrushes_  both the similarities and the differences from the Crow poems are interesting.

If youd like something lighter, try _Marginalia_ by Billy Collins. Its a great one for this forum. Its accessible, funny and, although many find Collins rather cute and gimmicky, it leaves me feeling warm. If you want something life affirming but still chewy, you could try one of the following by Patrick Kavanagh: _Canal Bank Walk_, _In Memory Of My Mother_, _Advent_.

If you are looking for a poem more horrible than Crow and one that asks almost as many questions, try _More Light! More Light!_ by Anthony Hecht. Its a harrowing read.

And, as its now Friday night in Bangkok, I think I might explore my own Heart of Darkness. The ears deafness will certainly come in handy tonight.

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## jackyyyy

> Why do so if that isnt the effect he is after?


Its how man catches, slaughters and processes his food 'today', which is as unlike the other creatures in the poem (bird-swooping down on insects, cat-catching and gagging on it, dog crunching it). If he had referenced a caveman, maybe. He could not say, "man goes on a hunt for food". I do not mean to belabour the point.. so excuse me here,, I came to this poem, virgin of it, which is what made me question other's not so virgin interpretation.

Uncanny, I just got off the phone with someone in Pattaya, selling cheap rooms.

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## blp

> Perhaps what Hughes is reflecting on really is the Heart of Darkness.


There's something of that, definitely. 

I don't think our readings are very far apart and I'm not sure there's enough in the poem to decide it either way, but it seems to me more a general description of a conflict all humans are subject to and one with a more unconscious effect than what you're describing (as I remember that Brando quote, he says, 'the strength, the _will_ to do that'). 

I see the poem itself as a sort of blort into consciousness of something usually pushed out of the picture.

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## ktd222

Well, heres my doozy. We're all in agreement(at least I think we are) that Emily Dickinson is brilliant, right? This _Tint_ poem has both philosophical and poetic elements in it.

The Tint I cannot take -- is best --
The Color too remote
That I could show it in Bazaar --
A Guinea at a sight --

The fine -- impalpable Array --
That swaggers on the eye
Like Cleopatra's Company --
Repeated -- in the sky --

The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell --

The eager look -- on Landscapes --
As if they just repressed
Some Secret -- that was pushing
Like Chariots -- in the Vest --

The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know.

Their Graspless manners -- mock us --
Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave --
Another way -- to see --

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## Virgil

Yay, ktd got her poem out. I've never read this Dickinson poem. Let me absorbed for now.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I may be completely wrong - it has been known - but I think she's describing a sunset in the first couple of verses and how such sights affect her in the subsequent stanzas. 

'The tint' is one of those exquisite, indescribable shades of colour that you sometimes see in a really great sunset; where the red and gold of the clouds meets the blue and turquoise of the sky. I see the 'Cleopatra's company' as being a reference to these colours as well - think of Tutankhamen's deathmask.

Following this physical description, Dickinson goes on to express the transcendental feelings associated with such visions of nature at Her most powerful and moving; how they leave us feeling inadequate and very small. She cites summer landscapes and winter snowscapes as further examples; but the prominence given to the sunset suggests that this was the moment that inspired the poem. She is saying finally that such things give us only hints of a greater glory that we won't witness till after death.

I am not at all familiar with Emily Dickinson's work, so it took several readings to get anything from this. I'd be grateful if anyone could shed any light on the unusual punctuation - breaking lines with dashes in mid phrase - and the capitalisation of certain words (which I assume is for emphasis). Are these common in her poetry?

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## Petrarch's Love

You're right, ktd, that is a doozy. I haven't read this Dickinson before. Some of my first impressions were similar to Xamonas'. The first few stanzas seem to refer to a sunset and then build from the intangible beauty of what we see in the heavens in life to the intangible things we will see after death. I thought the "Cleopatra's company" line was alluding to Shakespeare's _Antony and Cleopatra_, specifically the famous speech describing Cleopatra on her barge (though maybe I just have A&C on the brain after annotating it last summer). Here's an excerpt for consideration:




> I will tell you.
> The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
> Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
> Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
> The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
> Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
> The water which they beat to follow faster,
> As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
> It beggar'd all description: she did lie
> ...


The glitter of Cleopatra's barge seems to resonate with the "impalpable Array --That swaggers on the eye" Dickinson is trying to describe in her poem. 

As for the peculiar punctuation, I know it is something Dickinson is known for, but I've never made a formal study of her works, so I don't really know much about it. I did a little poking around in the MLA online database while I was looking up some articles for some other research this morning, and it seems that very few critics have tried writing on this poem, possibly because it is such a doozy. Evidently Harold Bloom considers it one of the greatest American poems though (for whatever that's worth), and I came across one interpretation that pointed out that the poem was written during the civil war and read the allusions to color for sale as partly a critcism of slavery in the period (I wasn't really sold on this argument, but wondered what others thought of it). Many critics pointed out that the imagery of the first stanza with the "tints" going to market, was likely evoking the sale of colored fabrics at a bazar (another tie in with the "purple sails" and "cloth-of-gold of tissue" in the Shakespeare). I liked the interpretation given along these lines in an article by an Ellen Fitzgerald in the Nov. 1969 _Explicator_. She interpreted the first line, "the tint I cannot take" in terms of the way cloth is sometimes unable to "take" or absorb a dye. Metaphorically Dickinson is like the cloth, that cannot "take" the tint which is "too remote," something which is beyond the grasp of the mortal soul. Anyway, that's what a little casual research brought up. I'll have to give this poem some additional thought. I'm really interested to see what people make of this poem in the week's discussion. 

P.S. 


> Yay, ktd got her poem out.


Oh wow, how did I miss that ktd is a woman? Really sorry if I got your gender wrong somewhere, ktd. I thought you were I guy for some reason!  :Blush:   :Blush:

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## Virgil

Actually I'm responsible for call ktd a "her". I don't know that it's true. For some reason I've got it in my mind that the person is a she. And so without thinking my grammer reflects that. Obviously Petrarch you assumed ktd is a he. I asked ktd once of his/her's gender and she never responded. Perhaps my question got lost in discussions. So how about we ask ktd one more time, and if he/she doesn't respond again, then obviously she doesn't want to share it. I'll understand. 


As to the poem, my first reaction was a tint for cloth, which I picked up from the first stanza. But XC quite rightly points out it refers to the sky in the second stanza. Perhaps she means both, and therefore tint in general. The poem lays heavy emphasis on seeing. Every stanza except the third (and perhaps the fifth, although there I think sight is implied) has a refernce to sight or eye or something visual. The construction of the poem I take as the following: 
(1)The first two stanzas are parallel constructions and therefore linked in thought.
(2)The fourth and fifth stanzas seem like they want to be linked, although I'm not sure. While stanzas one and two are colors imposing itself on the passive eye, in four and five it seems like the eye is actively looking out.
(3)The third and sixth stanzas are very much linked through the identical construction and rhythm of their final lines.

I'm hardly an expert on Dickinson's grammer, but having read a bit of her here are a couple of my observations:
(1) She does it for rhythm
(2) She does it for breath spacing, and therefore creating points of emphasis
(3) She does it for structure. Notice that the first full period comes at the end of the fifth stanza. But she's still able to write clauses with dashes for separation. But the period does add extra emphasis.

I would summarize the theme to be a distinction between the living's arrogance at thinking they see completely versus the dead's ability to see beyond, or "another way." But I think there's more going on here.

Can someone tell me what "Tulle" in the fifth stanza refers to?

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## chmpman

After a google search I believe it is some sort of netted fabric.

In the fifth stanza what do you guys think of the bringing in of Squirrels. Using my experience of these rodents I think she is referring here to "The Pleading of the Summer." This would not be a reference to sight, but sound. Have you ever heard the weird buzzing squirrels make? It sounds like it is coming from everywhere at once. This seems to me like it would be one of those things of Nature that transcends man's understanding.

What do you guys think of her comparing the sunset, a creation of Nature, to that of a manmade fabric? I think her first line definitely states her preference, perhaps the illusions to Shakespeare coming mockingly? Maybe not. Maybe her comparison is supposed to be between what is felt and what is seen. Good poem, I haven't studied Dickenson yet.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Tulle is a gauzy fabric used to make ruffs and frills - and especially wedding gowns - here she uses it as a nice metaphor for snow.

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## Virgil

> Tulle is a gauzy fabric used to make ruffs and frills - and especially wedding gowns - here she uses it as a nice metaphor for snow.


Oh, thanks.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

There is a lot of delicious ambiguity in this poem: 

Is the last line implying an alternative method of seeing or seeing an alternative route?
Do the 'graspless manners' belong to the squirrels? The full stop in the previous line would imply not - so to what do they refer?
Chariots -- in the vest? Pleading of the summer? Where do these two phrases fit? What do they mean even?

It's a grower - that's about the only thing I'm really sure of.

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## ktd222

> Is the last line implying an alternative method of seeing or seeing an alternative route?


I think so.
The tint she cannot take in some way is best-but she cannot reason why-but the squirrels seem to know-through graspless manners. Maybe the reason that she is unable to grasp tint is because The Tint is ungraspable; it cannot be reasoned or deduced by us in any way. The Tint must be felt; it is a fine impalpable array. 




> So how about we ask ktd one more time, and if he/she doesn't respond again, then obviously she doesn't want to share it. I'll understand.


I'll just leave it as this: I'll be 18 this year and am planning enrollement at Wellesley College.  :Wink:

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## Virgil

:FRlol:  Wow, I guess I got something right. Not even 18? Wow you seemed much older. I thought you were a grad student.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Wow, I guess I got something right. Not even 18? Wow you seemed much older. I thought you were a grad student.


Gee, sorry again for not knowing you were a girl, ktd. Mea Culpa. I thought you were about 19 or 20, first or second year undergrad. I'm not sure I would have guessed highschool. You must just be wise beyond your seventeen years.  :Wink:  Wellesley sounds like a great school...but where's your supply of young men to date?  :Brow:

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## rachel

> I may be completely wrong - it has been known - but I think she's describing a sunset in the first couple of verses and how such sights affect her in the subsequent stanzas. 
> 
> 'The tint' is one of those exquisite, indescribable shades of colour that you sometimes see in a really great sunset; where the red and gold of the clouds meets the blue and turquoise of the sky. I see the 'Cleopatra's company' as being a reference to these colours as well - think of Tutankhamen's deathmask.
> 
> Following this physical description, Dickinson goes on to express the transcendental feelings associated with such visions of nature at Her most powerful and moving; how they leave us feeling inadequate and very small. She cites summer landscapes and winter snowscapes as further examples; but the prominence given to the sunset suggests that this was the moment that inspired the poem. She is saying finally that such things give us only hints of a greater glory that we won't witness till after death.
> 
> I am not at all familiar with Emily Dickinson's work, so it took several readings to get anything from this. I'd be grateful if anyone could shed any light on the unusual punctuation - breaking lines with dashes in mid phrase - and the capitalisation of certain words (which I assume is for emphasis). Are these common in her poetry?


Being a great fan and having read as much on her life as is possible I think probably she did the unusual punctuation simply because she felt like it and didn't give a fig newton about what anyone else thought of it. Yay, I like that. All these rules and regulations about how to say what comes from your very own unique mind and heart-I hate that , it is just as wierd to me as having to wear fashions that some guy who lives in his own little fantasy world decides everyone else should wear.
but that is just my thought  :Biggrin:

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## ktd222

> Wellesley sounds like a great school...but where's your supply of young men to date?


Now do you see whats happening. I take everything that was said back; I'm a life-form from the planet Xenon come to Online-Literature to do research on galactical literature. Yes, we have schools where I come from-but what you call schools we call oohh-pock. If you want to procreate, you must get permission from The Mother Brain; otherwise kneck roek bop, kneck roek bop.

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## rachel

you are too adorable. How do you just say hullo and shake hands I wonder?,do you have hands then?

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## Petrarch's Love

> Now do you see whats happening. I take everything that was said back; I'm a life-form from the planet Xenon come to Online-Literature to do research on galactical literature. Yes, we have schools where I come from-but what you call schools we call oohh-pock. If you want to procreate, you must get permission from The Mother Brain; otherwise kneck roek bop, kneck roek bop.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:  Nanoo Nanoo! Oh wait, wrong planet. I'm from a planet called academia  :Alien:  where the inhabitants speak a language called "theory" (far less intelligible than your native Xenon language--seriously). They do this a lot:  :Brickwall:  and call it "thinking." 

Well enough frivolous interrogation of one another and back to a serious discussion of poetry.  :Banana:  




> Being a great fan and having read as much on her life as is possible I think probably she did the unusual punctuation simply because she felt like it and didn't give a fig newton about what anyone else thought of it.


I think that's a very good point Rachel. I've often thought that Dickinson isn't really what one might call a "critic's poet" in that she very much does her own thing in her own way. I sense that the way to understanding her poetry is often less a matter of thinking it out than of feeling it out.

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## ktd222

> I think that's a very good point Rachel. I've often thought that Dickinson isn't really what one might call a "critic's poet" in that she very much does her own thing in her own way. I sense that the way to understanding her poetry is often less a matter of thinking it out than of feeling it out.


I've always believed understanding her poetry requires utmost attentiveness by my critical eyes-being that most of her poetry is so short. The dependency of word choice, meter, syntax, etc, requires 'that extra level of importance' for the poem to succeed-and a lot of her poetry does succeed in achieving its art without overkill.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

ktd,

I spent a little time on Xenon on business. The people things were delightful but I found the magenta sky a little strident. I love those little pastries that whistle when you chew them though - are they called Knirple, Knopple? Something like that. :Biggrin: 

Thanks (and thanks to Rachel too) for clearing up the capital letter/punctuation thing. It sort of agrees with my guesses.

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## rachel

you....GUESSED? Oh I am shattered. I thought, no I was certain beyond anything that you KNOW EVERYTHING.
hmm, I think you are joking. No I know you are, for the wind has brought word to me from far away places that even the trees talk about you on breezy evenings and marvel that you know everything.  :FRlol:

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## jackyyyy

It was interesting to read how others here take to the style. Its like song lyrics I have read while listening to the particular singer. If I " listen " to it, I arrive. What I mean by this is, when someone is reciting a story or tale, or singing a song, its different to reading with 'our own' mental voice. I think this is Dickinson talking in her style.

A woman, elating the beauty revealed since the arrival of Summer. She has moments, flushes of high inspiration, fleeting and about to stay, but don't, can't quite. The Squirrels take these things, as is their nature, until the scowl of Winter and snow arrives again to protect what belongs to nature. Then, she knows, for only in her grave, no more Winters needed and she will enjoy without interruption.The very last words seem like throw aways. Not sure I described it so well.

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## Virgil

> A woman, elating the beauty revealed since the arrival of Summer. She has moments, flushes of high inspiration, fleeting and about to stay, but don't, can't quite. The Squirrels take these things, as is their nature, until the scowl of Winter and snow arrives again to protect what belongs to nature. Then, she knows, for only in her grave, no more Winters needed and she will enjoy without interruption.


I'm not sure I agree with that, Jack. I don't think it's simple beauty she's talking about, the kind you just enjoy. The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-" This is a deep phenomena she's talking about, obviously because of the allusions, spiritual, trascendental. That's anting the pot up a notch, and then (if you'll excuse the poker metaphor) she further antes it up at the end, perhaps throwing all her chips in: "Their Graspless manners - mock us / Until the Cheated Eye / Shuts arrogantly - in the grave - / Another way - to see -" So the experience with nature or beauty does something to her soul, which is to say it is quite an engraved ordeal. But that in the end is not the totality of experience. Transcendentalism is not the complete picture. There will be still another level to the experience that the living eye cannot know or see, but only from the grave can one know or see it.

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## jackyyyy

Aye, Virgil, I am not sure I agree with me either, but after reading it over two score times, I do want to post something to egg the ideas. You know who comes to my mind when I read it, Katherine Hepburn (nope, I don't know why). I was aware that her choice of words imply greater things, but I wonder if her intention was, and in her style, simply an account of her feelings, rather than a profound statement.



> The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-"


"Dominion" or mastery is another positive emotion, and "Too exquisite" sounds like her style again.



> "Their Graspless manners - mock us / Until the Cheated Eye / Shuts arrogantly - in the grave - / Another way - to see -"


When she writes "Another way - to see", does not infer to me that what she could see would be 'superior', only that its 'another way to see'.

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## Virgil

> You know who comes to my mind when I read it, Katherine Hepburn (nope, I don't know why).


Well, they were both from the same part of the U.S. Did Hepburn ever marry? She seems like a spinster type, but as an actress I'm sure she was more extraverted than Emily. 




> When she writes "Another way - to see", does not infer to me that what she could see would be 'superior', only that its 'another way to see'


Hmm. I would agree with that. It hadn't crossed my mind.

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## jackyyyy

I think she married Humpthrey 5 or 6 times, if that counts, and Spencer Tracey. I was crazy about her too.

Nope, just checked, Tracy was a companion, nearly the same thing.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I can't help seeing the last line as havnig the stress on the word 'way' - implying that she means seeing another way, as opposed to seeing _in_ another way. I think it's the pause thingy. Anybody else get that?

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## jackyyyy

As I read it, the stress is on the word 'see'. If I marry the person to the style, I can see her saying that, in her kind of flippant, half arrogant way... 

another way - to see.. what she wants to see, but the scoundrel Squirrels will not let her, least not here on Earth.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Hepburn married businessman & playboy Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928 and divorced him 6 years later. They famously got a second divorce in 1942 before he remarried because he wasn't sure that their Mexican divorce was legal! She had a long term affair with Spencer Tracey but never married him and no affair with Humph that I ever heard about. She did star alongside him in the brilliant 'African Queen' though.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I'm not sure about the last line, I can see it both ways. I like that in a poem. If it means the same every time you read it, it's too obvious IMHO.

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## jackyyyy

Yes, a poem for all seasons. So, why be precise, when we should just enjoy the colours it splashes on us. I feel if I read it again and again, Katherine will end up married to Tracy.. somewhere in those words. (nope, I don't know why)

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## ktd222

> The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-" This is a deep phenomena she's talking about, obviously because of the allusions, spiritual, trascendental.


If you read this poem again, taking into account The Squirrels *graspless*  manners to experience the transcendental aspect of tint, then you'll see in stanzas 1, 4, 5, 6, that she is trying to find an angle to *grasp* this transcendental aspect of The Tint. But to no avail. But yet, she continues throughout the poem to find an angle to grasps The Tint nontheless-even to her very last moments of existence-she refuses to understand The Tint through any other means, except grasping: _Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly_

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## ktd222

> If you are looking for a poem more horrible than Crow and one that asks almost as many questions, try More Light! More Light! by Anthony Hecht. Its a harrowing read.


Unnamable,

Wow! How absent or unconcious must the soul be to torture for amusement.

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## ktd222

Read Raymond Carver's _Cathedral_, you will see a similar thing developing as in Dickinson's _Tint_  poem.

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## Virgil

> I'm not sure about the last line, I can see it both ways. I like that in a poem. If it means the same every time you read it, it's too obvious IMHO.


I agree. I can read it both ways. But I'm not sure it changes the meaning that much.

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## Virgil

> If you read this poem again, taking into account The Squirrels *graspless*  manners to experience the transcendental aspect of tint, then you'll see in stanzas 1, 4, 5, 6, that she is trying to find an angle to *grasp* this transcendental aspect of The Tint. But to no avail. But yet, she continues throughout the poem to find an angle to grasps The Tint nontheless-even to her very last moments of existence-she refuses to understand The Tint through any other means, except grasping: _Until the Cheated Eye
> Shuts arrogantly_


Why do you say to no avail? The third stanza states that those things "happen on the soul". But I will say that I'm not getting the fifth stanza as I should. The "Mystery" and the squirrels confuse me. Perhaps we should focus on this stanza. Any thoughts out there?

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## ktd222

> The third stanza states that those things "happen on the soul".


Because if you read this stanza:

_The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell --_

The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul; not the Soul causes the Moments of Dominion to happen. She still isn't understanding, even though The Moments of Dominion has happened on her Soul. Her Soul has yet to fully understand, hence, on her Soul. There is this thing going on where just like the Tint and she, the Soul still isn't able to take the Moments of Dominion in, which is another way of saying the Soul hasn't grasped.

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## ktd222

_The eager look -- on Landscapes --
As if they just repressed
Some Secret -- that was pushing
Like Chariots -- in the Vest --

The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know._

These two stanzas are about she suspecting the Lanscape knowing 'something, 'Some Secret -- that was pushing Like Chariots -- in the Vest --.' Yet, she is unable to unlock the secret. I'll let others comment.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I mostly agree with ktd about the 'Happen on the soul' line - think of it as 'happen _upon_' if you prefer, not 'happen in'. 

The moments find the soul and change it, leaving it confused in a beautiful yet disturbing way but offering it no explanation. That's my take on that stanza.

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## jackyyyy

> The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul; not the Soul causes the Moments of Dominion to happen. She still isn't understanding, even though The Moments of Dominion has happened on her Soul. Her Soul has yet to fully understand, hence, on her Soul. There is this thing going on where just like the Tint and she, the Soul still isn't able to take the Moments of Dominion in, which is another way of saying the Soul hasn't grasped.


Yes, I agree here too, its the moments that cause the emotions, her soul is being affected. When you write "... Soul hasn't grasped", you make me confused with 'Their graspless manners'. I think its at the "Summer/Winter" point in the flow that she is summing up _something_. "Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp (it), cannot 'see' (it). And, manners = their habits.

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## jackyyyy

> I mostly agree with ktd about the 'Happen on the soul' line - think of it as 'happen _upon_' if you prefer, not 'happen in'. 
> 
> The moments find the soul and change it, leaving it confused in a beautiful yet disturbing way but offering it no explanation. That's my take on that stanza.


I don't know that she is confused, rather she is merely feeling and enjoying, but like I wrote earlier, its as though, and at the Summer/Winter point, she becomes upset at the Squirrels (and what they represent).

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## ktd222

> Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp


If they do not understand, then how is it that they can 'mock us'? I'm not saying your wrong, but not understanding and mocking seems to contridict each other.

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## ktd222

> Soul hasn't grasped", you make me confused with 'Their graspless manners'


Your right, I shouldn't have said it that way. Grasping is what she is trying to do throughout the poem to understand the meaning of the Tint. 'For fear the Squirrels -- know./Their Graspless manners -- mock us'-This states the Squirrels 'know.' Not that they don't understand. And it seems to me, 'Their Graspless manners-' gets at the degree(graspless) of the Squirrels knowing of the Tint. And the narrator senses the degree of the Squirrels knowing as well, even though 'she' cannot. 






> Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp (it), cannot 'see' (it). And, manners = their habits.


But you are leaving out this part: 'Their Graspless manners -- _mock us'_ .

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## jackyyyy

They mock in ignorance, and as per their manners/habit. They are graspless of those feelings she has, and cannot see what she can. I am trying to ascertain this word 'graspless' which was ambiguous to me before.. I saw Squirrels with little arms as opposed to Squirrels with little ability to grasp a notion.

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## ktd222

> I am trying to ascertain this word 'graspless' which was ambiguous to me before.. I saw Squirrels with little arms as opposed to Squirrels with little ability to grasp a notion.


Its not a grasping at all. 

_The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul_

To be, as you say, 'in ignorance' is the only way to experience the Tint.

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## jackyyyy

Thats why I felt the piece is reflecting her style, somehow. The Winter arrives, hides it all from the Squirrels. Since Summer/Winter is perpetual, its only in the grave (she mutters to herself), will she be able to understand what she feels. (thats where I am at now, tomorrow it could change).

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## ktd222

Understanding of Dickinson's poetry just requires attention to every single word. 




> The Winter arrives, hides it all from the Squirrels. Since Summer/Winter is perpetual


The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know.

Theres more here before you even get to the Squirrels. Who's 'Pleading'? Why is the Snow referred to as 'That other Prank'-which means the Summer was the first Prank? The Prank is being played on Who? The Landscape seems like an Entity here.

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## jackyyyy

The Summer is pleading (to stay).
The 'first ' prank be Mystery.
The prank is being played on her.

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## Grumbleguts

About time someone provided another copy of this poem. I shall oblige. :Biggrin: 




> The Tint I cannot take -- is best --
> The Color too remote
> That I could show it in Bazaar --
> A Guinea at a sight --
> 
> The fine -- impalpable Array --
> That swaggers on the eye
> Like Cleopatra's Company --
> Repeated -- in the sky --
> ...

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## ktd222

> The Summer is pleading (to stay).
> The 'first ' prank be Mystery.
> The prank is being played on her.


I would have to disagree; but I do not have time to go over it, right now.

There is no words in the poem denoting staying.

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## Virgil

> Its not a grasping at all. 
> 
> _The Moments of Dominion
> That happen on the Soul_
> 
> To be, as you say, 'in ignorance' is the only way to experience the Tint.


So, ktd, are you saying that the narrator is not seeing the trascendental power of nature in the first three stanzas? What then is she referring to with "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the soul"

Also I don't know if someone mentioned this before, but when she says "Their Graspless manners," their is refering to the multiple natural elements she's brought up. So perhaps you're right, ktd, the narrator can't experience the transcendental power. But then what is "Dominion" referring to?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I agree with most of that last post Virgil. 

Especially the meaning of 'their'. I think if it was the squirrels, the full stop wouldn't be there. I think by Dominion, she is referring to the overwhelming power of nature _dominating_ all that gaze upon it, particularly her soul, which it 'happens on' (ie. accidentally finds - as in 'I happened on a young girl as she was bathing in the stream - but enough of my fantasies!)

I have a handle (rightly or wrongly) on most of this poem now. The only two phrases that still won't sit still are _The Pleading of the Summer_ and the last line. The last line is OK though because it's nicely ambiguous and leads me off in all sorts of directions at once. 

But the pleading of summer is niggling at me; telling me that it has an obvious meaning which I'm just not quite getting (and I'm not happy with jackyyyy's pleading to stay theory - sorry jack). Any other ideas out there?

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## chmpman

I posted my squirrel theory.

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## jackyyyy

The eager look -- on Landscapes --
As if they just repressed

What does this mean, "repressed" ?

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## Virgil

> I agree with most of that last post Virgil. 
> 
> Especially the meaning of 'their'. I think if it was the squirrels, the full stop wouldn't be there. I think by Dominion, she is referring to the overwhelming power of nature _dominating_ all that gaze upon it, particularly her soul, which it 'happens on' (ie. accidentally finds - as in 'I happened on a young girl as she was bathing in the stream - but enough of my fantasies!)


Yes, I think we agree, but it seems to me that ktd is disagreeing with what you state above, and if so then I'm curious as to how she's reading it.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> The eager look -- on Landscapes --
> As if they just repressed
> 
> What does this mean, "repressed" ?


Read the whole stanza as a sentence.

The eager look on lanscapes as if they just repressed some secret that was pushing, like chariots, in the vest.

I am assuming that vest refers to the chest region and therefore the heart.

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## chmpman

Would that be repressed in the observer or the landscapes themselves? She seems to do a lot of personifying nature.

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## jackyyyy

She is saying, AS IF they, the LANDSCAPES...

An eager look on LANDSCAPES (AS IF) they, the landscapes themselves, repressed, pushed away (concealed, hidden) some secret that was trying to get out. She is not quite accusing the LANDSCAPES.

The LANDSCAPES are natural, change with the seasons, and because of the SQs (seasonal), and because of the snow (seasonal), I think of Winter.

Moments of Dominion... are good feelings of mastery, ownership, conquest. I think she is elating in the first 3 stanzas.

If I want to pick on every word I can, but I can't see why she would write a riddle. I wonder the test here is reading her style. Ktd seems very sure of, I look forward to what she has to say.

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## chmpman

But she uses the word "Vest", which seems to imply a feeling from the heart, as XC pointed out. If the landscapes are what is repressed, why the use of "Vest"?

I'm under the impression that the poem's meaning is to relate her feelings under the influence of nature. This is not an easy task, hence the ambiguity. I like it for that.

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## jackyyyy

Yes, its sure ambiguous anyway.. which is not a bad thing, like music, except when people want to be exact about it. Vest to me (don't laugh), is snow. Because its white (ya, I know lots of coloured vests, but not back then). Vest is also a verb.. but I do not want to complicate it anymore than is already.

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## ktd222

> Ktd seems very sure of, I look forward to what she has to say


Its just an argument for one way to see the poem. Isn't the one who posts the poem suppose to be active in the discussion anyways?

Okay, fine, well do this by stanza.

The Tint I cannot take -- is best --
The Color too remote
That I could show it in Bazaar --
A Guinea at a sight --

This to me reads The Tint she cannot take is the Tint at its best. There is a negative tone associated with what she cannot take. Look at the next lines: 

_The Color too remote
That I could show it in Bazaar --
A Guinea at a sight --_

More emphasis on the I. The Color of the Tint is too remote that she could show it in Bazaar--A Guinea at a sight. 

Bazaar defined: A bazaar is a market, often covered, typically found in areas of Muslim culture. 

The goods that the market is selling is found 'inside' or under the covering of the market. Another allusion to the market covering being the Tint and what it has to offer(its goods) inside. And you could almost see her paying a Guinea for a glimpse(sight) into the Tint. Yet, The poem starts off 'The Tint I cannot take-' so that negates that action being done by her to 'pay' for a look, if you will, into what the Tint has to offer inside-not full discernment though, she only gets 'a sight' for a Guinea-never more.

Its still 'The Tint she cannot take'

_The Color too remote_

Its as if from the color of the Tint alone she is unable to discern the significance of the Tint; so instead she 'pays' for discernment: 'A Guinea at a sight.' Even though, again, it is 'The Tint she cannot take.'

Agree or disagree? Any other opinons to how stanza 1 translates?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I like Petrarch's Love's idea about the 'tint' - back about 5 pages! - that she is referring to herself as a cloth and the 'tint' as a colour (a dye) that is too special and sublime to be completely absorbed by the cloth as it is, that is, the cloth cannot express it perfectly. She uses this as a metaphor for the way in which her soul is moved by nature at it's greatest but cannot express it adequately in words. If this is what she meant, it is a beautiful allegory. Even if this is NOT what she meant, it is STILL a beautiful allegory. I hope that it IS what she meant.

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## ktd222

Stanza 2:

The fine -- impalpable Array --
That swaggers on the eye
Like Cleopatra's Company --
Repeated -- in the sky --

'The fine -- impalpable Array --' to me, is a description of the Tint as being 'incapable of being felt by touch'(m-w dictionary). Or another way of implying that she is trying to grasp The Tint-which is just an alternative way from the first stanza-of 'paying' for information in order to understand the signifcance of The Tint. So that, as she is trying to grasp, 'The fine--impalpable Array--' seems to almost boast in front of her eye because Tint is not graspable, also. 

What I get from this: 'Like Cleopatra's Company --Repeated -- in the sky --'
is not only the way the Tint seems to swagger in front of the eye thats trying in vain to grasp it, but this line almost gives an imagined image to us about how graspable the Tint is-try physically, to grasp reflections of anything. You can't physically hold shadows in the palm of you hands. But as to why she specifically uses 'Cleopatra's Company,' I don't know. Any thoughts?

Disagree or agree?

----------


## Virgil

> Stanza 2:
> 
> The fine -- impalpable Array --
> That swaggers on the eye
> Like Cleopatra's Company --
> Repeated -- in the sky --
> 
> 'The fine -- impalpable Array --' to me, is a description of the Tint as being 'incapable of being felt by touch'(m-w dictionary). Or another way of implying that she is trying to grasp The Tint-which is just an alternative way from the first stanza-of 'paying' for information in order to understand the signifcance of The Tint. So that, as she is trying to grasp, 'The fine--impalpable Array--' seems to almost boast in front of her eye because Tint is not graspable, also. 
> 
> ...


I'm still holding on to my reading, although you make interesting points. Your reading doesn't explain "Momnets of Dominion on the soul" If you can weave that in, you might pursuade me.

This might hinge on how we interpret impalpable, so here's M-W:




> impalpable
> Main Entry: im·pal·pa·ble 
> Pronunciation: (")im-'pal-p&-b&l
> Function: adjective
> 1 a : incapable of being felt by touch : INTANGIBLE <the impalpable aura of power that emanated from him -- Osbert Sitwell> b : so finely divided that no grains or grit can be felt <rock worn to an impalpable powder>
> 2 : not readily discerned by the mind

----------


## ktd222

Virgil,

I'll explain the third stanza later. I have to get back to work.

----------


## ktd222

_The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell --_




> The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-" This is a deep phenomena she's talking about, obviously because of the allusions, spiritual, trascendental.


You stated above, and I agree, that 'The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul' has transported to a spiritual or transcendent level. 'The Moments of Dominion' may be the 'impalpable Array(stanza2),'The Tint' itself(stanza1), that is in front of her. All one in the same. In the first two stanzas she is trying to understand the Tint, but unsuccessfully. In this stanza the Tint, which we find out is same as 'The Moments of Dominion' happens on the Soul. 'Happens-'just happens on the Soul, not because she has found any way to understand it-because she hasn't. Even though 'The Moments of Dominion' happen on the Soul, she is unrealizing of it. Just as the Tint and Array shows itself to her.

'The Moments of Dominion' happen, it happens _on_ the Soul, right on the Soul. And yet, the Soul 'cannot take' 'The Moments of Dominion' into itself. Which metaphorically would be understanding, right? The Soul is still bound to some need of seeing and reasoning to understand, which prevents her from realizing 'The Moments of Dominion' happens right on her soul. And as a result:

_And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell_  

leaves even the Soul with a lack of contentment too exquisite to tell(to explain).

Any other opinions?

----------


## jackyyyy

I am still taking in everything you wrote there, Ktd. What about this word 'Exquisite'. Why do you think she picked that word?

----------


## ktd222

> What about this word 'Exquisite'. Why do you think she picked that word?


_And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell_  

ya, thats tough, because their is weird syntax when I translate the line above.

...And leaves the soul with a discontent too selective to tell. 

Any thoughts, because I'm tired. I'll comment tomorrow.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

Exquisite is an unusual word in the ways it can be used. 

It has 2 slightly differing meanings:

1. Extremely beautiful, usually with overtones of delicacy - "The filigree work on the musical box was exquisite."
2. Intensely felt - "As the lash struck his bared back, the pain was exquisite."

I think that Dickinson is well aware of the ambiguity of the word, it's positive/negative dichotomy. It could be that she is using it to simultaneously describe both the beauty and power of the 'tint' (in my interpretation, an awe-inspiring experience of nature) and the intensity of the discontent felt by being unable to fully grasp it's essence.

----------


## ktd222

> Exquisite is an unusual word in the ways it can be used. 
> 
> It has 2 slightly differing meanings:
> 
> 1. Extremely beautiful, usually with overtones of delicacy - "The filigree work on the musical box was exquisite."
> 2. Intensely felt - "As the lash struck his bared back, the pain was exquisite."
> 
> I think that Dickinson is well aware of the ambiguity of the word, it's positive/negative dichotomy. It could be that she is using it to simultaneously describe both the beauty and power of the 'tint' (in my interpretation, an awe-inspiring experience of nature) and the intensity of the discontent felt by being unable to fully grasp it's essence.


But this wouldn't fit with what is going on in the first two stanzas. A certain 'trying' to understand by her. 




> exquisite
> 2 entries found for exquisite.
> To select an entry, click on it. 
> exquisite[1,adjective]exquisite[2,noun] 
> 
> Main Entry: 1ex·qui·site 
> Pronunciation: ek-'skwi-z&t, 'ek-(")
> Function: adjective
> Etymology: Middle English exquisit, from Latin exquisitus, past participle of exquirere to search out, from ex- + quaerere to seek
> ...


The first or second definition would fit better.

----------


## jackyyyy

#2 works for me too. I don't know that it can be ambiguous without compromising the earlier stanzas. Anyway... a little closer to exquisition.

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## Virgil

> _The Moments of Dominion
> That happen on the Soul
> And leave it with a Discontent
> Too exquisite -- to tell --_
> 
> 
> 
> You stated above, and I agree, that 'The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul' has transported to a spiritual or transcendent level. 'The Moments of Dominion' may be the 'impalpable Array(stanza2),'The Tint' itself(stanza1), that is in front of her. All one in the same. In the first two stanzas she is trying to understand the Tint, but unsuccessfully. In this stanza the Tint, which we find out is same as 'The Moments of Dominion' happens on the Soul. 'Happens-'just happens on the Soul, not because she has found any way to understand it-because she hasn't. Even though 'The Moments of Dominion' happen on the Soul, she is unrealizing of it. Just as the Tint and Array shows itself to her.
> 
> ...


OK, that's not really different from what I and others were saying.


And at the end of the poem, then the lifting of the "Tulle" at death is a revalation, and I mean that in the religious sense. What is ungraspable but exquisite in life is revealed at death. Ok, I'm comfortable now with the whole thing.

----------


## ktd222

> And at the end of the poem, then the lifting of the "Tulle" at death is a revalation, and I mean that in the religious sense. What is ungraspable but exquisite in life is revealed at death. Ok, I'm comfortable now with the whole thing


ya, that would seem so, except for the word 'arrogantly' which still makes me unsure if she-in life or in death-will every free herself from reasoning. She's being so exact in all of the previous stanzas that I can't help it feel there is something else happening in the last stanza. The poem would be a total let down and border on cliche if the poem ended as above mentioned.

_Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave_  

There is something specific going on here. Again with the weird syntax. Why is the 'Cheated Eye' assuming that it can 'shut arrogantly--in the Grave'?

----------


## Virgil

> ya, that would seem so, except for the word 'arrogantly' which still makes me unsure if she-in life or in death-will every free herself from reasoning. She's being so exact in all of the previous stanzas that I can't help it feel there is something else happening in the last stanza. The poem would be a total let down and border on cliche if the poem ended as above mentioned.
> 
> _Until the Cheated Eye
> Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave_  
> 
> There is something specific going on here. Again with the weird syntax. Why is the 'Cheated Eye' assuming that it can 'shut arrogantly--in the Grave'?


Well, according to my earlier posts, the eye is arrogant in life becuase it thinks it knows everything. Arrogant is a word loaded with judgemental scorn. Once death arrives, the eye will see what it didn't know (and therefore cheated) before. And then "another way to see" as Xamonas points out.

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## ktd222

> Well, according to my earlier posts, the eye is arrogant in life becuase it thinks it knows everything. Arrogant is a word loaded with judgemental scorn. Once death arrives, the eye will see what it didn't know (and therefore cheated) before. And then "another way to see" as Xamonas points out.


Or what about the eye being so arrogant that it believes it can grasp Tint(or cheat) once the eye shuts in the grave?

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

But the eye is not described as _being_ arrogant, just of _shutting_ arrogantly. It is described as 'cheated' because it cannot 'grasp' the 'tint' - this part I can see - but why does it shut 'arrogantly'?

Personally, it is these ambiguities that I like best about the poem; these small, puddles of dubious clarity that refract and distort the view of the whole so that you never quite see it the same way twice - If you prefer, it is the tint I cannot take which is best!!  :Nod:

----------


## jackyyyy

> But the eye is not described as _being_ arrogant, just of _shutting_ arrogantly. It is described as 'cheated' because it cannot 'grasp' the 'tint' - this part I can see - but why does it shut 'arrogantly'?
> 
> Personally, it is these ambiguities that I like best about the poem; these small, puddles of dubious clarity that refract and distort the view of the whole so that you never quite see it the same way twice - If you prefer, it is the tint I cannot take which is best!!


Hey could be on a roll here.. exactly,, why 'exquisite', 'arrogant', 'cheated'. 

If it was only about enjoying it, ambiguities can make a great kaleidoscope, but for some reason we are trying to get inside Dickinson's head.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Hey could be on a roll here.. exactly,, why 'exquisite', 'arrogant', 'cheated'. 
> 
> If it was only about enjoying it, ambiguities can make a great kaleidoscope, but for some reason we are trying to get inside Dickinson's head.


And therein lies your mistake. You are trying to get inside the head of _Emily_ Dickinson. Emily is a woman's name! Much as I love the creatures, I don't understand how any woman's mind works, let alone one that also happens to be a great poet. 

There comes a point when you just have to stand back and marvel. For me the best thing about great poetry is the way that it twists in your grip and won't stand still. Over-analyse a poem (or a woman) and you run the risk of losing the mystery that gave it (or her) it's allure in the first place.

----------


## jackyyyy

> And therein lies your mistake. You are trying to get inside the head of _Emily_ Dickinson. Emily is a woman's name! Much as I love the creatures, I don't understand how any woman's mind works, let alone one that also happens to be a great poet. 
> 
> There comes a point when you just have to stand back and marvel. For me the best thing about great poetry is the way that it twists in your grip and won't stand still. Over-analyse a poem (or a woman) and you run the risk of losing the mystery that gave it (or her) it's allure in the first place.


I have to bow to your wisdom there.

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## ktd222

> But the eye is not described as being arrogant, just of shutting arrogantly. It is described as 'cheated' because it cannot 'grasp' the 'tint' - this part I can see - but why does it shut 'arrogantly'?


Look at it this way: The whole poem is about her trying to grasp Tint; yet it is this very 'trying to grasp' that is limiting her from understanding, because 'the trying' ceases her from understanding in any other way. It leads the a cheated Eye. 




> Main Entry: 1cheat 
> Pronunciation: 'chEt
> Function: verb
> transitive senses
> 1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
> 2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
> 3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>
> intransitive senses
> 1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly (as at cards or on an examination) 
> ...


Even in the grave the 'Cheated Eye shuts arrogantly.' Not _going_ to the grave the eye shuts arrogantly. She cannot let go of this 'trying to reason,' hence the 'arrogantly,' to believe this is another 'trying' she can use to see the tint. To 'see' not feel; which I've already stated that it must be the 'seeing' that ceases and the Tint to be felt. This last stanza goes back to the 'trying to see' in stanza 1 and 3.

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## ktd222

> If you prefer, it is the tint I cannot take which is best!!


I can't read anything to support this statement.

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## ktd222

> And therein lies your mistake. You are trying to get inside the head of Emily Dickinson


I'm not. I've been supporting my point with what I read in the poem.

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## ktd222

> Over-analyse a poem (or a woman) and you run the risk of losing the mystery that gave it (or her) it's allure in the first place.


If paying close attention to tone, syntax, etc, is over-analysing then I'm ok with your statement.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> I can't read anything to support this statement.


I was equating the way the poem talks about the impalpability of nature with the way I feel about the poem itself. It is the very fact that it is _not_ graspable in a single sitting, or even in several, that will keep me coming back to it.

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## ktd222

> It is the very fact that it is _not_ graspable in a single sitting, or even in several, that will keep me coming back to it.


I agree with this.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> If paying close attention to tone, syntax, etc, is over-analysing then I'm ok with your statement.


...and trying to analyse each and every word individually. It is like trying to analyse every brushstroke of a painting. There is a synergy to a great poem that cannot be broken down into the sum of it's parts without losing something. The way the words combine and play against each other is the essence; isolating a word from a line, a line from a stanza, a stanza from the whole, is like looking at parts of a car and wondering how it works. It can help, but it can also confuse if you lose sight of the bigger picture.

Another thing to consider. Even great poets are human. It is often assumed in analysis that they knew exactly why they put every word where they did and that they were all chosen for a purpose. This may be true in some cases. But it is certainly false in most. Is it beyond the bounds of reason that Dickinson would choose a word over an alternative just because it sounded good? Or that she might deliberately throw in an ambiguous word or phrase in a mischievous manner? Or that something that she wrote in a moment of inspiration didn't really make sense to her either but was too beautiful to drop (not to mention that she herself might have caught a hint of meaning in it without being sure exactly what)? I'm not saying that any of these are necessarily the case here, but I'm not ruling any of them out either. 

I love the poem; it speaks to me and I can see a meaning in it that may or may not be right. I also expect it to show another side of itself next time I read it. A poem's meaning lies somewhere between the author's intention and the reader's interpretation and is constantly in flux. I wouldn't have it any other way.

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## ktd222

> ...and trying to analyse each and every word individually.



This poem is not like, say, _The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock_, so every word does take on an extra level of importance.





> There is a synergy to a great poem that cannot be broken down into the sum of it's parts without losing something. The way the words combine and play against each other is the essence; isolating a word from a line, a line from a stanza, a stanza from the whole, is like looking at parts of a car and wondering how it works. It can help, but it can also confuse if you lose sight of the bigger picture.


I never discounted this. Tone and sytax does not mean analysis of every single word. I took both the sum and parts in my analysis.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> I never discounted this. Tone and sytax does not mean analysis of every single word. I took both the sum and parts in my analysis.


I never suggested that you did. Apologies if you got this impression. I was merely clarifying my earlier statement.  :Nod:

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## ktd222

I have to get to work. Yes, even on Sunday.  :Frown:  We can pick this up later if you want.

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## jackyyyy

> Even in the grave the 'Cheated Eye shuts arrogantly.' Not _going_ to the grave the eye shuts arrogantly. She cannot let go of this 'trying to reason,' hence the 'arrogantly,' to believe this is another 'trying' she can use to see the tint. To 'see' not feel; which I've already stated that it must be the 'seeing' that ceases and the Tint to be felt. This last stanza goes back to the 'trying to see' in stanza 1 and 3.


Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave --
Another way -- to see --

Yes, she is currently shutting her eye arrogantly.. until the grave when that action will stop. Makes me think there should be a (,) after the word UNTIL.

I now have a new understanding of the word Exquisite, thanks to Ktd, which wasn't in any of my brain cells before. So, it shed a new light. This part, I think is a very good reason to analyse, pay close attention, and thereby increase ours and other's awareness.

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## ktd222

> Yes, she is currently shutting her eye arrogantly.. until the grave when that action will stop


I don't know about this. The word 'shuts' is abrupt. Not like shutting which connnotates a 'process happening.'

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## Virgil

Jackyyy - Would you like to post one for this week? I don't think you have yet.

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## jackyyyy

> I don't know about this. The word 'shuts' is abrupt. Not like shutting which connnotates a 'process happening.'


You're right. I could have indicated a continual 'shutting abruptly' process, which will still never come out quite the same way as her one word. The tense, location and reference is clearer now, thanks again to your analysis. It also made me realize, and kind of stupidily on my part, that if we do not know all meanings and derivates for any given word, we will conjur up different pictures to satisfy a solution in our brain. On the other hand, I agree with Xamonas, and my kaleidoscopic view from this poem is still the one that satisfies my analysis, given my limitations (I am not the author), overall understanding of the author, the theme and the content - my colour blue is not the same as another's.




> Jackyyy - Would you like to post one for this week? I don't think you have yet.


Thanks for the offer Virgil, I would love to. I have many poems that have stuck with me over many years, I would enjoy that. However, I have only been here two weeks and I am still learning a lot. Maybe in a few months when I am a little more confident of what I am talking about.  :Wink:

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## ktd222

I had an epiphany while looking at this quote by Xamonas:




> There is a lot of delicious ambiguity in this poem: 
> Do the 'graspless manners' belong to the squirrels? The full stop in the previous line would imply not - so to what do they refer?


_Their Graspless manners -- mock us --
Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave --
Another way -- to see --_

Maybe '*Their* Graspless manners-' refers to--every way of 'trying' in stanzas 1,2,4,5, to grasp the transcendent element of tint: 

S1: the purchasing
S2: the grabbing
S4: the eager look
S5: the pleading by the Summer

All these ways to reason 'The Tint' are graspless, because we find out in S3 that 'The Moments of Dominion that *happen* on our Soul' is itself graspless. 'The Moments of Dominion' by chance reveals itself-we don't have any control over this transcendent element of the Tint. 

_The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know._

But our impression that the Squirrels may know(I don't know why squirrels) among the others mentioned 'mocks us,' until we ourselves are deceived(cheated) into believing comprehending of 'The Moments of Dominion' *must* be through these ways: S1, S2, S3, S4.

_Their Graspless manners -- mock us --
Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly -- in the Grave --
Another way -- to see --_

Therefore: the _deceived Eye shuts arrogantly_ '-in the grave-' with these impressions-bound by these impressions-excuse me for this cliche: seeing is believing. Or any of the '--another way--to see--' shown above. 

There you are! I incorporated all of our opinions in to one anwer. Do we agree?

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## Virgil

> Thanks for the offer Virgil, I would love to. I have many poems that have stuck with me over many years, I would enjoy that. However, I have only been here two weeks and I am still learning a lot. Maybe in a few months when I am a little more confident of what I am talking about.


OK, then I'm going to jump in and pick one of my favorite of all time. I'm sorry if Yeats has been done before, us looking at this one.




> *Sailing to Byzantium* by William Butler Yeats
> 
> THAT is no country for old men. The young
> In one another's arms, birds in the trees
> - Those dying generations - at their song,
> The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
> Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
> Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
> Caught in that sensual music all neglect
> ...


Somebody give it a start.

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## Virgil

> There you are! I incorporated all of our opinions in to one anwer. Do we agree?


OK, I'm pretty much on board.

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## jackyyyy

Aye.. I've had enough of squirrels cheating and mocking me, I fear them exquisitely. I'd be vest off in a grave to see it another way. This looks good, Virgil. Once I get me paying job out the way.... I'll mock it in a graspless manner, hehe.

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## The Unnamable

> Somebody give it a start.


"THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations-"

This is how I feel about the Forum.  :FRlol:   :Biggrin:   :Nod:   :Wink:   :Brow:

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## Virgil

> "THAT is no country for old men. The young
> In one another's arms, birds in the trees
> - Those dying generations-"
> 
> This is how I feel about the Forum.


Yes, I understand.  :FRlol:

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## The Unnamable

> OK, then I'm going to jump in and pick one of my favorite of all time.


Sorry, Virgil but Ive grown to like Yeats less and less over the years. The problem I have with this poem is that it offers artifice as a preference to the natural. Certain lines stand out (as they often do in Yeats) but he comes across as a bit of a fart to me. The poem has been called Romantic but I would have to agree with a less modern Romantic:

Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, -- 
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! 
But in the very world, which is the world 
Of all of us, -- the place where in the end 
We find our happiness, or not at all!
The Prelude (1850) bk. 12, 1. 204

Yes, I can see the fear of growing old and I can enjoy the unembellished image of A tattered coat upon a stick but can he really be serious about that golden bird?

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## jackyyyy

I am not sure what fits with people in this forum, but here is an idea you can shoot down. D.H.L. TEASE ?.. that should be.. well.... more than interesting...

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## Petrarch's Love

Thanks for posting the poem Virg. I had an Irish professor as an undergrad who had us memorize a few significant chunks of the Yeats cannon, and this was one of them. I had to recite it in front of the class, so I became accutely aware of how well the sound of it flows, completely independent of the meaning. Some of those lines just please the ear, like finally wrought artifacts, as though the poem as a whole were demonstrating its part in the "artifice of eternity." I'll have to think a little and post some better (more coherent?) comments a little later.

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## blp

Here it is again, since we're on a new page. 

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


I like little snatches of Yeats - _A terrible beauty is born_, _some rough beast, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born_, and _the foul rag and bone shop of the heart_, but (sorry) I've never enjoyed a whole poem enough to look at him much and he appears to have had some rather odd philosophical views, as well as in interest in the occult. Still, look around at other early modernists, in art and architecture as well as literature, and you find some awfully funny views about. I don't want to be too quick to judge. 

'Gyre' from S3, L3 here, is a key term in said philosophical schema and also turns up in Yeats' _The Second Coming_. It means a whirl, vortex or, as Yeats would have it, a historical cycle. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris in _Poems for the Millennium_ describe his vision of this as 'a mapping of all history and consciousness as a recurrent interplay of cycles' and quote R. Ellman , in explanation, 'a conflict of opposites...represented by two interpenetrating cones or gyres, the apex of one in the base of the other' and Yeats: 'What if Christ and Oedipus or, to shift the names, Saint Catherine of Genoa and Michael Angelo, are the two scales of balance, the two butt-ends of a see-saw? What if there is an arithmetic or geometry that can exactly measure the slope of a balance, the dip of a scale, and so date the coming of that something?'

Hmmm.

Well, a few other scattered observations: the title of this one is oddly similar to the famous phrase from _The Second Coming_, _Slouching towards Bethlehem_. No idea whether this is significant. The phrase _golden bough_, S4, L6, is the name of a book by J.G Frazer of comparative religion and myth, showing the parallels between Christianity and other traditions predating it, published 1922 and a key reference point for Pound and Eliot. Not sure of the specific significance of the title. 

This is getting long, so I'll hang back for now.

----------


## genoveva

Where is Byzantium?

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Where is Byzantium?


It's an old name for Istanbul / Constantinople.

----------


## Virgil

> Sorry, Virgil but Ive grown to like Yeats less and less over the years. The problem I have with this poem is that it offers artifice as a preference to the natural. Certain lines stand out (as they often do in Yeats) but he comes across as a bit of a fart to me. The poem has been called Romantic but I would have to agree with a less modern Romantic:
> 
> Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, -- 
> Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! 
> But in the very world, which is the world 
> Of all of us, -- the place where in the end 
> We find our happiness, or not at all!
> The Prelude (1850) bk. 12, 1. 204
> 
> Yes, I can see the fear of growing old and I can enjoy the unembellished image of A tattered coat upon a stick but can he really be serious about that golden bird?


 Yes, he splits from moderns. That's his way of looking at the world. All sorts of writers have all sorts of kooky ideas. To you ideas are paramount; to me the aesthetics. Ultimately it's his artistry, not his ideas, that makes him a poet. If ideas were paramount, he could have written an essay and be precisely clear. To me there are only a handful of poets writing in engish with his poetic skills: Shakespeare, Keats, Pope, come to mind.

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## Petrarch's Love

> The phrase golden bough, S4, L6, is the name of a book by J.G Frazer of comparative religion and myth, showing the parallels between Christianity and other traditions predating it, published 1922 and a key reference point for Pound and Eliot. Not sure of the specific significance of the title.


The golden bough is a reference from the Aeneid, book six, in which Aeneas must search for the golden bough in order to pass safely through the underworld (has this come up elsewhere in this thread or is it just _deja vu_?). I don't know if this was in Yeats' mind or not when he was writing this (I'd be interested if anyone were to suggest a significant way in which they are linked). My Norton anthology quotes Yeats as having written the following about the golden bough and bird:



> I have read somewhere, that in the Emperor's palace at byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver and artificial birds that sang.


The Norton also cites, Hans Christian Anderson's _Emperor's Nightengale_, which I don't remember having read. It's not here on Lit. Net. 



> Ultimately it's his artistry, not his ideas, that make him a poet.


I agree, that I enjoy Yeats most on the aesthetic level. Maybe we could talk about form a little to begin with? I think he does a beautiful job in the _ottava rima_ here. The concluding couplet really puts the emphasis on the end of the stanza, and he uses that fairly effectively. If you read just from the final lines of each stanza you could still get the gist of the poem:




> Caught in that sensual music all neglect
> Monuments of unageing intellect.
> And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
> To the holy city of Byzantium.
> Into the artifice of eternity.
> Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


I love the sound of that repeated rhyme between "come" and "Byzantium" for some reason. It also highlights the transition from the sense of coming to Byzantium in the third stanza to the sense of Byzantium and what is to come at the end. Through the use of the repeated rhyme in chiasmus he smoothly suggests the way the speaker is travelling from across the seas, to Byzantium and from thence to "the artifice of eternity."

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## blp

> It's an old name for Istanbul / Constantinople.


...and its significance would be, I think, though I can't offer a very complete or reliable history, that it was the capital of empire in Europe and the Mediterranean, prior to power shifting to Rome, and, as such, also a capital of culture. Byzantine art is exemplified by icon painting - lots of gilding, flatness and stylisation - a style that continued for a long time in the Roman Empire before early Renaissance artists looked back to Greek classicism for a greater naturalism. Yeats is alluding to and yearning for the arch artifice of Byzantine art - paralleling other modernist breaks with the lineal progression from Renaissance classicism that had characterised western art for some five centuries.

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## Virgil

> ...and its significance would be, I think, though I can't offer a very complete or reliable history, that it was the capital of empire in Europe and the Mediterranean, prior to power shifting to Rome, and, as such, also a capital of culture. Byzantine art is exemplified by icon painting - lots of gilding, flatness and stylisation - a style that continued for a long time in the Roman Empire before early Renaissance artists looked back to Greek classicism for a greater naturalism. Yeats is alluding to and yearning for the arch artifice of Byzantine art - paralleling other modernist breaks with the lineal progression from Renaissance classicism that had characterised western art for some five centuries.


Your history is a little off. Byzantium became Rome's second capital in the 4th century AD. When Rome and the western half of the empire collasped (arguably attributed to 476 AD) the eastern half continued with Constantinople [Byzantium is the original Greek name of town that was there prior to Emperor Constantine making it a major city 331(? I think)] as the capital, and we have come to reffer to that culture as the Byzantines, but they still considered themselves "Romanoi," the continuation of the Roman culture, even to the end in the 15th century. I think you're right to assume that Yeats is identifying with the art of the Byzantines. It's not clear to me what period of Byzantine art he's referring to, the art of the 6th century under emperor Justinian or the art during the middle ages.

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## rabid reader

From a religious aspect, which may proove valuble. After the split of Roman birthed the first division in Christaianity. Byzantium founded the _Eastern Orthadox Church_... this division was made final when the crusaders invaded Constanitopal, during the First Crusade, and had a hooker dance on the alter of the EO's holiest church.

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## Virgil

> From a religious aspect, which may proove valuble. After the split of Roman birthed the first division in Christaianity. Byzantium founded the _Eastern Orthadox Church_... this division was made final when the crusaders invaded Constanitopal, during the First Crusade, and had a hooker dance on the alter of the EO's holiest church.


Well, this perspective is pretty wrong.

Political divsion occured technically in 1054, referred to as the Schism. That's the political official division. Cultural divsion was occuring even before the western half of the empire collasped in the 5th century. First crusade occured in 1095. 

Crusaders sacked Constantiople in 1204, the fourth crusade.




> a hooker dance on the alter of the EO's holiest church


What? Where is that from?


Anybody for discussing the poem? I don't think the East-West Church split is relevant.

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## Petrarch's Love

> It's not clear to me what period of Byzantine art he's referring to, the art of the 6th century under emperor Justinian or the art during the middle ages.


Virgil--My Norton glosses the line "As in the gold mosaic of a wall" as a reference to the mosaics in Hagia Sophia. It's unclear whether that's coming from something they know about Yeats or the editor's imagination though. In any case, I thought I'd offer a couple of pics. as a visual aid for those who aren't familiar with the Byzantine style (and for the enjoyment of those who are).






The second and third shots of the interior really show how mosaic could look like "sages standing in god's holy fire." 

Here's a quote from Yeats I found in the Norton notes:




> "I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aestehtic, and practical life were one, that architects and artificers...spoke to the multitude in gold and silver. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without conciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subject matter and that vision of a whole people."

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## jackyyyy

I like it, Virgil, and more each time I read it. Though my view of it is still forming, I can write something.

*Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.*

The 'Sensual music' is reproduction, life's rythme, and the intellect of life does not 'really' change, just continues/repeats. He shows this, mortality and the process of life's things. The first stanza, 'One another's arms', he is pointing out life again, and how 'he' does not fit or want 'that'.

*O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.*

He writes God's holy fire, so I assume he means the Christian God since it's singular, and he then writes, 'as in', so he is comparing. The 'singing-masters' term makes him sound a little irreverend. He calls them '"O" sages', which came across both ways to me - sarcastic or normal. I don't think its ambiguous if its true that he is comparing the one Christian God with the choice here. He references Byzantine, its art and culture, which points us at that information, and then by the final stanza he seems to go up a gear.. he is clear he wants that 'type' of immortality. In fact, he now welcomes it. Greek soldiers, icondom was bestowed on them by supernatural somethings. Life as a song that can only repeat is limited, happy/unhappy, and immortality, as this 'icon', is his choice.

*Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.*

He is acknowledging his mind is everything, welcoming the supernaturals to take him away, to solve his heart. He wants no more heart.

*Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,*

'I shall NEVER' is strong here, like he is spitting it out.

I fell wrong of, ', perne in a gyre' .. first thought of a leg in a swirl of something (beer). 'perne/a' shows up in other languages. Can anyone offer up the official meaning of this expression, as it sits in this poem?

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## Virgil

Let me give this a kick start. Here's how I would summarize the stanzas:

Stanza 1: The mortatlity of the natural world
Stanza 2: The mortality of man
Stanza 3: The purging of mortal flesh into immortality
Stanza 4: The permanence of immortal form


Petrarch - Those are beautiful images. It was Yeat's poem which made me go an explore the artistry of the Byzantines. The early Renaissance painters owe a bit to them. I would not be surprised if the works you pasted here were prior to the Italian Renaissance and a comparison would show just how far ahead the Byzantines were artistically.




> I fell wrong of, ', perne in a gyre' .. first thought of a leg in a swirl of something (beer). 'perne/a' shows up in other languages. Can anyone offer up the official meaning of this expression, as it sits in this poem?


Jacky - I think we discussed "gyre" when we discussed Yeat's "The Second Coming", a few pages back in this thread. I think he means it to be a spiraling corkscrew motion. The note (from _The Selected Poems and Two Plays of WBY_)I have for "perne in a gyre" for this poem is the folllowing: "swoop down in a whirling movement".

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## jackyyyy

I wondered if that was commonly accepted. Okay, so we all onboard with that, and I checked on perne after I posted, Greek. Possibly, and since its a thread for Yeats, it explains his drive in these message - I am seeing more than a poem here, a statement.

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## chmpman

Quoted from my Norton Anthology:

"I think that if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Acadamy of Plato [6th cent. CE]... I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that architect and artificers...spoke to the multitude and the few alike. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subject matter and that the vision of a whole people." - WB Yeats in _A Vision_

I thought this might help. I'm glad you chose the Yeats, I just began studying a couple of his poems for a class but this wasn't one of them chosen by the professor. We did get to listen to Yeats read his poem "Lake Isle of Innisfree" though.

In the last stanza one of the things that sort of jumps out at me is the repeated use of the word "gold". He really seems to hammer (no pun intended) that into the mind of the reader. Doesn't Plato have some sort of parable about gold and wisdom? I thought there might be some connection here but I don't remember what it is that I remember that from.

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## jackyyyy

*But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
*
Its derision, to be wise on a bough to drowsy Emperors, or be humble and useful/decorative to Lords and Ladies. Greek Goddish pranking??, and it reminds me of Plato. I wonder if Yeats is laughing at himself here, he was a 'sage' afterall.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch - Those are beautiful images. It was Yeat's poem which made me go an explore the artistry of the Byzantines. The early Renaissance painters owe a bit to them. I would not be surprised if the works you pasted here were prior to the Italian Renaissance and a comparison would show just how far ahead the Byzantines were artistically.


Yes, the Hagia Sophia mosaics in the pictures I posted were indeed prior to the Italian Renaissance, mostly about ninth century AD. In Italy the truly stunning 11th to 14th century Byzantine mosaics in San Marco, Venice (see below), as well as the mosaics in Ravenna and the ceiling of the baptistry in Florence were no doubt an influence on the art of the early Renaissance. I was wondering if it were possibly these mosaics in Italy that Yeats might even have had in mind or if he had actually travelled to Byzantium. Does anyone know? 

San Marco, Venezia (But the pic. doesn't do it justice. It's absolutely incredible in person.)

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## ktd222

Does anyone else get a sense of desperation to become immortalized in this poem-maybe even to a point beyond desperation?




> Yes, I can see the fear of growing old and I can enjoy the unembellished image of A tattered coat upon a stick but can he really be serious about that golden bird?


_Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing_  

Does he have control over such things as this?

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## Virgil

[QUOTE=ktd222]


> Does anyone else get a sense of desperation to become immortalized in this poem-maybe even to a point beyond desperation?


You know, there may be a sense of desparation. He is on a quest:"I have sailed the seas..."


_Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing_  




> Does he have control over such things as this?


I supposed he does as an artist, if that is how to reach his concept of immortality.

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## ktd222

[QUOTE=Virgil]


> You know, there may be a sense of desparation. He is on a quest:"I have sailed the seas..."
> 
> 
> _Once out of nature I shall never take
> My bodily form from any natural thing_  
> 
> 
> I supposed he does as an artist, if that is how to reach his concept of immortality.


Do you think that there may be resignation by him?

_To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come._

What I mean is: he is also neglecting the 'monuments of unageing intellect./Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.'

Maybe we should talk about the above in comparison with this line: 'to sing...of what is past, or passing, or to come.' How can he talk about 'past, or passing, or to come' if himself is avoiding ' the Beyond this world.' What I mean is that I get sense of him wanting to hold on to immortality-but immortality as it belongs in this mortal world.

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## jackyyyy

> What I mean is: he is also neglecting the 'monuments of unageing intellect./Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.'
> 
> Maybe we should talk about the above in comparison with this line: 'to sing...of what is past, or passing, or to come.' How can he talk about 'past, or passing, or to come' if himself is avoiding ' the Beyond this world.' What I mean is that I get sense of him wanting to hold on to immortality-but immortality as it belongs in this mortal world.


He is belittling mortal artifacts in favour of gold symbols, or platoish symbols that are supernatural amongst the mortal ones. I think you mean 'hold on to mortality???', he is still mortal as he writes this. This is what I recall of Greek and Roman existentialism, supernatural combined to the natural World. He is desperate to solve his heart, he would rather no heart, so I think he is desperate, but I also sense resignation, because of how he depicts himself as a supernatural, sitting on a bough for Emperors. He would rather this. Thanks for your comments, Ktd, I really wanted to see what someone else thought of it. Again here, I am wondering if he has a trite sense of humour, where he uses the word 'Never', for example. Why use that word, or am I reading too much into it??



> Does anyone else get a sense of desperation to become immortalized in this poem-maybe even to a point beyond desperation?
> 
> 
> 
> _Once out of nature I shall never take
> My bodily form from any natural thing_  
> 
> Does he have control over such things as this?


I think, overall, its a sense of resignation. It took me a few reads to come to this impression, and I think most will disagree with me, and I would like to know whether others think he is really being serious or not - kind of black humour.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Does anyone else get a sense of desperation to become immortalized in this poem-maybe even to a point beyond desperation?


I see a lot of pretentious and rather precious aesthetic fartiness. The idea is silly and, as I said above, Yeats champions what I would consider gaudy artifice over what is natural and real. I dont really care how beautiful his imagery is, the idea of wanting to be a golden bird sitting in a golden tree in some imaginary place is laughable. I think he needed to get out of his Tower more. 




> What I mean is that I get sense of him wanting to hold on to immortality-but immortality as it belongs in this mortal world.


If I could feel such a tension, I might dislike the poem less  it would humanise it for me but I think he is so convinced by his own artifice that he retreats into his own rarefied world  one too far removed from the fury and the mire of human veins for me. The poem from which these words come is better.

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## Virgil

> What I mean is: he is also neglecting the 'monuments of unageing intellect./Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.'


I'm not sure what you're saying, but I take these lines as saying that the mortal (or perhaps a better phrasing would be mortal flesh) neglects the monuments.




> Maybe we should talk about the above in comparison with this line: 'to sing...of what is past, or passing, or to come.' How can he talk about 'past, or passing, or to come' if himself is avoiding ' the Beyond this world.' What I mean is that I get sense of him wanting to hold on to immortality-but immortality as it belongs in this mortal world.


That last line has always been a little mysterious to me. Is he avoiding the "beyond"? I take the poem as a quest toward the beyond. 

Do people see the dichotemes Yeats has set up: mortality/flesh/ nature versus soul/intellect/artifice?

And how about the word "commend" in the first stanza? Why such an odd way of saying that the animals are in life's cycle?

And what exactly is the soul singing in the second stanza? He repeats singing several times. 

Why is the city "holy" and how does the God thing fit in?

What about that last line?

And we could talk all day about the repetitions and sounds within the poem.

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## jackyyyy

> I think he needed to get out of his Tower more. 
> 
> 
> If I could feel such a tension, I might dislike the poem less 


I think he is in a basement as he writes this, can't reach his tower, and would settle for a bough. I can feel the tension in the word 'never', and the imagery might be jealousy.




> That last line has always been a little mysterious to me. Is he avoiding the "beyond"? I take the poem as a quest toward the beyond. 
> 
> Do people see the dichotemes Yeats has set up: mortality/flesh/ nature versus soul/intellect/artifice?
> 
> And how about the word "commend" in the first stanza? Why such an odd way of saying that the animals are in life's cycle?
> 
> And what exactly is the soul singing in the second stanza? He repeats singing several times. 
> 
> Why is the city "holy" and how does the God thing fit in?
> ...


1. I think he wants a foot in both, supernatural and sit on a bough amongst mortals.
2. The dichotomy is clear but it seems wishy washy. If you were supernatural, why would you want to sit amongst mortals? There is something else going on here. Is he being humble, or (????).

*Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
*3. Pointing out food is good. I think this is only extra imagery.
4. Singing = typical religious chanting.
5. They have a god who is head of that place. He starts with 'THAT', pointing at it. I think this is what hurts his heart, he feels spurned by life.. going at the 'tattered coats' and 'every tatter in its mortal dress'.
6. The last line is 'inevitable', his resignation and doctrine, and he would have some 'use/purpose' (Plato) in pointing this out to Lords and Ladies.

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## ktd222

> I see a lot of pretentious and rather precious aesthetic fartiness. The idea is silly and, as I said above, Yeats champions what I would consider gaudy artifice over what is natural and real. I dont really care how beautiful his imagery is, the idea of wanting to be a golden bird sitting in a golden tree in some imaginary place is laughable. I think he needed to get out of his Tower more.


Ya, I don't think hes being realistic. But I think thats what realizing your own mortality can do to you: warp the very notion that death comes to every mortal being. 
I hope before I'm 60yrs of age someone will discover the pill for everlasting life.





> If I could feel such a tension, I might dislike the poem less  it would humanise it for me but I think he is so convinced by his own artifice that he retreats into his own rarefied world  one too far removed from the fury and the mire of human veins for me. The poem from which these words come is better.


For some reason I do get the feeling that there is tension in his search for immortality-even beyond sanity: 'Consume my heart away; sick with desire and fasten to a dying animal it knows not what it is; and gather me into the artifice of eternity.'

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## The Unnamable

> I hope before I'm 60yrs of age someone will discover the pill for everlasting life.


By the time you get to thirty youll no longer wish this. The idea that this might go on forever is truly terrifying. Thered just be more Sudoku.

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## Virgil

> 1. I think he wants a foot in both, supernatural and sit on a bough amongst mortals.
> 2. The dichotomy is clear but it seems wishy washy. If you were supernatural, why would you want to sit amongst mortals? There is something else going on here. Is he being humble, or (????).
> 
> *Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
> Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
> *.


I take it that one has to go throught the mortal phase in order to reach "the artifice of eternity." The artists of the sixth century, the "sages" perhaps, have gone through it have reached "such a form."

How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"




> I hope before I'm 60yrs of age someone will discover the pill for everlasting life.


I would take that pill in a heartbeat. I love life. you just got to know how to live it.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I see a lot of pretentious and rather precious aesthetic fartiness. The idea is silly and, as I said above, Yeats champions what I would consider gaudy artifice over what is natural and real. I dont really care how beautiful his imagery is, the idea of wanting to be a golden bird sitting in a golden tree in some imaginary place is laughable. I think he needed to get out of his Tower more.


Unnamable--Think he'd been hanging out with these guys too long?  :Wink:  :

The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

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## jackyyyy

> I take it that one has to go throught the mortal phase in order to reach "the artifice of eternity." The artists of the sixth century, the "sages" perhaps, have gone through it have reached "such a form."
> 
> How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"


The mortal phase, as I think you are referring, would be along Christian lines. Many of us have a picture of immortality and how to arrive, whether 30 is the resignation point or its 75, or if its been shoved down our throats or we were actually suddenly enlightened. We may face death situations at any time of life, and many times. Facing it is tough, or you neglect it, or you resign. 

Who says eternity is an artifice? The Sages. Yeats may have been so collected in 'his' vision, that he was simply applying these images (Byzantium, Gold, etc) to further his message. Finally, what I see is a resignation, but also an offer: 'you might as well be useful'. Yes, be a Greek Urn.... as in dust to dust, be returned to the soil, to be useful, instead of a tattered up derelict, without use. I don't know enough of his other works to comment, but I can see he is fascinated with mythology, and that would be his education. We explain best by analogizing what we know the most against/for what we are projecting in discussion, as a poem in this case. Here, he is using his knowledge of Byzantium (a utopia of blind beauty and surrealism) to propell futility. When I wrote earlier that I wondered if he was being sarcastic or black humoured, atheist makes an easier envelope for the message, unless we are not atheist ourselves, of course.

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## Petrarch's Love

> How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"


I had just been about to post the same question. Much as I do like the Yeats, I have always felt a little of what Unnamable expresses about this poem. I must say, given a choice, I prefer the Keats because both the poems you mention do seem--to me at least--to address the issue in a slightly deeper or more emotionally relateable way. Perhaps it is because Keats' urn is an object he is contemplating, not only as some symbol of the "artifice of eternity", but as an actual object created by someone not unlike himself. In Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn" the eternity of art is rooted in the way the member of one generation can identify with what is produced by someone from a previous generation. Eternity is not for the individual but for the beauty in the world that will continue to be enjoyed by future people just as it was for the speaker of the poem. Art is not the provider, so much as the reminder of that beauty, and the acknowledgment of mortality and sadness is not only present but central to the argument of the poem. 
Yeats personalizes this by specifically making himself a golden artifact, and hence he and his art are in some way handed the authority of being set apart from the rest of humanity. What the "golden bird" image lacks is that connection between the artwork and the flawed human maker of that object. It seems to suggest that Yeats himself is art itself in some way, rather than simply someone who creates things in order to remind people about the beauty in life. I think the last line is what saves him from coming across as too absurd though. The "what is past or passing or to come" does seem to acknowledge some sort of ongoing connection with life, a desire for immortality not seperate from the mortal world, to paraphrase someone earlier on this thread (ktd?).

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## The Unnamable

> How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"


Its far less convincing than either and seems to miss the point of both. Keatss bird is a real one, even though he endows with a kind of immortality. His awareness of the real world is much more affecting than Yeatss:


Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
*The weariness, the fever, and the fret* 
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 
* Where but to think is to be full of sorrow* 
And leaden-eyed despairs, 
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Ive known enough of the weariness, the fever and the fret to prefer the Keats by miles (and Im not that much of a fan of him, either) as well as find the Yeats pretentious, self-indulgent and silly.

Keats is no less concerned with aesthetics than Yeats but I agree with *Petrarchs Love* here, especially Perhaps it is because Keats' urn is an object he is contemplating, not only as some symbol of the "artifice of eternity", but as an actual object created by someone not unlike himself.

When I wrote earlier that I didnt see the tension in the Yeats poem, I had in mind the kind of tension that is in Keats. Remember that the scene on the urn is described as a Cold Pastoral! The 'Bold Lover' will never 'die' but he'll never plant that kiss either. 

PS Do you know Desmond Skirrows parody of _Ode on a Grecian Urn_? -

Gods chase 
'round vase. 
What say? 
What play? 
Don't know. 
Nice, though.

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## Virgil

> Its far less convincing than either and seems to miss the point of both.


I didn't make a point. I asked a question. I would agree. I don't have time now. Although you're (all, not just you) partially right, you guys are being a little harsh. He's an old man who has gone through the life and is now searching for something more. He's not saying this is how we should lead the bulk of our lives; he's talking about an after life.

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## The Unnamable

> I didn't make a point. I asked a question. ... he's talking about an after life.


I didnt mean that _youd_ missed the point but that Yeats had.

However, I dont feel that he is talking about an afterlife so much as a state beyond life. Wheres the fury and the mire of human veins, Virgil? (Dont tell me its in a different poem, I know that.)

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## Virgil

> I didnt mean that _youd_ missed the point but that Yeats had.


Oh, Ok.




> However, I dont feel that he is talking about an afterlife so much as a state beyond life.


I agree, but you (and the rest) are implying that it's at the expense of life. I don't feel that way. He has lived life. He understands the "sensual music" of those "dying generations." After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."




> Wheres the fury and the mire of human veins, Virgil? (Dont tell me its in a different poem, I know that.)


Yes, I know, that's "Byzantium" and he wrote that a few years after this one. Perhaps he had the same qualms you are pointing out here. While there is an element of escapisim here in "STB", I think the state beyond life requires him to experience life. Look there are plenty of Yeats poems that emphasize life's experience: his love poems, "Easter 1916", "A Prayer For My Daughter," (quite touching) and his "Crazy Jane" poems. In fact the Crazy Jane poems emphasizes the same things you want him to emphasize.

But even here I don't think he is minimizing the importance of life's experience. Look at the first stanza:



> The young
> In one another's arms, birds in the trees
> - Those dying generations - at their song,
> The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
> Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
> Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.


Let me bring you back to that question I asked about "commend." From M-W:




> commend
> Main Entry: com·mend 
> Pronunciation: k&-'mend
> Function: verb
> Etymology: Middle English, from Latin commendare, from com- + mandare to entrust -- more at MANDATE
> transitive senses
> 1 : to entrust for care or preservation
> 2 : to recommend as worthy of confidence or notice
> 3 : to mention with approbation : PRAISE
> intransitive senses : to commend or serve as a commendation of something


He is commending life. Here that bird is a real life bird, a Keatsian nightinggale, if you will. But now he is an "aged man," a "dying animal," and now is searching for eternal permanence, and he finds it in art (well, he's an artist). I take the purging in the third stanza as a metaphor for the dying process. And then, "once out of nature" he can become through his art, through his poem, the golden bird which will sing to subsequent generations. He going through the process of the "dying generations" (not avoiding it) is what allows him to sing.

----------


## Grumbleguts

I agree with a lot of the posts here. This is not one of my favourite Yeats Poems. To my mind Yeats was at his best when he stuck to Ireland and Irish politics, most of his metaphysical works leave me cold, with the exception of Second Coming. I have never seen why this poem is vaunted as one of his greatest and I am glad to see that I am not alone in that. 

Read No Second Troy, Easter 1916 or The Lake Isle of Innisfree. They are among his best, this is just Muzak, it sounds dramating and meaningful but is essentially nothing but empty masturbation in rhyme.

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## The Unnamable

> empty masturbation in rhyme.


Wasnt that an early Led Zeppelin album? It included their hugely overrated Stairway to Onan.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> I agree, but you (and the rest) are implying that it's at the expense of life. I don't feel that way. He has lived life. He understands the "sensual music" of those "dying generations." After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."


Lest I be too quickly lumped in with "the rest," I thought I'd clarify that I agree with this point. Compared with Keats, I don't think this Yeats is as thorough and as deeply rooted in the human experience, but I don't think it's uprooted either. Considered purely on its own merits, rather than comparatively speaking, I don't know that I would classify it as completely absurd as Unnamable seems to think it is. As I said in my last post, that final line "what is past, or passing or to come" (partly a chiasmatic echo of the earlier "whatever is begotten, born or dies") in particular for me brings what might have otherwise escalated into an aesthetic daydream, back to a sympathy with the human experience, a return of the "sensual music of life" as Virg. so aptly puts it. So I'm somewhere between the two extremes in this debate. I do think it's quite a beautiful poem, but not perhaps as deeply reflective as some others I've come across. 

There's a whole genre of poetry across the ages in which the poet expresses the idea of his own immortality through his art. For example, it's all over Shakespeare's sonnets (take #55: "Not marble nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme"). This conversation has me thinking about the way poets chose to couch what is essentially the same claim about immortality through art. What is at stake when Shakespeare is contemplating immortality by describing his lover, another mortal creature; when Keat's is describing a man-made artifact; when Yeats is describing an imagined artifact? What claims are they making about the power of art over life when they give it power over death? Because "Sailing to Byzantium" is more abstracted from "the fury and the mire of human veins" so to speak, does that mean that it is in some way making a larger claim for the power and authority of the poet/artist who now stands in an omniscient god-like state with a body not "from any natural thing"? Is this in some way a stronger or weaker claim about the power of art than one in which art is more a reminder than an embodiment of the immortality of beauty? 

OK, I'll stop throwing out questions now. Just thought that since Unnamable has alluded to it more than once and others might not be catching the allusion I'd post "Byzantium" (which isn't here on Lit. Net for some odd reason) with the appropriate line in bold (you can also find the signature of one of the members here  :Wink:  ): 




> Byzantium
> 
> The unpurged images of day recede;
> The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
> Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
> After great cathedral gong;
> A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
> All that man is,
> All mere complexities,
> ...

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> Gods chase
> 'round vase.
> What say?
> What play?
> Don't know.
> Nice, though.


  :FRlol:  Thanks Unnamable, I hadn't come across that before. Maybe I can make it easy on myself and assign this version rather than the original to my students next year. They might actually read all of this one without any recourse to spark notes.  :Nod:

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## Virgil

> Wasnt that an early Led Zeppelin album? It included their hugely overrated Stairway to Onan.


Hey, you know I beginning to think we agree on lots of things.

----------


## jackyyyy

Here, he is maybe not so romantic compared to some, but I think he could have painted it up a lot more that he actually did. Especially when I compare with the Keats that someone just posted. Yeats used his word space to build a picture of humanity and myth. I can't give any of the myth part a grain of salt, thats why its myth. But, the human part I can. I think this is where the Keats impression wins over with people, he is more relatable. As for efficacy, a golden bird endowed with supernatural powers is really no different to a live bird endowered with a something else, except in One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest. All poets colourize with different brushes and what Yeats did was more focused. I mean, it was not that hard to read, other than the perne gyre he threw in. Apart from Virgil, and I think I did with some reservations, no one else has really summed it up. What was his message, even if you think its silly or ludricous, what did he intend?




> After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."


The bird is sitting in front of Lords and Ladies singing, "you silly fools" or "whos a pretty polly?". Its being compared to the Keats but I don't think there is any comparison to be made because he has a different message.

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## ktd222

> Oh, Ok. I agree, but you (and the rest) are implying that it's at the expense of life. I don't feel that way. He has lived life. He understands the "sensual music" of those "dying generations." After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."


It is at the expense of his life. Hes obsessive about what had been. He doesn't want to let go, even if retaining life in this world means not being in possession of his own heart, his own soul. Hes 'sick with desire...' Hes clinging to whatever part of this world that will let him be a part of this world.
I don't know if 'what is past, or passing, or to come' means what you say, or means that people can't let go of the good part of their life.
A good analogy, although at a lower scope, are people like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzy, etc, who come back from retirement believing they are still as good as they once were-just to find out that their not. This may not affect their past legacies, but it definity does tarnish the latter part of their life.
I see something like this happening in this Yeat's poem, but on a larger scale: his soul's life trapped in this mortal world.
This does not mean that I don't like this poem because I do.

----------


## Virgil

> It is at the expense of his life. Hes obsessive about what had been. He doesn't want to let go, even if retaining life in this world means not being in possession of his own heart, his own soul. Hes 'sick with desire...' Hes clinging to whatever part of this world that will let him be a part of this world.


Frankly, ktd, I don't understand your point. It is at the expense of life, but he doesn't want to let life go? I thought the point was that he wants to let life go. It's not at the expense of life, because he's at the end of life. He's already lived it.




> I don't know if 'what is past, or passing, or to come' means what you say, or means that people can't let go of the good part of their life.
> A good analogy, although at a lower scope, are people like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzy, etc, who come back from retirement believing they are still as good as they once were-just to find out that their not. This may not affect their past legacies, but it definity does tarnish the latter part of their life.
> I see something like this happening in this Yeat's poem, but on a larger scale: his soul's life trapped in this mortal world.


I don't follow. I don't feel this analogy is apt.

----------


## ktd222

> He's already lived it.


Ok, so when do you think life ends, when your in your 50's, 60's? Is he talking from beyond the grave? 




> I don't follow. I don't feel this analogy is apt


Thats because your stern with your point-of-view.




> Frankly, ktd, I don't understand your point. It is at the expense of life, but he doesn't want to let life go? I thought the point was that he wants to let life go. It's not at the expense of life, because he's at the end of life.


Is this one of those statements where you pretend not to understand me. Once you live you life(in this world) thats it! move on. And he can't move on.

Wouldn't you rather do something else with the latter part of your life than dwell on the past?

----------


## Virgil

> As I said in my last post, that final line "what is past, or passing or to come" (partly a chiasmatic echo of the earlier "whatever is begotten, born or dies") in particular for me brings...
> ):


I don't know what "chiasmatic" means but it sounds great!  :Wink:  There are all sorts of echoes and sound interconnections that make this such high art, for me. And yet it reads so smoothly as if no work actually went into it, as if it just rolled off his tongue. And perhaps it did.





> There's a whole genre of poetry across the ages in which the poet expresses the idea of his own immortality through his art. For example, it's all over Shakespeare's sonnets (take #55: "Not marble nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme"). This conversation has me thinking about the way poets chose to couch what is essentially the same claim about immortality through art...


It goes back at least to Horace, that I can think of. It must go back even further.




> Because "Sailing to Byzantium" is more abstracted from "the fury and the mire of human veins" so to speak, does that mean that it is in some way making a larger claim for the power and authority of the poet/artist who now stands in an omniscient god-like state with a body not "from any natural thing"?


Too many questions. I'll just answer this one. I would characterize it as supernatural state, not "ominiscient god-like state," if we can percieve a difference. I still maintain that even in his supernatural state he's intimately linked to nature: singing of "the dying generations," and of "the mortal dress". I'm not sure I would characterize it as "power and authority." All the golden bird is doing is entertaining, as far as we can see. In fact, the Emperor doesn't seem to even want to be entertained. It seems the singing is for beauty's sake. Art for art's sake, perhaps?




> Is this one of those statements where you pretend not to understand me. Once you live you life(in this world) thats it! move on. And he can't move on.
> 
> Wouldn't you rather do something else with the latter part of your life than dwell on the past?


Why do you say he can't move on. I read it as he questing for it. He's desiring it. I can't read the third stanza any other way:



> O sages standing in God's holy fire
> As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
> Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
> And be the singing-masters of my soul.
> Consume my heart away; sick with desire
> And fastened to a dying animal
> It knows not what it is; and gather me
> Into the artifice of eternity.


"Come...and be" and "Consume," and "gather me."




> Thats because your stern with your point-of-view.


  :FRlol:  Well, so are you.  :Nod: 




> Wouldn't you rather do something else with the latter part of your life than dwell on the past?


Oops, I didn't see this last question before. He's not dwelling on his personal past. He will sing of the sensual music (admittedly abstract) of life in a genereal sense, of the mortal dress. He's not being specific, I don't think.

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## ktd222

Look at the next post. I was playing with Image Insert and posted multiple times without knowing.




> Why do you say he can't move on. I read it as he questing for it. He's desiring it. I can't read the third stanza any other way:


Ok then, does he achieve his quest? And if he does, what form does he take? I read the third stanza as a resignation:'be the singing-masters of my soul./consume my heart away/sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is(as if); and gather me into the artifice.' 

Check out this link:
http://courses.washington.edu/englht...l481/dali.html



> Well, so are you


Then we, ourselves are resigned to our point-of-view.

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## Virgil

> Ok then, does he achieve his quest? And if he does, what form does he take? I read the third stanza as a resignation:'be the singing-masters of my soul./consume my heart away/sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is(as if); and gather me into the artifice.' 
> 
> Check out this link:
> http://courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl481/dali.html


I'm sorry, it won't let me open the link. But those are active verbs in the third stanza. I just don't see the resignation. I read it as he achieving his quest. 




> Then we, ourselves are resigned to our point-of-view.


I guess so.

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## ktd222

> I'm sorry, it won't let me open the link. But those are active verbs in the third stanza. I just don't see the resignation. I read it as he achieving his quest.


We'll then, paste it into the address box above. I agree they are active verbs. And yes I do think he achieves his quest, but not in the way same way as you think. The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world.

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## Virgil

> We'll then, paste it into the address box above. I agree they are active verbs. And yes I do think he achieves his quest, but not in the way same way as you think. The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world.


OK, I was able to open it. It's a Dali painting on time. So?

----------


## The Unnamable

> What was his message, even if you think its silly or ludricous, what did he intend?


To quote Morrissey, The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes.

I didnt know the word Chiasmatic, either. Having looked it up, I still dont understand what it means in relation to the poem. I think the line whatever is begotten, born, and dies is proleptic of the final line, which I take simply to refer to the past, present and future  the realm of time and change, which is the only place we exist. So the irony is that his wish to escape time by becoming a golden bird, a supreme work of art, if granted, means that he will be singing about the very things he had supposedly gotten away from. And look who his audience is. Perhaps thats the fate of all art  to become some object no longer alive in the human sense, dispensing observations on being alive, to some elite. I suppose thats sort of what has happened to Yeats. 




> I don't know that I would classify it as completely absurd as Unnamable *seems* to think it is.


Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' You are all admiring the cut and quality of the Emperors new clothes. The idea of Yeats having written something absurd wont strike you as quite so extreme if you read his guff about history as the movement of gyres in _A Vision_. Imagine if TS Eliot had put all his intellectual energy into astrology and then dropped acid. There is an unfeasibly sensible website dedicated to this nonsense. It has a nice animation of a widening gyre, though:

http://www.yeatsvision.com/

Give me the Yeats who wrote _The Scholars_ and these lines any day:

I might have thrown poor words away 
And been content to live.

And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!





> Is this in some way a stronger or weaker claim about the power of art than one in which art is more a reminder than an embodiment of the immortality of beauty?


This is where we differ. Im not really interested in abstract, rarefied discussions about the power of art. I like my art with snot and blood on it. To quote from another of his poems, 

only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.




> So I'm somewhere between the two extremes in this debate.


In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

Alexander Pope _The First Satire of the Second
Book of Horace, Imitated_

So theres me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate anddoes this mean Virgil is Gay?





> OK, I was able to open it. It's a Dali painting on time. So?


*ktd222*s comments are an interesting reading of the poem. The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world, suggests that Yeats is aware of the absurdity of achieving immortality in the way he describes. The point of the Dali link is more in the bit of accompanying text than in the painting itself; that which stands still stagnates. Without the passing of time, there is no decay but no growth either, so no life. Both words are significant in dying generations.

----------


## Virgil

> only an aching heart
> Conceives a changeless work of art.


What poem is that from, BTW?




> So theres me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate anddoes this mean Virgil is Gay?


Hey, I think that's the second time in a week you questioned my sexual orientation.  :FRlol:  Seriously, though, to my disgrace I am not familiar with the eighteen century poets. A class on them seems to have eluded me. I kind of get your references to Swift and Pope, but I'm not familiar with Gay. 





> *ktd222*s comments are an interesting reading of the poem. The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world, suggests that Yeats is aware of the absurdity of achieving immortality in the way he describes. The point of the Dali link is more in the bit of accompanying text than in the painting itself; that which stands still stagnates. Without the passing of time, there is no decay but no growth either, so no life. Both words are significant in dying generations


Perhaps it is more of a wish than something he really expects. But the third stanza is an elaborate description of his transfiguration, and the fourth stanza he does talk of hammering his post life form into the golden bird. And I want to emphasize again, post life form. I still don't see the resignation.

Now I would like to ask the million dollar question that I have a hard time answering: Why is that "no country for old men?"

----------


## jackyyyy

*Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.*

*Of what is past, or passing, or to come.*

Notice the rythme here.

*And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.*

This only means he has past thus far through life. It does not mean he has 'searched' the seas.... for something. He was resigned to his fate before he started the first Stanza.

Not until the fourth stanza does he go up a tone with renewed resolve...

*Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make*

*But such a form 'as'....*

He is not saying he would be a Grecian goldsmith piece/ornament. He is saying he would be 'as'.



> Perhaps thats the fate of all art  to become some object no longer alive in the human sense, dispensing observations on being alive, to some elite. I suppose thats sort of what has happened to Yeats.


Its not alive in any sense, its an artifact. This is where he is mocking the blissful ignorant of Byzantium, inclusive the O sages, and why he 'pretends' himself to sit on a bough, to point it out to Lord and Ladies, which is exactly what art does, sitting in it's art galleries as a reminder. Nihilism means zero, you are gone, whoosh. I think this is his message, might as well be a trinket on the wall. When I think about it, thats a lot of paint for a little message, a quickie.




> Now I would like to ask the million dollar question that I have a hard time answering: Why is that "no country for old men?"


Old people don't look good hanging around discos.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I don't know what "chiasmatic" means but it sounds great!





> I didnt know the word Chiasmatic, either. Having looked it up, I still dont understand what it means in relation to the poem.


Sorry guys, I properly meant "chiastic," the adjective for "chiasmus." I usually use "chiastic," in fact I have no idea whatsoever where "chiasmatic" came from. Not sure where my brain was.  :Brickwall:  Chiasmatic has sometimes been used in this way, but evidently not for at least a century, and (as I found upon looking it up in the OED) is evidently usually used as some sort of medical term. Perhaps it's a sign I've been studying too hard when I'm starting to make up words--at least this one turned out to actually be a word.  :FRlol:  Well, lesson learned not to post absentmindedly while trying to relax the brain after a three hour poetics workshop with Derek Attridge (literary critic) encompassing everything from the new critics to the deconstructionists.  :Nod:  

Anyway, I meant that I had seen the two lines as chiastic, in that I saw the elements in the first line--"begotten," "born," and "dies"--reversed in the final line with "past" corresponding to death, "passing" corresponding to birth into life, and "to come" corresponding with "begotten." Of course, after your justifiable confusion over my lamentable word choice made me look at these lines again, I realized that they could also be taken as much more straightforward parallelism, with "begotten" being what is past, birth, what is passing, and death what is to come. I suppose it's all a question of how you view the life cycle and how much you've allowed yourself to have been compelled by Yeats' artistic notion of rebirth. 




> Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' You are all admiring the cut and quality of the Emperors new clothes. The idea of Yeats having written something absurd wont strike you as quite so extreme if you read his guff about history as the movement of gyres in A Vision.


Lord, I was out of it when I posted. How could I have applied such an unseemly word as "seems" to The Unnamable?! Did I ever say Yeats couldn't write anything absurd? I am certain that he did so on more than one occasion. I only meant that in my opinion he is not being quite as absurd in this particular piece as you definitely (not seemingly) think he is. I'm not admiring the gold embroidery on the emperor's non-existent sleeve, but it looks to me as though he's still got on some boxers and an undershirt. (If you want to picture him naked that's your business). 




> In moderation placing all my glory,
> While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.
> 
> Alexander Pope The First Satire of the Second
> Book of Horace, Imitated
> 
> So theres me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate anddoes this mean Virgil is Gay?


  :FRlol:  Thanks Unnamable. I think this is the first time anyone's made me the object of a quote from a Pope satire, and I've always liked this one. I'm honored. I'll let Virgil defend himself against this shocking innuendo that he wrote the _Beggar's Opera_. (Oh, I just saw Virg.'s post. Here's a link to the Wiki. info on John Gay, in case you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gay)

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## The Unnamable

> What poem is that from, BTW?


_Meditations In Time Of Civil War_ (section 3, _My Table_). The poem also contains the line, Yet if no change appears/ No moon; 




> I kind of get your references to Swift and Pope, but I'm not familiar with Gay.


John Gay was a friend of Pope and Swift. His most famous work was _The Beggars Opera_:

Mackie was not Brechts original creation. Even the idea of _The Threepenny Opera_ was not his, but was suggested to him in 1928 by Elisabeth Hauptmann, one of the more enduring of his throng of willing women. With her knowledge of English, she had been searching through material for him to use, and had come across _The Beggars Opera_, John Gays hugely successful 1728 parody of Italian opera, made by taking popular songs of the day and singing them to new satirical texts, lampooning politicians and opera singers alike. Gays central figure, the highwayman Macheath, became Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife.




> Now I would like to ask the million dollar question that I have a hard time answering: Why is that "no country for old men?"


I agree with Jackyyy about why That is no country. He simply feels that the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged  its teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.




> Lord, I was out of it when I posted. How could I have applied such an unseemly word as "seems" to The Unnamable?!


No need to be self-critical. I can only ever be thankful when someone sets me up with an opportunity to recite some of Hamlets lines. I still cant believe that Ill never tread the boards as the Dane.  :Frown:  And I look so good in black doublet and hose.

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## Virgil

> _Meditations In Time Of Civil War_ (section 3, _My Table_). The poem also contains the line, Yet if no change appears/ No moon; .


Thanks.




> John Gay was a friend of Pope and Swift. His most famous work was _The Beggars Opera_:
> 
> Mackie was not Brechts original creation. Even the idea of _The Threepenny Opera_ was not his, but was suggested to him in 1928 by Elisabeth Hauptmann, one of the more enduring of his throng of willing women. With her knowledge of English, she had been searching through material for him to use, and had come across _The Beggars Opera_, John Gays hugely successful 1728 parody of Italian opera, made by taking popular songs of the day and singing them to new satirical texts, lampooning politicians and opera singers alike. Gays central figure, the highwayman Macheath, became Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife.


Oh, that is very interesting. I never knew any of that.




> I agree with Jackyyy about why That is no country. He simply feels that the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged  its teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.


Oh, you guys are saying the country is not Byzantium, but where he's coming from? I've always assumed Byzantium, but I think you're right. I've misread that all these years.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I still cant believe that Ill never tread the boards as the Dane. And I look so good in black doublet and hose.


  :FRlol:  Now there's a performance I'd love to see.

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## jackyyyy

> the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged  its teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.





> Oh, you guys are saying the country is not Byzantium, but where he's coming from?


The country he is leaving is 'his younger age', it was never Byzantium. Byzantium is 'this' point in time or 'this' condition and state.

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## The Unnamable

Its Monday here and I havent posted a new one for 6 weeks so here goes. 

In light of the kinds of discussions that have been taking place on the forum recently, this poem caught my eye. Should I even call it a poem? Id be interested to see how people respond to it. 


*A Paragraph Made Up of
Seven Sentences Which Have
Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them
or Reading Them and Have Each
Left an Impression There Like the
Slender Scar Left by a Salamander
in a Piece of Rapidly Cooling
Igneous Rock*

Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night. There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue. It's forty-eight WABC degrees. We control the horizontal. Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia. Missing coed found slain. All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More 

CHUCK WACHTEL

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## Virgil

> Its Monday here and I havent posted a new one for 6 weeks so here goes. 
> 
> In light of the kinds of discussions that have been taking place on the forum recently, this poem caught my eye. Should I even call it a poem? Id be interested to see how people respond to it. 
> 
> 
> *A Paragraph Made Up of
> Seven Sentences Which Have
> Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them
> or Reading Them and Have Each
> ...


Very interesting. Is the bold preface part of the poem and is there a title?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I'm pretty sure that the bold type _is_ the title - I've seen this before somewhere, I think.

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## jackyyyy

Fun, gossip, weather, television, sex, news and advertising; take your pick. I can select any one to get more, or let my car auto-search do it for me, and deepen the scar. As wearing as nature on our bodies, this time on our minds and souls, we are reshaped. I can guess the result will be seen ten thousand years from now.

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## ktd222

> Its Monday here and I havent posted a new one for 6 weeks so here goes. 
> 
> In light of the kinds of discussions that have been taking place on the forum recently, this poem caught my eye. Should I even call it a poem? Id be interested to see how people respond to it. 
> 
> 
> *A Paragraph Made Up of
> Seven Sentences Which Have
> Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them
> or Reading Them and Have Each
> ...


I can already see something ''artbitrary'' about all of the things the author has written above. The Outline set by someone else so that we can then begin to interpret.

Our circumstances for different interpretations of the previous weeks poem(or any poem) is dependent on what we know of the world(our set outlines): What we've experienced; the type of information that we use to interpret situations, and so on.





> Should I even call it a poem


LOL! its dependent on what you believe a poem is.

What classifications are needed to indentify something as a vegetable?

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## tn2743

Is this something to do with American culture or lifestyle???

Married life maybe...

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## ktd222

> Is this something to do with American culture or lifestyle???


Maybe even more specific: the individual.

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## Virgil

Well, TN it sounds like lines from TV shows. The first one I can almost bet was from The Newlywed Game, a TV game show in the US back in the 1970s. The show asked friviolous questions to newlyweds and the spouse had to match the mate's answer.

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## ktd222

> Well, TN it sounds like lines from TV shows. The first one I can almost bet was from The Newlywed Game, a TV game show in the US back in the 1970s. The show asked friviolous questions to newlyweds and the spouse had to match the mate's answer.





> Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night


Yes, the question is asked in way that will allow the person to lend their viewpoint. What shapes the viewpoint of each individuals response? To me all three vegetables seem too similar for me to tell the difference. Is their an option 4, 5, 6, 7...?

Let me explain further:

Maybe when I interpret the same poem as say, Unnamable, or Virgil, or Jackyll, or Petrarch, or Xamonas, Im working with the options 1,2,3; But Unnamable is working with options 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; and Virgil with options 2,3,4,5,6,7,8. These are different sets of options each individual has to work to shape their interpretion on 'something.' I don't have option 4 to interpret with but Unnamable and Virgil do, so I reject interpretation with option 4 because I don't have an understanding of it, even though it exist and may be more apt to interpret 'something.' 

I know this may be going too far, but what I'm getting at is that everyone
may, indeed, interpret with different viewpoints(options available). A word can mean something to one person and something different to another person. Who or what is responsible for our viewpoints(interpretations)?

Any other ideas?

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## Virgil

> Yes, the question is asked in way that will allow the person to lend their viewpoint. What shapes the viewpoint of each individuals response? To me all three vegetables seem too similar for me to tell the difference. Is their an option 4, 5, 6, 7...?
> 
> Let me explain further:
> 
> Maybe when I interpret the same poem as say, Unnamable, or Virgil, or Jackyll, or Petrarch, or Xamonas, Im working with the options 1,2,3; But Unnamable is working with options 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; and Virgil with options 2,3,4,5,6,7,8. These are different sets of options each individual has to work to shape their interpretion on 'something.' I don't have option 4 to interpret with but Unnamable and Virgil do, so I reject interpretation with option 4 because I don't have an understanding of it, even though it exist and may be more apt to interpret 'something.' 
> 
> I know this may be going too far, but what I'm getting at is that everyone
> may, indeed, interpret with different viewpoints(options available). A word can mean something to one person and something different to another person. Who or what is responsible for our viewpoints(interpretations)?
> 
> Any other ideas?


To some degree I agree but some of us are older and have more experience at it. When I was your age, there was no way I could interpret as well as you do. Some of it is experience built up through college and reading and some through personal experience.

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## tn2743

He compared his memory to a piece of rapidly cooling igneous rock and sentences from television shows are the slender scars on it...Hm

So this must have happened just after a volcano. The salamander surely is the TV, who somehow turns lava to rock (hence, life into memory?) with TV shows, and in the process leaves on the rocks sentence-scars. 

Igneous rock, salamander: sex life?!? So TV ruins his sex life? Or maybe it ruins his passionate marriage! ...? Yeah, I know, I'm way off.

Anyway, we all know that television isn't good for our health. At least I'm right about that  :Tongue:

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## The Unnamable

Here are some of the things that I pondered when first encountering the poem. Ill try not to give my own answers to the questions I asked as I think the questions themselves should help everyone formulate their own responses and it was by working through such questions that I arrived at my own reading.

1.	Why is the title so long? Why is it written in that way? The language of the title is very different from the body of the poem. Is the title meant as an endorsement of or a challenge to what follows?

2.	Why are there seven sentences? At first, they all appear to be unrelated  are they?

3.	How can we identify/characterise _each_ of the seven sentences? I dont know The Newlywed Game but Im sufficiently familiar with this type of inane game show to be able to identify the kind of host speaking the lines here as well as the kind of show hes hosting. He begins with Gentlemen and then asks a question that hardly seems consistent with the hosts supposed perception of the contestants as gentlemen. Why is there a full stop rather than a question mark at the end of this first sentence? 

4.	What is the context of the second sentence? Who would speak like this and in what circumstances?

5.	What is the difference between 48 degrees and 48 WABC degrees? I assume that WABC is a radio station. 

6.	In the next sentence, who is we? The line comes from the opening credits of _The Outer Limits_ TV show  a bit like _The Twilight Zone_.

7.	The next sentence returns us to game shows  in the UK there was a similar show called Blind Date. Is the poem itself like a session of channel hopping? Are we flicking between different aspects of our culture as represented through the banality of the media industry? The title says Seven Sentences Which Have / Entered My Memory Via _Hearing_ Them / or _Reading_ Them, so they arent all TV moments. What is the significance of the fact that bachelor number three collects Disney memorabilia?

8.	Is the next sentence a newspaper headline? It could also be the onscreen text during a news item. Why is the word coed used rather than say, student?

9.	Is the list of things in Encyclopedia Britannica III simply random or carefully chosen? 

10. Why does the poem end with ?

11. How can we group particular ideas in all of this? For example, there are a number of mentions of cold temperatures  turning blue, 48 WABC degrees, Abominable Snowman. 

12. What is the cumulative effect of these seven chosen sentences?




> The salamander surely is the TV,


I think the sentences themselves are the salamanders.

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## ktd222

[QUOTE=The Unnamable]Here are some of the things that I pondered when first encountering the poem. Ill try not to give my own answers to the questions I asked as I think the questions themselves should help everyone formulate their own responses and it was by working through such questions that I arrived at my own reading.[QUOTE]

I looked at the poem asking myself this question: Whats missing/present in each of the thought expressed in each of the several sentences? Over the next few days hopefully my understanding will become more refined.

Boy, do you know which line is haunts me? 'We control the horizontal.'

Why does the title not have punctuation but the several sentences are filled with it? I think there is something important in this.




> Is the list of things in Encyclopedia Britannica III simply random or carefully chosen?


Thanks, Unnamable! The above lead to my thoughts below.




> Why does the title not have punctuation but the several sentences are filled with it? I think there is something important in this.





> Boy, do you know which line is haunts me? 'We control the horizontal.'


This is very telling to me for some reason. A sentence is the expression of a complete thought; and yet there are several complete thoughts expressed below the title, Some DO, to me, seem unrelated and somehow my mind is reconfiguring, trying, to produce a connection between all several sentences. Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?

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## jackyyyy

> So this must have happened just after a volcano.


I really like this!

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## Virgil

The Newlywed Game Show made Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newlywed_Game

And here's their web site:

http://timstvshowcase.com/newlywed.html

Inane is the perfect word to describe it.

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## Grumbleguts

I believe that Ktd222 hit the nail on the head.




> Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?


This is precisely what our brains always do and what they are especially good at doing, finding connections. Whole religions have grown up out of the perceived connections spotted by our ever questing brains. 

To me this poem(?) is nothing more than what the title proclaims it to be, a cluster of phrases that have stuck in the author's mind run together into a paragraph. It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.

That doesn't mean that I don't quite like it, but I won't be wasting any of my time looking for hidden meanings.

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## tn2743

> Why is there a full stop rather than a question mark at the end of this first sentence?


I was going to ask this on my first post on this poem. But then I thought that it was because the author was simply quoting back. He's describing the scar on his igneous rock and reporting its shape and size, but he's not actually asking the question. He doesn't want to ask the question. Am I right?

As I was reading the seven sentences, the word 'scar' keeps entering my mind. These sentences all have different lengths and depths, and shapes too, like scars. 

I agree that the salamanders are the lines themselves. This changes my perspective completely. Well then, as the title has informed us, each sentence has at least one thing in common: they all have left a scar each on the author's memory in a way that a salamander would on an igneous rock. This relationship is still unclear to me. I keep thinking that I must understand this key of the title before I can understand fully the seven sentences.

I also thought that the seven sentences might not have been written in a completely different style from the title's. The difference is that the author had to use sentences already written. So the only thing he could do was to arrange them. He did not even choose them, because it was the sentences who left scars on him, not him who chose to remember the sentences. So, in a way, he's painting (or building) rather than writing. And the way that he has arranged them might not be all that different from the way he writes. Am I making sense?

'...': this one is a long and undefined scar?

I have a question: could he have read, or heard these sentences all from the TV? I read many things on TV...




> It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.


You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?

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## jackyyyy

> You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?


I believe it has a meaning, a moral message, and GrumbleGuts is correct to not read more into the seven, other than there are seven. These are typical 20th century footprints, that end up being genetic footprints because they shape humankind. He could have picked other footprints, even bootprints, but he picked these because they are kind of random, but inside the same media packet. As a distraction, I just happen to think there are seven because his car radio has seven buttons on it, which is strange because usually modern cars come with even numbers, so maybe its an old Mustang, and he is being kinda nostalgic. Seven could be, he is feeling lucky. I'll go one further, The Magnificent Seven.

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## tn2743

I didn't use 'meanings' only to address moral messages, I meant also the use of words and the skills of a poet that he might have employed. But Grumbleguts refused this, or at least that's what I think he did by saying that they are simply a list of random things.

They are just random? So you are dismissing all the questions as to the relationship between or the arragnement of these sentences? It's a risky assumption to make unless the author has instructed us in this direction; I don't recall reading the word 'random' anywhere in the poem. In fact, he stated clearly that this is a paragraph made up of setences which have significant structural meanings to his memory.

Well, aren't we here to answer the questions that this poem raised? I'd go along with the questions that Unnamable raised to start with. I think that there are relations between the sentences, and there is a deeper relation between the sentences and the title. And I think that these sentences have been arranged in an order of some kind (at least of time or something as basic as that). There must be more to a poem than just moral messages.

How could he have 'read' these lines from a radio?

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## The Unnamable

> This is very telling to me for some reason. A sentence is the expression of a complete thought; and yet there are several complete thoughts expressed below the title, Some DO, to me, seem unrelated and somehow my mind is reconfiguring, trying, to produce a connection between all several sentences. Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?


I dont think there is a _direct_ connection  they strike me as things that the poet could easily have actually heard or read. I think the significant connection is that they all tell us something about the nature of the world weve constructed for ourselves through the discourses of modern media. I said earlier that they have a cumulative effect but this isnt quite right  its more that they interact with one another and cumulatively produce a rather disturbing picture of the modern, media-saturated world.




> I was going to ask this on my first post on this poem. But then I thought that it was because the author was simply quoting back. He's describing the scar on his igneous rock and reporting its shape and size, but he's not actually asking the question. He doesn't want to ask the question. Am I right?


Possibly, I dont really know. I would agree that the punctuation is used to comment on the lines rather than simply to transcribe them in a grammatically correct way. Look at the subject matter of the sentence. Its supposed to be funny in a rather juvenile way but its about the loss of sexual vitality. Examine the diction part of their anatomy (nearly always used as a suggestive reference to genitals in this context), sag (need I say more?) and wedding night (when the desire was fresh and the apparatus was willing  :FRlol:  ).
It isnt a question because that process actually _is_ happening with the passing of time  their physical deterioration is not a mere possibility but a fact. This is the kind of observation that we would be unlikely to stop to think about in the context of the show itself but _here_ it is. 




> So the only thing he could do was *to arrange them*. He *did not even choose them*, because it was the sentences who left scars on him, not him who chose to remember the sentences. So, in a way, *he's painting (or building) rather than writing*. And the way that *he has arranged them* might not be all that different from the way he writes. Am I making sense?


Yes, I think so. I agree that the sentences arent intended to be lines composed by Wachtel himself but something hes stumbled across. I dont know if they _really are_ verbatim transcripts that Wachtel has read or heard but I can accept that they are for the sake of the understanding his purpose in including them. As you say, he _arranges_ them. Isnt that what artists do? They take the materials of everyday life (the kinds of materials we seldom think about in a way that is beyond their immediate purpose), and make us look at them with a fresh eye, from a different perspective. What I meant by asking question number 1 above was that the title seems rather grand and overblown compared to the very ordinary and everyday nature of the seven sentences.
There is an amusing Billy Collins poem with the title, _Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles_. The Collins poem includes a great example  

"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

Wachtels extremely long title reminds me of these sorts of poems as well as of the kinds of chapter prefaces you find in Swift and other eighteenth century novelists. Is Wachtel therefore suggesting that there are two linguistic realms  that of the past world of elevated literary expression and the rather debased and inane expression that saturates the world around us today? Even here in Thailand where I am immersed in a different culture, the same synthetic images of kodachrome perfection and eternal youth still ambush me around every corner. It seems that the topics of a lot if not all of the sentences are of the same stuff that poets have always written about  love, death, decay, relationships and so on. This is why I prefer to think of the sentences as actual transcripts  they then serve as a comment on the difference between the world as it is described through Art and the one in which we live.




> I have a question: could he have read, or heard these sentences all from the TV? I read many things on TV...


I think they probably could, with the exception of It's forty-eight WABC degrees (that must be a radio announcement, surely?) and the last bit which reads more like a print advertisement to me.




> To me this poem(?) is nothing more than what the title proclaims it to be, a cluster of phrases that have stuck in the author's mind run together into a paragraph. It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.
> 
> That doesn't mean that I don't quite like it, but I won't be wasting any of my time looking for hidden meanings.


I have to disagree with you here, GG. I think there is far more conscious crafting going on than you suggest. I dont think of this poem as having hidden meanings, just meanings. It seems perfectly coherent to me and this coherence has, as tn2743 said, been arranged. Id be interested to see if you change your opinion as the discussion progresses. 




> You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?


I like this attitude. Good on ya.




> How could he have 'read' these lines from a radio?


And then you go and let me down! Only joking. But if you look at the title, he does say Via *Hearing* Them / or Reading Them.

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## tn2743

> And then you go and let me down! Only joking. But if you look at the title, he does say Via *Hearing* Them / or Reading Them.


Thanks  :Smile:  

I said this because I thought Jackyyy suggested, by mentioning the 7 buttons on a car radio, that all seven sentences were taken from different radio stations.

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## Nightshade

I want to join in to this discussion since its still monday. But I just want to say in advance Im not great at poetry and Im really joining in to find out more so please bare with me.

Its a bit like what you'd get if you were flicking through channels isnt it? I mean game show, news (or possible crime drama?) , weather umm whats WABC? Something else, reality game show, news, adverts.
A scar is just the remnants a trace of something right? So what sort of like being haunted by words after you hear them on tele or read them and how they can appear to mean one thing out of context but in context they make sense?

Not making any sense am I ?  :Smile:

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## The Unnamable

> Its a bit like what you'd get if you were flicking through channels isnt it?


I agree and funnily enough Ive just watched Billy Wilders _The Apartment_ again and there is a short scene with a disgruntled Jack Lemmon flicking through the TV channels trying to find something worth watching. Most of it is battle scenes or advertising so he gives up.

WABC must be a radio station.




> and how they can appear to mean one thing out of context but in context they make sense?


By including them in the poem (or _as_ the poem), hasnt he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context?

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## jackyyyy

An auto-search finds a station, stops for about one sentence, then hunts the next. When it hits the band limit, it starts over again. After a while, you memorize certain sentences, maybe because they mean something to you. WABC is NYC, and there are too many channels, a cacophony of life, you've heard it all before, so you would rather listen to the auto-search, and maybe something new will pop up. I agree, Wachtel picked these seven to stick to his stone. I hazard we are being offered the protagonist's situation, personality, job, and the next paragraph.

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## Virgil

> Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night. There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue. It's forty-eight WABC degrees. We control the horizontal. Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia. Missing coed found slain. All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More 
> 
> CHUCK WACHTEL


Since these are mostly from American media allusions I can help with two more:
WABC - Yes, is a rado station in many cities in the US. Sounds like a voice from WABC in New York in the 1970s.




> Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.


Another American game show, The Dating Game, also from the 1970s. Three bachelors are secluded away while a young lady asks them questions and she picks one for a date based soley on their responses. Stupid questions, stupid responses. More inane. 1970s seems to correlate.

Any idea when the poem was written?




> By including them in the poem (or _as_ the poem), hasnt he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context?


I agree with that. But in addition, the dislocation from one sentence to another provides the only real poetic charge to the language in that section of poem, other than in the title.

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## ktd222

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
By including them in the poem (or as the poem), hasnt he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context? 

Virgil:



> I agree with that. But in addition, the dislocation from one sentence to another provides the only real poetic charge to the language in that section of poem, other than in the title.


You know what, after looking at the poem as a 'flipping back and forth through channels or pages', I dont know that these several sentences are ever taken out of context. He is creating a mode of action where the reader is also able to sense this 'flipping' happening as its happened to him. The context of the several sentences, I think, is secondary because of this line: 'we control the horizontal.' The thoughts expressed in the several sentences seem to be what interest the author, but obviously when I flip through the channels the main ones which interest me are not the ones listed by the author. So then this gets back to 'we control the horizontal' which gets more at us individuals controlling what enters into our mind.

Does anyone want to talk about this line further: 'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?

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## jackyyyy

> 'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?


I think you mentioned it in your first post re this poem, 'we control the horizontal'. Its stands out in the crowd, stays in your head, its profound. I want to correct myself earlier, its a 'scan' button, not an auto-search, and he does write 'hearing' or 'reading', so I will not add, roadside Billboards. These seven sentences/messages (which I am assuming is an arbitrary number), out of 100s, were impressive enough to stick. Some of the best literature is sitting on the side of our roads, repeated to us via media-pushers, in a surreptitious attempt to brain wash us into buying something:

*Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night. 
There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.
It's forty-eight WABC degrees.
We control the horizontal. 
Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia. 
Missing coed found slain. 
All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More
*I'll stab a guess: He's middleaged, wife/childs(s), worries about their health and security. Its 48 Fahrenheiht (8-9C), cool to cold - depending on what you are used to, could be Mar/Apr or Oct/Nov. He's thinking about promotion/money and freedom (we control the horizontal).

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## The Unnamable

> You know what, after looking at the poem as a 'flipping back and forth through channels or pages', I dont know that these several sentences are ever taken out of context.


They are _literally_ taken out of context and placed in a new context  that of Wachtels poem. This makes me look at them in a way I wouldnt if I was just channel hopping.




> Does anyone want to talk about this line further: 'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?


As I said above, its from _The Outer Limits_; each episode begins:

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits

Old televisions used to have control knobs known as a vertical hold and a horizontal hold. You fiddled around with them in order to stop the picture from rolling. The statement has overtones of Big Brother but the important thing is what we think is meant by We. Is it the corporate we? The media? Could it even be a reference to the battle of the sexes as a statement made by feminists (the horizontal being the realm of sexual activity  no doubt XC will have other ideas/positions)? In the context of The Outer Limits, it could be aliens. In the context of the paragraph, it has an unsettling effect. I dont take it as fundamentally different from the other sentences  this one also is another of the ubiquitous, encroaching assertions of a media industry that claims ownership of our souls. Something similar is going on with It's forty-eight WABC degrees.  They appear to own the weather.

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## Grumbleguts

I'd like to clarify my position a little if I may. I said that I quite liked the poem first and foremost. I also said that I found no deep significance in the lines chosen and I still maintain that position. To me thay are chosen to be a cross section of the kinds of lines seen and heard in American media. I had no intention of being dismissive of the poems worth, I just don't see the choice of phrases as particularly meaningful in themselves.

Of course Wachtel is inviting us to examine these sentences out of context as it were, this is self evident, but that is the extent of his construction as far as I see it, he could easily have chosen other similar sentences and achieved the same effect. He is holding up a mirror to the day to day bombardments of media slogans and formulaic phrases but it is not necessarily a carefully directed mirroir. These particular words stuck in his mind, as he says in the title, that is why they were chosen and not, "Two tyres, that's right TWO tyres for the price of one all day Sunday, every Sunday at big Ed's Tyres!" or "A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse of course." Either of these could have slotted in seemlessly

Interestingly enough, what do you think of the title of the poem? Isn't it as formulaicly 'poetic' as the other phrases are formulaicly 'mediaspeak'? Do you think that he is asking questions here too? I think he might be. It's interesting that no one has really questioned the layout and language of the title in this thread, seeing as it is almost as long as the poem itself. Surely the contrast between the two sections is more interesting than where he found the 7 sentences?

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## jackyyyy

> Interestingly enough, what do you think of the title of the poem? Isn't it as formulaicly 'poetic' as the other phrases are formulaicly 'mediaspeak'? Do you think that he is asking questions here too? I think he might be. It's interesting that no one has really questioned the layout and language of the title in this thread, seeing as it is almost as long as the poem itself. Surely the contrast between the two sections is more interesting than where he found the 7 sentences?


Acknowledged. The title does a larger job than expected, it could be the para. At first I thought he was putting the cart before the horse, then realized, the would not want to 'do it' any other way. He used the title space to reduce space/wordage, as in, why not make a long title, who says a title can only have x words. The sequence is important,,, and Unnamable asked in one of his questions,,, whey the '...' at the end of the Encycl. advert. Well, I thought at first, the Encycl. Britannica bit could have gone on forever, or simply its part of an advertisement, else.. its the preface to the next para. Why do I think this is a clip out of a book and not a poem?

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## The Unnamable

> he could easily have chosen other similar sentences and achieved the same effect.


This is where we disagree. Even if the sentences are actual snippets reproduced verbatim, the subtle interplay between them would be lost if you simply swapped some of them with your suggestions. For example, say we swapped the first of yours for Missing coed found slain and the second for Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia, would there really be no difference? Wouldnt we then lose something vital to the poem? Missing coed found slain is a news item; either its the text accompanying a TV news story or a newspaper headline. It is written in the shorthand style of a news headline (Ill come to style of writing in a moment). But look beyond that  why might Wachtel have chosen to include this particular sentence and what is its purpose in its _original_ context? Isnt it to entice us into learning more salacious details about a murder? Why is the victim identified (in the sense of given an identity) as a coed  the headline could have said simply woman, female, student, and so on. So the very fact that the victim has been given an identity as a young female (by a typically prurient media) introduces a sexual element to it. Doesnt the word coed carry some suggestion of young adult female encountering the world of independence and sexuality? When you see a headline like that dont you assume that the murder was sexually motivated (and youd be right most of the time)? Sexual tensions appear throughout the poem (even in the sagging vegetables bit). I cant see it in your examples. Also, bachelor is an interesting label. It serves to identify someone as available in the marriage market. This man collects Disney memorabilia. Why? When I think of Disney, I think of a world of sanitised and syrupy childhood. Does this man wish to remain a child? Is he sexually repressed? I can hear the objections now that I am reading too much into it. Im not saying that the man _is_ sexually repressed but I think the lines invite the reader to take part in exploring the interplay between the different sentences (and these two sentences come next to each other). The world reported by the media includes acts of sexual violence, presumably caused by aberrant sexuality. In what we call Literature, problematic human experiences are explored in depth  in the modern world they just serve as media bytes. The language in which they are expressed now is the debased language of tabloid journalism or advertising slogans. This is why I think the language of the title is so different from the paragraph of seven sentences. The title belongs to the old world; the paragraph is whats become of it.

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## tn2743

> 11. How can we group particular ideas in all of this? For example, there are a number of mentions of cold temperatures  turning blue, 48 WABC degrees, Abominable Snowman.


I think I can identify another idea that came up several times: time and its progress, or timing. In the first sentence the vegetables are listed in order, I think, of sagginess (in order of length of time after the wedding). The tomato is the firmest and shiniest, the pumpkin looks older and drier though still rounded, and the squash is clearly long a saggy (I'm trying my best to be respectful with these descriptions). So in this sense, the longer it has been since one's wedding night, the further to the right his option would be, and the further he is from the burning 'volcanic' passion that the igneous rock that is his memory used to experience. And in the second sentence "when I got there" and "blue" suggests that who ever got there got there too late. His timing was terrible. There's a pattern here, kind of.

And then the temperature connects this sentence with the third. And the third sentence is connected with the fourth by the arrogance of commercials. 

I fail to see the connection between the fourth and fifth. The fifth and the sixth, however, is connected by another idea that you have pointed out above: sex. Perhaps it is the "sexually repressed" man and his 'childish', perhaps ignorant, ideas of the world that are behind these violent sex crimes. Is there something unhealthy about a sales manager being single and collect children's toys?

The idea of death, or a lack of life, is also repeated.




> 10. Why does the poem end with ?


Is the '...' the end of the poem or of the last sentence? 

I think that the last sentence might be, possibly, a summary of the greed of the nowaday commerce, which tries to summarise everything regardless of their significance or meanings and stuffs them into bite size information. It ignores the horrific depths of the events that are capable of scarring the author and with great ease and ruthlessness. I mean, finding "the circus" and the "snowman" in the same sentence as "Napoleon" or "Atomic enerygy" is unfitting to say the least; it is almost a mockery. Race, Music, food, history, sex, etc; everything is a subject of this terrible mockery. And this ignorance, in itself, leaves another and longest scar...

I think the '...' might be part of the last sentence to express the endlessness of the list of things, or the author's amazement or ponderousness at this, maybe even his pain..

Please correct

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## The Unnamable

> I think I can identify another idea that came up several times: time and its progress, or timing. In the first sentence the vegetables are listed in order, I think, of sagginess (in order of length of time after the wedding). The tomato is the firmest and shiniest, the pumpkin looks older and drier though still rounded, and the squash is clearly long a saggy (I'm trying my best to be respectful with these descriptions).


Are you talking about people or vegetables? Okay, I admit  Im at the pumpkin stage.  :Biggrin:  

The passing of time is a popular theme for artists. Im not convinced by the timing idea, though.




> So in this sense, the longer it has been since one's wedding night, the further to the right his option would be,


So young and so cynical!  :FRlol: 




> and the further he is from the burning 'volcanic' passion that the igneous rock that is his memory used to experience. And in the second sentence "when I got there" and "blue" suggests that who ever got there got there too late. His timing was terrible. There's a pattern here, kind of.
> 
> And then the temperature connects this sentence with the third. And the third sentence is connected with the fourth by the arrogance of commercials. I fail to see the connection between the fourth and fifth.


Okay, but be careful  I dont think anyone has suggested that there is a linked progression  I referred to the interplay between them. In other words, just because you have established for yourself some pattern, dont then make the poem fit that pattern. Perhaps there is no connection here but perhaps you were wrong to assume that there should be. Perhaps there is a connection, however. If We control the horizontal is some kind of feminist slogan then the sexual repression of Mr. Disney could be the result of his inability to cope with female sexuality. Or perhaps We control the horizontal is a Big Brother/Media boast  our perceptions are controlled to the extent that our identity only exists in terms of how we are seen on television or _as_ television. _The Dating Game_ that Virgil mentioned is, I think, the show that spawned _Blind Date_ (UK). When huge media corporations control what we see and what we hear on the basis of maximising profits, this is the kind of garbage we end up with  but its all on the surface  the real nature of human sexuality involves slain coeds.




> The fifth and the sixth, however, is connected by another idea that you have pointed out above: sex. Perhaps it is the "sexually repressed" man and his 'childish', perhaps ignorant, ideas of the world that are behind these violent sex crimes. Is there something unhealthy about a sales manager being single and collect children's toys?


Obviously I dont think there always is  but the possibility of what you suggest is there in the interplay again. 




> Is the '...' the end of the poem or of the last sentence?


Good question  have they merged? Initially it can be seen simply to imply that the encyclopedia has more to offer but, as you say, its possible that it refers to the whole of the paragraph rather than just that one sentence. To me, it suggests that life goes on  to be continued next episode.




> I think that the last sentence might be, possibly, a summary of the greed of the nowaday commerce, which tries to summarise everything regardless of their significance or meanings and stuffs them into bite size information. It ignores the horrific depths of the events that are capable of scarring the author and with great ease and ruthlessness. I mean, finding "the circus" and the "snowman" in the same sentence as "Napoleon" or "Atomic enerygy" is unfitting to say the least;


Again, Id say that in this context its unsettling rather than incongruous. The capabilities given to us by Atomic Energy combined with the image of the world as a Circus. Now theres a thought!




> it is almost a mockery. Race, Music, food, history, sex, etc; everything is a subject of this terrible mockery. And this ignorance, in itself, leaves another and longest scar...
> 
> I think the '...' might be part of the last sentence to express the endlessness of the list of things, or the author's amazement or ponderousness at this, maybe even his pain..
> 
> Please correct


What do you mean by Please correct? Its a poem not a quadratic equation. There are things I dont see myself but Id agree with a lot of what you say and like the way you go about it  with the assumption that someone else had made the effort to think about it. As I say, good on ya.

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## tn2743

> Are you talking about people or vegetables?


I was following the comparison that the contestants were supposed to make about their wives' "anatomy". I assume it's a female ...thingIES  :Smile: 




> So young and so cynical!


Sorry, I forgot about plastic surgery  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

Inspector Unnamable wrote up his top of mind, so if I go along with that:

*Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night.*
He is thinking about the condition of the coed's body, after it was found.

*There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.*
He is thinking about an alibi.

*It's forty-eight WABC degrees.*
Its the public mood, they are hunting him.

*We control the horizontal.*
He is trying to outthink the police - road blocks.

*Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.*
What to do with the coed's stuff, and did he leave fingerprints?

*Missing coed found slain.*
Confirmation, she has been found, and they have identified the body.

*All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More*
He is desperate for ideas.

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## The Unnamable

jackyyyy, 
I have no idea what you are on (about).

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## Virgil

At first I thought they were random, like some of the early discussion. However, I don't think so any more. These two are definitely linked:

*Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night.*
and 
*Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.*To have two of seven game show quotes from an infinite possibility of media quotes is too much of a coincidence. Notice too that one is a bachelor's and the other is a newlywed's show. 

These two also seem to be linked in that they are apparently referring to a crime:
*There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.*
and 
*Missing coed found slain.*

Has anyone been able to track down whether these are actual quotes from a show, a crime show for instance? Otherwise we will probably have to assume they are news blurbs and may or may not be referring to the same crime, if the first one is a crime at all. The first one may be just a medical emergency. 

The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place. It's listings mirror the listings of the poem body, but there I see complete randomness in its selection. Actually this is the third time a listing is made in the poem: (1) the vegetable listing, (2) the body of the poem as an assembling of media quotes and (3) the encyclopedia listing. 

Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.

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## jackyyyy

> Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.


He could have listened to the tv, but don't they play some tv shows on the radio?




> jackyyyy, 
> I have no idea what you are on (about).


I'm on (about) paint.

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## Virgil

> He could have listened to the tv, but don't they play some tv shows on the radio?


I guess so. But is there a point to why it would/should only be radio?

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## jackyyyy

> I guess so. But is there a point to why it would/should only be radio?


They can all be picked up from a radio, plus the WABC. Billboards might write WABC, but tv, no. 

Just checked it, WABC is on tv.




> Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.





> All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More


This is advertising to me. What else could it be?

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## tn2743

> The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place. It's listings mirror the listings of the poem body, but there I see complete randomness in its selection.


"A world standard in reference since 1768" - is the slogan of the Encyclopedia Britannica website. "Standard"? and "world standard"? Isn't that arrogance or what?

If you are right Virgil (and I think you are) then I think this is a list of the things that have been standardised by commerce. Each of them have depths of meaning that are unexplored or ignored in this kind of referencing. And because this has actually become close to a "world standard" (because most people have no time to read more than 20 words about something), their true meanings are at risk of being lost forever. '...' means either 'the list goes on', or, as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?

I was just wondering, when I searched for things about "we control the horizontal", almost everything that came up had "we control the horizontal; we control the vertical" going together. So why only "horizontal" here?

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## The Unnamable

> At first I thought they were random, like some of the early discussion.


  :Biggrin:  Do you mean that some of the early discussion was random or that some of the early discussion supposed that _the poem_ was random?

These emerging linked themes are not simply those associated with game shows  arent they also the recurrent themes of Literature (Love and Death?)? Is Wachtel suggesting that the language of these media bytes has replaced the language of his title?




> The first one may be just a medical emergency.


Interesting in the context  someone is turning blue but its _just_ a medical emergency. Nothing to see here  its not as if its a murder or anything really exciting like that.  :FRlol:  




> The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place.


Napoleon? Didnt he think that he controlled the horizontal and vertical for a while? Wasnt he finally defeated by the coldness of the Russian winter? Many of his men turned blue.  :Nod: 




> Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes.


First of all, I agree with jackyyyy that the last sentence is an ad. and secondly, none of the listings are hairy umbrellas, either.




> So why only "horizontal" here?


I'd say simply that he doesn't need both and by using only the first part, Wachtel encourages us to think about it as more than simply a line from a TV show. Don't you like my suggestion that it could refer to the sexual realm of the horizontal?




> as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?


I also think it suggests _the story_ will be continued, for the very reason that you address in your next question  what can we do? Neither Literature nor life offers any answers to that question. I have no idea what we should do  but its a step in the right direction simply to be aware of whos telling us what and why and with what effect on our lives.

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## tn2743

> Wachtel encourages us to think about it as more than simply a line from a TV show.


Ah! I think this makes sense now, though since he has taken all sentences out of context by putting them into the poem, I thought that might be enough encouragement.

Sorry, I forgot about your idea of the horizontal sexual realm. That would definitely link it with the next sentence. I was only wondering: why not vertical? But it makes sense now.

Though I have to say, being young and all, the sexual realm can be 'vertical' for a lot of the time  :FRlol:  (I hope this joke's not too rude for this thread)

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## jackyyyy

> Though I have to say, being young and all, the sexual realm can be 'vertical' for a lot of the time  (I hope this joke's not too rude for this thread)


I am deeply shocked!!!

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## tn2743

Excuse me  :Biggrin:

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## ktd222

> They are _literally_ taken out of context and placed in a new context  that of Wachtels poem. This makes me look at them in a way I wouldnt if I was just channel hopping.


They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.




> There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits





> Old televisions used to have control knobs known as a vertical hold and a horizontal hold. You fiddled around with them in order to stop the picture from rolling. The statement has overtones of Big Brother but the important thing is what we think is meant by We. Is it the corporate we? The media?


I can see your point, but its 'we control the horizontal' not vertical. Nothing ever mentioned about vertical. I think this means we(we individuals) have control over everything except the horizontal. 




> I dont take it as fundamentally different from the other sentences  this one also is another of the ubiquitous, encroaching assertions of a media industry that claims ownership of our souls. Something similar is going on with It's forty-eight WABC degrees.  They appear to own the weather.


I like your idea that 'they appear to own the weather,' but isn't it going too far to say that they seem to 'claim ownership of our souls.'

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## tn2743

> They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.


I'm sorry ktd222 but I don't really understand what you are saying here. Surely the author had taken these sentences out of their original context in order to put more focus on them. Their meanings may not have changed, but the context in which they are has changed. Isn't the fact that we read them in this poem rather than on the TV a change of context? Their environment and their purpose have changed, among other things. The most obvious example, I think, is the first sentence which has lost its question mark. It used to be a question, and now it is not.

Furthermore, even if the author had not intended for their original meanings to be changed, the fact that he used them for a different purpose and in a different way must have changed them. Relativity right?  :Smile:

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## The Unnamable

> They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.


No, it isnt. The meaning does change. Meanings are always dependent on context. Look at this sentence:

I enjoyed having my neighbour for lunch.

Does it only mean one thing, regardless of context? What if the context is that its a cannibal who makes the statement? Now it means something very different. Poetry isnt literal and denotative  it depends on connotations. As *tn2743* says, Their environment and their purpose have changed. Its not that Wachtel has replaced the meanings with wholly different ones but that he has invited us to generate meanings other than the ones intended by the original context. I assume that turning blue in the original context refers to someone not getting enough oxygen  within the context of a poem that uses coldness as a sort of motif, it also suggests a less literal coldness.




> I think this means we(we individuals) have control over everything except the horizontal.


Okay  and what does that mean? Given that the context is a series of comments about TV and media, is it so unlikely that the sentence could relate to televisions?





> I like your idea that 'they appear to own the weather,' but isn't it going too far to say that they seem to 'claim ownership of our souls.'


It would be if I based it entirely upon that one phrase in this particular poem. The claim ownership of our souls bit is the way _I_ see it but it is consistent with the Media as represented in the poem.

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## Petrarch's Love

Goodness, get sick for a few days and I've missed this whole discussion about sagging vegetables and frustrated serial killers collecting Disney memorabilia or something.  :FRlol:  . 

Well, I've only just gotten a chance to look at the contribution for this week. My first thought, like others who have commented, was that it sounds like channel surfing. I think the idea of the form (or lack thereof, depending on how you see it) is an interesting one, a media inspired stream of conciousness commenting on the way fragments of ads and tv and radio seep into our minds and sort of settle there in a plastic soup. I wonder though, if others find that it's a poem that they still find it as interesting on the second read, or if, like the quickly shifting, disposable soundbytes it's made of, it fails to keep our attention in any meaningful way? I wonder, because I've run across similar ideas before, and while I've found it the sort of thing that momentarily makes you stop and think about the connections between the random phrases etc., it's seldom anything that I feel compelled to come back to and read over again. After all, much of the allure really lies in its uniqueness. I don't know that the work itself is as interesting as much as the idea behind it of stringing random phrases together. If many poets started using the same form and it lost its originality I feel as though such a poem would also lose most of its edge. I'd be interested to hear if there are differences of opinion though. I'm not trying to claim it's "bad" poetry, just trying to see if people find it to be poetry of lasting interest. Maybe I just need to read through it again and see if it speaks to me more.  :Wink:

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## Virgil

> They can all be picked up from a radio, plus the WABC. Billboards might write WABC, but tv, no. 
> 
> Just checked it, WABC is on tv.


Yes, WABC is a television station as well. It's the particular locution that suggested radio to me. But I guess it doesn't have to be.




> This is advertising to me. What else could it be?


Ok, I stand corrected.




> These emerging linked themes are not simply those associated with game shows  arent they also the recurrent themes of Literature (Love and Death?)? Is Wachtel suggesting that the language of these media bytes has replaced the language of his title?


Good points. I can buy into both.




> Napoleon? Didnt he think that he controlled the horizontal and vertical for a while? Wasnt he finally defeated by the coldness of the Russian winter? Many of his men turned blue.


This I don't buy into. Way too tenuous a connection. What about the other things he lists?




> If you are right Virgil (and I think you are) then I think this is a list of the things that have been standardised by commerce. Each of them have depths of meaning that are unexplored or ignored in this kind of referencing. And because this has actually become close to a "world standard" (because most people have no time to read more than 20 words about something), their true meanings are at risk of being lost forever. '...' means either 'the list goes on', or, as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?


I don't know if lost forever, but it certainly trivializes serious topics.

Here's a thought: Horizontal, euphemism for death as well as love.

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## ktd222

> No, it isnt. The meaning does change. Meanings are always dependent on context. Look at this sentence:
> 
> I enjoyed having my neighbour for lunch.
> 
> Does it only mean one thing, regardless of context? What if the context is that its a cannibal who makes the statement? Now it means something very different. Poetry isnt literal and denotative  it depends on connotations. As *tn2743* says, Their environment and their purpose have changed. Its not that Wachtel has replaced the meanings with wholly different ones but that he has invited us to generate meanings other than the ones intended by the original context. I assume that turning blue in the original context refers to someone not getting enough oxygen  within the context of a poem that uses coldness as a sort of motif, it also suggests a less literal coldness.


Does this mean I get partial credit? Because the original meaning of the sentences is still there in the context of the Wachter poem even though a new meaning may have been generated.




> Okay  and what does that mean? Given that the context is a series of comments about TV and media, is it so unlikely that the sentence could relate to televisions?


I'm just saying in the Wachter poem it states 'we control the horizontal' not 'we control every degree,' so maybe this lends some control to us(non-media) in whatever capacity it is.




> It would be if I based it entirely upon that one phrase in this particular poem. The claim ownership of our souls bit is the way _I_ see it but it is consistent with the Media as represented in the poem.


But the title talks about these several sentences leaving 'an impression' on his memory, not soul.

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## Virgil

> I wonder though, if others find that it's a poem that they still find it as interesting on the second read, or if, like the quickly shifting, disposable soundbytes it's made of, it fails to keep our attention in any meaningful way? I wonder, because I've run across similar ideas before, and while I've found it the sort of thing that momentarily makes you stop and think about the connections between the random phrases etc., it's seldom anything that I feel compelled to come back to and read over again. After all, much of the allure really lies in its uniqueness. I don't know that the work itself is as interesting as much as the idea behind it of stringing random phrases together. If many poets started using the same form and it lost its originality I feel as though such a poem would also lose most of its edge. I'd be interested to hear if there are differences of opinion though. I'm not trying to claim it's "bad" poetry, just trying to see if people find it to be poetry of lasting interest. Maybe I just need to read through it again and see if it speaks to me more.


I'm in agreement with you, Petrarch. I like the idea of the poem, but ultimately the language is dull. Like I said somewhere else, the only poetic charge (other than what's in the title) is the dislocation between the phrases. Otherwise it's too prosaic, and i'm sure that's part of the point. Perhaps the aesthetics match the meaning well and that's a good thing. [BTW, from my profile this is the reason why I think Dante's Divine Comedy is the most perfect work of art; form and aesthetics match perfectly with theme and world view.] But Dante has interesting language, he's a great poet. Perhaps Wachtel is a great poet too, but this work doesn't show it. There is a technique that some poets play with, called "found" poetry. They will take lines written somewhere/elsewhere and rearrange them so that they get shaped into a poem. I don't know if this meets the definition of found poetry, but it's along those lines. It's in wiki, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry

But the "find" is usually interesting language not dull.

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## tn2743

> After all, much of the allure really lies in its uniqueness. I don't know that the work itself is as interesting as much as the idea behind it of stringing random phrases together.


I totally understand what you mean. In my very humble opinion, I think that in art, especially modern art, uniqueness and originality is essential. And it is easy to underestimate or overlook meanings. Though isn't that why it's art? An original idea would be philosophy, wouldn't it? (I have not thought this last point through, please don't prey on my weakness  :Biggrin:  ). 

Anyway, if I have learnt anything in my _3_ '_long_'  :Smile:  years of University (besides the horrific economic models which I have now completely forgotten) it is that I don't have the luxury of choosing what I want to dedicate all my attention to. I have to put the same effort into all assignments regardless of how I rate the wisdom of the question... That way my grade isn't affected by the quality of the book that I'm reading. (I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trying to sound smart)

I guess my point is: whilst the contents, meanings, or 'ideas' of this poem might not be what makes it interesting; that should not get in the way of me trying to understand them throroughly nontheless.

I know that you never actually said anything to contradict this. I just felt like contributing to this point, which was also on my mind.  :Smile:

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## Petrarch's Love

> There is a technique that some poets play with, called "found" poetry. They will take lines written somewhere/elsewhere and rearrange them so that they get shaped into a poem. I don't know if this meets the definition of found poetry, but it's along those lines. It's in wiki, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry
> 
> But the "find" is usually interesting language not dull.


Thanks Virg., I couldn't remember what it was called. I've had a lot of fun writing "found" poetry myself (no claims to anything profound, just fun). It's a nice brainstorming excercise since it encourages finding unexpected connections between seemingly seperate or unrelated ideas, or words, or sounds of words. I was thinking of one such experiment during our discussions here last week:

The time of the singing of the birds is come
And smale fowles maken melodye
The Phoenix and the Turtle
Singest of summer in full-throated ease,
Those dying generations at their song.

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## Shanna

Is there any significance to this?

"..Named from the Greek meaning fire-lizards, salamanders have a long mythological history of holding the power to thwart fire. Thomas Bulfinch, of _Mythology_ fame, notes that "...the authority of numerous sage philosophers, at the head of whom are Aristotle and Pliny, affirms this power of the salamander. According to them, the animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when he sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well knows how to vanquish." Some attributed these powers to the salamander's cold-bloodedness, others to fire-proof skin, while still others say the myth began when salamanders were seen emerging from the charred remnants of fire logs." 

Excerpt from AN ALCHEMIST'S POEM: 
A SALAMANDER LIVES IN THE FIRE, WHICH IMPARTS TO IT A MOST GLORIOUS HUE. 

...In all fables we are told 
That the Salamander is born in the fire; 
In the fire it has that food and life 
Which Nature herself has assigned to it. 
It dwells in a great mountain 
Which is encompassed by many flames, 
And one of these is ever smaller than another - 
Herein the Salamander bathes. 
The third is greater, the fourth brighter than the rest - 
In all these the Salamander washes, and is purified. 
Then he hies him to his cave, 
But on the way is caught and pierced 
So that it dies, and yields up its life with its blood. 
But this, too, happens for its good: 
For from its blood it wins immortal life, 
And then death has no more power over it. ...

- From: BOOK OF LAMBSPRING

http://www.geocities.com/alandwpeters/lambspring.html

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## tn2743

> Is there any significance to this?


Interesting. I was wondering if we might have to go back to the title for more clues. Do you mind having a go at answering this question first Shanna? It seems like you're trying to suggest something.

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## jackyyyy

*A Paragraph Made Up of
Seven Sentences Which Have
Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them
or Reading Them and Have Each
Left an Impression There Like the
Slender Scar Left by a Salamander
in a Piece of Rapidly Cooling
Igneous Rock*

1. Its a title.
2. With it, he writes of a Paragraph. 
3. He indicates that seven sentences 'have entered' his memory.

There is no evidence here that he set the paragraph out. Could be, it was presented to him as a paragraph. We can assume it is a collection that has been selected somewhere and by someone, its not random in this sense. 
He also writes, 'Which Have Entered', which only indicates they are familiar to him.

He now presents this 'Paragraph' to us.

Because we can derive an infinite number of conclusions from these seven (or not??), I wonder if he is simply presenting to us a collection of salamanders that he discovered somewhere, somehow. 

What do you think?




> Is there any significance to this?


There is definitely something in the Salamanders. Whether he is simply applying that analogy as a theme or there is something else going on here is hard to pin down. I think its in the next para.




> Interesting. I was wondering if we might have to go back to the title for more clues. Do you mind having a go at answering this question first Shanna? It seems like you're trying to suggest something.


Yes, its like we chase and chase the lady till she catches us. The title holds the key.

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## Virgil

> Because we can derive an infinite number of conclusions from these seven (or not??), I wonder if he is simply presenting to us a collection of salamanders that he discovered somewhere, somehow. 
> 
> What do you think?


You might be on to something there. However, I still don't feel that they are randomly picked. I think there is order to it, but I haven't found anyone's (including mine) logic convincing. Perhaps these are just salamanders that have crept into his consciousness, ordered by what might have been on his mind at the moment of conceptualization, frozen in the rock of his brain, but is incapable of truely communicating to future archeologists (us!) the theme or idea from some pre-historical epoch?

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## jackyyyy

> You might be on to something there. However, I still don't feel that they are randomly picked. I think there is order to it, but I haven't found anyone's (including mine) logic convincing. Perhaps these are just salamanders that have crept into his consciousness, ordered by what might have been on his mind at the moment of conceptualization, frozen in the rock of his brain, but is incapable of truely communicating to future archeologists (us!) the theme or idea from some pre-historical epoch?


I don't think they are random either (they stook to the stone, when others didn't). Yes, I agree there is a theme he is alluding to, but there is insufficient information in the content to fix on the target, which leads me to suppose its in the subsequent para, which he is not giving us, teasing us.

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## tn2743

> He also writes, 'Which Have Entered', which only indicates they are familiar to him.


Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean here.




> I wonder if he is simply presenting to us a collection of salamanders that he discovered somewhere, somehow.


Do you mean he has an actual collection of salamanders??? I don't think this can be. He indicates very clearly that the sentences are to his memory like salamanders to a rock. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

...

I think that if there is an overriding theme or 'logic' in this poem, it is the human sexual nature. Every sentense including the title can relate to this theme heavily. 

I'm not sure either as to why he has arranged them the way he did. It's not that no one has come up with anything convincing; I don't think that anyone has attempted to explain his arrangement. Though I thought some of the attempts to explain the meanings and impact of each sentences and the connections between them were quite convincing. But why in that order?  :Confused:

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## Pendragon

If I may comment here, having read several of your posts on this poem: I cannot lay claim to being an expert on the poem's style, although I have used it with some success as a poet myself, but salamanders are a different story. You see, my home state of Virginia is said to have more species of salamanders living here than anywhere in the world. My wife and I, and my three children often go on salamander hunts. There is one species here, and throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains, that has that fire-charged "glorious hue", that this poem reminds me of so strongly. We call it a "ruber". It is actually a _Pseudotritin ruber ruber_ or Northern Red Salamander. 

This is it. Does it not have the "glorious hue"?

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## Grumbleguts

I am still not convinced of a totally conscious arrangement and selection of these sentences. I can appreciate most of the arguments regarding sexual and mortal concerns but I don't agree that these are the whole picture (or even necessarily a part of it.)

These phrases stuck in Wachtel's memory, carved themselves into it as he says in the title. Isn't it a possibility that the choice of the sentences is down to nothing more than the type of sentence that the poet is prone to remember? Perhaps he has a preoccupation with sex and death, most of us do to some degree or other. Perhaps that is why these phrases stuck.

I like the idea that the Unnameable presented of the language of the sentences replacing that of the title. That I do agree with. There is a deliberate contrast between the two parts. I consider the title just as important a part of the whole as the supposed text of the work and I consider the dichotomy between the two to be far more important than which phrases were used.

I also appreciate TU's comments regarding the 'alternative' phrases that I proposed. They weren't well chosen perhaps to fit with the style of the actual ones in the poem, being randomly chosen scars from my own lump of rock which is more sedimentary than igneous, layered over years rather than fired by the first flash of youth. I still maintain that it is the linguistic style of the individual sentences that is important, the way in which 'the media' says things and the implied subtexts, rather than any particular phrase. Perhaps these examples would fit better - "MP in Vicarage Sex Romp", "Up 12 Big BBC Top 40 Places This Week!", "L'Oreal, because you're worth it." Compared with my previous suggestions, these carry a larger burden of implications, more in keeping with the ones used in Wachtel's piece.

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## jackyyyy

> Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean here.


I am suggesting the author is presenting to us a paragraph, that he or someone else built, which comprises these sentences. It also happens to be, that the seven have entered his memory (at some point in time). I can derive they are familiar. This does not imply randomness, because the paragraph was chosen for it's content.



> Do you mean he has an actual collection of salamanders??? I don't think this can be. He indicates very clearly that the sentences are to his memory like salamanders to a rock. Sorry if I misunderstood you.


No, the salamanders are the sentences.



> I think that if there is an overriding theme or 'logic' in this poem, it is the human sexual nature. Every sentense including the title can relate to this theme heavily.


Sex again?



> I'm not sure either as to why he has arranged them the way he did. It's not that no one has come up with anything convincing; I don't think that anyone has attempted to explain his arrangement. Though I thought some of the attempts to explain the meanings and impact of each sentences and the connections between them were quite convincing. But why in that order?


I don't think there is anything in the order of the sentences, But, there does exist a consistency in the content.

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## tn2743

> I think the significant connection is that they all tell us something about the nature of the world weve constructed for ourselves through the discourses of modern media. I said earlier that they have a cumulative effect but this isnt quite right  its more that they interact with one another and cumulatively produce a rather disturbing picture of the modern, media-saturated world.
> 
> Is Wachtel therefore suggesting that there are two linguistic realms  that of the past world of elevated literary expression and the rather debased and inane expression that saturates the world around us today? they then serve as a comment on the difference between the world as it is described through Art and the one in which we live.


When I first read this poem I immediately assumed that this poem was criticising the modern media in some way. It has just occured to me that Wachtel could, just as easily, be criticising the past artistic ways. Someone suggested to me that it matters more to a poet to observe spring and its flowers than to follow world politics. Maybe Wachtel, through this paragraph, wants to show us that if poets actually follow the news and use it as inspiration, this is what they might come up with: quite unflattering, though more relevant. Maybe he is suggesting that poetry should merge with reality.

Just a thought.

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## Petrarch's Love

> "..Named from the Greek meaning fire-lizards, salamanders have a long mythological history of holding the power to thwart fire. Thomas Bulfinch, of Mythology fame, notes that "...the authority of numerous sage philosophers, at the head of whom are Aristotle and Pliny, affirms this power of the salamander. According to them, the animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when he sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well knows how to vanquish." Some attributed these powers to the salamander's cold-bloodedness, others to fire-proof skin, while still others say the myth began when salamanders were seen emerging from the charred remnants of fire logs."


I'm glad someone brought this up. As a Renaissance scholar the association with the salamander and fire naturally came to mind, since salamanders in hot situations are all over the iconography of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They were often represented in emblems, and several famous people took the salamander reclining in fire as their device (rather like the personal version of a coat of arms), among them Francois I, 16th century king of France. As Shanna's post says, the salamander was believed to be able to both survive in fire and to extinguish fire with the coldness of its skin. Because of this they were thought to symbolize the justice of God in having the power to withstand and snuff out fire. Francois I's motto, (_nutrisco et extinguo_, I nourish and extinguish) which accompanied his Salamander device attributes such power to the king. Here's a 16th century (possibly 17th century copy) royal emblem of a salamander (which like many stylized representations of the period, looks a bit like a little dragon):



And here's the municipal flag of Vitry-le-Francois in France, with Francois I's salamander device and motto:



I wonder if this was in the back of Wachtel's mind in the image of the salamander making its mark on the hot lava. If, as someone suggested, the sentences that follow are, in a sense, seven Salamanders, this association with the salamander as it is represented in traditional European iconography would suggest a connection between the power of the salamander to nourish and extinguish and the power of the media to nourish and extinguish our thoughts. Even if it wasn't really at all in Wachtel's thoughts as he penned this, it strikes me as a musing that is somehow appropriate to the poem's intent.

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## jackyyyy

> Even if it wasn't really at all in Wachtel's thoughts as he penned this, it strikes me as a musing that is somehow appropriate to the poem's intent.


Salamanders flourished x billion years ago, which is why they ended up on so much rock. If we carry the analogy over to our sentences, we see media comments, punch lines, spiltover language, all the things that flourish today, making up this paragraph. And, the paragraph is the rock, and now, its a poem. Thanks, Petrarch.

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## ktd222

So wasn't I on to something at the beginning of this weeks thread?

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## Virgil

> So wasn't I on to something at the beginning of this weeks thread?


My dear, you are always on to something, even when I disagree with you.  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

> So wasn't I on to something at the beginning of this weeks thread?


If it wasn't for your timely interlocutions, I would be listening to my car radio right now, pushing all the wrong buttons.

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## Pensive

TO HOPE BY JOHN KEATS


When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof.

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chace him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed.
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed--
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.

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## Petrarch's Love

Ah, Pensive, you've posted a poem by one of my favorite poets. This isn't one I've spent as much time with as others (probably because it's not in the volume of his selected poems I refer to the most). Do you know by chance if this is one of his earlier poems? It seems less finished than some of his later works. It feels to me as though he's been reading something like Spenser's "Epithalamion" with that repeating final line. I'm not sure why he doesn't maintain it throughout though (it's in all but three of the stanzas). Is there a significance I'm missing about the three stanzas that don't end with," And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head," or might this just be a sign of a beginning poet experimenting? It's got the elements of what makes some of his other poetry so deeply moving--an unwavering faith that there is something in the world worth loving, a refusal to submit to despair, a reason to hope. I hate to say though that he loses me completely when he gets to the patriotic stuff in stanzas six and seven. Keats is best at personal feelings, I inevitably get bored when he starts hitting any kind of political note. Anyway, I'll give this one some more thought and maybe some other people will comment too. Thanks for posting Pensy. :Smile:

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## jackyyyy

I had a difficult time absorbing it until my third peek at it. The 'silver pinions' is with some mood, but then I like how he does that. I'd also like to know what year this was written, so I will research it. Thanks, Pensive.

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## Petrarch's Love

Jackyyyy (and others who are interested)--The poem is evidently dated February 1815, meaning it is fairly early in his career (early being a relative term in a career that was necessarily limited by death), and one year before the publication of his first poem in the _Examiner_ . It's astounding how much his poetry changed between the time of this poem and his death at age twenty-five.

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## Virgil

> Ah, Pensive, you've posted a poem by one of my favorite poets. This isn't one I've spent as much time with as others (probably because it's not in the volume of his selected poems I refer to the most). Do you know by chance if this is one of his earlier poems? It seems less finished than some of his later works. It feels to me as though he's been reading something like Spenser's "Epithalamion" with that repeating final line.


Keats is also one of my favorite poets. I have never seen this poem before. I did an internet search and found a date (didn't say whether written or published) of February 1815. I think this puts Keats at nineteen years old, certainly one of his early ones. In fact the site numbered the poems and while I don't know the exact logc of the numbering system, it put this at number eight. I would guess that ths is a very early poem. You can tell by how less polished it seems. I've only quickly skimmed it, but I think every single line a end-stopped line (the opposite of enjambent, I forget what that's called). Also the rhythm felt very fixed and overly regular. I believe Keats was heavily infleuenced by Spencer. Many of his stanza structures are either Spencerian or a variation. The stanza structure (ABABCC) here is also simpler than later Keats.


edit: I didn't read Perarch's last post (just above) when I wrote this. She had already mentioned the date of the poem.

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## Pensive

I love this poem but I am also a little uncomfortable with him repeating the line: "Wave thy silver pinions over my head"

I haven't read many of the Keats poems but those I read, I found them really worth reading.

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## jackyyyy

> I love this poem but I am also a little uncomfortable with him repeating the line: "Wave thy silver pinions over my head"
> 
> I haven't read many of the Keats poems but those I read, I found them really worth reading.


Just focusing on 'pinion'... outer edge of a wing, flutters the most, pronouncing some angelic/benevolent finger of authourity, a wisdom, a miracle for the enlightenment and relief he is asking for. I wondered what is common about those stanzas that end with this 'pinions' too, and if maybe there are crests and troughs. But, I do not see this yet. Also, 'pinion', as used today, brings up lots of notions - a strong word inferring a guide, cogwheel, a binding of sort. I think 'pinion' had other connotations in Keat's time, not unique to birds/angels. Another remark, its silver, and not white. Because of the repeat, the whole piece feels like a song people might sing in a Church or school.

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## Petrarch's Love

I'm finding it interesting in reading this poem to think about what it is exactly that Keats changed in his later poetry to make it so much more affecting. It's funny because he really sounds like a young poet here. It's not quite so hard to imagine that he's a very talented young man who would be about the age of a freshman in college, or a little out of highschool nowadays, while in his later poetry seems so beyond his years (I'm only a year younger than he was when he died, so I guess I'm keenly aware of where most people--even fairly bright and talented people--are at that age). As I said in an earlier post, the basic sentiment in this poem is not dissimilar to some of his later work, but it comes across as being obviously less developed. This might be an opportunity for us to discuss what it is that makes a poem seem "finished." What combination of the technical aspects of a poem, and choice of subject make a poem "great" as opposed to "good"? 

As Virgil points out, Keats is using a simpler stanza form here than in other poems, and all the lines are end-stopped. The later Keats uses enjambment beautifully and, like Spenser, is much more conscious of the metrical breaks in the line. Some of the metaphors seem a little heavy handed here too, and as people are pointing out the "silver pinions" repetition comes off a little akwardly. At first I thought this might be because he didn't consistently carry through with it throughout the poem, but I'm not sure if that would have helped either. Earlier, I was starting to compare the repeating end line with Spenser's "Epithalamian," one of the most successful poems I can think of which repeats the same line at the end of each stanza. I wonder why it works there and not in this poem. The obvious answer would be that Spenser's is a better line, but why is this? Why do lines like the "silver pinions" come across as a bit overkill here, while the "faery lands forlorn" from one of Keats' later poems (which one would expect to sound just as sappy) works much better? (Of course, maybe some would argue that it doesn't  :FRlol: ). Anyway, just some things I was tossing around in my head. I wondered if anyone else had similar thoughts.

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## Petrarch's Love

Off topic--Does anyone happen to know what's become of Unnamable? It's not like him to stop posting for more than a couple days, and even though it's only been a little under a week since his last post, I wondered if he had told anyone he was taking a little time off for some reason? The forums are in danger of becoming positively sachrine without his cynical wit being peppered about. Will he actually let us go on discussing "silver pinions" all week?!  :Wink:

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## Virgil

> Off topic--Does anyone happen to know what's become of Unnamable? It's not like him to stop posting for more than a couple days, and even though it's only been a little under a week since his last post, I wondered if he had told anyone he was taking a little time off for some reason? The forums are in danger of becoming positively sachrine without his cynical wit being peppered about. Will he actually let us go on discussing "silver pinions" all week?!


I haven't heard Petrarch, but it seems like a number of people have some sort of spring break at this time of year. I too was thinking about him, especially what his reaction would be to this poem ("To Hope," bah humbug!  :Biggrin:  ), but I imagine he might be away.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Just focusing on 'pinion'... outer edge of a wing, flutters the most, pronouncing some angelic/benevolent finger of authourity, a wisdom, a miracle for the enlightenment and relief he is asking for. I wondered what is common about those stanzas that end with this 'pinions' too, and if maybe there are crests and troughs. But, I do not see this yet. Also, 'pinion', as used today, brings up lots of notions - a strong word inferring a guide, cogwheel, a binding of sort. I think 'pinion' had other connotations in Keat's time, not unique to birds/angels.


Jackyyyy--I just saw this post. I looked up "pinion" in the OED, and it seems that the meanings you give for the word--guide, cogwheel, a verb meaning to bind--have all been around since at least the 17th century. I didn't come across any particular connotations from Keats' time that we wouldn't have now except some meaning having to do with left over wool, which I don't think is applicable. The OED does refer to the figurative use of pinion for things poetically represented as having wings. Of possible interest under that entry, is the quotation from Pope's _An Essay on Man_, "hope humbly then, with trembling pinions soar." I wonder if this passage was at all in Keats mind when he wrote his poem, or if it's a coincidence? 

I also did a search for the phrase "silver pinions" in a wideranging 19th c. poetry database I have access to, and it came up with several instances of the phrase in describing the wings of doves of peace before Keats' use of it here.




> I haven't heard Petrarch, but it seems like a number of people have some sort of spring break at this time of year. I too was thinking about him, especially what his reaction would be to this poem ("To Hope," bah humbug! ), but I imagine he might be away.


You're probably right, I forgot some people have a later spring break. Maybe one of us should be elected to be the resident curmudgeon while he's away and toss a few more bah humbugs onto the thread.  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

> You're probably right, I forgot some people have a later spring break. Maybe one of us should be elected to be the resident curmudgeon while he's away and toss a few more bah humbugs onto the thread.


Bahh, its all humbug !!!  :Biggrin: 
( I am not electing myself, btw. Just moving things along...)

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## Virgil

I take pinions to be strictly as bird's wings.

One thing I notice is that the quatrain (first four lines) of each stanza is in the subjuntive (I think it's subjuntive, somebody check my grammer) mood. They are all in either a hypothetical or very general vague time: "When..." or Whenever..." or "Should..." or Let me not see..." or "So, when...". It puts the poem in a realm of imagination rather than the here and now. 

Here's how I see the idea of each stanza:
One: When alone with hateful thoughts
Two: When wandering and despondency comes to him
Three: When disppointment seizes his heart
Four: When fate befalls dear ones
Five: Unhappy love from dear ones
Six: Possible loss of naton's honor
Seven: Possible loss of libert
Eight: A goomy cloud veils heaven

The good poetry rests in the eighth stanza and I don't think I captured it's meaning with my summary. However, the first seven stanzas are all parallel statements, that is there is no progression of thought or narrative. Like in classical music, the poem is in a theme and variation structure. 

The closing couplets seem to be a sort of request for blessing from the diety, "Hope". "Sweet Hope, etheral balm upon me shed / And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head."

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## jackyyyy

Yes, I am resting with bird wing tips despite I could go figure. Overall, it appears it should or would be subjunctive mood, but its not consistent - he flips to indicative. Maybe this is as Patrarch pointed out, and I think an early work with some indecisiveness. I read up on Keats last night, since I did not know that much of him. He wrote this when he was 19, died at 25 from Tuberculosis, same as a brother. His work reflects this mental anguish, as I combine his ambitions and situation, the girl he could not marry, closeness of family, mother. Interesting, that he was around Shelley, a favourite of mine and another romantic. Keats involves more religious overtones (I think). The patriot stanza is interesting because of those times, God and country. It almost feels like a token effort, out of place with the rest except if this was heavy on his mind. I like what Virgil wrote, 'like in classical music'. I could not put my finger on it properly until he wrote that, and I agree. However, I disagree that there is no progression. I think it bounces back with the ryhme of 'silver pinions' in an unusual manner.

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## Virgil

> The patriot stanza is interesting because of those times, God and country. It almost feels like a token effort, out of place with the rest except if this was heavy on his mind.


That's true. 1815 is Napoleon at Waterloo. I just looked up the eaxct date of the battle, June 18,1815. I still don't see the progression, though.

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## jackyyyy

> That's true. 1815 is Napoleon at Waterloo. I just looked up the eaxct date of the battle, June 18,1815. I still don't see the progression, though.


It was also the time of the Brit/Americas wars, awesome history and times, the fleet locked up with the French/spanish, not enough ships to go round. I can't sing for toffee, but I can hum(bug) it, kinda. Reminds me of a cross between a rally song and a hymn. I'll see if I can describe it better.

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## Grumbleguts

Not Keats at his romantic best. But an interesting example of the middle ground between juvenilia and his adult voice. I think I've seen this before but it must have been many years ago - its not in my selected Keats. I agree with most of what has been said here. I like Virgil's classical music comparison - my first impression was that this was in the tradition of 'lyric' poetry, ie. intended to be sung - which fits in with Virgil's view. I don't have anything else to add really - it's been pretty well summed up by you all before I got here.

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## Petrarch's Love

> The good poetry rests in the eighth stanza and I don't think I captured it's meaning with my summary. However, the first seven stanzas are all parallel statements, that is there is no progression of thought or narrative. Like in classical music, the poem is in a theme and variation structure.


Virgil--I also agree that the best poetry rests in the final stanza. That's where I started feeling like I could really see the later Keats starting to develop. Your comparison to the theme and variations is very apt, and I think also highlights both what is successful and what is problematic in this poem. I've been working on a Mozart theme and variation from his piano sonata k331 recently, so I've been thinking a fair amount about what makes a theme and variation work well. The trick is to balance what is being repeated in from the theme and what is being varied just enough to keep the listner's attention. What I've noticed is that in a very successful theme and variation like Mozart's there is a sense of some kind of progression within the repetitions. Each variation gets a little more complex in some way than the last, even while being tied to the others by the common theme. Even though you are essentially repeating what you started with in the theme, there is a sense that each successive variation is building on the last and making progress toward the conclusion. 

I think this highlights what you're saying about Keats' poem seeming to lack progression. It feels like he's looking for just that sort of balance between repetition and variation that a musical composer might. Hence, his uncertainty in when to use the "silver pinions" refrain, and the slightly disjointed feeling in the shifting subjects he's addressing (I agree with Jackyyy that the patriotic sentiments feel less like something he's personally emotionally invested in, than a sort of general concern of the times). If we compare it with music, this poem sounds like a theme and variation by a composer who's laying out a set of variations which, as you say lie parallel to one another--introducing something new each time but not necessarily somthing more complex or in a more comlex style that builds upon the last-- as opposed to a theme and variations like Mozart's in which the stanzas would build upon each other while maintaining just enough of the original theme to connect them all without sounding tiresomely repetitive. Just some thoughts that came to mind. 




> I can hum(bug) it, kinda.


  :FRlol:  Glad to see the humbugs keep rolling in. Now we'll have a whole bouquet of them to present Unnamable when he surfaces again. 
Maybe I'd best get to work thinking up some less aesthetic artsy fartsy comments and more bah humbugish remarks myself just to maintain a sense of balance  :Wink: .

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## jackyyyy

> refrain


You took the hum out of my whistle, that is exactly it (to me at least).



> as opposed to a theme and variations like Mozart's in which the stanzas would build upon each other while maintaining just enough of the original theme to connect them all without sounding tiresomely repetitive. Just some thoughts that came to mind.


Yes, and this is exactly what happens in music, which is why I was trying to sing it in my choir boy voice (unsuccessfuly, I should add). I just blew the dust off my Mozart, to be sure.



> Glad to see the humbugs keep rolling in. Now we'll have a whole bouquet of them to present Unnamable when he surfaces again. 
> Maybe I'd best get to work thinking up some less aesthetic artsy fartsy comments and more bah humbugish remarks myself just to maintain a sense of balance .


He'll think Easter arrived late around here, and lots of chocolate to melt over.



> I didn't come across any particular connotations from Keats' time that we wouldn't have now except some meaning having to do with left over wool, which I don't think is applicable.


New inventions in the textile industry before and around 1812, wool then cotton, and 'pinions' was a common multi-use word in textiles.

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## Virgil

You guys make good points about theme and variation, while repetitive, still needs to progress in some fashion. I just went searching for later Keats poems that have a similar form and I think "Ode To Psyche" fits. Go and check it. We have it in the lit net data base. It's so much better because (well for many reasons) while there is no logical thought or narrative that gets progressed, the originanlity in each subsequet stanzas does make the poem feel it is heading somewhere.

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## tn2743

"From cruel parents, or relentless fair;"

Can someone please explain this line for me; I don't quite get it. Is 'fair' a noun here? Thanks

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## Petrarch's Love

tn2743--Yes, "fair" is a noun, as in "fair maiden." He seems to be referring to some sort of unrequited love. I suppose "cruel parents" could be getting in the way of that love, or maybe they're just cruel on general principles because parents tell nineteen year old aspiring poets they should be in medical school etc.  :Wink:  (Keats did attend Med. school for a time before he dropped that profession to dedicate himself to writing). I frankly think it's a rather akward, contrived sounding line.

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## Virgil

> tn2743--Yes, "fair" is a noun, as in "fair maiden."


Your explanation of the line was quite good, but you made me smile with the sentence I quote you. Isn't "fair" in "fair maiden" an adjective, not a noun.  :Nod:  I know I can slip on the finer points of grammer, but that one I think I know.  :Biggrin:

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## Petrarch's Love

Virg.--Thanks for pointing us to "Ode to Psyche." A more developed Keats poem with pinions in it.  :Wink:  I think you're right that he's acheived there a lot of what he's working out here. For one thing, the longer, less structured stanzas allow for much more musical activity. My copy, unlike the one here on Lit. Net has the poem divided into four rather than five stanzas, with no break between "A brooklet, scarce espied:" and "'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed." Not only does the four stanza version make more sense (I mean, why break at the colon?), but it also means that each of the first three stanzas begin with the vocative "O"--"O Godess!," "O latest born and loveliest vision," "O brightest!" This very subtle anaphora demonstrates a way he's found to introduce repetition or refrain into his poetry without having to be so blatant as to hit the reader over the head with silver pinions. Also, just as you say, the laudatory nature of the poem doesn't neccessarily tell a story, but he finds more to tell, and in more interesting ways from stanza to stanza so that the reader has a feeling of having moved forward in the course of the poem.

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## tn2743

> I've been working on a Mozart theme and variation from his piano sonata k331 recently, so I've been thinking a fair amount about what makes a theme and variation work well. The trick is to balance what is being repeated in from the theme and what is being varied just enough to keep the listner's attention.


Petrarch, are you a conductor or a musician? How cool!!! I was recently given some directions into listening and understanding classical music by a conductor friend (I'm almost blind and deaf musically) - it is just as hard as understanding poetry. But I find that music and poetry are similar in many ways.

I was surprised to see the bits about nation's honour and liberty. I thought that the first 5 stanzas are also beautiful poetry, talking about something very deeply painful in a personal way. The fifth stanza seems almost like an ending of this personal comtemplation, when he asks himself whether it is in vain to throw poetry into the air. It feels like a deep 'sign', a deep breath to finally rest his worries. But then the next two stanzas suddenly come back to describe much more abtract problems (and, as you said, something he has not invested in emotionally). They kind of broke the progression down for me. It seems like he was not sure whether he has finished 'unloading' all of his worries onto the page, not sure what bothers him. Although, it is possible that this lack of progession can be delibrate. Wha ya think?  :Smile:

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## Petrarch's Love

> Your explanation of the line was quite good, but you made me smile with the sentence I quote you. Isn't "fair" in "fair maiden" an adjective, not a noun. I know I can slip on the finer points of grammer, but that one I think I know.


  :FRlol:  You're quite right. I was unconsciously quoting where the use of "fair" as a noun seems to most frequently arise from. I've seen writers start off referring to the "fair maid" and subsequently just shortening it to "fair." So I suppose I meant it not as an example of how the word is used as a noun, but what it is that "fair" is replacing. The "fair maiden" becomes the "fair". Thanks for keeping me on my toes.  :Wink:

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## Virgil

> Petrarch, are you a conductor or a musician? How cool!!! I was recently given some directions into listening and understanding classical music by a conductor friend (I'm almost blind and deaf musically) - it is just as hard as understanding poetry. But I find that music and poetry are similar in many ways.
> 
> I was surprised to see the bits about nation's honour and liberty. I thought that the first 5 stanzas are also beautiful poetry, talking about something very deeply painful in a personal way. The fifth stanza seems almost like an ending of this personal comtemplation, when he asks himself whether it is in vain to throw poetry into the air. It feels like a deep 'sign', a deep breath to finally rest his worries. But then the next two stanzas suddenly come back to describe much more abtract problems (and, as you said, something he has not invested in emotionally). They kind of broke the progression down for me. It seems like he was not sure whether he has finished 'unloading' all of his worries onto the page, not sure what bothers him. Although, it is possible that this lack of progession can be delibrate. Wha ya think?



I was surprised too to see the political brought up here too. I guess it is understandable on a poem about hope and the national fear that Napoleon brought.

At some point we should discuss the closing couplets to each stanza and why he does what he does with them. I've certainly not come to any understanding.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch, are you a conductor or a musician? How cool!!! I was recently given some directions into listening and understanding classical music by a conductor friend (I'm almost blind and deaf musically) - it is just as hard as understanding poetry. But I find that music and poetry are similar in many ways.


No, I'm not a professional musician, though it would be wonderful to be that talented. I'm just a lit. scholar who plays the piano on a pretty amateur level and have a deep interest in and appreciation of classical music.  :Smile: 




> I was surprised too to see the political brought up here too. I guess it is understandable on a poem about hope and the national fear that Napoleon brought.
> 
> At some point we should discuss the closing couplets to each stanza and why he does what he does with them. I've certainly not come to any understanding.


Like you guys, I also feel like the political is out of place here. I feel as though he was trying to cover every situation that came to his mind as possibly troubling and depressing--politics often fits that bill.  :Wink:  I think it's a good idea to take a closer look at each stanza Virg., but I'm going to leave that until later, since I've got miles to read before I sleep.  :As Sleep:

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## tn2743

> At some point we should discuss the closing couplets to each stanza and why he does what he does with them. I've certainly not come to any understanding.


I have only noticed that he uses the rhyme "shed" and "head" many times, though not in a clear pattern. But every time he uses this rhyme, it is to conclude the stanza with a feeling that he is passive and is waiting for protection or blessing from Hope or a greater power. Perhaps he is stressing that he is not doing enough himself to help the situation, that he is helpless: "O let me think it is not quite in vain/ To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!"

There's another kind of hope; one you can help by participating in in the proccess of obtaining the result to be hoped for. He could be fighting in the war, or be in the court protecting lady Liberty. Maybe he is cursing his lack of action and his "morbid fancy" that he could probably escape himself?

Other than that, I can't see anything either. I don't understand the radomness in which this particular rhyme appears.

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## tn2743

> No, I'm not a professional musician, though it would be wonderful to be that talented. I'm just a lit. scholar who plays the piano on a pretty amateur level and have a deep interest in and appreciation of classical music.


That's really cool too. The piano is my favourite instrument. I love listening to Arthur Rubinstein, though I can't articulate 'why' intellectually... just seems calmer and deeper. I'm a grade one piano, btw  :Biggrin:  

Anyway, back to poetry...

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## jackyyyy

> Perhaps he is stressing that he is not doing enough himself to help the situation, that he is helpless: "O let me think it is not quite in vain/ To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!"


I do not sense quite 'helplessness', instead 'acceptance', and then he adds 'hope'. In regard to progression, I am finding the early stanzas discuss 'personal love and hope' and the later, 'love and hope of country (duty)'. I am not suggesting he is making a comparison, because I cannot see where he provokes that (yet), but I will suggest its a progression.

Another point about those times, duty was pressganged.

Interestingly, and I do not mean to fester this thread with my meanderings, but many poems have evolved into modern songs.

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## Virgil

> Another point about those times, duty was pressganged.


An interesting thought I just had. The political does show the differences between Keats and the other Romantics. The other Romantics had a subversive element to their thoughts and politics. One could never imagine Shelley writing the following: "Let me not see our country's honour fade: / O let me see our land retain her soul" I can't recall any element in Keats' opus that was politically subversive.

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## jackyyyy

I think Shelley and Yeats would have been more precise. I put this down to Keats being either less skilled or less confident at the time. I am comparing a lot with the recent Yeats piece, after the comparisons other people made, which wandered around in discussion for other reasons, not these same. Honour can be at a high price, and just maybe in Keat's situation (war times), at the price of personal love, health and other things. So, if I take that notion further it gives again the progression from personal love to love of country/duty. The 'hope' is calling for 'silver pinions' to arrive, and victory - an end to suffering. I sense resignation (I called it acceptance before), but different to Yeats (he was 19, should be full of life), and wonder if its a tough and reluctant resignation as a young man might resent. Also, being 19, and not being a military man, he would use 'refrain' in politeness.

The history fascinates me as much as the actual message itself. When I combine the times, personal biography and circumstances, I see a picture underneath the words. And here, I wonder if he was being a politer Shelley.

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## jackyyyy

badnet....

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## tn2743

> I do not sense quite 'helplessness', instead 'acceptance', and then he adds 'hope'


I didn't quite understan why you have made this replacement. I don't think that 'acceptance' or 'resignation' would accompany 'Hope' as well as 'helplessness' or perhaps a better word that I can't quite think of; since the word 'resignation' itself somewhat implies lack or absence of 'Hope'. Doesn't it? Besides, if you were on the same page as me, I was talking about the final couplets of the stanzas. Where did he add Hope, if this 'resignation' was suggested in the final couplets of each stanza? I am not denying that there might be a progression that I cannot see, but maybe not in the direction of resignation. Wouldn't that contradict with the title too much?




> At some point we should discuss the closing couplets to each stanza and why he does what he does with them. I've certainly not come to any understanding.


Has anyone thought more about this question? I think Virgil asked a good question here. I also thought that Petrarch were right in saying that we should look at each stanza individually in order to find a progression, since there seem to be no obvious pattern.

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## jackyyyy

> I didn't quite understan why you have made this replacement. I don't think that 'acceptance' or 'resignation' would accompany 'Hope' as well as 'helplessness' or perhaps a better word that I can't quite think of; since the word 'resignation' itself somewhat implies lack or absence of 'Hope'. Doesn't it? Besides, if you were on the same page as me, I was talking about the final couplets of the stanzas. Where did he add Hope, if this 'resignation' was suggested in the final couplets of each stanza? I am not denying that there might be a progression that I cannot see, but maybe not in the direction of resignation. Wouldn't that contradict with the title too much?


I think we've digested the fact there are eight stanzas, there is a lot here, and but you are right, each sentence could be given a lot of attention. 'Helpless' didn't quite do it for me. In stanza after stanza, he writes, 'When.., Should.., And as..'. Acceptance/resignation that life may/should/would be sad, ...there are despondent times, and then hope for silver pinions to arrive. I am suggesting resignation to the earthly things does not preclude unearthly things. I think the other word you mentioned, 'passive' is how I would describe his character, but not mood. Sometimes he goes '!'.

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## tn2743

> In stanza after stanza, he writes, 'When.., Should.., And as..'. Acceptance/resignation that life may/should/would be sad, ...there are despondent times, and then hope for silver pinions to arrive. I am suggesting resignation to the earthly things does not preclude unearthly things.


I see what you mean about how "when..., should..., And as..." can be a sign of acceptance. They do give a feeling of submission or simply of being 'fed up'. But that is why in the last couplet of each stanza, the hope that he asks for seems so passive and helpless; but as long as he is wishing for things, he can't have given up. I think you would agree that... 

"Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head"

...does not constitute a resignation. 

He is wishing for something. Though even this wish is not as lively as can be. He could wish for the strength to get through whatever misfortune; he could wish for a chance to undo whatever mistake. But instead he asks to be protected or cheered up. He just wants to be blessed and offers nothing in return but verses. 




> I think the other word you mentioned, 'passive' is how I would describe his character, but not mood.


Sorry Jackyyyy, could you explain a little more about how 'passive' is his "character" but not "mood"? How have you separated them from each other through the message given by the poem? I see an expression of self - it can be either the mood or the character; but how does it express both separately and differently?




> Sometimes he goes '!'.


Are you saying that the mood is positive or negative? '!' represents determination or desperation, no? How does that defy the passive *'mood'*? Unless it's a positive mood and he is determined, then that wouldn't fit your 'resgination' theory anymore.

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## Petrarch's Love

Perhaps neither "resignation" nor "helplessness" quite covers his view of despair in the world. I think it's a matter of "recognition." In the first portion of each stanza he recognizes something that either is bad or has the potential to become bad in his life. Perhaps there are some ways in which he goes so far as acceptance of certain things that happen in life over which he has no control, but I don't think it ever goes so far as resignation, and, as Jackyyyy says, accepting earthly hardships does not preclude hope in some heavenly good (not that I think hope is relegated to the next world here--there seem to be plenty of points for hope on this earth).
The final lines of each stanza are more like a repeated prayer than anything else. They are requests that "Hope" will act to fight against and sheild him from despair. This externalization and personification of Hope does give the impression of the speaker being in a passive, plaintive position. At the same time, however, the struggle is actually an internal one. Hope is something within the poet. He is calling upon something within himself, appealing to the better instincts of his own personality.

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## jackyyyy

> I see what you mean about how "when..., should..., And as..." can be a sign of acceptance. They do give a feeling of submission or simply of being 'fed up'. But that is why in the last couplet of each stanza, the hope that he asks for seems so passive and helpless; but as long as he is wishing for things, he can't have given up. I think you would agree that...


No, the 'When/Should/And as' refers to subjunctive mood. I am suggesting 'acceptance/resignation' that life can be sad. I don't think submissive/fed up/helpless are the same as acceptance/resignation.



> "Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
> And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head"
> ...does not constitute a resignation.


I agree, this is hope. The resignation(s) I am referring to are prior in those stanzas.


> He is wishing for something. Though even this wish is not as lively as can be. He could wish for the strength to get through whatever misfortune; he could wish for a chance to undo whatever mistake. But instead he asks to be protected or cheered up. He just wants to be blessed and offers nothing in return but verses. Sorry Jackyyyy, could you explain a little more about how 'passive' is his "character" but not "mood"? How have you separated them from each other through the message given by the poem? I see an expression of self - it can be either the mood or the character; but how does it express both separately and differently?


Agreed, he is not revolting/fighting, instead wishing/hoping, which makes his character somewhat 'passive'. He states an example then calls on silver pinions and hope to arrive.



> Are you saying that the mood is positive or negative? '!' represents determination or desperation, no? How does that defy the passive *'mood'*? Unless it's a positive mood and he is determined, then that wouldn't fit your 'resgination' theory anymore.


Overall positive '!'. Resignation to the facts of life (cases he mentions) does not mean the end. The word 'helpless' does not work for me because I believe he could revolt, and therefore he is not helpless.


> I think it's a matter of "recognition."


Agreed, it is a recognition in that he recognizes it to us.


> The final lines of each stanza are more like a repeated prayer than anything else. They are requests that "Hope" will act to fight against and sheild him from despair. This externalization and personification of Hope does give the impression of the speaker being in a passive, plaintive position. At the same time, however, the struggle is actually an internal one. Hope is something within the poet. He is calling upon something within himself, appealing to the better instincts of his own personality.


Here again, he is not helpless. He can call on something to help. I use the word 'resignation' as acceptance, not termination. A repeated prayer, yes. I am not sure about calling upon something within himself. I need to read it with that view.

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## tn2743

> He can call on something to help. I use the word 'resignation' as acceptance, not termination.


I'm afraid you're not making any sense and haven't explained yourself any clearer to me. So he *resigns* to the fact that life is sad, but he doesn't *terminate* the hope that it might not be? A slight contradiction don't you think? How else do you suggest we should percieve this statement? And you haven't explained the *character* v *mood* theory that you proposed either.

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## tn2743

> Perhaps neither "resignation" nor "helplessness" quite covers his view of despair in the world. I think it's a matter of "recognition." In the first portion of each stanza he recognizes something that either is bad or has the potential to become bad in his life. Perhaps there are some ways in which he goes so far as acceptance of certain things that happen in life over which he has no control, but I don't think it ever goes so far as resignation, and, as Jackyyyy says, accepting earthly hardships does not preclude hope in some heavenly good (not that I think hope is relegated to the next world here--there seem to be plenty of points for hope on this earth).
> The final lines of each stanza are more like a repeated prayer than anything else. They are requests that "Hope" will act to fight against and sheild him from despair. This externalization and personification of Hope does give the impression of the speaker being in a passive, plaintive position. At the same time, however, the struggle is actually an internal one. Hope is something within the poet. He is calling upon something within himself, appealing to the better instincts of his own personality.


I agree with you. I think that you have found the middle ground here, or have made the arguments clearer to me anyway. I like the idea of the repeated prayers; maybe it's not as complicated as I thought.

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## jackyyyy

> I'm afraid you're not making any sense and haven't explained yourself any clearer to me. So he *resigns* to the fact that life is sad, but he doesn't *terminate* the hope that it might not be? A slight contradiction don't you think? How else do you suggest we should percieve this statement? And you haven't explained the *character* v *mood* theory that you proposed either.


No, I wrote, resigned to the fact that life 'can' be sad. I wrote, I use the word resignation as acceptance, 'not' termination. My point was, the word 'helpless' does not fit, and your word 'passive' is closer to how I would describe hiim. I do not think it valuable to put more energy into explaining his character, the 'hymn' idea has stuck, and I like that.

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## Pensive

Oh, I think that if only Keats wouldn't have repeated the lines: "And wave thy silver pinions over my head" poem would have been better but it is still good, in my opinion.

Quoting Petratch Lover: "Hope is something within the poet. He is calling upon something within himself, appealing to the better instincts of his own personality"

I agree with you and I think that we have no right to say that he was in a bad mood or in a good mood. All we are talking about is the poem which includes poet but not hismoods. He wrote this poem but all draw backs of it, they will remain as they were whether he was in a good mood or a bad one.

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## tn2743

> Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
> Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
> With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
> Bowing her head, and ready to expire:


I'm not sure why he has mentioned purple here.  :Confused: 

I go to court in England all the time, and the only purple I see is the purple on the Judge's robe. So base on this risky observation (that it is about the purple of the robe that he writes), I'll ask another question: does he mean that the judges oppress Liberty? 

There were arguments during the Enlightenment (and even now) that the English retrospective legal system based on common law, which claims to serve the interest of the people better than continental laws, was putting too much legislative power in the hands of the judges (when, according to popular belief, legislative power belongs to the people). Maybe this could be what he talks about. Then, once again, I find this stanza strange and lacking in "emotional investment".

Unless, of course, I have misunderstood the purple completely.

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## jackyyyy

Well.. I have no idea either, but here is something...... 'Great liberty, 1790. riots... the Great Liberty Virginians, Lady Liberty and Liberty Bell, late 1700s, purple - flower of freedom.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I'm not sure why he has mentioned purple here.


"Purple" is a common shorthand way of poetically refering to a monarch or royalty, or things associated with royalty. Since Roman times it has been considered the color of the royal and the elite, since purple dye was, for a long time, both rare and expensive. This is how I had read the line.

As people have been remarking, Keats is not generally as political a poet as say, Shelley or others of the romantic circle, but he shared similar liberal views in favor of a strong democracy, freedom of the press, etc. One of his few other political poems is a brief poem written in the same year as this one, 1815, in response to the celebrations held in Briton in that year in honor of the anniversary of the restoration of Charles II (the king who was restored to the throne in the 17th century, ending the period of the protectorate in England--mostly under Cromwell--that resulted after the English civil wars). These 1815 celebrations were made in conjunction with the forced exile of the "rightful" French King, Louis XVIII to London because of Napoleon's escape from Elba. Evidently all this celebration of monarchy made Keats and others uneasy. I assume the "purple" in the "Hope" poem alludes to similar concerns about a threat to democracy in England. The court would be the king's court to which liberty--i.e. republicanism or democracy--would be forced to bow (though the choice of the word court may also have a secondary allusion to justice--I'd be interested if anyone else could make more with that). The poem criticising the Restoration celebrations is brief enough that I'll quote it here:




> Lines Written on 29 May 
> The anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II
> 
> Infatuate Britons, will you still proclaim
> His memory, your direst, foulest shame?
> Nor patriots revere?
> 
> Ah! when I hear each traitorous lying bell,
> 'Tis gallant Sidney's, Russell's, Vane's sad knell,
> ...


The Sidney, Russell, and Vane mentioned, were republicans executed as traitors after the restoration in 1660.

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## tn2743

Thanks Petrarch.  :Smile:

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## Pensive

Petratch, man, your information is a bliss. I was also wondering the same thing...

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## Virgil

> As people have been remarking, Keats is not generally as political a poet as say, Shelley or others of the romantic circle, but he shared similar liberal views in favor of a strong democracy, freedom of the press, etc. One of his few other political poems is a brief poem written in the same year as this one, 1815, in response to the celebrations held in Briton in that year in honor of the anniversary of the restoration of Charles II (the king who was restored to the throne in the 17th century, ending the period of the protectorate in England--mostly under Cromwell--that resulted after the English civil wars). These 1815 celebrations were made in conjunction with the forced exile of the "rightful" French King, Louis XVIII to London because of Napoleon's escape from Elba. Evidently all this celebration of monarchy made Keats and others uneasy. I assume the "purple" in the "Hope" poem alludes to similar concerns about a threat to democracy in England. The court would be the king's court to which liberty--i.e. republicanism or democracy--would be forced to bow (though the choice of the word court may also have a secondary allusion to justice--I'd be interested if anyone else could make more with that). The poem criticising the Restoration celebrations is brief enough that I'll quote it here:
> 
> 
> 
> The Sidney, Russell, and Vane mentioned, were republicans executed as traitors after the restoration in 1660.


But doesn't this show how different Keats' politics (if he really had any, remember he was still only 19) was from the other Romantics? By Keats' day the republican protestant gov't was the long established rule. There's 150 years between the Restoration and Keats' day. The politics of the Restoration (I'm treading here on ground I'm not all that learned in) had a lot to do with Catholic versus Protestant understandings of Kingship. It had all been decided by Keats' day, and the new dichotomy of Keats' time was freedom, ala the American and French revolutions and the aristocracy (albeit limited) of England. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake all supported the French Revolution, and while Shelley and Byron were too young at the time, but certainly their world views were in synch with this new order. Keats' as I can tell seems not to be. But again I'm not all that familiar with the politics of 1815. Remember, by then the french revolution had soured and become dispicable, and then Napoleon was on the rise. Wordsworth ultimately came to reject the french revolution model. The point of all this is, either Keats' was just superficially taking up the local political sentiments of his day or he was quite uncharacteristically "conservative" compared to the other Romantics. I tend to believe it was mostly superficial.

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## jackyyyy

Not to distract, but to add. Heavy on people's minds must have been the following, and Liberty Bell.



> Jacksons energy got results, and timely reinforcements from Kentucky and Tennessee brought his available forces to a little over 5,000. After several minor attacks in December, the British launched their grand assault at dawn of January 8, 1815. It was a foolhardy attempt-an attack in close columns against earthworks defended by artillery and riflemen whose aim was known to be deadly. The assault ended in terrible defeat for the British. The British lost their three highest-ranking officers, some 2,000 other casualties, and the city of New Orleans. Jacksons losses were just thirteen killed.

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## Regit

> The politics of the Restoration (I'm treading here on ground I'm not all that learned in) had a lot to do with Catholic versus Protestant understandings of Kingship. It had all been decided by Keats' day, and the new dichotomy of Keats' time was freedom, aka the American and French revolutions and the aristocracy (albeit limited) of England. 
> 
> The point of all this is, either Keats' was just superficially taking up the local political sentiments of his day or he was quite uncharacteristically "conservative" compared to the other Romantics. I tend to believe it was mostly superficial.


Hi,

So the 'court' in "the base purple of the court oppress'd" is not a court of law but the court of royal rule?

If the case is that of the latter, then I will agree with Virgil here. It doesn't seem like Keats has had much time to think about politics before writing this stanza. It seems quite superficial and too brief.

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## Petrarch's Love

> But doesn't this show how different Keats' politics (if he really had any, remember he was still only 19) was from the other Romantics? By Keats' day the republican protestant gov't was the long established rule. There's 150 years between the Restoration and Keats' day. The politics of the Restoration (I'm treading here on ground I'm not all that learned in) had a lot to do with Catholic versus Protestant understandings of Kingship. It had all been decided by Keats' day, and the new dichotomy of Keats' time was freedom, ala the American and French revolutions and the aristocracy (albeit limited) of England. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake all supported the French Revolution, and while Shelley and Byron were too young at the time, but certainly their world views were in synch with this new order. Keats' as I can tell seems not to be. But again I'm not all that familiar with the politics of 1815. Remember, by then the french revolution had soured and become dispicable, and then Napoleon was on the rise. Wordsworth ultimately came to reject the french revolution model. The point of all this is, either Keats' was just superficially taking up the local political sentiments of his day or he was quite uncharacteristically "conservative" compared to the other Romantics. I tend to believe it was mostly superficial.


Ok, first off I think you're probably right to a certain extent in that, as I said in my earlier post, I don't think Keats is really a political poet, and I don't think he is giving very rigorous attention to the fine points of politics in his poem. That said, I don't see any problem with drawing parallels between the English civil wars of the seventeenth century and the issues in Keats day (Keats certainly didn't). To begin with it isn't strictly true that the 17th century conflict was over Catholic and Protestant views. England was a Protestant country at that point so the issue was with the Puritans on Cromwell's side who took issue with Charles I's support of more "high church" (but still protestant) practices. It is true that some feared that Charles might be inclining toward turning England back to Catholicism, but he hadn't in fact so, though religion was definately a factor, it was a more complex thing than a simple Catholic/Protestant dichotomy. 

The big issue in the civil wars, setting the religion aside for a moment, was really a matter of parliamentary rights and dissatisfaction with Charles I's rule. There were a number of financial issues at stake and a desire for a stronger role for parliament. We're talking about a group that beheaded the king and started a decade long interregnum without a monarchy. While it can be debated how successful they were, and how much Cromwell came to resemble a monarch himself, the idea behind the interregnum was that they were establishing a republican commonwealth. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 would be the end of this republican experiment. In other words, the issues between the royalists and the roundheads in the 17th century were very much related to a conflict similar to that between "freedom and the aristocracy" that you applied to the romantic period. Someone who would support the types of republican ideals of the French and American revolutions in Keats' day could quite logically refer back to this earlier (albeit failed) attempt at a republican model of government. I thought his allusion back to a sympathy with the republicans of the civil wars made his stance in favor of the new ideals of "freedom" in his own day pretty clear. From all I've read about him I gather that Keats' views were, if anything, liberally inclined. Again, I do think his treatment of politics is somewhat "superficial" as you say--that's why I find his political moments pretty dull--but I'm not seeing the evidence that he's coming across as much different than or more conservative than the other romantic poets we've been mentioning. Maybe I'm just missing something you're picking up on?

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## Virgil

> In other words, the issues between the royalists and the roundheads in the 17th century were very much related to a conflict similar to that between "freedom and the aristocracy" that you applied to the romantic period. Someone who would support the types of republican ideals of the French and American revolutions in Keats' day could quite logically refer back to this earlier (albeit failed) attempt at a republican model of government. I thought his allusion back to a sympathy with the republicans of the civil wars made his stance in favor of the new ideals of "freedom" in his own day pretty clear. From all I've read about him I gather that Keats' views were, if anything, liberally inclined/ Again, I do think his treatment of politics is somewhat "superficial" as you say--that's why I find his political moments pretty dull--but I'm not seeing the evidence that he's coming across as much different than or more conservative than the other romantic poets we've been mentioning. Maybe I'm just missing something you're picking up on?


Ok, I don't want to belabor this point. But here's one last attempt.  :Wink:  

The way Keats is expressing himself politically (in both the poem at hand and the bit that you quote) strikes me as different than when Shelley and Byron express themselves politically. I'm no expert of the times, so bear with me. Shelley and Byron (and I believe they both left England for somewhat political reasons) strike me as being subversive to their gov'ts, similar to the Beat generation poets of recent years. Keats' sentiment is definitely not subversivce, in fact supportive. The Restoration was 150 years prior to Keats. That's a long time. Just consider us expressing opinions of a political issue of 1856. Especially given the issues at hand of the French Revolution and the rise and threat of Napoleon. I don't know. All in all, I think we all agree that Keats political sentiments are superficial.

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## Petrarch's Love

> The way Keats is expressing himself politically (in both the poem at hand and the bit that you quote) strikes me as different than when Shelley and Byron express themselves politically. I'm no expert of the times, so bear with me. Shelley and Byron (and I believe they both left England for somewhat political reasons) strike me as being subversive to their gov'ts, similar to the Beat generation poets of recent years. Keats' sentiment is definitely not subversivce, in fact supportive.


I guess we're just reading the poem very differently. I didn't think Keats was really being supportive of his current government. Supportive of his country, yes, but not perhaps of its current policies. In these lines for example:

"O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade."

He is concerned that England will no longer be able to retain "her soul," but that this true freedom will be replaced by a mere "shade," an imitation of freedom. This looked to me like a critique of overly conservative tendencies that he was afraid were endangering the existing freedoms he valued in his country. He may not be as boldly spoken as say, Shelley, but I think his tendencies are more in that direction than not. 



> The Restoration was 150 years prior to Keats. That's a long time. Just consider us expressing opinions of a political issue of 1856. Especially given the issues at hand of the French Revolution and the rise and threat of Napoleon.


 As for, the matter of his referring back to the civil wars, the point is that he wasn't making a political statement about an event 150 years ago. He was using the resonance of an allusion to this historical event that he assumed most of his readers would associate with a certain kind of conflict between republican freedom and monarchy in order to saterize the attitudes of his own period. We still do this with our own history. If someone wrote a piece alluding to the nazi movement or about Benedict Arnold, we would instantly grasp that they aren't really concerned with the specific issues of sixty or even two-hundred years ago, but are drawing a parallel between those times and our own to make a statement about corrupt government or treachery. 




> All in all, I think we all agree that Keats political sentiments are superficial.


Yes, I think we do. I don't really want to belabor the point either, just interested that we seem to have read it so very differently.  :Smile:

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## Virgil

OK, you're probably rght, Petrarch. I think you convinced me. Keats' words are vague enough for multiple readings, and his appeal to national honor seemed different than what Shelley or Byron might say. But perhaps that's just my personal impression of Byron and Shelley.

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## jackyyyy

> Let me not see our country's honour fade:
> O let me see our land retain her soul,
> Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.


If I read the poem with the mindview of a Loyalist, then the beginning and the end nolonger appear disjointed. The fought over freedoms that Keats understood were, a century and more later, fighting the freedom fighters of the rest of the World. Trafalgar was 1805, and the French and Spanish were still powerful enemies. New Orleans was 1815, and news would have hit England just prior to his writing the poem. Great Liberty was the cry of the French Republic, and the people of 'plain attire'. 




> not freedom's shade.


He writes, 'retain' these things, but NOT, 'freedom's shade'. I think here it means, 'a lesser Freedom'.
Keats is not decrying the regime, subversive, instead appears saddened/worried by its potential loss forever. This is why the word 'passive' seems to fit here. He does not appear 'threatened' or outspoken on the issue. Rather, he explains some emotional stuff, his feelings. He starts the poem with talk of despondency and hope, love and 'freedoms'. I take these early lines as examples of freedom of soul. Then finally, he states it:


> Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
> Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
> With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
> Bowing her head, and ready to expire:


Patriot versus patriot, he does not want to see the patriot's death, the hard earn't Liberty now 'great in plain attire'. Which patriot is he talking about, and why 'base' purple.. a dirtied purple? I wonder if he was actually the political opposite of Shelley and Byron, or and probably an undecided 19 year old.



> Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,


He seems unsure here?

I know my take on it depends on a few things, but it makes most sense to me right now. Those were desperate years, and being loyal was at a high price and sacrifice. It was an ideal. Events forced Keats to look again at his values, with Shelley and others would have been pulling, swaying him. When I read the opening stanzas, and what he held dear and fair, then consider what actually transpired, did celestial influence bear on Keats and those, and finally us? Its a powerful poem in many ways, and I think its unfortunate that we have such a problem finding its absolute context, but I would like that.

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## MelanieD

> Now I would like to ask the million dollar question that I have a hard time answering: Why is that "no country for old men?"


I don't know if I shall say something, being old and new.
I read with great interest all your comments. I noticed that at each reading of the poem I reached a different opinion.
First, to answer Virgils question: in one of the learned books of my husband's (Brodie's Notes) it is said, Yeats speaks of Ireland in the first stroph. 
Then, in my understanding of the poem, he wants to turn his back on this country where 'all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect', (he's not humble) and there too much life going on for an old man. So he sails to B. and pleads to the emblems of permanence, to allow him to enter eternity - and here the key word - 'sick with desire'. He knows he's human (dying animal) and he knows: eternity is just an idea, a dream, a desire, an illusion. He accepts that. The sages in the gold mosaic, who are eternal, shall be his singing master, as he is a poet. 
Beginning of stroph IV stresses not a truth (maybe denial of rebirth) but ('But') the wish to be that poet who works and hammers at the material that lasts (the words). And he is conscious that that object is without any practical use in the world, we are the drowsy Emperors, eyes half closed we listen to a bird sing 'Of what is past, or passing, or to come' (the sensual music of life) and then go back to real living.
This poem is the sigh which is in all of us.

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## Virgil

Melanie

I think your reading seems to fit as I read it too. I take it you liked the poem?

Every Monday, one of us selects a new poem for the week to discuss. Since it is near nightfall on Sunday for you, why don't you post a poem you would like discussed? I think we've pretty much completed the Keats poem.

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## jackyyyy

> I don't know if I shall say something, being old and new.
> I read with great interest all your comments. I noticed that at each reading of the poem I reached a different opinion.


Hi Melanie. Good to meet you. You're right, seems we already know something of a work or start from scratch, and each read and each post brings a new impression. Quite amazing how the picture (almost a book, if I may) unfolds each time. You brought some very interesting comments with you. "shall be his singing master, as he is a poet" gives me another piece in the puzzle and I did not know this about him and Ireland.  :Nod:

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## Virgil

One thing I forgot to mention on "Sailing to Byzantim." There is a great rendition of it set to music by Paul Hillier in a CD called "Bitter Ballads". Hillier is an early (medevil and renaissance) music conductor and arranger, and this CD is poetry (Swift, Blake, Yeats, Stein, etc.) arranged around early music form. You can check the CD out here, and even listen to little clips: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=glance&n=5174
Early music has become a fascination for me, and coupled with poetry, I was overwhelmed. I can't say that everything on the CD works perfectly, but everything is at least interesting. You can read about Paul Hillier here:http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Hillier-Paul.htm
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hillier

I also would love to hear other classic poems set to music. I have not been too succesful in finding some. If anyone is aware of classic poetry set to music, please inform me of it.

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## Riesa

Virgil, I don't know if you like folk at all but I love this guy, Greg Brown. He dedicates an entire album to William Blake.



Greg Brown, and Songs of Innocence and Experience

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## Virgil

> Virgil, I don't know if you like folk at all but I love this guy, Greg Brown. He dedicates an entire album to William Blake.
> 
> 
> 
> Greg Brown, and Songs of Innocence and Experience


Cool. Thanks Riesa. I'm going to order it.

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## MelanieD

How do I do that? It's Monday morning.
Okay, I just type one up.


Morning song

He speaks:
Come, my laid lady, whom I wooed with words,
And called my Star--
Since you proved that you loved me, I
Know what you are?

For, knowing what I am, I have a rod
To measure by
If you mistake what I gave you for love, you are
More beast than I.

And having eased in you my ambiguous lusts
I now can prove
That you're a dupe who let me wallow you
And call it love.

If I have feet of clay, yet you are now
The dirt they trod --
And in that moment when I brought you down,
I was a god!

Katherine Anne Porter

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## jackyyyy

> One thing I forgot to mention on "Sailing to Byzantim." There is a great rendition of it set to music by Paul Hillier in a CD called "Bitter Ballads". Hillier is an early (medevil and renaissance) music conductor and arranger, and this CD is poetry (Swift, Blake, Yeats, Stein, etc.) arranged around early music form. You can check the CD out here, and even listen to little clips: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=glance&n=5174


Thanks Virgil, I very much appreciate that!

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## Virgil

> How do I do that? It's Monday morning.
> Okay, I just type one up.
> 
> 
> Morning song
> 
> He speaks:
> Come, my laid lady, whom I wooed with words,
> And called my Star--
> ...


Thanks Melanie. You did it. Let me digest it.

Quick look: Very sensual. We're going to have fun with this one.  :Wink:

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## Grumbleguts

On first reading one would assume that Ms Porter takes a very dim view of men. And a not much brighter one of women.

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## Virgil

Shall I list the sexual puns as a start, just to get that out of the way? Why not. Here are the words with double entendre: "come," "laid", "rod", "eased in."

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## jackyyyy

> Shall I list the sexual puns as a start, just to get that out of the way? Why not. Here are the words with double entendre: "come," "laid", "rod", "eased in."


But Virgil, you mean... this isn't this about a gardner, in love with nature, and flower arranging?  :FRlol:

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## Virgil

> But Virgil, you mean... this isn't this about a gardner, in love with nature, and flower arranging?


I didn't fully realize it when I posted before, but that was a very naughty post. On reading it over, it makes my heart flutter. Oh the cheap thrills in life.

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## genoveva

Ew, what a horrible poem! Great puns, horrible message. But, alas, I know it is true, sometimes.

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## Grumbleguts

I don't think there are any _double-entendres_ in this poem. The meanings of the words on Virgil's list are blatantly sexual and allow no innocent interpretation in the context of the poem. Except that I contest his interpretation of 'eased in' - the speaker is saying that he has eased his lust, not eased into the woman's body.

I should like to say in defence of the male half of humanity that I have never treated a woman with the contempt shown in this poem and doubt that many men are as callously, sexually predative as the one described here. Although I know that such do exist, it still strikes me as feminist cliche.

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## Regit

> Ew, what a horrible poem! Great puns, horrible message. But, alas, I know it is true, sometimes.


I agree. Not only that, somehow I don't think it will take a week to exhaust the technical substance of this poem. But I suppose a heated discussion about feminism can be interesting, that is under the assumption that someone would be brave enough to take the side of the masculine message suggested here. Because, as *Grumbleguts* rightly said, men are not like that!

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## jackyyyy

Smiling here, I don't know that its horrible, though I know what you mean. Its interesting how people immediately take to a camp. On the surface it appears sexual, which isn't outlawed yet (is it?), and but this all depends on the context, no? Time and again, context turns everything upside down. Anyway, we are not the author, nor the protagonist, simply the train spotter here. I'll put my sunglasses back on now.... even if its about a gardner, in love with nature, and the double entendre is actually our faux pas.  :Banana:

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## Petrarch's Love

My, that is a bitter, bitter poem. The poet really holds nothing back in making him an unabashedly straightforward sob. I'll have to read it again and see if some more insightful comments spring to mind. Darn it, others have already had the fun of pointing out most of the naughty bits (though I'm sure there are more there yet unidentified).  :Brow:  



> I should like to say in defence of the male half of humanity that I have never treated a woman with the contempt shown in this poem and doubt that many men are as callously, sexually predative as the one described here. Although I know that such do exist, it still strikes me as feminist cliche.


Grumbleguts--I just saw this. Let me begin by saying that I agree with most of your post. I don't at all believe this represents men in general, and I have luckily never been involved with the type described here. All the same, I have to comment on your describing this as "feminist cliche." As a poem, it is describing a certain type of individual that does in fact exist. There are men with this kind of attitude. By identifying one such individual in her poem Porter may be displaying some sort of personal anger and resentment from a bad experience she either had herself or heard about, but it seems like a bit of a leap from that to some genralization about feminist thought. If you were reading a poem by a man who was writing about a woman who had done him wrong--and there have been many written--you might think he was bitter about women and you might think he had gone overboard in his resentment, but it would probably never occur to you to think of it as a "cliche" of male empowerment. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that men wrong women and women wrong men, and the wronged parties of either sex tend to get very bitter and sometimes get hyperbolic in their condemnation of the opposite sex. It seems to me, however, that only women who express this sentiment get placed in this kind of position where they're branded as "feminist," with the implication that being a "feminist" is in some way linked to hating men as a result of a bad experience. Call the author of this poem a bitter woman who has trouble trusting men. Say that she's wrong to express this type of opinion, but don't say that it's just some cliche rhetoric having to do with women's rights. To be fair I should say that I'm aware that there are some women who use the term feminism as an excuse for male bashing, and I disagree with their use of the term as well.

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## Chinaski

Grumble - couldn't both connotations be intended - thus strengthening the line?

Petrarch's - I don't think it is down to 'some men...' in this case - the protagonist is clearly sick - as in psychopathic. We all wrong people in love at soem time - we don't want to treat em like dirt for kicks - if we are at least relatively healthy!

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## Chinaski

By the way, I started a challenge on a new thread - anyone know where it migt have disappeared to?

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## Chinaski

Oh I found it - guess nobodies interested!

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch's - I don't think it is down to 'some men...' in this case - the protagonist is clearly sick - as in psychopathic. We all wrong people in love at soem time - we don't want to treat em like dirt for kicks - if we are at least relatively healthy!


Chinaski--I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make. I want to be very clear about this. I was not trying to defend this poem as an accurate representation of the vast majority of men, or even of any man all of the time. I was not disagreeing with the idea that the poem is unhealthy in both the attitude of the speaker and the attitude towards men the creation of such a speaker implies. I agree that it is unhealthy. I think there are some unhealthy people out there, or people who have unhealthy moments, and this poem is describing one of them. What I was disaggreeing with is the identification of this kind of attitude with feminism. I don't see this as a "feminist" poem. I see this as a poem that was probably written by a woman who had issues with a certain man. Maybe the man who wronged her wasn't that bad and she's over-reacting as a result of being hurt. Maybe he had his own issues with women and was really just as heartless and vindictive as the poem makes him out to be. Either way I really don't see what that has to do with her position as a "feminist," unless the term feminist is being used as the equivilent of "man-hater," which I don't believe it should be.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I must admit that I have met feminists that have exactly the attitude presented by this poem. (Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that it is typical by any means - but they are out there, just as the man described in this poem is out there.) 

It was feminists like this that refused to allow men that were enrolled on the "Women's studies" course at the Open University to view the lesbian pornography that was being screened at the course's summer school "for educational purposes". Apparently, men would only view it for sexual gratification and would not see it as the pure and beautiful art form that women would perceive it as (or some such tosh). A friend of mine, that was one of only 2 men attending the course, complained to the Dean of the OU and was sent a copy on tape - very sexually gratifying it was too!  :Biggrin: 
(That was a joke, honest - I never actually saw it myself.)

I agree with most of the comments that say that this is a very misandrous poem. Even the most blatant womanisers that I have met have not been as one-sided and disrespectful as the speaker in this poem. I can't help feeling that these feelings are being attributed to him by, as Petrach's says, a very bitter woman. He hurt her, sure, but I doubt he was as much the monster as Porter makes out; these situations tend to generate one-sided viewpoints but are, on the whole, the result of a two-sided conflict.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I must admit that I have met feminists that have exactly the attitude presented by this poem. (Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that it is typical by any means - but they are out there, just as the man described in this poem is out there.)
> 
> It was feminists like this that refused to allow men that were enrolled on the "Women's studies" course at the Open University to view the lesbian pornography that was being screened at the course's summer school "for educational purposes". Apparently, men would only view it for sexual gratification and would not see it as the pure and beautiful art form that women would perceive it as (or some such tosh). A friend of mine, that was one of only 2 men attending the course, complained to the Dean of the OU and was sent a copy on tape - very sexually gratifying it was too!
> (That was a joke, honest - I never actually saw it myself.)


See, there's my point. I just don't agree with this type of "feminism." IMHO a true feminist would be interested in equality, including having porn equally available or unavailable to both sexes.  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

Frankly, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Let me try this, and tell me what you think. I think its a great love poem.

*He speaks:*

Two people in this conversation, argument, or lover's tiff.

*Since you proved that you loved me, I
Know what you are?*

- Proving you loved me once, does not tell if you do now.

*If you mistake what I gave you for love, you are
More beast than I*

- I proved my love for you, and if you cannot see it, then you are more stupid than I am 

*And having eased in you my ambiguous lusts
I now can prove
That you're a dupe who let me wallow you
And call if love.*

- after releasing /opening up myself to you about my confusing love, I can now show you are two faced to let me worry about you, and you call "that" love.

*If I have feet of clay, yet you are now
The dirt they trod --
And in that moment when I brought you down,
I was a god!*

If I am stook in my opinion, then so are you, and this time I was right!'.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I think you must have taken some of TBtheG's acid!  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

> I think you must have taken some of TBtheG's acid!


Nargh, he spilt it all over a thread, darn it. Come on, you must have seen a heated argument.  :FRlol:  I threw that out to kickstart the motor, but there are no double entendres, notice. GrumbleGuts left one possible, 'Ease in you', relaxed in you.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I think you'll find that what he 'relaxed' in her were his ambiguous lusts - hmmm, ambiguous, do you think there's a homoerotic sub-text there? Perhaps this macho man treats women so callously because he really wants to play hide the chippolata with a Bangkok lady-boy? Opinions please?

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## blp

> And call if love.


Is this a missprint? 'if'?

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I think so blp

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## jackyyyy

> I think you'll find that what he 'relaxed' in her were his ambiguous lusts - hmmm, ambiguous, do you think there's a homoerotic sub-text there? Perhaps this macho man treats women so callously because he really wants to play hide the chippolata with a Bangkok lady-boy? Opinions please?


I guess anything is possible if he is actually indicating that type of ambiguity. I took 'ambiguity' to mean 'confusion', then I am not on acid. I am really not sure about this macho man stuff. Another interpretation, he is a cheat (ambiguous lust), and he is calling her a cheat too (comparing with her). There is an interplay of sort going on here, love was in the past, but they are talking in the present.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

As I see it, the implication is that he promised love to get her in the sack but was never really offering it. As I say, stereotyping. Men are human, hence sensitive even if they don't want to be and even if they deny it. Often more so when they deny it.

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## jackyyyy

*Come, my laid lady, whom I wooed with words,
And called my Star--
Since you proved that you loved me, I
Know what you are?*

Men 'woo', and call their girl, 'my Star'. It is stereotyping to suggest only men do this, women do it too. Then he admits, 'she proved her love', but he still does not know what she is, and he is asking her. Well, she is a woman, what else could she be???

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## Virgil

> I must admit that I have met feminists that have exactly the attitude presented by this poem. (Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that it is typical by any means - but they are out there, just as the man described in this poem is out there.)


I'm from a different generation, and I think Xam is close to me in age. I remember real hardcore feminists of the late seventies and eighties considered/put out/argued (I'm not sure what the right characterizaton is) that all sex between men and women was a form of rape. I know that it was not the majority of feminists, let alone women, but it was out there. Also if you weren't one of these weeny men, then you were a pig. So that sort of reading is in the realm of possibility. I wonder when the poem was written. I couldn't find it on the internet.

However, Katherine Ann Porter is not someone I would have associated with those feminists. She was of a way older generation. She died in 1980 at 90 years old. 

Those are double entendres. A double entendre is a word that ostensibly says one thing but also puns with a sexual connotation. "Come" ostensiby means here listen up; "laid" ostensibly refers to laying in bed (although I grant you on this one my arguement is weak), "rod" ostensibly refers to a measuring stick; and "easying in you my ambiguous lusts" ostensibly refers to the wooing with words that was done for the seduction. And we all know what the sexual pun of each refers to.  :Brow:  (I must say, I'm really having fun with this poem.  :Wink:  )

The shock that everyone has gotten from the poem is from the incredibly loutish behavior of the "he" speaking. I can't help but feel that there should be a complementary poem or section that starts with "She Speaks" where we get her point of view. If there was such a complementary poem and that poem presented a Wife-of-Bath type of argument, our whole perception might be quite different. 

Also this poem is narrated by a woman through the voice of the man. Is this what she thinks he would say? What if what happened the night before was this: a man and a woman go to their local meat-market bar, he with the intent of picking up some woman, she with the intent of getting picked up. He says: "If you mistake what I gave you for love, you are/More beast than I". Who says she's mistakened anything? In fact his whole speech is rather outrageous. Who would actually say such a thing, even if that's what he felt? And the last line, "I was a god!", well men might think that, but to actually tell a woman that the next morning borders on delusional. Can she be so naive and he so delusional? I can't help but feel that the poem is her interpretation of what she thinks he feels. Is it more likely that she feels like dirt or that he would call her dirt? I think the former is more likely. Is it more likely that she might feel like a dupe or that he would tell her she's a dupe? Again, the former is more likely.

PS, There some good poetry in here too which I'll get to later in the week if no one brings it up. This post is already too long.

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## jackyyyy

The whole lot could derive some double entendre, if we want, and not necessarily sexual. Our sub-conscious takes us where we really want to go, eh. 'my laid lady' is the lady I won (laid) through wooing, and so on. Its standard equipment in courting ritual. I don't know what generation people are, and what culturals are here, but in any relationship (and this one is more than a one nighter) the language changes from 'you are naughty, my teddybear' in a cutting up with a chainsaw context to 'now shut up and give me a smack on the lips, O sewing machine of Satan' with a looking deep into her happy eyes context. You know, its an adult poem, afterall, displaying as real as possible, some part of some kind of relationship. Whether we can conclude anything is nigh impossible, unless there is some fact in the lines that establish. Its such a subjective issue, and it surprises me that any of us can leave a pile of words with any definition at all. But, people do for some reason, when maybe they should remember they are looking at it through a window, and when they turn their head away, put the question mark back on the cover. Here again, as Virgil pointed out, if there was a round two, she could be mouthing off at him (in his voice). You know, another thing about poetry (words), we cannot gauge the volume, even with a '!'. Ever see Richard Burton go at Liz Taylor, in that quiet voice, Cat on a Hot tin Roof, Marlon Brando. Words can cut at any volume, and double entendre is often a toy for wordy people. I am interested to see how the meat in this poem is analysed, because so far we haven't got past the sex shock (and assuming everyone here is over 18).  :Banana:

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## Virgil

> I am interested to see how the meat in this poem is analysed, because so far we haven't got past the sex shock (and assuming everyone here is over 18).


  :Brow:  Meat, did you say? Is that a double entendre?  :FRlol:

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## jackyyyy

Yes, its an unashamedly, triply entendred, oft obsfucatingly and maligned seed of destruction, poked into that sentence to deliberately provoke gutterings of wild and sexual steamings!  :Goof:

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## MelanieD

I see, as someone put forward, the heat is out of you or the poem doesn't have enough 'meat' for long discussions.
I'll give you my version. I chose the poem 'vite fait' in a hurry, KAP fell into my hands like that. Nevertheless, I think it is a nice poem even if not knowing KAP.
She led a quite difficult life (her mother died she was two), grew up in Texas and from then on lived in many different countries and towns, including Europe. She was very educated, at fifteen she knew Shakespeare's sonnets by heart, had read most major authors. She married early and thereon very often, but most often didn't go that far. All her loves were unhappy and there were many. We speak here of the nineteentwenties and -thirties. She probably wasn't of the aggressiveness and sturdiness of a Rebecca West or Dorothy Parker (two years in a sanatorium for tubercolosis), so she suffered easily. Early on she experimented, not unlike Ezra Pound, with different forms of poetry, the "Morning Song" was from 1929. She had a vivid sense of satire and caricature in which category I would place this poem, clothed in a mock Elizabethean style (no?) or old English anyhow. It is a mirror poem, where she looks through the eyes of the disappointing lover at herself, and gives herself a sort of self-laceration at the same time.
At the end, she decided she wasn't a good poet and wrote mostly fiction. She is one of the few women writers I read with pleasure.
To finish, I will quote a poem that she translated from the Spanish written by a nun in 1641, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Has to do with recenty discussed topics.

To a Portrait of the Poet

This which you see is merely a painted shadow
Wrought by the boastful pride of art,
With falsely reasoned arguments of colours,
A wary, sweet deception of the senses.

This picture, where flattery has endeavored
To mitigate the terrors of the years,
To defeat the rigorous assaults of Time,
And triumph over oblivion and decay --

Is only a subtle careful artifice,
A fragile flower of the wind,
A useless shield against my destiny.

It is an anxious diligence to preserve
A perishable thing: and clearly seen
It is a corpse, a whirl of dust, a shadow, --
-- nothing
(For who speaks Spanish, I've the original version)

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## jackyyyy

The heat maybe out of some, Melanie, or they are simply busy. I like very much this type of poem, 'Morning Song', and if it is a 'vite fait', you must have a wide choice to mistake from. It has meat for an eternity of discussions and it does seem odd to see a 'real life' poem amongst classics and others. I want more. I read up on KAP after you posted it, and found her life 'full of life'. I hope we are not leaving it as is...  :Wink:  

I noticed the triumpf,, Spanish is triunfo. I would love to see the Spanish version, can I get it on-line somewhere, or can you post it here?

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## MelanieD

Hi Jackyyy, here is the original nun's voice (surprising)

Procura desmentir los elogios que a un retrato de la poetisa inscribió la verdad, que llama pasión


Este, que ves, engaño colorido
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engaño del sentido;
este, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los años los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,
es un vano artificio del cuidado,
es una flor al viento delicada,
es un resguardo inútil para el hado:
es una necia deligencia errada,
es un afán caduco y, bien mirado,
es cadáver. es polvo, es sombra, es nada.

Why not try your hand and translate it again. I just have a few notions of Spanish and everytime I read a poem in this language it seems so much simpler than the one translated into. Is it the words have more flavor?
Apropos, I learned about KAP from poems that were published quite a while ago in the New Yorker. And her poetry was assembled and edited by a women professor, Darlene Harbour Unrue, U. of South Carolina Press.

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## jackyyyy

Thanks, Melanie! My Spanish is not as tried as my Portuguese, but this looks fine. I find it has more everything in the original language, and I don't think it presumptious of me to say translations 'never' capture it all. I read Shakespeare in Portuguese a while back, which must be one of the most translated poems. Word for word it worked, but nothing else (in my opinion). Thanks for the note about KAP too, I will check that out.

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## Virgil

> It is a mirror poem, where she looks through the eyes of the disappointing lover at herself, and gives herself a sort of self-laceration at the same time.


Yes, I was right!!

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## ktd222

Maybe I can restart a discussion on this week's poem by telling you what I see(poetic elements) that adds to what you all have been discussing.

There seems to only be one person speaking throughout the poem, the _he_ or _I_ , which points to this poem being about the 'He' and not the 'her'. And adding to this is that when you read the poem there seems to be an excessive use of the word 'I'. And when you read this poem out loud, the word 'I' is pronounced against the words 'you'(her); and that sound seems to carry from the beginning of the poem to the end of the poem. And look at the stressed words associated with describing the I:trod/lust/god/rod/. 
I think this all adds to an overwhelming sense that the _Morning Song_ seems to not concern the 'Her' through the speaker of the poem.

There are some other things I see, but does anyone else want to add their opinions first?

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## Virgil

> Maybe I can restart a discussion on this week's poem by telling you what I see(poetic elements) that adds to what you all have been discussing.


Great, let's get to this.





> There seems to only be one person speaking throughout the poem, the _he_ or _I_ , which points to this poem being about the 'He' and not the 'her'.


But ktd, the "he" is not the "I". The "I" is the woman, who orients us with "He speaks".




> And adding to this is that when you read the poem there seems to be an excessive use of the word 'I'. And when you read this poem out loud, the word 'I' is pronounced against the words 'you'(her); and that sound seems to carry from the beginning of the poem to the end of the poem.


Yes, I count nine "I's" and nine "you's" and that's a huge amount for such a short poem. In fact so much of the poem is framed "I am," and "you are."




> And look at the stressed words associated with describing the I:trod/lust/god/rod/.


One thing, I didn't pick up the rhyme, rod, trod, god. It makes the poem accelerate.

Like the Larkin poem, this is an aubade, a greeting of the morning between lovers. There are allusions in it of renaissance poems, refering to the woman as his star (doesn't Dante do this with his Beatrice?) and the line "in that moment when I brought you down". This is a metaphor comparing the seduction to a hunt, very prevalent in Renaissance poetry. I'm always reminded of Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They flee from me that sometime did me seek" when I think of this metaphor; just google that first line and it'll come up. It's a pretty poem where he puns hart (deer) with heart.

But KAP's poem is not like your typical morning poem. She turns the tradition (of love) to crass lust, and of amorous banter to insulting ridicule. This is typical of the moderns, to turn tradition on it's head. Sort of like Joyce's _Ulysses_ from Homer's _Odyssey_. 

Another highlight of this poem to me was two interesting adjectives: "ambiguous lusts" and "wallow you." My first reaction was, what is so ambiguous about this lust? But it dawned on me that the ambiguity was on her part, not his. That's what led me to think that this was her imagining of his thoughts. She wasn't so naive; there was a part of her that was just as lustful.

What an interesting euphemism for sexual intercourse with "wallow you." Replace the "wallow" with "f**k" (excuse me, but this poem brings out the devil in me) and the line works perfect: "That you're a dupe who let me BLANK you."

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## MelanieD

> Great, let's get to this.
> 
> But KAP's poem is not like your typical morning poem. She turns the tradition (of love) to crass lust, and of amorous banter to insulting ridicule. This is typical of the moderns, to turn tradition on it's head. Sort of like Joyce's _Ulysses_ from Homer's _Odyssey_. 
> 
> Another highlight of this poem to me was two interesting adjectives: "ambiguous lusts" and "wallow you." My first reaction was, what is so ambiguous about this lust? But it dawned on me that the ambiguity was on her part, not his. That's what led me to think that this was her imagining of his thoughts. She wasn't so naive; there was a part of her that was just as lustful.


And what's wrong with that? Women's lust passes over feelings like love, which is always ambiguous, as mostly you can't distinguish one from the other. And to wallow according to the American Heritage Dic is: to roll the body about indolently, to luxuriate, to revel.
I'll tell you something. I'm not a good talker (please: no fishing) and I haven't ever LEARNED anything about poetry, I read poems intuitively. I do have lots of volumes bought at random but seldom READ poetry with attention. So, being here, reading what you have to say makes me happy, I feel like coming nearer the heart of the matter (of living?) I LEARN and therefore I wanted to thank you all.

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## jackyyyy

> And what's wrong with that? Women's lust passes over feelings like love, which is always ambiguous, as mostly you can't distinguish one from the other. And to wallow according to the American Heritage Dic is: to roll the body about indolently, to luxuriate, to revel.
> I'll tell you something. I'm not a good talker (please: no fishing) and I haven't ever LEARNED anything about poetry, I read poems intuitively. I do have lots of volumes bought at random but seldom READ poetry with attention. So, being here, reading what you have to say makes me happy, I feel like coming nearer the heart of the matter (of living?) I LEARN and therefore I wanted to thank you all.


Thanks are to you for bringing it, Melanie! Btw, I am not learned in it either, just like to wallow in it, lustfully. Not sure about the context of 'wallow' here. 

Here are a few:
a. A pool of water or mud where animals go to wallow. (n)
b. condition of degradation or baseness. (n)
c. To be plentifully supplied: wallowing in money. (v)

Interesting, you wrote, 'women's lust passes over feelings like love, which is always ambiguous'. I would like to assist by adding 'men' to that, to be on the safe side. We can certainly see her emotional condition.

Also btw, Melanie, I wanted to ask, how do you know its her talking for him about her? Did KAP write that later, or is this the generally accepted decision? I am only asking because I want to know if there is a definitive phrase, word, or other clue that makes this clear, and which it is.

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## jackyyyy

> One thing, I didn't pick up the rhyme, rod, trod, god. It makes the poem accelerate.


Yes, she gets progressively more 'angry' until she proclaims for him, 'I am God!' He is starting to look in a much better light now, eh.



> Another highlight of this poem to me was two interesting adjectives: "ambiguous lusts" and "wallow you." My first reaction was, what is so ambiguous about this lust? But it dawned on me that the ambiguity was on her part, not his. That's what led me to think that this was her imagining of his thoughts. She wasn't so naive; there was a part of her that was just as lustful.


"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."



> What an interesting euphemism for sexual intercourse with "wallow you." Replace the "wallow" with "f**k" (excuse me, but this poem brings out the devil in me) and the line works perfect: "That you're a dupe who let me BLANK you."


The devil is needed, not Mary Poppins.  :Banana:  

I am digesting what Melanie wrote and some research I did on KAP. This piece appear a dialog an actor/actress might perform on stage, a screenplay- one person and a single chair (nothing else), talking for two people. I think there was a lot of heavy drama being written in the US during those years. (nope, I don't know why).

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## Virgil

> And what's wrong with that? Women's lust passes over feelings like love, which is always ambiguous, as mostly you can't distinguish one from the other.


I didn't say there was anything wrong with it, just that she wasn't as naive as he thinks. Women's lusts (I'm speculating here, and probably going to sound foolish) are more ambiguous than men, aren't they? We men just let our lusts hang out there.  :Biggrin:  




> And to wallow according to the American Heritage Dic is: to roll the body about indolently, to luxuriate, to revel.


I didn't want to elaborate, but "to wallow" strikes me as so apt. It's usually associated with wallowing in wet things.




> I'll tell you something. I'm not a good talker (please: no fishing) and I haven't ever LEARNED anything about poetry, I read poems intuitively. I do have lots of volumes bought at random but seldom READ poetry with attention. So, being here, reading what you have to say makes me happy, I feel like coming nearer the heart of the matter (of living?) I LEARN and therefore I wanted to thank you all.


I hope you stay around and contribute to other poems we'll be discussing.

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## Virgil

> Yes, she gets progressively more 'angry' until she proclaims for him, 'I am God!' He is starting to look in a much better light now, eh.


That is a very good observation.

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## jackyyyy

"Wallow"

I don't think 'wet' things at all, not in this context. You know, I really think you guys are thinking American, where is Unnamable to sort this out?  :Brow:

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## Virgil

Is that American? I don't know. Here's the entire definition from American Heritage Dictionary:

wal·low (w¼l½) intr.v. wal·lowed, wal·low·ing, wal·lows. 1. To roll the body about indolently or clumsily in or as if in water, snow, or mud. 2. To luxuriate; revel. 3. To be plentifully supplied. 4. To move with difficulty in a clumsy or rolling manner; flounder. 5. To swell or surge forth; billow. --wal·low n. 1. The act or an instance of wallowing. 2.a. A pool of water or mud where animals go to wallow. b. The depression, pool, or pit produced by wallowing animals. 3. A condition of degradation or baseness. --wallow·er n.

I don't have Oxford electronically. I wonder how that would compare.

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## jackyyyy

My favourite is a combination of 'devote oneself entirely..' and 'delight greatly in'.

*The noun wallow has 2 meanings:*
Meaning #1: a puddle where animals go to wallow
Meaning #2: an indolent or clumsy rolling about

*The verb wallow has 5 meanings:*
Meaning #1: devote oneself entirely to something; indulge in to an immoderate degree, usually with pleasure
Meaning #2: roll around, as of a pig in mud
Synonym: welter
Meaning #3: billow forth; as of smoke or waves
Synonym: billow
Meaning #4: be ecstatic with joy
Synonyms: revel, rejoice, triumph
Meaning #5: delight greatly in


http://www.answers.com/topic/wallow

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## Xamonas Chegwe

My Shorter Oxford gives similar details but in more detail - there is a distinct meaning of 'Remain plunged, take delight or indulge unrestrainedly in vice, sensuality, pleasure, misery, etc; revel in.', which sort of fits, except that he doesn't wallow _in_ her, he _wallows_ her. Still it wouldn't be the first instance of a poet using a word slightly out of context to drag in its associations.

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## MelanieD

> I didn't say there was anything wrong with it, just that she wasn't as naive as he thinks. Women's lusts (I'm speculating here, and probably going to sound foolish) are more ambiguous than men, aren't they? We men just let our lusts hang out there.


Hi Virgil, maybe I heard something that wasn't there. It is just that the word love and lust are overburdened by different meanings which are kicked from one camp to the other like a football. As I see it, nature did endow men and women differently (genetically mixing it up like in a cocktail shaker, so everyone is different), but as far as I know women's love is more ambiguous than men's. You're sprung by it, if this is correct English. No hard feelings, anyhow I'm not a feminist. I fought men straight on (when necessary), maybe like KAP.

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## Regit

> but as far as I know women's love is more ambiguous than men's. You're sprung by it.


Can I assume by this you mean that women are *not* sprung by "it"? And is "it" love?




> genetically mixing it up like in a cocktail shaker, so everyone is different.


Actually I think genetics is a very accurate science, where only the smallest difference can cause dramatic changes. And most of the DNA of people are identical; everyone is different due to very small differences in their DNA (not to mention all the angry sociologists listening to this from heaven  :Smile: ).

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## jackyyyy

> And most of the DNA of people are identical; everyone is different due to very small differences in their DNA (not to mention all the angry sociologists listening to this from heaven ).


Aye, and don't forget to include the social engineering you elaborated on extensively, else you could be talking in her voice about him who is actually a female but acting at playing a man with a woman's perspective.  :FRlol:

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## MelanieD

> Interesting, you wrote, 'women's lust passes over feelings like love, which is always ambiguous'. I would like to assist by adding 'men' to that, to be on the safe side. We can certainly see her emotional condition.


It is my tendency to pass general statements. I better not say anything.
But I thought of Richard Ford in 'Independence Day', at the end of the book where he talks to Sally, and I found a good quote:
"I finished our talk by telling her not that I loved her but that I wasn't beyond affection, which she said she was glad to hear. 
Let's be honest, each encounter is a blind grip for a dream. Let's be content, that men are not beyond affection.




> Also btw, Melanie, I wanted to ask, how do you know its her talking for him about her? Did KAP write that later, or is this the generally accepted decision? I am only asking because I want to know if there is a definitive phrase, word, or other clue that makes this clear, and which it is.


No, I don't know. There seems to be no general accepted opinion about KAP. The book by Darlene Harbour Unrue says:
"In the meantime, in the autumn of 1928, Porter met Metthew Josephson and began another sur-to-fail love affair that would bring forth more poetry....
"Morning song", written at the end of the affair, reveals Porter's usual reaction to the disillusionment that attends the failure of romantic love. What is unusual in this poem is that the persona is the jilting lover. Instead of bringing forth the personally experienced pain of being betrayed, Porter had to imagine the callous arrogance of the faithless lover. For the effect of irony, she reverted to a conventional Cavalier beginning suggestive of Marlowe of Herrick, which in this instance quickly turns to a contrasting bitternes."
The rest is up to us, I guess.
I for my part stick to the version of self-punishment for this poem. Imagine her imagining (maybe wrongly, but it doesn't matter) the crudeness of this guy. Isn't she kind of exorcising not the man but the feeling that is inside her that makes her always strain to seek the wrong men? Open-heart surgery? And how about the clay-feet. Virgil should know where this comes from, Dante or Homer? Clay feet equal dust, the transient. He says he stands on clay feet and they trod on her who's dirt. So she knows he knows all is transient, but there was just one moment (triumph of man, but also of woman in a different sense, women can bring men down!), one moment where he felt eternal. I'm reading the Shakespeare sonnets, so what is he talking about in the first ones? Please my love, procreate, so you continue being. The prayer of man. Useless for most women, at the time of KAP you had no choice, but she couldn't have children. Another hurt she inflicts on herself? So maybe she incorporates the poem as both, man and (barren) woman? To whom nothing is left but lust?

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## Petrarch's Love

Wow, I've been missing a lot of good discussion and no time to make a proper response just now, but this caught my eye:



> Like the Larkin poem, this is an aubade, a greeting of the morning between lovers. There are allusions in it of renaissance poems, refering to the woman as his star (doesn't Dante do this with his Beatrice?) and the line "in that moment when I brought you down". This is a metaphor comparing the seduction to a hunt, very prevalent in Renaissance poetry. I'm always reminded of Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They flee from me that sometime did me seek" when I think of this metaphor; just google that first line and it'll come up. It's a pretty poem where he puns hart (deer) with heart.


Virgil is quite right to bring up the allusions to Renaissance poetry (I like the Wyatt connection--his "Whoso List to Hunt" also comes to mind), but I can't believe that we're going straight to Dante and Beatrice without anybody first mentioning the "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" allusion.  :Biggrin:  Maybe it's just too obvious. It's so appropriately and ironically employed. Now he is no longer gazing up at some unattainable and mysterious "star" and wondering what she is, but has brought her to earth and thinks he knows exactly what she is (i.e. what kind of woman she is). I found a copy of this poem that doesn't have a question mark after the "I/ know what you are." I wonder how that choice of punctuation was made. It certainly makes a more forceful statement without the question mark. 



> So, being here, reading what you have to say makes me happy, I feel like coming nearer the heart of the matter (of living?) I LEARN and therefore I wanted to thank you all.


Well, we're really glad you've come to join us Melanie. I know I've been learning a lot myself from your posts in this discussion.  :Nod:

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## The Unnamable

> But I suppose a heated discussion about feminism can be interesting, that is under the assumption that someone would be brave enough to take the side of the masculine message suggested here. Because, as Grumbleguts rightly said, men are not like that!





> As a poem, it is describing a certain type of individual that does in fact exist. There are men with this kind of attitude.


Ive mentioned this before but there is a male teacher I know out here who is very similar to the male in the poem. He boasts openly (but only to other men) that he sleeps with a different woman at least twice a week and adds that none of them has a waist larger than 24 inches (we are all supposed to admire this). He is, quite simply, a pig - so wallow is perfect in his case. The only thing I cannot understand is why women are stupid enough to fall for his charms. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the male speaker in the poem is right  his victims deserve their fates. Of course men lie to get women into bed and the task is made easier by the fact that women have placed such a ridiculous importance on love. We know what you want to hear so youll hear it.

"I don't want love. I haven't time for it. It's weakness. I am a man, and sometimes I want a woman. When I've satisfied my passion I'm ready for other things. I can't overcome my desire, but I hate it; it imprisons my spirit; I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. I know lust. That's normal and healthy. Love is a disease. Women are the instruments of my pleasure; I have no patience with their claim to be helpmates, partners, companions."
W. Somerset Maugham 

Gentlemen, woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month, partuates once a year and copulates whenever she has the opportunity.
W. Somerset Maugham

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
HL Mencken




> Virgil is quite right to bring up the allusions to Renaissance poetry (I like the Wyatt connection--his "Whoso List to Hunt" also comes to mind), but I can't believe that we're going straight to Dante and Beatrice without anybody first mentioning the "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" allusion. Maybe it's just too obvious. It's so appropriately and ironically employed. Now he is no longer gazing up at some unattainable and mysterious "star" and wondering what she is, but has brought her to earth and thinks he knows exactly what she is (i.e. what kind of woman she is).


Hope not for mind in women; at their best
Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy, possess'd. 
John Donne _Love's Alchemy_

For possessd read wallowed.

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## rachel

well this poem makes me sad. Is it forever to be that man and woman cannot be like children and just open up to one another and not have a double agenda. Must the very act of sexual contact make man or woman a liar, a fake, a manipulator to receive a temporary orgasm that is forgotten ten seconds later while the wound they inflict upon the other-even if the other does not know it but somehow feels diminished-is to last forever. 
It almost makes me think-why bother.why bother if you acted in honesty and kindness and the other acted as if you were a notch on the wall, an obscene joke.
oh well......

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## Regit

> The only thing I cannot understand is why women are stupid enough to fall for his charms. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the male speaker in the poem is right  his victims deserve their fates... We know what you want to hear so youll hear it.


You make a good point. A wise man once said: "Only in the absence of charm can a woman be trusted." (Yes, I know, "wise" is totally in my opinion). As much as I would like to be on Rachel's side, I have seen how easily good looks and charm can win *some* girl's affection. The guy in the poem never said that he loved the girl. He called her his "Star", and, as he expected, she thought that it meant love. This does not necessarily mean that charm is a bad thing. It can be a great thing. Many genuinely nice guys are also charming and also with an agenda; but once he wins a girl's affection, he becomes dedicated and caring and other nice things (or at least he will _try his best_  to be). I guess, as Unnamable said, "we know what you want to hear so you'll hear it." And, beast or man, what becomes of the guy after the "wallowing" is merely a chance that the girl was prepared to take, having easily interpreted charm for love and having consented to sex. Afterall, she could have said no.

And as Unnamable thinks his teacher friend a pig, so do I the guys who trick girls into bed. But the girls who get tricked must be partly at fault, for how bad at judging a character must someone be to mistake a guy like the one in the poem for a caring and loving man?




> "I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life."


This is something that I sometimes want to scream out loud. Because the thing with work is, if we don't put it on top of our list, it will never get done properly.

PS. Quoting my "brave" comment, you must be one who loves a challenge Unnamable  :Smile:

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

It is by no means just women that fall for 'charm'. I found this particularly interesting - it appears to be true that when a man's blood rushes elsewhere, his brain is left deprived.  :Wink: 

Link

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## ktd222

> But ktd, the "he" is not the "I". The "I" is the woman, who orients us with "He speaks".


I can totally get behind this idea, except that I don't think its out of the realm of possibility for a man to act in this manner.

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## ktd222

> Yes, I count nine "I's" and nine "you's" and that's a huge amount for such a short poem. In fact so much of the poem is framed "I am," and "you are."


Ya, whats interesting is that even though there are nine "I's" and nine"you's," the sound created by the 'I' is more pronounced than the 'you'. Isn't this something poetic thats happening in this poem?

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## Virgil

> Of course men lie to get women into bed and the task is made easier by the fact that women have placed such a ridiculous importance on love. We know what you want to hear so youll hear it.


Well, let me ask you this. On what basis would you prefer relationships to be formed? I can only think of three general types: on love, on financial/status (and I don't necessarily mean prostitution), and lust. Perhaps there are others. Real relationships may share some element of each, but the only one that I meaningful is love.




> women have placed such a ridiculous importance on love.


Frankly that's what I find most endearing about women. From a mother's love, to a grandmother's love, to a wife's love, they hold our families and I our lives together. God knows what this world would be like if only men existed or if women acted and felt just like men.

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## Virgil

> I can totally get behind this idea, except that I don't think its out of the realm of possibility for a man to act in this manner.


Oh yes. Of course. But my point was that it was very unlikely that he would speak these thought, even if true, to her.

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## Virgil

> Ya, whats interesting is that even though there are nine "I's" and nine"you's," the sound created by the 'I' is more pronounced than the 'you'. Isn't this something poetic thats happening in this poem?


They seem equally prominant to me. Perhaps "I" might be a shade more prominant.

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## ktd222

> They seem equally prominant to me. Perhaps "I" might be a shade more prominant.


The 'I' is whats being stressed in this poem. I can't believe you can't hear this.

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## Petrarch's Love

I was wondering how long it would take before Unnamable came along with a reality check and a quote from Donne (who was obviously just reiterating this "feminist cliche" about men  :Wink:  ). 



> He boasts openly (but only to other men) that he sleeps with a different woman at least twice a week and adds that none of them has a waist larger than 24 inches (we are all supposed to admire this)


What a nauseating individual--not to mention a deadly dull conversationalist. If only all like minded men had such requirements. It would save those of us with a larger than 24" waist the bother of having to tell them to get lost.  :FRlol:  



> well this poem makes me sad. Is it forever to be that man and woman cannot be like children and just open up to one another and not have a double agenda. Must the very act of sexual contact make man or woman a liar, a fake, a manipulator to receive a temporary orgasm that is forgotten ten seconds later while the wound they inflict upon the other-even if the other does not know it but somehow feels diminished-is to last forever.
> It almost makes me think-why bother.why bother if you acted in honesty and kindness and the other acted as if you were a notch on the wall, an obscene joke.


Don't give up Rachel. Remember there are good people out there, both men and women, and good relationships are possible, just hard to come by sometimes.  :Nod:

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## rachel

I certainly won't, I was just expressing what I have heard so many say. I do understand that it is a great risk and takes courage to just be honest about who you are and what you want from someone. Why men or women think they have to lie and tell the other person what he or she wants to hear just to get either sexual thrills or money or security is something I cannot, maybe never will comprehend. Just speak the truth and if the other person doesn't like that or want that well then move on.
And the way they hate each other afterwards, at least some of my friends, well I am glad that I have chosen to be alone for these years and take my time.I could care less if I am made fun of, I have my dignity and my integrity-and besides there are too many men and women showing up at my house with tears flowing down their poor faces from having been used. It keeps me quite busy!
you are the best of friends dear Love and I know that whoever has the honor of taking your hand one day won't be anything like that.

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## Petrarch's Love

> My Shorter Oxford gives similar details but in more detail - there is a distinct meaning of 'Remain plunged, take delight or indulge unrestrainedly in vice, sensuality, pleasure, misery, etc; revel in.', which sort of fits, except that he doesn't wallow in her, he wallows her. Still it wouldn't be the first instance of a poet using a word slightly out of context to drag in its associations.


My etymological instincts were awakened after reading the discussion about the definition of wallow above in the thread. I went to the online OED and found that there is indeed a definition of it being used as a transitive verb the way it is in the poem (and a lot of other interesting definitions I won't list here). To wallow somebody is to roll them around or to "cause them to lie prostrate in some liquid or sticky substance," also "to make dirty by wallowing." Most of the examples given are reflexive, as in "he wallowed himself in sin," though there are some like this in which one person wallows another. I think in this poem though, there's also the sense of the word being used as him "wallowing in" with the "in" missing just as Xamonas suggested. In any case I think I should send a friend of mine who does some work for the OED the line from this poem to include in the examples for the definition of this word. It would spice things up for bored dictionary readers.  :Brow:

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## Petrarch's Love

> I certainly won't, I was just expressing what I have heard so many say. I do understand that it is a great risk and takes courage to just be honest about who you are and what you want from someone. Why men or women think they have to lie and tell the other person what he or she wants to hear just to get either sexual thrills or money or security is something I cannot, maybe never will comprehend. Just speak the truth and if the other person doesn't like that or want that well then move on.
> And the way they hate each other afterwards, at least some of my friends, well I am glad that I have chosen to be alone for these years and take my time.I could care less if I am made fun of, I have my dignity and my integrity-and besides there are too many men and women showing up at my house with tears flowing down their poor faces from having been used. It keeps me quite busy!


Good for you Rachel. And I'm sure your heart-broken friends appreciate your sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

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## The Unnamable

> Well, let me ask you this. On what basis would you prefer relationships to be formed? I can only think of three general types: on love, on financial/status (and I don't necessarily mean prostitution), and lust. Perhaps there are others. Real relationships may share some element of each, but the only one that I meaningful is love.


There is no more usual basis of matrimony than a mutual misunderstanding. - Henry James

To be honest, perhaps it would be better if relationships were not formed at all. The way I see it, women are like potato chips  they come in all sorts of flavours and we all probably have a favourite. However, no one wants to eat Cheese n Onion time after time. Its good to try a packet of Salt n Vinegar now and again, as well. I agree that some women might be more like a fine, three-course meal than a bag of what we Brits call crisps, but often I really dont want a fine meal  Id prefer to stuff my face with junk food. Thats why God created bimbos. They are the sexual equivalent of a Big Mac.




> Frankly that's what I find most endearing about women. From a mother's love, to a grandmother's love, to a wife's love, they hold our families and I our lives together. God knows what this world would be like if only men existed or if women acted and felt just like men.


How sweet! And not at all patronising to the gentler sex.  :Biggrin:

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## jackyyyy

> Hope not for mind in women; at their best
> Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy, possess'd. 
> John Donne _Love's Alchemy_
> 
> For possessd read wallowed.


That is a lot more meat on the table than we had before. 

Its goes against my instincts to jump into a debate about relationships rather than simply study the actual meat in the poem, the object. However, I now have an excuse like everyone else. If this poem was written three hundred years ago, would it fuel up the same thoughts, or close? Unnamable does not need to be polite about it, being blunt is needed while people have fogged up notions. There do exist plenty of walking around examples to show its true. Our own unedited social engineering today, still includes mothers telling their daughters its profitable to be a bimbo and fathers telling their sons its a strength to notch up bed posts. The problem is, children are taught one way to behave, then retaught another way... or left to educate themselves. I don't know which is worse, but education is a start, because with that, they 'might' develop a brain to discern a good act against a bad one, and if granddad and grandmom passed down some of their painful experience, just maybe that would help develop some strength of character to say 'no'. There is no clear definition of how to be, act and behave. And, we allow that, don't we.. promote the spirit of independence. So, we do it to ourselves, should slap our own faces, get used to it.

I want to add a comment about anger that I find applicable here. I believe there is an equivalent hate to love in the same person. A person's great love turns to that same person's great hate, with an equal force. I am not going to try and measure it, just say that it is the same brain loving that is hating. I guess with time, the brain would have changed itself, maybe mellowed in acceptance.

This is also one of the reasons why I refrain from pointing the finger soley at 'him', and agree with Melanie and others with regard to 'her' involvement. After digesting this idea that KAP was 'more' venemous in her portrayal of him to us because of her emotional condition, I still must conclude that it is 'him' talking. And, right or wrong, all reasons aside, that is how the author wanted 'him' portrayed to us. Therefore, he is being a pig, as presented, and in the lack of other information, and 'her' portrayal, which would only make him 'fair' or 'not fair'.

And, I need to be blunt here too. I know plenty of people that talk cr*p to each other.. and actually love each other like crazy, fall about themselves to sniff the air that person walked in. Love is a crazy notion, and the hate wallowed is equally crazy.

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## jackyyyy

> It is by no means just women that fall for 'charm'. I found this particularly interesting - it appears to be true that when a man's blood rushes elsewhere, his brain is left deprived. 
> 
> Link


Vampires do exist! Love bitten, smitten, and it's victim left pale.

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## jackyyyy

> Well, let me ask you this. On what basis would you prefer relationships to be formed? I can only think of three general types: on love, on financial/status (and I don't necessarily mean prostitution), and lust. Perhaps there are others. Real relationships may share some element of each, but the only one that I meaningful is love.


Relationships are variable, therefore, a seven year contract, renewable. Throw an insurance policy in there for good measure, with no claims bonus. That should increase the number of insurance agents knocking on your door and reduce the number of divorce lawyers. Or, lawyers include insurance on the same paper.  :Brow:  



> Frankly that's what I find most endearing about women. From a mother's love, to a grandmother's love, to a wife's love, they hold our families and I our lives together. God knows what this world would be like if only men existed or if women acted and felt just like men.


We need a woman here to say something good about men (to be on the safe side).  :Brow:

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## The Unnamable

Rachel,

Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.




> If only all like minded men had such requirements. It would save those of us with a larger than 24" waist the bother of having to tell them to get lost.


They dont tell him to get lost  they compete for his attentions  arming themselves for combat with yet another caked layer of cosmetics and ever-tighter garments stretched over their carcases. Whats wrong with your sex? Why are they so foolish? Why is it that it takes only a few months for Youve got such beautiful eyes to change to What the **** are you staring at? And why do I hear I dont ever wont to change you, changing to youll never change? Dont any of you realise that there hasnt been a new man since Adam?




> PS. Quoting my "brave" comment, you must be one who loves a challenge Unnamable.


I suppose I do  especially when it gives me an opportunity to spit venom at the idiocy that is womankind.

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## The Unnamable

> We need a woman here to say something good about men (to be on the safe side).


Where are you going to find one? Dylan had it right:

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

Truth will ouch.

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## jackyyyy

> Where are you going to find one? Dylan had it right:
> 
> Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
> Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
> Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
> You're an idiot, babe.
> It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.
> 
> Truth will ouch.


Dylan's brother had it right: 

"Well, I'll look and I'll duck, and keep on lookin', and truckin' too, wid me guitar and my best friend Shoot - till she darn well finds me..."  :Banana:

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## Virgil

> How sweet! And not at all patronising to the gentler sex.


Patronising? How am I patronizing? If anything they (the women in my life) have patronized me, tolerating my boyish wanderings and silly excursions, all at the expense of avoiding what is truely important in life. I'm not patronizing. I'm speaking from the heart. I'm speaking from my life. 

So you didn't answer: On which is it best to build a relationship: love, finance, lust?

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## Gozeta

> Where are you going to find one? Dylan had it right:
> 
> Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
> Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
> Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
> You're an idiot, babe.
> It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.
> 
> Truth will ouch.


wow, the way you keep talking you'll never meet a good women. I tend to think that women are probably better then men in many cases. Well, from what I've seen; I don't know your luck.

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## Petrarch's Love

> We need a woman here to say something good about men


No problem. I've met many fine men in my life who are honest and caring people. I've known men who are hardworking, who are excellent fathers and role models, who are strong either physically or emotionally (or both). I think men have the capacity to provide the enjoyments of companionship, additional support in life (and here I mean emotional/spiritual support--though obviously many men do an admirable job of providing financial support as well), an added sense of security, ...and then there are all the obvious physical attractions (well, only obvious to about half of us I guess).  :FRlol:  And of course individual men have all sorts of wonderful qualities that people in general can have--love, loyalty, integrity, intelligence, wit and so on. I don't think either sex is necessarily better. 




> How sweet! And not at all patronising to the gentler sex.


This may come as a bit of a shock but, given the choice, the "gentler sex" by and large prefers being "patronized" as being loving family members rather than as being bags of crisps.  :FRlol:  Besides, I took Virgil's remark as being sincere and well meant, not patronizing.




> They dont tell him to get lost  they compete for his attentions  arming themselves for combat with yet another caked layer of cosmetics and ever-tighter garments stretched over their carcases. Whats wrong with your sex? Why are they so foolish? Why is it that it takes only a few months for Youve got such beautiful eyes to change to What the **** are you staring at? And why do I hear I dont ever wont to change you, changing to youll never change? Dont any of you realise that there hasnt been a new man since Adam?





> I suppose I do  especially when it gives me an opportunity to spit venom at the idiocy that is womankind.


I like it better when you're calling all of humankind idiots. At least that sounds like a logical argument. I can't tell you what's wrong with the idiots of my sex any more than you can tell me what's wrong with the idiots of yours. Incidently I personally agree that it's by and large a fruitless effort to try to fundamentally "change" a man. I've never tried to do so and don't know why some women do. I prefer to just choose to date men I don't feel the need to change, people whose flaws (and we all have them) I feel I can deal with and whose better points I can admire and respect.

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## jackyyyy

> He speaks:
> Come, my laid lady, whom I wooed with words,
> And called my Star--
> Since you proved that you loved me, I
> Know what you are?
> 
> For, knowing what I am, I have a rod
> To measure by
> If you mistake what I gave you for love, you are
> ...


Now I am wondering if he is simply looking out the window in the morning, talking to himself. Hardly singing because I don't think this is something to sing about.

*"He speaks:"*
Does this really mean its his turn to speak, or simply, 'he speaks'?

*"Since you proved that you loved me, I
Know what you are?"*
Why do we think he is asking her?

I am also starting to feel there are errors in the structure of the poem, and I am getting tired of dealing with ambiguities or where the piece has no apparent clue to indicate its true targets. Maybe someone here can ID them because I cannot ennunciate it.

Thanks, Petrarch. Unnamable is rather good at pushing buttons, isn't he, and if we read everything he wrote, he is actually pointing out deficiencies in both sexes. So, yes, everyone is an idiot.  :Banana:

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## Xamonas Chegwe

The more I read this, the more I think that she is criticising herself in this poem, almost more than the man. Remember, she is merely putting words into his mouth. When he calls her beast / dupe / dirt, it is in fact KAP describing herself this way.

She's not fond of the guy either, don't get me wrong; but I think there is perhaps more self-loathing / -criticism here than I originally picked up on.

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## Regit

> This may come as a bit of a shock but, given the choice, the "gentler sex" by and large prefers being "patronized" as being loving family members rather than as being bags of crisps.  Besides, I took Virgil's remark as being sincere and well meant, not patronizing.


Sure, I would not doubt Virgil's sincerity for a minute either. But you cannot deny that this remark somewhat conflicts with itself, being used as a defence against the argument that women give love a ridiculous importance. And so far I haven't heard a point raised against that argument.

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## Virgil

> Sure, I would not doubt Virgil's sincerity for a minute either. But you cannot deny that this remark somewhat conflicts with itself, being used as a defence against the argument that women give love a ridiculous importance. And so far I haven't heard a point raised against that argument.


What do you mean? I agree that women give love importance, what I'm reacting to is the value of it. I don't think it's rediculous. I think it's admirable; more than admirable. Our society depends upon it. Let's say I find it heroic.

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## rachel

> Rachel,
> 
> Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
> 
> 
> They dont tell him to get lost  they compete for his attentions  arming themselves for combat with yet another caked layer of cosmetics and ever-tighter garments stretched over their carcases. Whats wrong with your sex? Why are they so foolish? Why is it that it takes only a few months for Youve got such beautiful eyes to change to What the **** are you staring at? And why do I hear I dont ever wont to change you, changing to youll never change? Dont any of you realise that there hasnt been a new man since Adam?
> 
> 
> I suppose I do  especially when it gives me an opportunity to spit venom at the idiocy that is womankind.


I think there is a lot of truth in what Unnameable has said , quote: the idiocy that is womankind. 
I did say in my post Un that I was talking about both men AND women that treat one another so badly.But I feel like crying when you say that "as empty experiences go it is one of the best." I dont' believe that, because unless you have been so hurt that you have absolutely hardened your heart, I believe firmly that afterwards there is only a worse ache in the heart and more despair than before and that does not equate with any sort of peace of happiness.
I see what he says that women do with that sort of guy all the time. I had a dear friend break down and tell me that after she had been wooed and whatever , the next time she went to see the man he merely smiled and said that she wasn't the type of person he could see himself with down the road.
That is why I have stayed celebate for these years- I would rather die than use another human being for my selfish ends, they have hearts and feelings and I don't care even how handsome, rich, famous whatever they are-to me they don't deserve that sort of respect.
And, I may not be much in the eyes of this world, but I would like to die knowing that I at least respected myself enough to not go a a moment's thrill and the rest of my life feel sick at heart , never.
I cannot say like Petrarch that I have met many good men, ones I think, despite the pain and ugliness of life are still good in their hearts. 
I am sorry to say many I looked up to, thought were wonderful, when given two minutes alone with me say in the living room while we waited for the dear wife to get her coat, or the parishoners to come into the room for choir practise-well let us just say I left with a broken heart and less a friend or two.
But I believe that they are out there, I believe if you look you will find them.And at the risk of freaking out about a thousand people- I just happen to think that Unnameable, despite the words he says is one of t hem
And I will not post on this thread again. It keeps me up at night crying.

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## Regit

> What do you mean? I agree that women give love importance, what I'm reacting to is the value of it. I don't think it's rediculous. I think it's admirable; more than admirable. Our society depends upon it. Let's say I find it heroic.


I would not deny women the meaning or significance of their love. And I, by no mean, meant to say that society does not need women for their role and their devotion. We are arguing different points here. When I used 'ridiculous' I meant it in the context of my argument for the poem: that the girl in this poem deserved what happened to her (at least partly at fault), for placing too much importance on love leading herself to assume that the charm of the man also means love. Now that is not to say that the same girl could not find another man and build a family and, thus, becomes a valuable member of society. But in this particular incident, however, her yearning for love and her expectation of it from men is ridiculous (if, in fact, she did interprete being called a "Star", and being wooed with "words" as an offer of love and as falling in love respectively). And this represents a different way in which women can "give importance" to love, a very realistic and significant way. And it is to this that I was refering.

----------


## Virgil

> I would not deny women the meaning or significance of their love. And I, by no mean, meant to say that society does not need women for their role and their devotion. We are arguing different points here. When I used 'ridiculous' I meant it in the context of my argument for the poem: that the girl in this poem deserved what happened to her (at least partly at fault), for placing too much importance on love leading herself to assume that the charm of the man also means love. Now that is not to say that the same girl could not find another man and build a family and, thus, becomes a valuable member of society. But in this particular incident, however, her yearning for love and her expectation of it from men is ridiculous (if, in fact, she did interprete being called a "Star", and being wooed with "words" as an offer of love and as falling in love respectively).


I'm sorry Regit. I thought you were refering to our side comments. I don't know if we know enough of what's going on for me to say if she deserved what happened. Since we are only getting her subjective feelings of the relationship, I can't judge how bad a persn the he truely is. If he really said that to her, he's a dispicable person and she's a victum. But just like a court case, it's a "he said/she said" conflict, and unfortunately there are no facts to sort out the events.

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## Regit

No need for apologies Virgil; as you said, "no grudges"  :Smile: 

Though I think that there is enough evidence here. Like what Xamonas suggested, it seems like she is being critical of herself. For if indeed she speaks from her own bitter experience, then surely the information or judgement about the woman must be much more accurate than that about the man. What I mean is that, she cannot be sure if the man of whom she speaks might really be what she portraits him to be; but she must be certain that the woman of whom she speak is really what she, through the man's voice, portraits her to be. Thus, "beast", "dirt", "dupe", "laid", etc are more accurate descriptions than "God", "clay", "ambiguous".

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## jackyyyy

> The more I read this, the more I think that she is criticising herself in this poem, almost more than the man. Remember, she is merely putting words into his mouth. When he calls her beast / dupe / dirt, it is in fact KAP describing herself this way.
> 
> She's not fond of the guy either, don't get me wrong; but I think there is perhaps more self-loathing / -criticism here than I originally picked up on.


'the more I think' - its a strange poem for this reason. Here we are, debating who is really talking. The author is the creator of him, and I think the mention of "He speaks:" is to reinforce to us that its him speaking. Once the poem has left the author, its on its own feet. Isn't it? Or, should it be? While we feel 'safe' to assume she is beating herself up somehow, due to the baggage of information on her, that is another context we should not be including here. 

Now, and only in the context of what is presented by the piece, is he a pig or is he something else? My opinion is, he is a pig, because she wrote "He speaks:". She did not write, "I woke up in the morning and imagined him saying this to me:" Soley in the context of what is presented, and in lack of Virgil's highly likely round 2, this is all we have to go on. Btw, I would hazard the piece is round 2, she already mouthed off in round 1.

The next issue, and I think where Unnamable is coming from, is; look who is pointing fingers at pigs! Well, pigs do tend to wallow in the mud together, eh. So, he has a point, and as I wrote, equal hate, equal love, equal pig.

This reminds me of a few other poems we've read here. Our view of it is corrupted by our knowledge of the author. I remember now why I prefer to look at the plain paper of it, because too much paint can turn a Da Vinci into a Dali, and Mona would appear to be a man.  :FRlol:

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## jackyyyy

> I think there is a lot of truth in what Unnameable has said , quote: the idiocy that is womankind. 
> I did say in my post Un that I was talking about both men AND women that treat one another so badly.But I feel like crying when you say that "as empty experiences go it is one of the best."


He was quoting, and lots of examples. Men are equally idiot in feeding the idiocy of women, and vice versa. We do it to ourselves.

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## The Unnamable

It looks like Ive upset a few people yet again. First of all, *Rachel*  you know that I dont mean it when I play Devils Advocate. *Regit* challenged someone to speak for the man so I did. As *Jackyyyy* points out, I was quoting (Woody Allen) when I said, "as empty experiences go it is one of the best." There is certainly some truth in it but that isnt how I lead my life. Its freely available here around every corner but I spend my time on things like this Forum instead. As meaningless experiences go, its not so bad. *Gozeta* considered the lines I quoted from Dylans _Idiot Wind_ to be the views of someone who will never meet a good woman. This is to make the same mistake that some appear to be making with the poem  its not how I feel all the time, just at certain moments. Besides, and I hope this appeases *Petrarchs Love* as well, Dylan goes on to say, 

Idiot wind, blowin' thru the buttons of *our* coats
Blowin' thru the letters that *we* wrote
Idiot wind, blowin' thru the dust upon *our* shelves
*We're* idiots babe
It's a wonder *we* can even feed ourselves.


Incidentally, Ive just spent the past few weeks in the company of a remarkable woman who is nobodys fool and loves Dylan. She knows too much to argue or to judge but wouldnt take kindly to me evaluating her worth according to how much she holds society together through her feminine qualities. Yes, shes a woman but she is a thinking person in her own right first and foremost. 

Nevertheless, I do think that the respective idiocies of men and women are different. I am more disappointed by the latter because I hope for better. I have heard many, many women deriding and criticising the kinds of attitudes espoused by the man in the poem. Those same women are then so flattered when the attention is directed at them that they suspend their objections and capitulate. 

On the question of patronising attitudes to women, I find it alarming that no woman can see my point. The idea that women exist to check the behaviour of men and to provide a nurturing effect is simply another form of patriarchal control. Men define you and evaluate your worth according to how it suits their agenda. It doesnt view them as people in their own right but as some kind of emotional plasma that lubricates societys cogs. My comment aimed at women is singled out as one-sided and so unbalanced. Had it been a (supposedly) positive comment like Virgils, I suspect that I would not have been challenged. Make negative generalisations about women and you are guilty of lacking balance; make positive generalisations and you are a gentleman. If you want genuine equality, all such generalisations should be considered inaccurate. I guess the inconsistency proves my point. 




> And, beast or man, what becomes of the guy after the "wallowing" is merely a chance that the girl was prepared to take, having easily interpreted charm for love and having consented to sex. After all, she could have said no.


This is the key for me  the implicit assumption that men want sex and women either consent or refuse to consent to that want. Do women have no desire of their own? Why is it that you might hear a woman say to her badly behaved partner, right, thats it  no sex for you tonight, but you seldom hear a man saying the same to a badly behaved woman? Why cant women desire loveless sex in the way men do? Why does such sex have to be considered shallow? The desire from many women seems to be that men see things the way they do (in some comments this is assumed to be more meaningful) but is this any different from men wanting women to see things their way? As ever, we are simply witnessing an ideological battle.




> So you didn't answer: On which is it best to build a relationship: love, finance, lust?


I hope its okay if I dont choose one of your reasons and suggest one of my own. At the risk of sounding like a new age prannet, I would say respect and a mutual desire for a companion with whom to explore the million-petalled flower of being here.





> This may come as a bit of a shock but, given the choice, the "gentler sex" by and large prefers being "patronized" as being loving family members rather than as being bags of crisps.


Exactly. You prefer being flattered, even though the idea of what constitutes a loving family member is a predominantly male ideological construct. And it might come as a bit of a shock to you that, by and large, the ungentle sex prefer crisps.  :Biggrin:  

Finally, I find it interesting that Donnes viciousness in _Loves Alchemy_ doesnt appear to have offended anyone as much as either my comments or KAPs. He is saying that once you have had your wicked way with a woman, she is nothing more than a mummy. Please note, umbrage grabbers, that it was _Donne_ who said it and not me. He could obviously teach me a thing or two about charm.

----------


## Virgil

> I hope its okay if I dont choose one of your reasons and suggest one of my own. At the risk of sounding like a new age prannet, I would say respect and a mutual desire for a companion with whom to explore the million-petalled flower of being here.


That is quite nice. You didn't upset me, I just wanted to pin down your thought. Love is not a perfect thing, as we can see and we all I'm sure know. There is no utopia, but we have to navigate ourselves through life choosing the best options we can. It may or may not work out. As one weighs the options, one (or perhaps just I) realizes the paltriness of the other two. "Respect and mutual desire for a companion," that sounds like love to me.  :Wink:  

But as to your ideological points, I'm sure you fathom I do not agree, but I *do not*  want to have that debate. Nor frankly would it be appropriate in this thread.




> Incidentally, Ive just spent the past few weeks in the company of a remarkable woman who is nobodys fool and loves Dylan. She knows too much to argue or to judge but wouldnt take kindly to me evaluating her worth according to how much she holds society together through her feminine qualities. Yes, shes a woman but she is a thinking person in her own right first and foremost.


She sounds great. Good luck.

----------


## jackyyyy

> Finally, I find it interesting that Donnes viciousness in _Loves Alchemy_ doesnt appear to have offended anyone as much as either my comments or KAPs. He is saying that once you have had your wicked way with a woman, she is nothing more than a mummy. Please note, umbrage grabbers, that it was _Donne_ who said it and not me. He could obviously teach me a thing or two about charm.


Its just more meat on the table. Most women, I talk to, are perfectly upfront in their opinion, unlike most men. However, they are less upfront about who they are, unlike most men. I am aiming that squarely at the KAP comment, whether she said it, or he did.

Dylan's brother got it right: 

"
Once she has let you have your wicked way 
You are nothing more than a daddy,
Tweedly shee and tweeeeedly heeee
With a banjo on each knee!
" 

 :FRlol:

----------


## MelanieD

What pointless discussions. I'm sorry to have chosen this poem. I would like to contribute a word from a Parisian society lady Madame Lambert, 17th century. She says that one of the things that make women unhappy is that they expect too much from men. This, I think is vice-versa. We fall in love with an imagined person. Please consider that all that has to do with feeling cannot be directed by our brains. Passion means 'to suffer', when our will is mute. But love we must, I said it earlier.
To compensate I'll typ up a small poem by John Montague

The leaping fire

Each morning, from the corner
of the hearth, I saw a miracle
as you sifted the smoored ashes
to blow
a fire's sleeping remains
back to life, holding the burning brands
of turf, between work-hardened hands.
I draw on that fire....

----------


## Regit

> What pointless discussions.


Whatever do you mean MelanieD? We all contributed our opinions and learnt of others'; isn't that what all discussions here are aiming for? If you had an idea of where the discussion should have gone, you could have contributed a little earlier to try and save it from being "_pointless_". I don't see how what you've said give any kind of guidance. They're just opinions, they don't overwhelm anyone else's opinion in integrity and credibility.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> On the question of patronising attitudes to women, I find it alarming that no woman can see my point. The idea that women exist to check the behaviour of men and to provide a nurturing effect is simply another form of patriarchal control. Men define you and evaluate your worth according to how it suits their agenda.





> Exactly. You prefer being flattered, even though the idea of what constitutes a loving family member is a predominantly male ideological construct.


To begin with, do note that I say "given the choice," it's not as though either of these options is the way I choose to define myself or anyone else, man or woman, but I am able to identify to some extent with wanting to be a source of love and comfort to my family (not because of any male expectations, but because of my own) whereas I don't really identify at all with crisps.  :Biggrin:  I'm very familiar with the sorts of arguments you suggest about male defined roles for women, and I do see your point about the potential for such a comment to be patronizing, but I think I was reacting to this comment as a compliment of a specific aspect of a woman's life rather than a generalization about a woman's sole role in life. If I thought that Virgil was suggesting this was the _only_ way a woman is able to be admired or that the degree to which a woman is like this is a measure of her worth as a person (and I've seen such comments made with that sort of intent and objected to them) then I would have found it more patronizing. Being a loving wife and mother who is needed by others can be a very important part of a woman's life, in some cases her greatest contibution, and I thought that the remark was simply admiring women who fill those rolls (in fact I thought he was trying to express something akin to the sentiment in the poem Melanie just posted above). I could equally say I admire the roles that men serve as loving husbands and fathers who play their part in nurturing and being needed by their families. I personally have similar expectations for men as I do for women when it comes to providing love and support to those around them. I think it's a compliment that could go both ways (which may be where I do differ from Virgil's point?), whereas I've never really thought of describing a man as a bag of crisps.  :FRlol:  It was because of this, not because it was more "flattering" that I found the comment more acceptable. 




> And it might come as a bit of a shock to you that, by and large, the ungentle sex prefer crisps.



You never know. Some just don't like crisps much. I was once out on a date with a guy who prefered comparing women to different kinds of trail mix (he liked a variety). Much to his chagrin I didn't stick around to see if he would classify me as a nut or a raisin.  :Biggrin: 




> I would say respect and a mutual desire for a companion with whom to explore the million-petalled flower of being here.


This, I think we can all agree on. Best of luck with your new lady. She sounds like a winner.  :Smile:

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> I cannot say like Petrarch that I have met many good men, ones I think, despite the pain and ugliness of life are still good in their hearts...I just happen to think that Unnameable, despite the words he says is one of them.


I just happen to agree with you, Rachel.  :Nod:  I hope in the future that you will have the opportunity to meet many more men who are genuinely good.



> And I will not post on this thread again. It keeps me up at night crying.


Do not cry over this thread dear Rachel. Such thoughts are not worth your tears.

----------


## jackyyyy

Interesting about crisps... I know women who classify men by type of dog; Labrador, Dashund, Bulldog, Terrier, all the way to Poodles and Pit Bulls. I kind of like that since I am a dog fan, but I did not last long in the kennel because I had a habit of pooping where I wanted, when I wanted and as many times as I wanted.  :Biggrin:  You know, there is no law saying people have to be in a relationship, and many people that are, settle for less than their ideals. Which is okay too. Back to "Morning Song", I still think they are crazy in love with each other unless someone can show me otherwise.  :Brow:

----------


## Virgil

> What pointless discussions. I'm sorry to have chosen this poem. ...


Not so pointless, though I admit off topic. If any is my fault, I apologize. It was a good choice for a poem, but being short I think we've fully explored it at this point. If we go into that ideological discussion, now that would really be a pointless discussion.




> I would like to contribute a word from a Parisian society lady Madame Lambert, 17th century. She says that one of the things that make women unhappy is that they expect too much from men. This, I think is vice-versa. We fall in love with an imagined person.


Perhaps. But the trick in life is to stay in love with that person. That I'm afraid has nothing to do with imagination.




> Please consider that all that has to do with feeling cannot be directed by our brains. Passion means 'to suffer', when our will is mute. But love we must, I said it earlier.


I like that.

----------


## rachel

> It looks like Ive upset a few people yet again. First of all, *Rachel*  you know that I dont mean it when I play Devils Advocate. *Regit* challenged someone to speak for the man so I did. As *Jackyyyy* points out, I was quoting (Woody Allen) when I said, "as empty experiences go it is one of the best." There is certainly some truth in it but that isnt how I lead my life. Its freely available here around every corner but I spend my time on things like this Forum instead. As meaningless experiences go, its not so bad. *Gozeta* considered the lines I quoted from Dylans _Idiot Wind_ to be the views of someone who will never meet a good woman. This is to make the same mistake that some appear to be making with the poem  its not how I feel all the time, just at certain moments. Besides, and I hope this appeases *Petrarchs Love* as well, Dylan goes on to say, 
> 
> Idiot wind, blowin' thru the buttons of *our* coats
> Blowin' thru the letters that *we* wrote
> Idiot wind, blowin' thru the dust upon *our* shelves
> *We're* idiots babe
> It's a wonder *we* can even feed ourselves.
> 
> 
> ...


my deepest apologies Un, I KNOW you don't mean it when you play devil's advocate, I wasn't a bit upset with you, only the reality that people DO think and behave like that. I am very sorry if I upset you.  :Bawling:

----------


## jackyyyy

> a small poem by John Montague
> 
> The leaping fire
> 
> Each morning, from the corner
> of the hearth, I saw a miracle
> as you sifted the smoored ashes
> to blow
> a fire's sleeping remains
> ...


This is great stuff for a Sunday morning, and Renovation.

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## rachel

you are renovating, ooh I know it will be absolutely perfect. Hope your trip was fab.
yes it is beautiful, new life, new hope and a relief when the air is frigid and your toes and fingers are blue.

----------


## jackyyyy

This piece that Melanie posted is inspirational. It covers everything from beauty, love, strength and tenderness... and getting out of bed on a cold morning.  :FRlol:  I did not render it here for 'poem of the week', by the way, I think way toooo short for that. Her choice was/is perfect. I go next week, yet, btw, and renovating does sound better than ruminating, so good, eh!  :Biggrin:

----------


## rachel

just ignore me Jackyyyy, I have had about two hours sleep in well actually I cannot remember. baby Hasia is going thru the 'there is a monster in the bedroom" thing now and I am up constantly comforting her. forgive me . sigh....

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> This piece that Melanie posted is inspirational. It covers everything from beauty, love, strength and tenderness... and getting out of bed on a cold morning.  I did not render it here for 'poem of the week', by the way, I think way toooo short for that. Her choice was/is perfect. I go next week, yet, btw, and renovating does sound better than ruminating, so good, eh!


I agree. It's a beautiful poem--a moment of peace and clarity. Thanks Melanie. Looking forward to your pick next week Jackyyyy.

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## jackyyyy

I am away this week.  :Wave:  Why not take a turn Patrarch, May 1st.

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## Petrarch's Love

Jackyyyy--Oh, I lost track of what you were referring to and when you said you were going to "go" next week I thought you meant you were going to have a go selecting a poem.  :FRlol:  Have a great trip, wherever you're going.  :Wave:  Hmmm...I'll have to go think about what poem to post, that is unless anyone else is just dying to put one up.

----------


## Virgil

> Jackyyyy--Oh, I lost track of what you were referring to and when you said you were going to "go" next week I thought you meant you were going to have a go selecting a poem.  Have a great trip, wherever you're going.  Hmmm...I'll have to go think about what poem to post, that is unless anyone else is just dying to put one up.


How about something from Milton, Petrarch? I don't know if "Lycidas" is too long. Just a suggestion. Whatever your heart desires.

----------


## Pensive

Petratch, Virgil is right, Milton will be a good choice....I think that Robert Frost might be a good candidate as well.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Wow, you read my mind Virg. I was just looking at Lycidas. I've broken it into four parts with spaces that aren't in the original poem, to suggest some more easily digested segments for discussion. At least we won't run out of material to discuss.  :FRlol:  

In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in
his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion foretells
the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.

[1] Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
[10] Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew .
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat'ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may some gentle Muse
[20] With lucky words favour my destined urn, 
And as he passes turn
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
[30] Oft till the star that rose, at ev'ning, bright 
Toward heav'n's descent had sloped his west'ring wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to th' oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.

But O! the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,
[40] With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 
And all their echoes mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flow'rs, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
[50] Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me, I fondly dream!
Had ye been there, for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself for her enchanting son,
[60] Whom universal nature did lament, 
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
[70] Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glist'ring foil
[80] Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed."
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood;
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
[90] That came in Neptune's plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory:
They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
[100] It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
"Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?"
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake.
[110] Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain)
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake
"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
[120] A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoll'n with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
[130] But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flow'rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
[140] That on the green turf suck the honeyed show'rs,
And purple all the ground with vernal flow'rs.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
[150] And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
[160] Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth;
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
[170] And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
[180] That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
 To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
[190] And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

----------


## jackyyyy

> In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.


Wow, great choice. I am in Chester, I'll be sure to wave this poem at some clergy while away, thanks!  :Banana:

----------


## Virgil

You know a couple of weeks back I mentioned I think three poets who I considered top tier in poetic skill. I forgot to mention Milton. He truely is a great artificer of the english language, despite what T.S. Eliot says about him. It was either last year or the year before (at my age the years are becoming a blur) I read the entire _Paradise Lost_ from start to finish, which I had never had to do. In school they just asigned sections to read, and usually the satan passages. So after reading the entire thing, every line, I was enthralled with Milton. I was completely in love with his voice. Shakespeare may be a slightly better poet, beng able to whip images and metaphors like breathing. But nobody, and I mean nobody, has the grand, epic, powerful voice of Milton. It truly is an adjective in itself, "Miltonic." "Lycidas" is an early work, and I think there are some rough spots in there, but those opening lines certainly foreshadow Milton's epic lines of Paradise Lost.



> Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
> Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
> I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
> And with forced fingers rude
> Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
> Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
> Compels me to disturb your season due;
> For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
> Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
> ...

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> You know a couple of weeks back I mentioned I think three poets who I considered top tier in poetic skill. I forgot to mention Milton. He truely is a great artificer of the english language, despite what T.S. Eliot says about him. It was either last year or the year before (at my age the years are becoming a blur) I read the entire _Paradise Lost_ from start to finish, which I had never had to do. In school they just asigned sections to read, and usually the satan passages. So after reading the entire thing, every line, I was enthralled with Milton. I was completely in love with his voice. Shakespeare may be a slightly better poet, beng able to whip images and metaphors like breathing. But nobody, and I mean nobody, has the grand, epic, powerful voice of Milton. It truly is an adjective in itself, "Miltonic." "Lycidas" is an early work, and I think there are some rough spots in there, but those opening lines certainly foreshadow Milton's epic lines of Paradise Lost.


Virgil--I agree that there's nothing quite like Milton. The first time I read _Paradise Lost_ I was an undergrad sitting around in the student lounge bored and I picked up an old battered copy of PL and started reading. I've seldom been so forcefully struck by an author's voice. The lines were so powerfully different from anything I'd read before, and so alluring that I couldn't put it down. I spent the rest of the afternoon transfixed until they kicked me out of the student lounge at closing and I ran right out to the bookstore to buy my own copy.  :FRlol:  

Last year I took a course in which we read all of Milton's poetic works in chronological order (as well as the more interesting bits of prose). Lycidas struck me as one of the first places where, as you say, the voice we hear later in PL really starts to emerge. I've always found the church criticism in the middle a bit out of place (though others disagree with me) and some of the lines are less than perfect, but over all it's a beautifully written poem. There's so much more going on than you would ever catch in one reading. My favorite lines are those at the end:



> Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills,
> While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
> He touched the tender stops of various quills,
> With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
> And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
> And now was dropped into the western bay.
> At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
> Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.


I always feel there's something unexpected unfolding in these final lines. It may be because of the realization that the whole poem is actually being song by the shepherd, meaning that we're only getting to the actual story framing this poem when we reach the very end; and of course that final line is just perfect. I wonder what people make of the different voices in this poem: Lycidas, Milton himself, the muses, the shepheard singing at the end. There are so many different voices in this poem, but yet at any given moment it feels as though there is only one narrator, perhaps because the first person voice of the opening lines seems to announce himself so forcefully that there really doesn't seem to be any question of authority. 

I also love his use of short lines in this poem. It's fairly unusual for Milton to have varied line length, but he uses them like an expert musician in this poem. There are fewer and fewer abbreviated lines as the poem progresses until the end section--somewhere around the point where the shepheards are told to weep no more and onward--has only full lines appropriate to resurrection and continuing life. Some of my favorite abbreviated lines earlier in the poem are these:




> So may some gentle Muse
> With lucky words favour my destined urn,
> And as he passes turn
> And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.


It's just a perfect poetic "turn." The two shortened lines surround the mention of Milton's death, while the full lines describe the words and actions of the muse who will grant him life in poetry even after death. The line "as he passes turn" is so rich with word play. The future "muse" or poet literally passes Milton's grave in walking by it, but at the same time it is implied that this future poet is also passing, as in passing through this life, or passing away. He literally turns to recite a benediction on the dead poet, but also turns in the sense of poetic turn, or writing poetry. One poet passes the muse to another who then takes his turn even as he himself passes swiftly out of this life. It's a beautiful evocation of the continuance of life and of poetry and of life through poetry. 

Anyway, I suppose I've rambled enough for the moment (does it show that I love this poem?  :Biggrin:  ). I'll let others get some thoughts or questions or comments out there. 

One question of my own--I wondered what season of the year people imagined the opening lines were describing? I thought it was really obviously a certain time of year but I recently had a debate with a professor of mine who was equally certain it was a completely different season. I'm curious as to whether more people agree with me or with him.  :Biggrin:

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## Xamonas Chegwe

I would say late autumn (or possibly winter), seeing as the laurel has berries and he mentions that the myrtle (like ivy) doesn't wither like other plants.

He also mentions a 'mellowing' year - ie. aging - again leading me to late autumn / early winter.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

With regard to the lines you quote - about the urn - I take it to mean that Milton is hoping that some future poet will sing _his_ praises in the way that he himself is praising 'Lycidas' - forgive me if that is what you meant.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Has anyone any information on the mythological persons used in the poem? I think many of them come from Virgil's eclogues, but I'm unsure. Seeing as we have Virgil with us here, perhaps he can shed some light? It's hard to make out the allusions otherwise.
Some kind of a Dramatis Personae would be useful.

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## jackyyyy

yes, 'the berries' and 'Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year' makes me think of Oct/Nov, but 'ivy, sere, and O laurels' reminds me of December. I have not digested it all.

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## Petrarch's Love

> With regard to the lines you quote - about the urn - I take it to mean that Milton is hoping that some future poet will sing his praises in the way that he himself is praising 'Lycidas' - forgive me if that is what you meant.


Yes, my apologies, I realize I didn't really state the primary meaning of the lines in my comments. Just as you say, the meaning of the lines is that Milton imagines some future poet praising him in a poem just as he is now praising Lycidas, and that's what I was referring to when I said they describe a continuance of life and of poetry--one poet (the future muse) continuing where another has left off by eulogizing that previous poet (Milton) . I was taking the meaning for granted and examining the way in which he's getting that meaning across because I've always found his diction here very rich. The "turn" make it clear that he's talking about poetic composition that will immortalize him one day, and I love the way his choice of the word "passes" not only describes a poet in the future, but describes him doing something in the present tense with an implication of this future poet one day himself becoming past. It's a really wonderfully compact way of putting across a whole cycle of events repeating themselves throughout time as each succeeding poet pays homage to the last and hopes to be immortalized himself.

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## Petrarch's Love

> yes, 'the berries' and 'Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year' makes me think of Oct/Nov, but 'ivy, sere, and O laurels' reminds me of December. I have not digested it all.





> I would say late autumn (or possibly winter), seeing as the laurel has berries and he mentions that the myrtle (like ivy) doesn't wither like other plants.


Well I'm glad I'm not alone. I always thought it was autumn, but my professor insists that it's spring for some reason. I tried to tell him that berries probably wouldn't be out in the spring, but he seems pretty certain in his reading. I still think he's wrong though.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Has anyone any information on the mythological persons used in the poem? I think many of them come from Virgil's eclogues, but I'm unsure. Seeing as we have Virgil with us here, perhaps he can shed some light? It's hard to make out the allusions otherwise.
> Some kind of a Dramatis Personae would be useful.


Yes, no doubt it would be! I had forgotten there weren't any footnotes to this. There are a lot of references in the poem, but I'll see what I can do with putting together a list of key characters/allusions that may be helpful. To begin with you're right that some of the names are from Virgil's eclogues, in fact the whole pastoral conceit of the poem in which all the poets are shepherds etc. comes from the eclogues. Stay tuned for a list of the more important players mentioned....

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## Virgil

Some info on myrtle berries. I could not find what time of year they come out. My guess is late summer.




> Family: Myrtaceae
> Genus: Myrtus
> Species: communis 
> Myrtle is a Mediterranean evergreen shrub whose leaves and blue berries have a flavor similar to juniper and rosemary. 
> 
> The Myrtle has long been a symbolic plant in Mediterranean cultures. In ancient Greece it was sacred to Aphrodite and later to the Roman equivalent, Venus. It preceded Laurel as the plant symbolizing victory, whether in war or in athletic games. One can see Myrtle symbolically used in this way today--the golden designs used on U. S. military officers' hats contain sprigs of Myrtle. The plant's berries were used for centuries by the Romans as a pepper-like seasoning. The leaves were used in medicine, and both the leaves and flowers were used to make love potions (being the sacred plant of Venus). Myrtle is also a symbolic plant for the Jews, being one of four plants used during the Sukkoth festival that celebrates the harvest and commemorates the period during which the Jews wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus. 
> 
> Myrtle was one of the flavoring ingredients in the original recipe for Mortadella, a smoked sausage from Bologna, Italy. (Juniper is now mostly used). 
> 
> ...

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## Virgil

> Has anyone any information on the mythological persons used in the poem? I think many of them come from Virgil's eclogues, but I'm unsure. Seeing as we have Virgil with us here, perhaps he can shed some light? It's hard to make out the allusions otherwise.
> Some kind of a Dramatis Personae would be useful.


  :Wink:  I do have a annotated version of this, but I'll have to dig out the book. Tomorrow night I'll dig it out. I've been running around all day today.

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## Petrarch's Love

First off, please note I've added line numbers in brackets every ten lines, since I figured it would be easier if we could refer to line numbers in a poem of this length. 




> Has anyone any information on the mythological persons used in the poem? I think many of them come from Virgil's eclogues, but I'm unsure. Seeing as we have Virgil with us here, perhaps he can shed some light? It's hard to make out the allusions otherwise.
> Some kind of a Dramatis Personae would be useful.


O.K., here are a few things that might be useful:

The first important allusion that came to mind was his extended reference to the story of *Orpheus* in lines 58-64. For those unfamiliar with the story, Orpheus was the son of the muse Calliope and was associated with the power of poetry and music in that his own songs had the power to move rock and tame beasts, not to mention being persuasive enough to get his wife released from the underworld (that is, it would have worked if only he hadn't looked back). After losing his wife, Eurydice, he gave up women (in fact he went a step further and became gay). This enraged the *maenads* (frenzied female followers of Bachus) who tore him to pieces in a fit of rage and threw his head down the river. 

Here are some other potentially useful glosses that jumped out to me as I was reading, though it is by no means exhaustive of references that might cause confusion:

People:

*Lycidas*: A common name in classical pastoral. Among others Theocritas has a Lycidas, and Virgil's ninth eclogue employs the name. I think there's also a Lycidas somewhere in Lucan, but I'd have to double check.
*sisters of the sacred well* (ln. 15): the muses. The sacred well probably refers to the fountain Aganippe on mount Helicon, home of the muses. 
*Damaetas* (ln36): a conventional shepheard name in pastoral (including Virgil's eclogues)
*Amaryllis* (ln68) *Naera* (ln. 69): Both conventional names for nymphs or shepheardesses in pastoral:
*Hippotades* (ln. 96): Aeolus, or god of winds 
*Panope*: a nereid (sea nymph)
*Camus* (ln.103) : Refers to the river Cam and to Cambridge. 
*Bellerus* (ln. 160): A mythical giant from which Land's End in Cornwall was supposed to have derived its Roman name, Bellerium. 

Places:

*Deva* (ln 55): The river Dee in England
*Hebrus* (ln. 63): The classical name for the river that runs through Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (known now as the Maritsa, the evros and the Meric in those respective countries).
*Arethuse* (ln. 85): a sicilian spring associated with poetic inspiration
*Mincius* (ln. 86): A river in Mantua, the birthplace of Virgil
*Alpheus* (ln. 132): A fabled river running through Arcadia. It was thought to end in the fountain Arethuse (mentioned above). Alpheus is also the name of a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses who pursues a nymph (whose name I've forgotten just now) until she turns into a fountain.
*Namancos and Bayona* (ln. 162): Both places in Spain

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## The Unnamable

> Well I'm glad I'm not alone. I always thought it was autumn, but my professor insists that it's spring for some reason. I tried to tell him that berries probably wouldn't be out in the spring, but he seems pretty certain in his reading. I still think he's wrong though.


I could be wrong (is that really likely?) but I wonder if your professor could be seeing what others appear to have missed. The significance of the berries being harsh and crude is that they are not yet ripened. Milton has to celebrate Lycidas prematurely - before he has matured as a poet. The idea of things not being ready is obviously consistent with the premature death of Edward King.

Petrarch, I would have thought the following lines appealed to you most, given that you are a hard-grafting academic:

Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.

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## jackyyyy

Cold berries

http://www.jimpix.co.uk/photos/default.asp?id=282

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## Virgil

> Yes, my apologies, I realize I didn't really state the primary meaning of the lines in my comments. Just as you say, the meaning of the lines is that Milton imagines some future poet praising him in a poem just as he is now praising Lycidas, and that's what I was referring to when I said they describe a continuance of life and of poetry--one poet (the future muse) continuing where another has left off by eulogizing that previous poet (Milton) . I was taking the meaning for granted and examining the way in which he's getting that meaning across because I've always found his diction here very rich. The "turn" make it clear that he's talking about poetic composition that will immortalize him one day, and I love the way his choice of the word "passes" not only describes a poet in the future, but describes him doing something in the present tense with an implication of this future poet one day himself becoming past. It's a really wonderfully compact way of putting across a whole cycle of events repeating themselves throughout time as each succeeding poet pays homage to the last and hopes to be immortalized himself.


And so, by analogy, he Milton comes to "pluck" the berries, so Lycidas has been plucked. What a strong verb. It just sticks out for me in all the words of the first dozen or so lines. And "forced" as an adjective here is a little startling. I don't think he means it as fingers forced their way into something, but as fingers that applied force to pluck and crush. Not your standard way of using the adjective, which is probably one of the things that drove T.S. Eliot to put down Milton. But I think it's innovative. I almost envision God's hand plucking poor Lycidas. And add the other strong verb, "shatter" and I think you can feel the violence of the openning.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I could be wrong (is that really likely?) but I wonder if your professor could be seeing what others appear to have missed. The significance of the berries being harsh and crude is that they are not yet ripened. Milton has to celebrate Lycidas prematurely - before he has matured as a poet. The idea of things not being ready is obviously consistent with the premature death of Edward King.


Yes, my prof. said the same thing. I still wasn't too sure about that argument though. It's spring right now and I don't see berries of any description about. It seems as though you don't see berries until late summer/early fall (though I'm no botanical expert here--Does anyone know for certain when the myrtle berries would first appear?). We disagreed about "mellowing" too, which I think of as a distinctly autumnal word describing the ripening of the fall, while my prof. sees it as describing a softening of the harsh winter weather. I wouldn't say full fall, but that time around late summer maybe, when everything is on the verge of ripening but not quite there yet.

In any case, I agree with Virgil that regardless of the exact season, there's the feeling of things being cut off or "plucked" before they reach their peak, and a certain violence in the diction of the opening lines. 



> Petrarch, I would have thought the following lines appealed to you most, given that you are a hard-grafting academic:


  :FRlol:  Yes, there's been talk of typing up the passage you quote and posting it in the grad student lounge, though there's another group in favor of the more pithy "_Laciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate_" (abandon hope all ye who enter here).

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## Virgil

Success!! Found it:



> Suitable for gardens yes Nursery Unknown Compost no Size at acquisition Unknown Garden location Unknown Garden notes Myrtus communis has a colorful display of berries in the fall and early winter. The flowers and leaves of Myrtle berry (also known as sweet myrtle and Greek myrtle) have a faint sweet fragrance. This plant can survive cold winter nights that go as low as 10° Fahrenheit. This species needs summer days with high heat. Full sun to light shade is ideal for this plant. It prefers well drained soils.


http://www.crescentbloom.com/plants/...20communis.htm

Fall and early winter. I was wrong.

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## The Unnamable

Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (Im not saying that it should be)  I certainly dont think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.

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## Virgil

> Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (Im not saying that it should be)  I certainly dont think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.


  :FRlol:  I agree. I can't help but half feel that a rival was knocked off, and he got the opportunity to write up a poem to show off his learning and skill. That is pretty cynical on my part.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Does anyone think that Milton gave a damn about Edward King? The poem is hardly a warm and moving tribute (Im not saying that it should be)  I certainly dont think it encourages much sympathy for the deceased.


Oh, he almost undoubtably didn't care deeply about poor King. They weren't close friends or anything. I don't think he was necessarily rooting for the event (though I found Virgil's suggestion amusing  :FRlol:  ). I think he thought it was a sad thing, but there isn't a very deep personal loss here. It was originally published in a memorial volume, _Justa Edouardo King naufrago_, compiled by King's fellow students in his honor. Milton's contribution was one of several, it just happened to be better written and thus better remembered than the others. Clearly he was using this as an opportunity to explore his own poetic career and show off his talents. To give Milton some credit, it may be that when faced with the request to write a eulogy for a guy he didn't know terribly well, he was trying his best to write based on what he did know about him--that he was a fellow poet. Often eulogies written by people who didn't know the person well tend to start generalizing about some role that person filled. All the same, it certainly comes out as more about Milton than anyone else.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Success!! Found it:
> Quote:
> Suitable for gardens yes Nursery Unknown Compost no Size at acquisition Unknown Garden location Unknown Garden notes Myrtus communis has a colorful display of berries in the fall and early winter. The flowers and leaves of Myrtle berry (also known as sweet myrtle and Greek myrtle) have a faint sweet fragrance. This plant can survive cold winter nights that go as low as 10° Fahrenheit. This species needs summer days with high heat. Full sun to light shade is ideal for this plant. It prefers well drained soils.
> 
> 
> http://www.crescentbloom.com/plants...%20communis.htm
> 
> Fall and early winter. I was wrong.


Thanks Virg. Now I've got good botanical evidence on my side for the great academic debate raging here.  :FRlol:  Next week perhaps we'll move on to counting angels dancing on the head of a pin.  :Wink:

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## Xamonas Chegwe

Has anyone any examples of King's poetry? Apparently it's not terribly good.

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## Isagel

I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning. I almost find the continued references to dying young and drowning a bit tasteless - like a tabloid. Young Poet dead by Drowning, read all on page 3. 

But it might be becuase I just can´t understand things like this: 
"With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, " 
I might be missing something. 

I also never really liked the poetry that uses that many symbols, and Gods. Sometimes I can find them interesting, like puzzles. But I seldom like them as poetry.

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## Grumbleguts

I can remember having to analyse the metre of this poem back when I was a lad of 13 or so. Underline trochees and circle spondees and do something or other to pyrrhi (or pyrrhuses, whichever the plural of the wretched thing is). I only recognised it about half way through. I do not believe that we actually spent time analysing the meaning and references of this poem or if we did I have completely forgotten anything I might have learnt 55 years ago.
It is much better read for pleasure than as a tedious exercise. The rhythm in Milton's writing is always a delight to both tongue and ear.

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## Petrarch's Love

It occured to me last night that there's an online edition of this poem with convenient glosses (you just click on the highlighted words and the link takes you to the footnote), which might be helpful given the obscure allusions and sometimes general trickiness of Milton's writing. 

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/rea...as/index.shtml 

This site's done similar things with Milton's other works, including PL, so it might be handy for anyone interested in Milton .

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## Petrarch's Love

> Has anyone any examples of King's poetry? Apparently it's not terribly good.


It's funny, I've never come across any of King's poetry, though I too have heard it wasn't that good. Poor King, ah well at least he's more remembered than most amateur poets. I'd be interested to read it if anyone dug anything up. 




> I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning. I almost find the continued references to dying young and drowning a bit tasteless - like a tabloid. Young Poet dead by Drowning, read all on page 3.
> 
> But it might be becuase I just can´t understand things like this:
> "With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, "
> I might be missing something.
> 
> I also never really liked the poetry that uses that many symbols, and Gods. Sometimes I can find them interesting, like puzzles. But I seldom like them as poetry.


I think it comes across as a colder sounding poem if you're expecting it to be a personal eulogy to a friend. It's a formal elegy rather than an _In Memorium_ type of poem. The heart of the poem is less in the specific death it contemplates than in a general contemplation of death and poets and the power of poetry to live past death. I personally don't find it as distant as a tabloid piece, which has no sympathetic feeling with the victim at all. I think Milton is touched in some way by King's death, but as an acquaintance and fellow student rather than a close friend. When people, especially young people, experience this kind of loss, the loss of an aquaintance and peer, I think it makes them reflect, not only on the general sadness of someone who was young and who they knew being gone, but on their own mortality, which is exactly where it takes Milton in this poem. I think he's doing his best to remember King with this poem, recognizing that King's chance to live on in some way is in being memorialized in words, and hoping that he, Milton, will in turn be remembered in some way, honored in someone else's poem. So I think the poem lies somewhere in between the detachment of the tabloid and the mourning of a personal friend. 

As for the allusions and the crazy syntax, part of this is just what was popular in the period Milton wrote in and a matter of taste. Part of it is Milton's style which you are not alone in criticising (T.S. Eliot among others might be in your camp). Milton does have bad lines, and incidently I've never much cared for the one you quote. I find it cumbersome and overwrought. For what it's worth, the literal meaning is that he's bathing his oozy (wet from the sea) hair in some sort of heavenly nector, with connotations of him being annointed as he enters heaven. In terms of the allusions in general, I think part of the reason for using all those allusions to gods and to past poetry and mythology is to emphasize the connection that both Milton and King have with the past. It emphasizes the way both the life and death of a young poet is part of a repeated cycle of life and death and poetry throughout the ages, a story that has been told before and will be told again. It's a matter of searching a past story to make sense of the present one. 




> I can remember having to analyse the metre of this poem back when I was a lad of 13 or so. Underline trochees and circle spondees and do something or other to pyrrhi (or pyrrhuses, whichever the plural of the wretched thing is). I only recognised it about half way through. I do not believe that we actually spent time analysing the meaning and references of this poem or if we did I have completely forgotten anything I might have learnt 55 years ago.
> It is much better read for pleasure than as a tedious exercise. The rhythm in Milton's writing is always a delight to both tongue and ear.


  :FRlol:  Glad you're getting the chance to re-read the poem for pleasure's sake. I personally find scansion interesting but only so far as it augments an appreciation of how the poet is working to convey his/her meaning. It's an abysmal approach to teaching the poem to young minds. It's like showing them Michelangelo's David and spending the whole time with a microscope analysing the mineral composition of the marble--missing the forest for the trees a bit.

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## Isagel

Thank you for a very nice answer. I have read Milton before, and although he sometimes can make language flow like magic, I also tend to find him bombastic, and when he makes bad lines they are sometimes remarkably bad. (It happens to the best, there are some really bad by Shakespeare too, I think there is a collection of them in a thread somewhere on the forum. TS Eliot is of course without flaw :-), though ) I know that it is partly the style of the time, and I prefer modern poetry. But when you write like that I almost feel bad for being mean to him.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I have read Milton before, and although he sometimes can make language flow like magic, I also tend to find him bombastic, and when he makes bad lines they are sometimes remarkably bad.


True on all counts. I actually think among famous poets Milton writes some of the worst bad lines (but also some of the best good ones). 




> It happens to the best, there are some really bad by Shakespeare too, I think there is a collection of them in a thread somewhere on the forum.


Oh wow, I'd love to find that thread. A list of bad lines written by Shakespeare would make a great icebreaker for class discussion when I'm teaching him next year.  :FRlol:  




> TS Eliot is of course without flaw :-),


Of course.  :Wink:  




> I know that it is partly the style of the time, and I prefer modern poetry.


Yes, it's really just a matter of what speaks to you personally. I'm an oddball who just loves the stuff written around this period. 




> But when you write like that I almost feel bad for being mean to him.


How kind of you to say. Don't feel too bad though. He's been dead for a while so I'm sure he doesn't much mind what's said about him.  :Biggrin:

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## The Unnamable

> I can´t find any sorrow or, actually, any feeling at all. To me it seems more like an exercise in style, than any kind of mourning.


Welcome back. 

On the whole, Id agree with you. Milton was showing us how clever he is, which is fine by me, given that he was. I think you are missing something if you feel the same about _Paradise Lost_, though, especially Books I, II, IV and IX.

I cant wait until someone posts PL for Poem of the Month. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive Poem of the Month posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big Poem of the Year! (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Prousts _À la recherche du temps perdu_ for Novel of the Decade. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two decade texts in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Miltons ten best uses of the comma or the letter g?

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## Petrarch's Love

> I cant wait until someone posts PL for Poem of the Month. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive Poem of the Month posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big Poem of the Year! (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Prousts À la recherche du temps perdu for Novel of the Decade. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two decade texts in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Miltons ten best uses of the comma or the letter g?


 :FRlol:  Be careful what you wish for. You may find yourself commited to a year of Paradise Lost yet. I personally love nothing better than discussing long poetic works, but I don't know if everyone else is of a similar mind. And don't you know it's dangerous to challenge an academic to do something like find out the ten most common words in early Milton? They may just settle in for a life's work of counting words in Comus and Lycidas. Luckily I'm sure someone's already done that so I'll just have to find some even less fruitful way to come up with a dissertation topic.  :Biggrin:  

As for the novel of the decade, I say we start with the first sentence right now. No time like the present: 

"Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure." 

Now we can all contemplate whether Proust is making an allusion to Ben Franklin's saying "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Also, why is it that he says he went to bed early in the past tense (obviously because for anyone embarking on a seven volume novel sleep is of necessity a thing of the past). Since it is a thing of the past, maybe he's just setting us up for an advert for a perscription sleep aid. What will happen next I wonder? Will he wake up? The answer to these questions and more next week when we contemplate the second sentence: "Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n'avais pas le temps de me dire: "Je m'endors."

Actually I've never made it through all of the _Temps Perdu_. I'd love to do so someday, but I think reading one sentence at a time really is all I'm up for at the moment.  :FRlol:  O.K. enough silliness. We can go back to discussing Milton now .

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## Virgil

I'd like to try to understand the various transitions and structure of the poem. Here's sort of how I summarize the various sections, and I'll refer to Petrarch's sub-divisions.

Sub-Division 1: The need to sing of his death.
Sub-Division 2: 
(a) The change now that he's gone. (b) What could we have done to prevent it.(c) He died attempting to acquire fame.(d) How he died.Sub-Division 3: Shepherd's work.
Sub-Division 4: 
(a) Look homeward, to Paradise(b) Weep no more.There may be more that I've glossed over. First there is a sort of classical logic to it. Does anyone know if this is a classical/medevil/renaissance rhetorical form? It's interesting Milton delays how King died well into the poem. Perhaps it was a well known fact. 

The section I found the most interesting was the sub-division 3, the shepherd's work. The other sections, despite Milton's great voice, seem kind of sterile, almost like a fossil. There's just way too much classical allusions and given that he's working with a fixed established form (I guessing), it gives the feel of a petrified piece of wood. Sub-division 3 doesn't feel that way to me. It seems like he lets his imagination run there, and, even though the whole shepherd's thing is kind of corny, it's not bogged down with learned name droppings.

----------


## Isagel

> Welcome back. 
> 
> On the whole, Id agree with you. Milton was showing us how clever he is, which is fine by me, given that he was. I think you are missing something if you feel the same about _Paradise Lost_, though, especially Books I, II, IV and IX.
> 
> I cant wait until someone posts PL for Poem of the Month. Perhaps each of the twelve books could feature as the next twelve consecutive Poem of the Month posts. Or perhaps we should have all twelve books as one big Poem of the Year! (and yes, I did put the exclamation mark in the right place). If our sorry little lives mean that we are still around for longer than we could possibly have any excuse to be, then we should switch to prose and I, The Unnamable, hereby nominate, on this, the fourth day of May twenty hundred and six, Marcel Prousts _À la recherche du temps perdu_ for Novel of the Decade. We could discuss a long piece like that every ten years. No one should be allowed to post more than two decade texts in any one century, however. Would anyone be interested in a thread on the top ten words used in (a) Early Milton, (b) Middle Milton or (c) Late Milton? How about Miltons ten best uses of the comma or the letter g?


Thank you for the welcome. 
I have read parts of PL and liked them. That is why I am so disappointed in this one. Of course he may brag, but he can´t make me like it. I defy you Milton! Ha! Your clever alliterations will not make me fall this time. I see your games! 

You go ahead looking for g´s and commas, we will be right there. Promise. 

But reading PL as a project could be fun. Then I´ll have proper help when I get stuck.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I'd like to try to understand the various transitions and structure of the poem. Here's sort of how I summarize the various sections, and I'll refer to Petrarch's sub-divisions.
> 
> Sub-Division 1: The need to sing of his death.
> Sub-Division 2: 
> (a) The change now that he's gone. (b) What could we have done to prevent it.(c) He died attempting to acquire fame.(d) How he died.Sub-Division 3: Shepherd's work.
> Sub-Division 4: 
> (a) Look homeward, to Paradise(b) Weep no more.There may be more that I've glossed over. First there is a sort of classical logic to it. Does anyone know if this is a classical/medevil/renaissance rhetorical form? It's interesting Milton delays how King died well into the poem. Perhaps it was a well known fact. 
> 
> The section I found the most interesting was the sub-division 3, the shepherd's work. The other sections, despite Milton's great voice, seem kind of sterile, almost like a fossil. There's just way too much classical allusions and given that he's working with a fixed established form (I guessing), it gives the feel of a petrified piece of wood. Sub-division 3 doesn't feel that way to me. It seems like he lets his imagination run there, and, even though the whole shepherd's thing is kind of corny, it's not bogged down with learned name droppings.



Thanks Virg. You're so good at doing these outline things. Let me first make a disclaimer that the way I've divided the poem was almost entirely arbitrary for the sake of having some smaller segments to digest, just so no one tries to read any particular significance into these parts (not suggesting you were doing so, just want everything clear up front). There's actually been some debate over how the this poem should be divided. It seems as though most scholars would divide it into three parts with the first part being roughly a combination of my parts one and two and the other parts as I've divided them (I was going to split it in three, but that would make the first part cumbersomely long). 

The form of the poem as stated in the intro is a "monody" meaning an ode (often an elegiac ode) sung by a single voice, though many scholars (myself included) have been quick to point out that one feature of the poem is the sense of it having multiple speakers. The form it's really modelled after of course, is the pastoral elegy (basically an elegy in which the mourner and the mourned are figured as shepheards), which originates with Theocritus (but is also in Virgil etc.). Usually the classical pastoral elegy had a refrain, which is missing from Milton's version, but other than that it shares much of the same features including the invocation of the muses, the lament of nature for the fallen shepheard, the procession of mouners (which I've just realized I inelegantly cut in half in my divisions--ah well) and the consolation at the end (though obviously the classical versions of the form lack the Christian bias  :Wink:  ). So Milton is generally following a tradition, but there isn't really what you'd call a set structure he's following, and the exact genre and intended form of the poem has long been the subject of speculation. The verse itself is most akin to the form of the Italian Canzone in its occasional rhymes and varied line length. 

The one thing you failed to mention about the third section is that it is an ecclesiastical satire. The inclusion of church criticism in the pastoral elegy (and the pastoral in general) had become common in the Medieval/Renaissance periods (Petrarch, and of course Spenser being among those who used Pastoral in this way). In _Lycidas_ the "Pilot of the Galilean lake" with his "Two massy keys" is a reference to St. Peter, the keeper of the keys of heaven and critic of false teachers who has come to denounce those pastors who "for their bellies' sake/ Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." His "mitred locks" refer to a bishop's mitre etc. I think my favorite line in this passage is "Blind mouths!" There's something about the conflation between sight and taste that conveys this sort of ghastly, irrational gluttony. Perhaps Virgil likes this section best because it's where the "wolf" shows up?  :Wink:  

Anyway, I think I'll stop for now and let others have a say.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I have read parts of PL and liked them. That is why I am so disappointed in this one. Of course he may brag, but he can´t make me like it. I defy you Milton! Ha! Your clever alliterations will not make me fall this time. I see your games!


I thought you might like the following quote from Dr. Johnson. His feelings about this poem were similar to your own, in fact even more vehement.  :Biggrin:  

"In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind."
Samuel Johnson, _Lives of the Poets_

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## Virgil

> Perhaps Virgil likes this section best because it's where the "wolf" shows up?


Goodness. I didn't even think of that. You're right!!  :FRlol:

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## Regit

Is anyone posting a new poem?

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## Scheherazade

I have heard a lot about this poem but read it only once. Would like to hear what you think of it.

*Mending Wall*  by Robert Frost 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

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## Petrarch's Love

Thanks Sher, I don't think we've discussed Frost on this thread before, or at least not since I've been around, and I love his poetry. I first read this poem as a child, and I've always liked it. It's one of those I've read every now and again many times over the years since I first came across it in school. What I like about it, and about Frost's poetry in general is the rich simplicity of it. The first line (later repeated) "something there is, that doesn't love a wall" is built around the indeterminacy of what that "something" is, and yet throughout the poem the reader has the feeling that he/she knows exactly what is being referred to in that "something." In those first few lines I always have a vivid image of the earth actively swelling beneath the wall, of the earth breathing deeply to crack the strange constraints placed upon it. Anyway, I'll make some more comments when I have the time. This should be an interesting poem to discuss.

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## ktd222

I think there is a dynamic being set up between the land and man-made things(the wall), the land and man, man and man, man and land, all being constrained, yet all(man,land,man) held together literally and symbolically by this Wall. I don't think it is as easy as the man-made wall is whats keeping the land from being in a fluid state with man. But that is(and this seems weird) the land's POV.
_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:_
_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down._  

And yet there is this totally different relationship being addressed:
_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair_
*He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'*

And the relationship between man and nature:
_Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense._

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## jackyyyy

I am back and forthe with this because of sentences like the following:

*And to whom I was like to give offense.*

Just as I feel I have it in my grasp, he goes and does it again... 

*And some are loaves and some so nearly balls*

and again! 

*Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.* 

Me thinks he is playing wid me brain. He definitely has a 'voice', just not sure what kind of voice it is. Its fascinating what he did; took the concept of a wall and wrote all around it, under it, above it, and inside it. I cannot commit a notion to it yet, except to give it the safe 10, and for making me look at so many times.  :Nod:

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## Virgil

> The first line (later repeated) "something there is, that doesn't love a wall" is built around the indeterminacy of what that "something" is, and yet throughout the poem the reader has the feeling that he/she knows exactly what is being referred to in that "something." In those first few lines I always have a vivid image of the earth actively swelling beneath the wall, of the earth breathing deeply to crack the strange constraints placed upon it. Anyway, I'll make some more comments when I have the time. This should be an interesting poem to discuss.


The first line is indeed interesting. First of all the sentence is incredibly strained, if not grammatically incorrect. What he means to say is "There is something that doesn't love a wall." By twisting the syntax around he's giving us a crooked sentence, if you will, which mirrors the broken, crooked wall. It is indeterminant at that line, which is important because I think it will foreshadow a different meaning, but in the following line he tells us exactly what causes the crookedness, the frozen ground. So what is the significance of Frost repeating that same line later on in a different context? I have not fully absorbed it all to articulate it, but I think ktd is on the right track with the "dynamic being set up between the land and man-made things".


edit: BTW, I love when someone uses the word "dynamic". It brings out the engineer in me.

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## ktd222

_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:_

What do ya'll think when Frost writes _The work of hunters is another thing_? This 'thing' is different from the 'something', right?

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## ktd222

> edit: BTW, I love when someone uses the word "dynamic". It brings out the engineer in me.


Thanks, my second word choice was 'thingamajig'.

----------


## The Unnamable

On one level this rather dull poem is about ordinary work on a farm. In this case, the job of mending a stone wall. On another level, the poem is about barriers between people, the stone wall symbolising this barrier. Frost disapproves of such barriers and feels that nature agrees with him. In lines 1-3, he describes a natural phenomenon: how the ground freezes and expands in winter, causing the stones on top to fall off  but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.

The sight of his neighbour with a stone grasped firmly in each hand reminds Frost of an old-stone savage armed. His neighbour resembles prehistoric man, barbaric and uncivilised. Lines 41 and 42 suggest that it is not only the darkness of shade in which his neighbour moves, but also the darkness of ignorance and prejudice.

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## jackyyyy

> _Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
> And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
> The work of hunters is another thing:_
> 
> What do ya'll think when Frost writes _The work of hunters is another thing_? This 'thing' is different from the 'something', right?


You pointed it out before.. the 'something' that doesn't love a wall, is nature, because it can send the frozen ground, which swells and moves, cracks, breaks up stones and the like, does not consider a wall made up of its own nature to be anything more than a pile of stones (in this case). And the second, the 'thing', is hunters and dogs who may pull it down to get what they want (the rabbit). So, either way, nature or man may not 'love' a wall. I get the sense that the 'something' is indescribable to him, as nature is, and hunters, dogs are single entities, things, that he can describe.

*The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.*

I think what he is getting at is, while a wall is a physical construct, its not necessarily a 'barrier'. A barrier is a mental construct. While a wall is a wall, we decide to look at it as a separation, division, partition, barrier, or not.

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## ktd222

> On one level this rather dull poem is about ordinary work on a farm. In this case, the job of mending a stone wall. On another level, the poem is about barriers between people, the stone wall symbolising this barrier. Frost disapproves of such barriers and feels that nature agrees with him. In lines 1-3, he describes a natural phenomenon: how the ground freezes and expands in winter, causing the stones on top to fall off  but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.


Does Frost disprove of the Wall? _The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair/Where they have left not one stone on a stone_ Why then, is he coming out to make repairs to the wall? I don't get the full sense of disapproval by him. The reasons why I don't quite understand yet.

----------


## jackyyyy

> but he attributes a motive to this phenomenon: a shared dislike of barriers.


I did not pick up that there is a shared dislike of barriers, as nature would even know its a barrier. I need to find that.

I think, this wall theme has been used a few times in poetry, Wordsworth???

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## jackyyyy

*And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'*

He seems to have aligned himself with nature, while accepting 'Good fences' can be a good thing.

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## ktd222

> *And he likes having thought of it so well
> He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'*
> 
> He seems to have aligned himself with nature, while accepting 'Good fences' can be a good thing.


Jackyy? I'm not sure I understand. It is the neighbor that says _Good fences make good neighbors._  He is referring to Frost when he says this, not anyone else. And remember the Wall is not in 'alignment' with the land, and those two people in the poem don't seem to be 'aligned' with the land if they are trying to repair the wall.

----------


## jackyyyy

> Jackyy? I'm not sure I understand. It is the neighbor that says _Good fences make good neighbors._  He is referring to Frost when he says this, not anyone else. And remember the Wall is not in 'alignment' with the land, and those two people in the poem don't seem to be 'aligned' with the land if they are trying to repair the wall.


Yes, and I am concluding this is Frost's overall message because its repeated. 

1 *he only says*

2 *he says again*

I think that, overall, the message is about 'natural, unnatural walls' and 'barriers/separations/divisions of the mind', and that 'his thinking' is aligned to nature - though he accepts 'Good fences'. Sorry, I did not mean the wall was aligned as in engineering, rather his brain.

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## ktd222

I'm not ready to move to the brain yet, but I would like to hear other people's opinions. 

Here are some other questions I would like to ask you: what is the need for a wall? Can't the two still be neighbors without the wall?

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## jackyyyy

> I'm not ready to move to the brain yet, but I would like to hear other people's opinions. 
> 
> Here are some other questions I would like to ask you: what is the need for a wall? Can't the two still be neighbors without the wall?


He writes, 'Good fences make good neighbours', indicating a wall may be a good thing. Therefore, a wall may be needed. I say, yes, they can still be neighbours, but, without a 'good' wall, they may not be good neighbours. I am keying on the word 'Good' here, because he is making the point.. there are good, bad, useless, pointless, whatever type of wall.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Does Frost disprove of the Wall?


Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

Could this cold something be 'frost' (as in Robert) by any chance or is this just a coincidence?

----------


## jackyyyy

> Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> 
> Could this cold something be 'frost' (as in Robert) by any chance or is this just a coincidence?


hehe, and if it is Frost, he would be something there that does not love a wall.  :FRlol:

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## ktd222

> He writes, 'Good fences make good neighbours', indicating a wall may be a good thing. Therefore, a wall may be needed. I say, yes, they can still be neighbours, but, without a 'good' wall, they may not be good neighbours. I am keying on the word 'Good' here, because he is making the point.. there are good, bad, useless, pointless, whatever type of wall.


Then I would ask what is it that the wall is walling off? Look at these snippets.

_Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense_

_There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him._

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## ktd222

> Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> 
> Could this cold something be 'frost' (as in Robert) by any chance or is this just a coincidence?


I have no idea. 




> hehe, and if it is Frost, he would be something there that does not love a wall.


I don't think Frost would like to be referred to as a 'something.'

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## jackyyyy

> Then I would ask what is it that the wall is walling off? Look at these snippets.
> 
> _Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
> What I was walling in or walling out,
> And to whom I was like to give offense_
> 
> _There where it is we do not need the wall:
> He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
> My apple trees will never get across
> And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him._


Apart other things, neighbours. Any host of reasons. He is asking, however, 'what is the point of a wall'. In the first case, he would ask so he knows its reason, and in the second case, there is a natural division (type of tree), which would make a physical wall pointless. The 'he' keeps coming back and saying, 'Good walls make good neighbours'. So, I imply, its a people thing only because nature does not need walls.

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## ktd222

> Apart other things, neighbours. Any host of reasons. He is asking, however, 'what is the point of a wall'. In the first case, he would ask so he knows its reason, and in the second case, there is a natural division (type of tree), which would make a physical wall pointless. The 'he' keeps coming back and saying, 'Good walls make good neighbours'. So, I imply, its a people thing only because nature does not need walls.


Ya, it comes back to a people thing, a nature thing, a people and nature thing.

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## Virgil

> Thanks, my second word choice was 'thingamajig'.


We use that in engineering too.  :Biggrin:

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## The Unnamable

Try these  they are .pdf files from a site for English teachers. 

http://www.teachit.co.uk/pdf/4645.pdf

http://www.teachit.co.uk/pdf/4713.pdf

There is an interesting set of articles here;

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...frost/wall.htm

In particular, I found the Lawrence Raab essay worth a go, although I can find no reliable evidence that Kennedy did quote the first line at the Berlin Wall. The Raab article begins:

Robert Frost once said that "Mending Wall" was a poem that was spoiled by being applied.

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## Virgil

> Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> 
> Could this cold something be 'frost' (as in Robert) by any chance or is this just a coincidence?


Just a side note. I don't think frost by itself would cause damage to a wall, but the cycling of freezing and unfreezing of both the ground and whatever mosture got into crevices of the wall could and does. It is a thought, though.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Just a side note. I don't think frost by itself would cause damage to a wall, but the cycling of freezing and unfreezing of both the ground and whatever mosture got into crevices of the wall could and does. It is a thought, though.


I know that Virgil but do you really think Robert _Frost_ didnt think of _frost_ when he wrote those lines? Come on!

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## jackyyyy

In his famous 1963 speech, President Kennedy professed solidarity with the people of Berlin by declaring, "Ich bin ein Berliner." Unfortunately he was not only saying "I am a Berliner," he was also saying "I am a jelly doughnut" -- "ein Berliner" being a popular local pastry.

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## Virgil

> I know that Virgil but do you really think Robert _Frost_ didnt think of _frost_ when he wrote those lines? Come on!


It could, but I don't think it's definitive. When I think of shifting ground and cracked foundations and crooked walls, I don't think of frost. I think of frozen ground, that is frozen earth to a certain depth that can be quite powerful. And look at the lines that follow:



> Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
> And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.


I think it's describing what I'm saying, not some frozen suface moisture. Perhaps he's punning on his name, but I don't see it. I'm willing to accept it if you point it out. I'm not sure it makes a difference one way or the other to the poem. What's the significance?

----------


## ktd222

> http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...frost/wall.htm
> 
> In particular, I found the Lawrence Raab essay worth a go, although I can find no reliable evidence that Kennedy did quote the first line at the Berlin Wall. The Raab article begins:
> 
> Robert Frost once said that "Mending Wall" was a poem that was spoiled by being applied.


This is good stuff. The article is not at odds with what I've been saying. I sensed the wall's literal and figurative connotations to the 'relationships' being expressed in the poem, but I have not fully defined those relationships yet. I fear that after reading this article my ethusiasm for analyzing this poem has deflated. I guess we'll see...

----------


## The Unnamable

> It could, but I don't think it's definitive. When I think of shifting ground and cracked foundations and crooked walls, I don't think of frost. I think of frozen ground, that is frozen earth to a certain depth that can be quite powerful.


Okay, I concede that, in the strictest sense possible, one of Americas most revered poets should have been called Robert Frozen but its close enough to be obvious to me and many others. He was a poet  do you think he wouldnt have thought of possible puns? Donne did it and Frost does it elsewhere in this very poem.




> What's the significance?


Okay, Ill try. First of all, the significance is that he implies that he is one of those things that doesn't love a wall. Secondly, the whole poem is filled with a similar playfulness. 

We have to use a spell to make them balance:  humorous (they dont really)

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. - funny  not gut-bustingly so but amusing nonetheless.

Spring is the mischief in me - The spring air makes him feel mischievous and he tries to make his neighbour question the proverb that sounds so wise on the surface.

And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,

offense  a fence! A pun if ever I saw one. He could tell the neighbour that elves are causing it?!

The speaker knows that his neighbour will never understand his feelings. The man is too deeply locked into tradition to be able to question whatever is customarily done. He points out, ironically, that his neighbour likes having thought of it so well / He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'" Isnt it obvious that the neighbour hasnt thought about it deeply at all?

Virgil, you do realise that this poem is about me and you, dont you?  :Biggrin:

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## Virgil

> Okay, I concede that, in the strictest sense possible, one of Americas most revered poets should have been called Robert Frozen but its close enough to be obvious to me and many others. He was a poet  do you think he wouldnt have thought of possible puns? Donne did it and Frost does it elsewhere in this very poem.


No I agree it must have crossed his mind. Let me somewhat concede and say it's a loose fit. I can go with it, but not without a qualm.





> Okay, Ill try. First of all, the significance is that he implies that he is one of those things that doesn't love a wall. Secondly, the whole poem is filled with a similar playfulness.


Ok. perhaps I was getting too scientific about it. He is having fun in the poem, especially where he decides to egg his neighbor on.




> Virgil, you do realise that this poem is about me and you, dont you?


  :FRlol:  Well, I prefer to think we just disagree but can be friends.

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## Petrarch's Love

> There is an interesting set of articles here;
> 
> http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/po.../frost/wall.htm
> 
> In particular, I found the Lawrence Raab essay worth a go, although I can find no reliable evidence that Kennedy did quote the first line at the Berlin Wall. The Raab article begins:
> 
> Robert Frost once said that "Mending Wall" was a poem that was spoiled by being applied.


Thanks for the link, Unnamable. I also liked the Raab essay. I think it attempted to express something there is about Robert Frost's work in general, something which I was trying to get at in my post above when I alluded to the "rich simplicity" of his verse. People seem to be frequently tempted to reduce lines from Frost to the status of one dimensional sayings, and "apply" the lines in a cliched fashion that makes them shed the very ambiguity that made them so memorable: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," "Good fences make good neighbors," "Nothing gold can stay," "I took the road less travelled by," etc. I'm sure I've used his lines this way myself in the course of my speech. All the same, his poems themselves are really much more complex than the way they're most frequently alluded to, but in a way that is not easily defined or readily apparent. I like Raab's observation that ""Mending Wall" is less a poem about what to think than it is poem about what thinking is, and where it might lead." I think that perhaps it's missing a large part of this poem to be overly focused on whether exactly he loves or hates the wall. Though it's obviously a question we'll want to kick around, I sense that this sort of dichotomy isn't really the "something" that the poem is after. 




> The first line is indeed interesting. First of all the sentence is incredibly strained, if not grammatically incorrect. What he means to say is "There is something that doesn't love a wall." By twisting the syntax around he's giving us a crooked sentence, if you will, which mirrors the broken, crooked wall. It is indeterminant at that line, which is important because I think it will foreshadow a different meaning, but in the following line he tells us exactly what causes the crookedness, the frozen ground.


I like the thought of it as a crooked sentence mirroring the crooked wall. His choice to front the line with "something" is something of a Miltonic move--conspicuously changing word order as a way of placing stress and emphasis on a particular word and thus on a particular thing or concept. As you say, he goes on here to imply that the "something" is the ground, and the forces of nature that move both ground and wall. His repetition of the line later seems to imply that he himself is the one who does not love the wall. I'm not sure though, as I said above, if saying that it is either him, or nature, or even both that do not love the wall is really sufficient to explain that "something." The "something" remains predominant. 

Also, I've always notice in this line the deliberate way in which he says "does not love" rather than "hates" or "dislikes." Not loving doesn't necessarily mean hating, though that's where the mind tends to jump first. It merely means an absence of love, which could refer to a whole range of emotions from active dislike, to neutral tolerance, to a not entirely unaffectionate respect.

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## ktd222

> The speaker know that his neighbour will never understand his feelings. The man is too deeply locked into tradition to be able to question whatever is customarily done. He points out, ironically, that his neighbour likes having thought of it so well / He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'" Isnt it obvious that the neighbour hasnt thought about it deeply at all?


But how does the speaker knows the neighbor hasn't thought about what he has thought about? The speaker 'plays around' and never is upfront with the neighbor about his feelings. The neighbor is saying 'Good fences make good neighbor', but that does not mean he hasn't thought about what the line means. The speaker assumes.
_To the speaker, the farmer is antipathetic because he seems so antipoetic: he distrusts the flow of words, ideas, and feelings. Lacking a playful imagination and the willingness to "go behind" a saying or a concept, he seems cut off from the poetic. But we must not forget that the failure of communication in the poem is mutual. And in truth, Frost's persona is the less communicative and the more hostile of the two. His portrait of an intractable neighbor involves feverish speculation that makes us doubt the reliability of his point of view. On the surface of it, at least, the Yankee's brief adage bespeaks more amiability than do the speaker's speculations and suspicious conjectures. Yet Frost offers no answers in "Mending Wall," no clues about who is right or wrong. He does not moralize: he demonstrates._(John C. Kemp:http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...frost/wall.htm)

----------


## The Unnamable

Youre determined to catch me out, arent you?  :Wink:  



> But how does the speaker knows the neighbor hasn't thought about what he has thought about? The speaker 'plays around' and never is upfront with the neighbor about his feelings. The neighbor is saying 'Good fences make good neighbor', but that does not mean he hasn't thought about what the line means. The speaker assumes.


When I set my alarm I dont know it will go off but I assume it will. Does that make me dogmatic? I base my assumptions of the evidence available to me. Why do you think Frost writes, He will not go behind his father's saying? Do you believe that the neighbour _has_ thought deeply about the saying? I dont. 

As for John C Kemps comments, do they strike you as accurate? Do the speakers words exude *feverish* speculation? Isnt it apparent that this critic is forcing his argument and is aware of it?

"_On the surface of it, at least_, the Yankee's brief *adage* bespeaks more amiability than do the speaker's speculations and _suspicious conjectures_.

So whats under that surface? Kemp is careful to note that it is the _adage_ and not the farmer that bespeaks amiability. Would you characterise the speakers thoughts as suspicious conjectures?

While I would agree that Frost doesnt moralise, I believe that the neighbour is more responsible for the failure of communication than the speaker:

He moves in darkness as _it seems to me_,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

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## MelanieD

Petrarch's Love said:
- I like Raab's observation that "Mending Wall" is less a poem about what to think than it is poem about what thinking is, and where it might lead." I think that perhaps it's missing a large part of this poem to be overly focused on whether exactly he loves or hates the wall. Though it's obviously a question we'll want to kick around, I sense that this sort of dichotomy isn't really the "something" that the poem is after. --
Your comment comes closest to what I feel about this poem. I can't say I like this stern dry master of wordings. This is what the poem seems to me to be about**: reality or irreality of the word. A statement, an observation about how the world is made (the wall is inside us), specially our vehicle of communication. That we use to manage truth, a thing we know nothing about. The first line:
"Something there is that doen't love a wall" - a philosophical statement of the kind: there 'is' instead of 'is not'. Applied to the Berlin wall, applied to politics in general, to any politics, it becomes something different in whomever mouths you put it. That's the difficulty of existing. And inside ourselves? How many walls? Useful? Yes, but.

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## The Unnamable

Sorry, MelanieD but at whom is this addressed?

----------


## ktd222

> Youre determined to catch me out, arent you?


I'm determined to make sense of this freakin poem.  :Confused:  




> When I set my alarm I dont know it will go off but I assume it will. Does that make me dogmatic? I base my assumptions of the evidence available to me. Why do you think Frost writes, He will not go behind his father's saying? Do you believe that the neighbour _has_ thought deeply about the saying? I dont.


In short, I don't know either way about whether the neighbor has thought deeply about the saying. I know it's what the speaker seems to believe. It's not as if one 'goes behind' his father's saying that that will still not produce the neighbor saying, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' There could be multiple reasons why this statement, to the neighbor, still have validity-even though he doesn't explain it to the speaker.




> As for John C Kemps comments, do they strike you as accurate? Do the speakers words exude *feverish* speculation? Isnt it apparent that this critic is forcing his argument and is aware of it?


The speaker's words do take on a kind of feverish speculation by belittling his neighbor with a word game meant to 'put a notion in his head' about why 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Again, the speaker is using the notion that the neighbor hasn't thought about what the saying really means and so its up to him to show the fallacies of such a statement. 




> "_On the surface of it, at least_, the Yankee's brief *adage* bespeaks more amiability than do the speaker's speculations and _suspicious conjectures_.
> So whats under that surface? Kemp is careful to note that it is the _adage_ and not the farmer that bespeaks amiability. Would you characterise the speakers thoughts as suspicious conjectures?


What's under the surface is a mystery to all except the Yankee. The speaker is obviously not straightforward in asking the neighbor about why he believes 'Good fences make good neighbors.' 
Yes, I think suspicion and speculation are conveyed with the speaker's thoughts. The speaker is assuming things, like 'he will not go behind his father's saying,' and the speaker's game is meant for the neighbor to do just that. 




> While I would agree that Frost doesnt moralise, I believe that the neighbour is more responsible for the failure of communication than the speaker:
> He moves in darkness as _it seems to me_,
> Not of woods only and the shade of trees.


I agree that they are both responsible for the 'failure of communication.' When the neighbor says, 'Good fences make good neighbors,' why doesn't the speaker just say, "why do you think that 'Good fences make good neighbors'?

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## MelanieD

> Sorry, MelanieD but at whom is this addressed?


Why? To all.
See the wall you draw? For what? So that I answer you politely, hey, look, I'm a good neighbor.

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## jackyyyy

> In short, I don't know either way about whether the neighbor has thought deeply about the saying. I know it's what the speaker seems to believe. It's not as if one 'goes behind' his father's saying that that will still not produce the neighbor saying, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' There could be multiple reasons why this statement, to the neighbor, still have validity-even though he doesn't explain it to the speaker.
> 
> The speaker's words do take on a kind of feverish speculation by belittling his neighbor with a word game meant to 'put a notion in his head' about why 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Again, the speaker is using the notion that the neighbor hasn't thought about what the saying really means and so its up to him to show the fallacies of such a statement. 
> 
> What's under the surface is a mystery to all except the Yankee. The speaker is obviously not straightforward in asking the neighbor about why he believes 'Good fences make good neighbors.' 
> Yes, I think suspicion and speculation are conveyed with the speaker's thoughts. The speaker is assuming things, like 'he will not go behind his father's saying,' and the speaker's game is meant for the neighbor to do just that. 
> 
> I agree that they are both responsible for the 'failure of communication.' When the neighbor says, 'Good fences make good neighbors,' why doesn't the speaker just say, "why do you think that 'Good fences make good neighbors'?


The neighbour wants the apples and the speaker knows it.

*There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
*

*I tell him.* 

'He' is joking at the neighbour, that his apples will not eat the cones. Meaning, the opposite. He is playing with his neighbour's brain to suggest, 'There where it is we do not need the wall'. Of course they need a wall. And, the neighbour only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours.' I'll bet, reluctantly, like... sure, don't bother putting a wall there, because I really don't want your apples, what a waste of time.

He tries the same tactic again:

*'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.*

I don't think there is any failure in communication, they're a wily pair of old goats.

----------


## ktd222

> The neighbour wants the apples and the speaker knows it.


edit: this is my comment:Your speaking for the neighbor. This is just another assumption



> 'He' is joking at the neighbour, that his apples will not eat the cones. Meaning, the opposite. He is playing with his neighbour's brain to suggest, 'There where it is we do not need the wall'. Of course they need a wall. And, the neighbour only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours.' I'll bet, reluctantly, like... sure, don't bother putting a wall there, because I really don't want your apples, what a waste of time.


I don't know what your trying to say here.




> He tries the same tactic again:
> 
> *'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
> Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.*
> 
> I don't think there is any failure in communication, they're a wily pair of old goats.


He's answering his own question. Where is the communication if you answer your own question.

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## ktd222

> Sorry, MelanieD but at whom is this addressed?


I agree Unnamable. MelanieD, what are you addressing?

----------


## jackyyyy

> He's answering his own question. Where is the communication if you answer your own question.


The speaker is asking a loaded question, the question holds the answer.

The speaker told the neighbour this:

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, *I tell him.*

The neighbour replied this:

He only says, *'Good fences make good neighbors.'*

Apples are edible, pine cones are not. He is indicating he has something of value, and the neighbour does not (at this point in the wall). However, he is talking ridiculous to his neighbour, who pretends to shrug it off. Of course the neighbour knows the difference between an apple and a pine cone. I think that suggests a LOT of communication (even if it was only a raised eyebrow over the top of the wall, but here we see, there is actual dialog). Moreover, its the neighbour who replies, 'Good fences make good neighbors.', sarcastic, because, of course he wants those apples, but would not admit it.

I don't think its an assumption, else why did Frost use an apple and a pine cone??

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## jackyyyy

> Petrarch's Love said:
> - I like Raab's observation that "Mending Wall" is less a poem about what to think than it is poem about what thinking is, and where it might lead." I think that perhaps it's missing a large part of this poem to be overly focused on whether exactly he loves or hates the wall. Though it's obviously a question we'll want to kick around, I sense that this sort of dichotomy isn't really the "something" that the poem is after. --
> Your comment comes closest to what I feel about this poem. I can't say I like this stern dry master of wordings. This is what the poem seems to me to be about**: reality or irreality of the word. A statement, an observation about how the world is made (the wall is inside us), specially our vehicle of communication. That we use to manage truth, a thing we know nothing about. The first line:
> "Something there is that doen't love a wall" - a philosophical statement of the kind: there 'is' instead of 'is not'. Applied to the Berlin wall, applied to politics in general, to any politics, it becomes something different in whomever mouths you put it. That's the difficulty of existing. And inside ourselves? How many walls? Useful? Yes, but.


I think you made a lot of interesting points there. I need to read this RAAB. Certainly, it goes way further than the detail he actually laid out here, and that is typical of many poems, where they contain a superior message. The applications are far reaching. 

You know, it was the allies in 1961 who asked the GDR to build the Wall, and they preferred to build houses, but they obliged. And Kennedy was in front of it in 1963, they wanted it down, but up. *Edit: There are conflicting stories on who wanted the wall in the first place, which goes to prove the poem again.*

Amazing to realize just how fitting this poem is.

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## ktd222

> The speaker is asking a loaded question, the question holds the answer.
> 
> The speaker told the neighbour this:
> 
> My apple trees will never get across
> And eat the cones under his pines, *I tell him.*
> 
> The neighbour replied this:
> 
> He only says, *'Good fences make good neighbors.'*


Where is the question mark? 





> Apples are edible, pine cones are not. He is indicating he has something of value, and the neighbour does not (at this point in the wall). However, he is talking ridiculous to his neighbour, who pretends to shrug it off. Of course the neighbour knows the difference between an apple and a pine cone. I think that suggests a LOT of communication (even if it was only a raised eyebrow over the top of the wall, but here we see, there is actual dialog). Moreover, its the neighbour who replies, 'Good fences make good neighbors.', sarcastic, because, of course he wants those apples, but would not admit it.
> I don't think its an assumption, else why did Frost use an apple and a pine cone??


And I thought he was just disguishing between them two's land. How do you know the neighbor 'shrug's those questions off? Maybe the answer is 'Good fences make good neighbor,' but the speaker is not understanding of what he means by that. And obviously, the speaker is not being straightforward with the neighbor because he keeps making references to things and hopes the neighbor will pick up on what he's saying. 
How the sudden does 'Good fences make good neighbors' turn into I want your apples?

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## jackyyyy

> Where is the question mark? 
> 
> 
> 
> And I thought he was just disguishing between them two's land. How do you know the neighbor 'shrug's those questions off? Maybe the answer is 'Good fences make good neighbor,' but the speaker is not understanding of what he means by that. And obviously, the speaker is not being straightforward with the neighbor because he keeps making references to things and hopes the neighbor will pick up on what he's saying. 
> How the sudden does 'Good fences make good neighbors' turn into I want your apples?


The question is implicit, begging a response by being ridiculous.

I know he shrugged it of because of his retort:

*He only says*, 'Good fences...'

He could have said, 'go take a hike'.

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## ktd222

> The question is implicit, begging a response by being ridiculous.
> 
> I know he shrugged it of because of his retort:
> 
> *He only says*, 'Good fences...'
> 
> He could have said, 'go take a hike'.


If you want to believe that, but seems awfully broken to begin with, the conversation  :Wink:  I mean. I don't think a question could be a question without a question mark, but hey, what do I know. You could yell, whisper, scream, but a question mark will be needed to be in question form.

Look here, the speaker is so closer to being straightforward with this statement: 
_If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?_
Instead he choses this way to express himeself:
_Isn't it/Where there are cows? But here there are no cows._

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## jackyyyy

> If you want to believe that, but seems awfully broken to begin with, the conversation  I mean. I don't think a question could be a question without a question mark, but hey, what do I know. You could yell, whisper, scream, but a question mark will be needed to be in question form.
> 
> Look here, the speaker is so closer to being straightforward with this statement: 
> _If I could put a notion in his head:
> 'Why do they make good neighbors?_
> Instead he choses this way to express himeself:
> _Isn't it/Where there are cows? But here there are no cows._


*You have not posted a poem today.*  :Brow:  

I don't know if you have or not, but it begs an answer. Don't you feel like answering it??

Yes, they move from 'dialog' to the speaker 'wondering' if he could play with his brain and put a more normal notion in his head instead, suggest a wall because of cows. But, as he concludes, there are no cows, so he knows that is not going to prevent showing offense.

He has his wall up because of his apples, but, he does not want to show offense to his neighbour (for whatever reason, possibly the neighbour has strawberries further down the wall).

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## ktd222

> *You have not posted a poem today.*  
> 
> I don't know if you have or not, but it begs an answer. Don't you feel like answering it??


Can you decode this for me?




> Yes, they move from 'dialog' to the speaker 'wondering' if he could play with his brain and put a more normal notion in his head instead, suggest a wall because of cows. But, as he concludes, there are no cows, so he knows that is not going to prevent showing offense.
> 
> He has his wall up because of his apples, but, he does not want to show offense to his neighbour (for whatever reason, possibly the neighbour has strawberries further down the wall).


What?? strawberries?LOL...oh man. If your suggesting dialog(and I don't concur) the last line of the poem is he says, 'Good fences make good neigbors,' so is it movement of dialog to wondering to dialog?  :Confused:

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

Does anyone else find Frost's poems deceptively simple?

I mean that thay look so obvious when you first read them and you almost think you've got everything it has to offer, but...

Every subsequent reading throws up another little niggle of ambiguity. There is no overt obscurity in most of his works but there are plenty of layers there, hiding just below the surface. 

I used to dismiss Frost as a lightweight poet, but I think this discussion shows that his lack of apparent depth is not the same as any lack of _actual_ depth.

Unlike last week's Milton, you can easily understand every line in this poem - at least on the surface - you don't need a commentary to understand any of the references; everything is laid out in the open for easy access, but there is still more going on than meets the eye. I am of the opinion that, in the Milton, once you understand the references to ancient Greek and Roman literature and know the targets of his allegories, the meaning is pretty well established. In this poem however, there are no difficult words or names of forgotten gods and heroes to decipher - most readers won't find a word that will cause them to reach for the dictionary - yet there are a whole series of layers of meaning (and possible meaning) at work here.

Frost doesn't create ambiguity by using long words and complex sentence structures; he does it by using simple words and dropping hints.

There are many poets that make me _feel_ far more deeply than Frost (currently, Sylvia Plath is turning my head inside out every night with her incredible word choices and phrasings), but I like him none the less, because he can make me think deeply about the simplest and most everyday of phrases. That I think is his particular greatest poetic gift.

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## jackyyyy

> Can you decode this for me?
> 
> 
> What?? strawberries?LOL...oh man. If your suggesting dialog(and I don't concur) the last line of the poem is he says, 'Good fences make good neigbors,' so is it movement of dialog to wondering to dialog?


You are going to hate me for this, you just answered me with a question. I told you it was loaded.

Is this dialog or not: '?'

And eat the cones under his pines, *I tell him*.
He only says, '*Good fences make good neighbors*.'

Yes, in the last line the neighbour *says again*, 'Good fences...'

----------


## ktd222

> You are going to hate me for this, you just answered me with a question. I told you it was loaded.
> 
> Is this dialog or not: '?'
> 
> And eat the cones under his pines, *I tell him*.
> He only says, '*Good fences make good neighbors*.'
> 
> Yes, in the last line the neighbour *says again*, 'Good fences...'


I don't know what you mean so I'm asking you to explain.

edit: who's doing the loading?

----------


## ktd222

> Does anyone else find Frost's poems deceptively simple?
> 
> I mean that thay look so obvious when you first read them and you almost think you've got everything it has to offer, but...
> 
> Every subsequent reading throws up another little niggle of ambiguity. There is no overt obscurity in most of his works but there are plenty of layers there, hiding just below the surface. 
> 
> I used to dismiss Frost as a lightweight poet, but I think this discussion shows that his lack of apparent depth is not the same as any lack of _actual_ depth.
> 
> Unlike last week's Milton, you can easily understand every line in this poem - at least on the surface - you don't need a commentary to understand any of the references; everything is laid out in the open for easy access, but there is still more going on than meets the eye. I am of the opinion that, in the Milton, once you understand the references to ancient Greek and Roman literature and know the targets of his allegories, the meaning is pretty well established. In this poem however, there are no difficult words or names of forgotten gods and heroes to decipher - most readers won't find a word that will cause them to reach for the dictionary - yet there are a whole series of layers of meaning (and possible meaning) at work here.
> ...


Can you tell us what you think about the poem's meaning?

----------


## jackyyyy

> Does anyone else find Frost's poems deceptively simple?
> 
> I mean that thay look so obvious when you first read them and you almost think you've got everything it has to offer, but...
> 
> Every subsequent reading throws up another little niggle of ambiguity. There is no overt obscurity in most of his works but there are plenty of layers there, hiding just below the surface. 
> 
> I used to dismiss Frost as a lightweight poet, but I think this discussion shows that his lack of apparent depth is not the same as any lack of _actual_ depth.
> 
> Unlike last week's Milton, you can easily understand every line in this poem - at least on the surface - you don't need a commentary to understand any of the references; everything is laid out in the open for easy access, but there is still more going on than meets the eye. I am of the opinion that, in the Milton, once you understand the references to ancient Greek and Roman literature and know the targets of his allegories, the meaning is pretty well established. In this poem however, there are no difficult words or names of forgotten gods and heroes to decipher - most readers won't find a word that will cause them to reach for the dictionary - yet there are a whole series of layers of meaning (and possible meaning) at work here.
> ...


Yes, 'deceptively simple' puts it perfectly, and I am a great fan of simple. Btw, that Mushroom poem of Plath's is still buzzing around my head, you're right about her. We should psychoanalyse that in this thread so it has more time to air. I think the thing with Frost is, his 'voice', not unlike Milton, btw. Once I got some background on Frost, I could roughly find the voice, and at that point the personality. Of course, I could be completely wrong and he is really Bob Dylan's brother, but the fun is in the challenge, eh.

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## jackyyyy

> I don't know what you mean so I'm asking you to explain.
> 
> edit: who's doing the loading?


Mr Speaker

*My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines*, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the *mischief* in me, and I wonder
If I could *put a notion* in his head:
'*Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?* But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' *I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly*, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

----------


## ktd222

> Mr Speaker
> 
> *My apple trees will never get across
> And eat the cones under his pines*, I tell him.
> He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
> Spring is the *mischief* in me, and I wonder
> If I could *put a notion* in his head:
> '*Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
> Where there are cows?* But here there are no cows.
> ...


Is this the way two people converse with each other? 
_If I could put a notion in his head_
Why would the speaker suspect that the other doesn't have a notion about what the statement means? Just because the neighbor says, 'Good fences make good neighbor,' and thats all he says, doesn't mean he hasn't 'gone behind' the saying. That is an assumption made by the speaker. It could easily be that they both have different views of the statement. They are both being vague to each other.

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## The Unnamable

> Why? To all.
> See the wall you draw? For what? So that I answer you politely, hey, look, I'm a good neighbor.


I wasn't trying to erect anything - least of all a wall. I only asked because you started your contribution by quoting Petrarch and then added Your comment comes closest to what I feel about this poem. I was trying to confirm that you were addressing PL here but I didnt know if it was Raabs or Petrarchs comment you had in mind. Thats all.

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## The Unnamable

I think that what the speaker really wants is for his neighbour to agree with him that walls are often a bad thing because they bring about unwelcome separation: I'd rather / He said it for himself. He doesnt want the man to agree with him simply because hes told it  he wants him to think about it and reach the same conclusion for himself.

I sometimes wonder if we are all reading the same poem.

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## ktd222

And I wonder if people are not being as objective as they could be because they find an article that fits with their thoughts.

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## jackyyyy

> Is this the way two people converse with each other? 
> _If I could put a notion in his head_
> Why would the speaker suspect that the other doesn't have a notion about what the statement means? Just because the neighbor says, 'Good fences make good neighbor,' and thats all he says, doesn't mean he hasn't 'gone behind' the saying. That is an assumption made by the speaker. It could easily be that they both have different views of the statement. They are both being vague to each other.


Its a summary of their conversing. I am not suggesting the neighbour does not have 'a' notion, as I am sure he has many, but the speaker is here considering to give him one. I am not suggesting he has 'gone behind' it either.

*He will not go behind his father's saying,*

'go behind' refers to dropping this tradition.

Yes, they are both being vague in that they are not 'direct'.




> I think that what the speaker really wants is for his neighbour to agree with him that walls are often a bad thing because they bring about unwelcome separation: I'd rather / He said it for himself. He doesnt want the man to agree with him simply because hes told it  he wants him to think about it and reach the same conclusion for himself.
> 
> I sometimes wonder if we are all reading the same poem.


I agree with this, but am adding that 'apples versus cones' is the reason for the walls. The dialog is real, so communication is happening. I go further because he uses, and exactly, 'apples and cones'. Why would he tell his neighbour:

*My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines,*

?

And, don't you think the neighbour knows that?

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## The Unnamable

> And, don't you think the neighbour knows that?


I dont believe he thinks about it  the speaker is just being playful. Sometimes when confronted by such dense, unreflecting obtuseness, humour is the only response. You can see plenty of evidence of this on the forum.

----------


## Virgil

One thing I like to do is sub divide them poem into sections and see if that leads to any conclusions. I find five rough sub-divisions in the poem. Here's how I divide it:



> Sub-Div 1
> Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
> That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
> And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
> And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.





> Sub-Div 2;
> The work of hunters is another thing:
> I have come after them and made repair
> Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
> But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
> To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
> No one has seen them made or heard them made,
> But at spring mending-time we find them there.
> I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
> ...





> Sub-Div 3:
> We keep the wall between us as we go.
> To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
> And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
> We have to use a spell to make them balance:
> 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
> We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
> Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
> One on a side. It comes to little more:
> ...





> Sub-Div 4
> My apple trees will never get across
> And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
> He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
> Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
> If I could put a notion in his head:
> 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
> Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
> Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
> ...





> Sub-Div 5
> He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
> Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
> He will not go behind his father's saying,
> And he likes having thought of it so well
> He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'


So here's how I would summarize the sub-divisions:
S-D 1: Intro of the wall and nature's effect on it.
S-D 2: What the hunters secretly do to the wall and meeting the neighbor.
S-D 3: Fixing the wall.
S-D 4: Trying to convince the neighbor it's not worth it.
S-D 5: Conclusion that the neighbor is unmovable.

At first I had interpreted the contrast between S-D1 and S-D 2 as nature versus man, but given the rest of the poem I don't think so. what Frost has done is create polarities: nature/man, pine/orchard, neighbor/narrator work/leisure with my slash mark "/" as a wall between the polarized units. Is Frost saying that there is an imperviousness between the polarites? ("He is all pine and I am all orchard.") Perhaps, but the wall does need annual mending. Given that Frost chooses to write the poem from the first person of one of these polarities we do sense his preference, or at least where he feels he fits.

As a side note, the neighbor reminds me a lot of my grandfather on my mother's side, a dedicated workaholic type who can't relax. And the narrator reminds me of my father's side of the family.

----------


## jackyyyy

> I dont believe he thinks about it  the speaker is just being playful. Sometimes when confronted by such dense, unreflecting obtuseness, humour is the only response. You can see plenty of evidence of this on the forum.


Yes but, my dense obtuse brain thinks there is a reason for the speaker's humour and the neighbour's stubborn response... and he is actually tempting these apples to his neighbour, which would be why the neighbour wants the wall, and tradition says, don't bite that apple, you'll end up like Adam!

----------


## The Unnamable

> Yes but, my dense obtuse brain thinks there is a reason for the speaker's humour and the neighbour's stubborn response...


I really *wasnt* referring to you when I said that. However, I am tempted to say that the _reason_ is that the speaker is humorous and the neighbour stubborn. 




> and he is actually tempting these apples to his neighbour, which would be why the neighbour wants the wall, and tradition says, don't bite that apple, you'll end up like Adam!


HmmmYour response to poetry reminds me of a line from _Annie Hall_:

'Why do you always reduce my animal urges to psychoanalytic categories?'

----------


## jackyyyy

> I really *wasnt* referring to you when I said that. However, I am tempted to say that the _reason_ is that the speaker is humorous and the neighbour stubborn. 
> 
> 
> HmmmYour response to poetry reminds me of a line from _Annie Hall_:
> 
> 'Why do you always reduce my animal urges to psychoanalytic categories?'


Actually, I am not predisposed that way, thankfully. I reduce it because 'animal urges' often end up on television, along with the XXX-files. So, you agree 'S' is humerous and 'N' is stubborn. But, you will not offer why so? We have Billy Connolly on the one side and Milton on the other, and hmm, thats why there's a wall.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Actually, I am not predisposed that way, thankfully. I reduce it because 'animal urges' often end up on television, along with the XXX-files.


Much of the time, I really have no idea what you are talking about. I dont mind that but I often also have no idea whether you want or do not want a reply. 




> So, you agree 'S' is humerous and 'N' is stubborn. But, you will not offer why so?


Do you mean that I will offer no evidence from the poem that this is so or that I offer no _reasons_ why this is so? 




> We have Billy Connolly on the one side and Milton on the other, and hmm, thats why there's a wall.


Now, you see, jackyyyy, its comments like this that make me wonder if your favourite song is _Puff, The Magic Dragon_.  :Wink:

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Can you tell us what you think about the poem's meaning?


Pretty much what a lot of other people have already said.

On the surface he is talking about mending a wall with a neighbour.
The subtext is the psychological walls that people erect against each other.

That is the obvious stuff - the deceptively simple stuff.

Under that, we have his humorous notion that there is something that hates walls and knocks them down each year, (which most people here seem to assume is in nature, because of the mention of frozen-ground-swells, but I am not sure he's really being that specific). All he is really saying is that each year, there is more damage than just what you might expect to have come from hunters and the like, so he has invented this idea of a 'something' - as he says later 'I could say 'elves' to him' - he is trying to amuse his neighbour by talking about his daft idea of a something, but the neighbour is way too practical a type to be carried by such flights of fancy. Similarly, he tries to question the point of the wall at all when the two fields have no animals to fence in (again in a humorous manner) but is rebuffed by the old man's 'received wisdom' yet again.

Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. the interplay between the two disparate central characters is beautifully portrayed. Frost with his poetic, questioning, mercurial mind and the neighbour with his dull, set-in-stone outlook.

And this difference in outlook is also their wall - every bit as real as the physical one.

----------


## Virgil

> Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. the interplay between the two disparate central characters is beautifully portrayed.


I really like this. I think you articulated it perfectly.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Finally had the time to properly catch up with what's been going on here. I agree with Xam. and The Unnamable that there's a sense of humor at play in the interaction between the two men in this poem. I think that's one of its best qualities. I also like Xam.'s earlier remarks: 



> Does anyone else find Frost's poems deceptively simple?
> 
> I mean that thay look so obvious when you first read them and you almost think you've got everything it has to offer, but...
> 
> Every subsequent reading throws up another little niggle of ambiguity. There is no overt obscurity in most of his works but there are plenty of layers there, hiding just below the surface.
> 
> I used to dismiss Frost as a lightweight poet, but I think this discussion shows that his lack of apparent depth is not the same as any lack of actual depth.


I think what Xamonas says above is very true about Frost's work, and expresses again much of what I was trying to say earlier about the poem, and what I think Melanie was agreeing with in her response to me/what I quoted of the Raab article. As Virgil points out above in his schematic of the poem, Frost sets up several sets of polarities in the poem, which makes it seem like it's founded on simple dichotomies, but I think the poem is really trying to express a dissatisfaction with any set dichotomy, or with the strong identification with one "polarity," to use Virg's term. The problem is not so much the wall. I don't think he's crazy about the wall, but I don't think that's what actually what bothers him most. I think it's the _unreflecting_ nature of his neighbor's devotion to the wall. 




> We have Billy Connolly on the one side and Milton on the other, and hmm, thats why there's a wall.


  :FRlol:  Where did that come from? It was so random I had to laugh, and since I was picking up a pic. for one of the image games anyway, I couldn't help but be curious what it would look like (they have remarkably similar hairstyles) :Wink:  :

----------


## jackyyyy

> Much of the time, I really have no idea what you are talking about. I dont mind that but I often also have no idea whether you want or do not want a reply.


People write something if they feel like it, its not mandatory. They are replying directly or simply throwing something into the pot. I don't find this forum is insisting on formality, just politeness. With that, I believe people should feel free to express themselves in their way, not forced to a uniform style. I find it important to analyse and find something concrete, landmarks if you like, to base an assumption on. Yes, I do want to reduce it, and I alluded to your reference to Annie Hall, and I thought that was obvious, but my mention was confusing, and it failed. Cutting up the content to make it more accessible is also part and parcel of analysing it. So if Annie Hall is questioned me doing it, then she would question anybody doing it, including yourself. I am having a hard time explaining something I see here, and I don't think what I see is without any 'concrete'. I appreciate, however, that if I fail to explain it, the notion is lost.




> Do you mean that I will offer no evidence from the poem that this is so or that I offer no _reasons_ why this is so?


No, of course you do, but on this occasion, you wrote, 'I am tempted to say...', which is quite a departure from when you were more sure:




> Originally Posted by The Unnamable
> I know that Virgil but do you really think Robert Frost didnt think of frost when he wrote those lines? Come on!


There is nothing wrong with being reserved, just surprising sometimes. I happen to disagree with this assumption based only on his name, but its okay to throw ideas around, else we stagnate.




> Now, you see, jackyyyy, its comments like this that make me wonder if your favourite song is _Puff, The Magic Dragon_.


Well, apart from being highly creative and educational, its also fun. I am not going to pull my hair out over a bag of words, but I will never dismiss an idea, nomatter how far fetched, if there is an inkling of fact that could sway it another way. There are several things in this piece that I think are concrete enough to make me put in the extra effort. If my view is too radical for others then thats fine too.

Having said all that, the clarity of vision Xamonas displays in his write-up is awesome.

----------


## ktd222

> Under that, we have his humorous notion that there is something that hates walls and knocks them down each year, (which most people here seem to assume is in nature, because of the mention of frozen-ground-swells, but I am not sure he's really being that specific). All he is really saying is that each year, there is more damage than just what you might expect to have come from hunters and the like, so he has invented this idea of a 'something' - as he says later 'I could say 'elves' to him' - he is trying to amuse his neighbour by talking about his daft idea of a something, but the neighbour is way too practical a type to be carried by such flights of fancy. Similarly, he tries to question the point of the wall at all when the two fields have no animals to fence in (again in a humorous manner) but is rebuffed by the old man's 'received wisdom' yet again.


_I let my neighbor know beyond the hill_...the speaker is the one trying to engage the neighbor in this conversation, but at the same time, as you read further on the tone of the speaker gets more hostile than merely humorous questioning about the needless function of a wall. Whiner! 




> Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. the interplay between the two disparate central characters is beautifully portrayed. Frost with his poetic, questioning, mercurial mind and the neighbour with his dull, set-in-stone outlook.
> 
> And this difference in outlook is also their wall - every bit as real as the physical one.


It is a 'game'-and gaming involves competiton. What's the speaker trying to prove or win at? The process of building a wall may seem serious to the neighbor, but just as equal the 'need' to not have a wall is just as serious to the speaker.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> _I let my neighbor know beyond the hill_...the speaker is the one trying to engage the neighbor in this conversation, but at the same time, as you read further on the tone of the speaker gets more hostile than merely humorous questioning about the needless function of a wall. Whiner!


I don't really see hostile - not overtly hostile at any rate - he is merely questioning why they are going through this ritual of wall-repairing and trying to get his neighbour to question too. His descriptions of the neighbour in the poem are derogatory, but his words to him are not.




> It is a 'game'-and gaming involves competiton. What's the speaker trying to prove or win at? The process of building a wall may seem serious to the neighbor, but just as equal the 'need' to not have a wall is just as serious to the speaker.


I don't quite agree with you there ktd. If the narrator 'needs' not to have the wall, why is he helping to repair it? He questions the need for it - he doesn't deny the need for it outright. And games can also involve teamwork, not just competition - even though he says "One on a side", they are both working towards the same end.

----------


## ktd222

> I don't really see hostile - not overtly hostile at any rate - he is merely questioning why they are going through this ritual of wall-repairing and trying to get his neighbour to question too. His descriptions of the neighbour in the poem are derogatory, but his words to him are not.


I agree, not overtly hostile. 






> I don't quite agree with you there ktd. If the narrator 'needs' not to have the wall, why is he helping to repair it? He questions the need for it - he doesn't deny the need for it outright. And games can also involve teamwork, not just competition - even though he says "One on a side", they are both working towards the same end.


When else is he going to be able to implant these thoughts in the neighbor's mind about the needless function of a wall. Like you said, _Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion_. Alternative motive?
Great! then they both want the wall.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

He does the job because it's "one of those jobs that has to be done". You paint the fence, repair the tiles on the roof, wash the car, mend the wall. There is quite obviously an implied tradition of wall-mending in this situation. It's a shared wall, so both parties have an obligation to repair it. Frost is questioning this tradition; questioning the need for the wall at all. His neighbour isn't interested. I would imagine that that wall went on getting repaired for many years - by the two of them, or their descendants.

An implication of the poem to me is not that we should necessarily reject traditions such as wall-mending (walls between fields and walls between people) but that we should question whether they are applicable to a particular case rather than blithely continuing with the status quo.

I don't see anything more revolutionary than this in Frost's POV here.

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## jackyyyy

This is a man made wall. 

Walls do not appear for no reason. 

Somebody put the wall there for a reason. 

Has the reason disappeared? Well, the job of mending has to be done, because people, animals, nature, whatever, keeps trying to pull it down, and.... they want the wall to stay up. Else, why mend it.

Tradition does not make people waste their time mending walls. For sure, the neighbour is very serious about it. Speaker, on the other hand, is a wily old goat playing mischief.. and, he is the one with the apples.

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## ktd222

> An implication of the poem to me is not that we should necessarily reject traditions such as wall-mending (walls between fields and walls between people) but that we should question whether they are applicable to a particular case rather than blithely continuing with the status quo.
> 
> I don't see anything more revolutionary than this in Frost's POV here.


Or, the neighbor sees nothing wrong with the wall; while the speaker, through his imagining of the function of the wall, injects connotations into that wall which would otherwise just be a wall.

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## ktd222

:Wink:  


> This is a man made wall. 
> 
> Walls do not appear for no reason. 
> 
> Somebody put the wall there for a reason. 
> 
> Has the reason disappeared? Well, the job of mending has to be done, because people, animals, nature, whatever, keeps trying to pull it down, and.... they want the wall to stay up. Else, why mend it.
> 
> Tradition does not make people waste their time mending walls. For sure, the neighbour is very serious about it. Speaker, on the other hand, is a wily old goat playing mischief.. and, he is the one with the apples.


You got me going unto I saw the word 'apple'.

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## jackyyyy

> Or, the neighbor sees nothing wrong with the wall; while the speaker, through his imagining of the function of the wall, injects connotations into that wall which would otherwise just be a wall.


That works for me.

----------


## The Unnamable

> People write something if they feel like it...


I think we are at cross-purposes. _Annie Hall_ is a comedy and Allen was simply making fun of Psychoanalysis and the tendency of intellectuals armed with Freud to seek the deeper meaning in the most obvious of actions. My point with regard to your comments was that you were looking at things at an almost sub-atomic level without considering fully that the larger picture might be sufficient. I didnt think you were reducing it  in fact, quite the opposite. Reducing simply happened to be the word Allen humorously uses in the script. Im sorry if I gave the impression that I thought you were being obtuse.

I am tempted to say was meant light-heartedly. I said I am tempted and then said it anyway. I assumed youd realise I was contradicting myself.




> Well, apart from being highly creative and educational, its also fun. I am not going to pull my hair out over a bag of words, but I will never dismiss an idea, nomatter how far fetched, if there is an inkling of fact that could sway it another way. There are several things in this piece that I think are concrete enough to make me put in the extra effort. If my view is too radical for others then thats fine too.


To be honest, thats largely what I like about reading your posts  and again, Im sorry if I offended you. _Puff, The Magic Dragon_ was meant as a light-hearted reference to the use of psychotropic substances. For one thing, your soaring, Brownian motion-type thinking threw up the disturbing pictures that Petrarch posted above.

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Or, the neighbor sees nothing wrong with the wall; while the speaker, through his imagining of the function of the wall, injects connotations into that wall which would otherwise just be a wall.


Of course he injects connotations - he's a poet - connotations and hidden meanings are his stock in trade. He is as unable to take anything at its face value as his neighbour appears to be unable not to. This is why he is asking his questions in the first place - because he can see the connotations that the other guy apparently doesn't, evinced by his falling back on the stock phrase, "Good fences...".

I don't think we're really disagreeing here, or at least, I'm not quite sure how we are. We just approached the poem from slightly different viewpoints and saw it in a slightly different light accordingly - my earlier post said it was deceptively simple; I think this shows it.

----------


## ktd222

For some reason I'm see Squirrels in my monitor.  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:

----------


## jackyyyy

> I think we are at cross-purposes. _Annie Hall_ is a comedy and Allen was simply making fun of Psychoanalysis and the tendency of intellectuals armed with Freud to seek the deeper meaning in the most obvious of actions. My point with regard to your comments was that you were looking at things at an almost sub-atomic level without considering fully that the larger picture might be sufficient. I didnt think you were reducing it  in fact, quite the opposite. Reducing simply happened to be the word Allen humorously uses in the script. Im sorry if I gave the impression that I thought you were being obtuse.
> 
> I am tempted to say was meant light-heartedly. I said I am tempted and then said it anyway. I assumed youd realise I was contradicting myself.
> 
> 
> To be honest, thats largely what I like about reading your posts  and again, Im sorry if I offended you. _Puff, The Magic Dragon_ was meant as a light-hearted reference to the use of psychotropic substances. For one thing, your soaring, Brownian motion-type thinking threw up the disturbing pictures that Petrarch posted above.


I find people on the whole are constantly in a state of 'cross-purposefullness', which I'd offer is a reason they communicate in the first place. We are being the intellectuals here, attempting to categorize. The problem is and if we perceive to have put the something in the wrong box, and I agree that when we are at a forest, looking for wood, we can stop when we see the wood. However, if we are still not sure its wood, I tend to go further into the forest. I did use the word, psychoanalyse with regard to Plath's mushrooms, so the Annie Hall reference was perfect. I never once thought you thought I was being obtuse, no worry, and I am familiar with you contradicting yourself to make a point, its an excellent tool, and my egging question was simply that - egging. 

Why are the side by side mug shots of Billy and John disturbing? They sure look related, and there is Hadrian's Wall. (Was that Brownian?)

----------


## MelanieD

I read your exchanges over again. You all teach me a lot. Most of all, you force me to deeply go into a thing (a poem). I have even come to like it, and reading it again, it takes a different meaning. I'm not so learned as you are and not everything you say I understand. So my viewpoint is naive, instinctive. 
When reading it, I now notice the speaker's distinct playful tone that shows in truncated sentences (i.e. He is all pine and I am apple orchard)(besides, being a gardener now, I must disagree with Frost. Unless the terrain rises steeply to rocky area on the neighbor's side, pine cannot coexist with apple trees, but this is, of course possible, as the wall is made of natural stones)(sorry for the divagation). I now think, the speaker implicitely agrees with the neighbor's proposition. He just tempts him a bit, and himself. Proof: he himself demands for the rebuilding of the wall. But 'Spring is the mischief in me' and what better time to go against all that presses against us in daily life all year round. Let's try break down order a bit. I don't think of him as the liberal intellectual and the other one as a stubborn farmer. (What's a farmer doing on a stony hill?) He's just another homeowner whose mood is not for playing games. Then, meeeting incomprehension, the speaker is overcome by a strong dislike of the man (old-stone savage armed), he sees someone horrible towering above him out of some darkness (who knows: his own?)
And there he mentions the neighbor's father (maybe all fathers, or his own??) and the submissive son who's so content of being obedient, although he had 'thought of it so well' which means: he had to reason as well and is not some dumb guy. And so he has the last word, with which the speaker agreed all along.
I should probably let all this sit a while and then read it again, but I won't.

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## Virgil

> Unless the terrain rises steeply to rocky area on the neighbor's side, pine cannot coexist with apple trees, but this is, of course possible, as the wall is made of natural stones)(sorry for the divagation). ... (What's a farmer doing on a stony hill?) He's just another homeowner whose mood is not for playing games.


Frost lived in New Hampshire, which is a rocky, mountainous area. For your info. Now that I think of it, the farmer is your typical New England Yankee, short of words, full of proverbs, and hard working, stubborn fellow.

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## The Unnamable

> Billy and John


Such familairity.  :FRlol: 

*Mary Wilkie*: I guess I should straighten my life out, huh? I mean, Donnie my analyst is always telling me... 
*Isaac Davis*: You call your analyst _Donnie_?.. I call mine Dr. Chomsky

_Annie Hall_

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## jackyyyy

> When reading it, I now notice the speaker's distinct playful tone that shows in truncated sentences (i.e. He is all pine and I am apple orchard)(besides, being a gardener now, I must disagree with Frost. Unless the terrain rises steeply to rocky area on the neighbor's side, pine cannot coexist with apple trees, but this is, of course possible, as the wall is made of natural stones)(sorry for the divagation). I now think, the speaker implicitely agrees with the neighbor's proposition. He just tempts him a bit, and himself. Proof: he himself demands for the rebuilding of the wall. But 'Spring is the mischief in me' and what better time to go against all that presses against us in daily life all year round. Let's try break down order a bit. I don't think of him as the liberal intellectual and the other one as a stubborn farmer. (What's a farmer doing on a stony hill?) He's just another homeowner whose mood is not for playing games. Then, meeeting incomprehension, the speaker is overcome by a strong dislike of the man (old-stone savage armed), he sees someone horrible towering above him out of some darkness (who knows: his own?)
> And there he mentions the neighbor's father (maybe all fathers, or his own??) and the submissive son who's so content of being obedient, although he had 'thought of it so well' which means: he had to reason as well and is not some dumb guy. And so he has the last word, with which the speaker agreed all along.


I missed that. So, the neighbour is not a farmer, has 'only' pine cones and some rocks, and the speaker is the one with the apples.  :Wink:

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## jackyyyy

> Such familairity. 
> 
> *Mary Wilkie*: I guess I should straighten my life out, huh? I mean, Donnie my analyst is always telling me... 
> *Isaac Davis*: You call your analyst _Donnie_?.. I call mine Dr. Chomsky
> 
> _Annie Hall_


Good point, it didn't even occur to me. I am obtuse!

And well, Mary is getting her analysis done for free (more or less).  :Brow:

----------


## jackyyyy

> Of course he injects connotations - he's a poet - connotations and hidden meanings are his stock in trade. He is as unable to take anything at its face value as his neighbour appears to be unable not to. This is why he is asking his questions in the first place - because he can see the connotations that the other guy apparently doesn't, evinced by his falling back on the stock phrase, "Good fences...".
> 
> I don't think we're really disagreeing here, or at least, I'm not quite sure how we are. We just approached the poem from slightly different viewpoints and saw it in a slightly different light accordingly - my earlier post said it was deceptively simple; I think this shows it.


Sorry Xamonas, this reminds me of "Morning Song", where the author is speaking for the speaker, kind of. Yes, I know what you mean when you write the poet is injecting connotations, but, finally its the speaker who does the connotating, isn't it. I am reading this wrong?

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## jackyyyy

> For some reason I'm see Squirrels in my monitor.


You could try adjusting the horizontal.

Do you mean... those squirrels again? 

 :Smash:  <------- wack-a-mole

----------


## Xamonas Chegwe

> Sorry Xamonas, this reminds me of "Morning Song", where the author is speaking for the speaker, kind of. Yes, I know what you mean when you write the poet is injecting connotations, but, finally its the speaker who does the connotating, isn't it. I am reading this wrong?


Perhaps - but I see a difference in the two poems on this point. In Morning Song, the poem begins, "He speaks", telling us (as if the sex difference wasn't enough  :Biggrin: ) that the poet and the speaker are not one and the same. In the Frost poem, the writing style is in the style of a personal anecdote or recollection - the reader is meant to accept that the speaker is the poet himself and not some creation. This may not be the case - the incident could be purely fictitious and/or exagerrated - but that is not my impression.

----------


## Shanna

Its Monday here. 
I owe this poem, among several other things, to a friend.


*More Light! More Light!*
_For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt_

Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."

Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.
His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap
Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.

And that was but one, and by no means one of the worst;
Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;
And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,
That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility.

We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

-_Anthony Hecht_

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## The Unnamable

There are times when you read something that leaves you feeling that there is nothing left to be said, nothing that _can_ be said but that you have to say it anyway. This poem is one of those things. 

I find it extremely powerful and unanswerable. I cant think of many lines that are more horrible than that description of the burning martyr:

His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap
Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.

And yet this physical horror is surpassed by the psychological horror of what follows. 

For those who dont know, Hannah Arendt was a German philosopher/political theorist who fled to the USA in 1941 to escape the Nazis. She was married to Heinrich Blucher. 

She studied Philosophy with Martin Heidegger and they were lovers for a while  interesting given Heideggers later membership of the Nazi Party.

She is possibly most famous for her phrase the banality of evil to describe Adolf Eichmann (she covered the Eichmann Trial).

The title of the poem comes from what were (supposedly) Goethes dying words.

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## Virgil

Why do I get the feeling that Shanna is Unnamable under a different log in?  :FRlol:  

There are a few things I like about this poem, but how about I save those comments for later in the week. Just so we're not all one big shiny happy family let me point out in this post what I find problematic with the poem, and ultimately makes it mediocre for me. First before anyone jumps on me, I am in complete sympathy with Hecht's theme and moral core. I wish we would take on more dictators in the world, not shy away from them.

While I don't have any dispute with the moral core of the poem I do have a problem with it's emotional core. The poem is predicated on melodrama. At times it sinks to maudlin. The justaposition of the two narratives, the martyr and the Nazi execution, is a reaching for bathos, as if the Nazi execution was not emotionally charged enough. I can understand if a metaphor was contrived or an allusion referenced, but two parallel narratives ties the emotion together and frankly that's mawkish. In fact it superficializes both narratives. And if the point is that that there is a connection between ancient martyrdom and Nazi execution, again a metaphor or an allusion would have given the suggestion, but a detailed narrative beckons historical scrutiny, and any historian can point out a plethora of differences. Unfortuantely Hecht is striving for melodrama.

And there are phrases that are horribly melodramatic: "howled for the Kindly Light", "pitful dignity", "drained away their souls", "quivering chin". "Kindly Light" sounds like something out of my third grade Roman Catholic catechism book. 

And even the narrative: The Pole switches places with the Jews, they bury him to his neck, they dig him out, and then he buries the Jews, and then they shoot him. Would make a great movie, a maudlin movie. And it might not be a bad movie, but a movie or a novel has space to develop character and in the words of one of my creative writing teachers "earn" the emotion. That's why Tolstoy in his large novels can get away with melodrama, there is enough space to develop it. And that's why a greeting card sounds so trite, there is no space to develop, I prefer to use the word "earn", the emotion. Here in 32 lines you have not one, but two vague stick figure melodramas that don't earn the emotion that's packed here.

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## ktd222

Let me just say that this poem is less about emotion and more about what the two rituals differ as far as purpose.

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## ktd222

One obvious difference I see between the two ceromonies is the use of what I would refer to as the ceromony being performed 'in the name of _blank_'(a divine power)-which seems to be missing in the latter ceromony. The result of this, I think(for Union Jack  :FRlol:  ), alters the fate of the souls that are being described in the poem.

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## The Unnamable

> Why do I get the feeling that Shanna is Unnamable under a different log in?


Not guilty and I am confident this time that IP addresses will reveal we are in different countries.




> While I don't have any dispute with the moral core of the poem I do have a problem with it's emotional core. The poem is predicated on melodrama. At times it sinks to maudlin. The justaposition of the two narratives, the martyr and the Nazi execution, is a reaching for bathos, as if the Nazi execution was not emotionally charged enough. I can understand if a metaphor was contrived or an allusion referenced, but two parallel narratives ties the emotion together and frankly that's mawkish. In fact it superficializes both narratives. And if the point is that that there is a connection between ancient martyrdom and Nazi execution, again a metaphor or an allusion would have given the suggestion, but a detailed narrative beckons historical scrutiny, and any historian can point out a plethora of differences. *Unfortuantely Hecht is striving for melodrama*.


  :Brickwall:  I totally disagree. What is most conspicuous about the poem for me is its detachment. To be honest, I think you have completely misunderstood what Hecht has done here and failed to notice something that he has (in your reading, pointlessly) striven to avoid.




> And even the narrative: The Pole switches places with the Jews, they bury him to his neck, they dig him out, and then he buries the Jews, and then they shoot him. Would make a great movie, a maudlin movie.


A movie, eh? Did you know, Virgil, that Hecht based this part of the poem on an actual documented incident that happened near Buchenwald? 

For anyone wishing to read sensitive, balanced and thoughtful responses to this poem, try the following link:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...echt/light.htm

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## Petrarch's Love

My first reaction to this poem was almost exactly like Unnamable's. At first I just couldn't imagine how I could add words to that, but almost in the same moment I realized that it's the kind of thing you have to respond to despite the fact that, as Unnamable said, it seems "unanswerable," so I'll try to answer. Having just read a poem I thought of as bleak, stark, and overwhelming I was amazed to see Virgil's response describing it as "maudlin," since this seemed so very much the reverse of my initial response. Having looked over the poem again I think I understood what Virg. meant about such lines as the "kindly light" having the ring of a text like a catechism. If there are some "maudlin" means of expression present though (and I don't think the diction of the poem generally could be characterized as maudlin) I would still interpret them very differently. Certain lines may be intended to evoke something like the kinds of lines we learn in school or in catechism or something similar. This poem attempts to describe events that are so horrific that faith in even the most simple good is shaken. The little lines that we cling to--little religious phrases, prayers, poetry, whatever it is--to help us face the worst in life are in danger of becoming completely obliterated. The "kindly light" is a simple phrase, so simple we just accept it as a basic truth. I don't think such prases are maudlin in this context. Instead they demonstate the hideous inadequacy of something that seems so basic and true to deal with such an overwhelming situation, just as the Polish man is unable to hold fast to even such a basic conviction as not wanting to bury another alive. How could anyone describe the things this poem deals with and not have their language come across as hopelessly ineffective to deal with such things? 

And I don't see the two narratives as being "melodramatic." I think quite the reverse. If anything there is something relentless and crushing in the detached way the two are presented. The poem begins almost as though we'd walked into a history lecture and the prof. and just been discussing the poems written in the tower and is moving on to an anecdote about the martyr's execution before making an almost casual and unaffected transition by moving to a forest somewhere in Germany. It's almost as though someone were saying, and now class, open your text books to page 666 and we'll discuss the activities of the Nazis. (Note, I'm not suggesting the poem is actually supposed to be a lecture, just that it is this kind of voice, rather than a frenzied melodramatic one that I hear in this poem). What is so oppressive about the poem is that we can all picture ourselves having sat through a history class or something, where we callously turn over page after page of accounts of human brutality. This poem brings two specific incidents out into the light, forcing us to consider them in hideous detail and to realize that in the time that seperates them nothing has changed. 

These are some of my first thoughts, anyway. I'll see what others have to say, and post more later perhaps. Just now there are images of martyrdoms and concentration camps in my mind. I can't think how to respond to those images adequately. I can't get past them.

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## Petrarch's Love

> For anyone wishing to read sensitive, balanced and thoughtful responses to this poem, try the following link:
> 
> http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/po...hecht/light.htm


Thanks Unnamable, I only saw your post after I'd posted. I like these little critical collections you've unearthed on the UIUC site. They would be great to assign for the sort of brief class discussions when you know the students aren't going to make it through multiple essays, but you'd like them to have some familiarity with readings of the poem. Maybe I should look for or do something similar for some Med/Ren works online. Is this associated with the journal entitled Modern American Poetry by chance? I can't remember where that comes out of, since it's outside my field. 

Anyway, I was interested to find that in the final essay Charlson, like me, found the voice in the poem in places like the voice "perhaps of the history teacher, briskly and unapologetically moving his class from one example to the next." I think he really sums it up best though, when he writes in the opening of his paper, "Hecht's lyric voice is neither that of the objective historian nor the subjectively striving voice of individual expression; somewhere in between." I think this is a poem that is extreemely deft in the way it balances a sense of detachment and a sense of the devastatingly personal. It allows us to be just detached enough to see how grossly horrific it is, and just human enough to have the horror affect us on an individual level.

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## The Unnamable

PL,
Thank God that someone else can see the enormous power of this poem. You ask, How could anyone describe the things this poem deals with and not have their language come across as hopelessly ineffective to deal with such things? . A good question and one that most writers on the Shoah must ask. Both Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel adopt a similar method to the one Hecht uses  they try to present the facts with little commentary (Levi does this more consistently than Wiesel but _Night_ is still a powerful and important piece of writing). The events speak for themselves. Both Levi and Wiesel were prisoners in the camps so the urge to scream out at the almost inexpressible injustice and horror of it all must have been far greater than anything I feel.

I agree with almost all of what you say and this isnt nitpicking for the sake of it but when you say that nothing has changed, I would argue that, horribly, it has. Which one of the deaths in the poem strikes people as the worst and why?

As T S Eliot wrote, After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

A number of years ago, a British TV Arts programme called _The South Bank Show_ covered Henryk Góreckis _Symphony of Sorrowful Songs_. In an interview he talked about the second movement, which is based on a message he discovered scrawled on a Gestapo prison cell wall in 1944 by an 18-year-old girl Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna: 

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Help me always.
Hail Mary. 

He said that he found it both profoundly moving and humbling. I guess he lacked a sense of its melodramatic, maudlin qualities. In the midst of all this unspeakable horror, the graffiti was not an impassioned expression of outrage for the evil being inflicted upon her and her family, nor a threat of revenge but something gentle, loving and unassuming. - I feel sick as Im typing this  itsno matter

_The South Bank Show_ documentary included the inevitable footage of the piles of emaciated and brutalised corpses as well as images of mass famine and gassed Kurds. In the days following transmission, some British newspapers printed letters they had received from viewers of the programme. A number of people had written in to complain that the programme had forever spoiled for them what they had previously considered to be a beautiful piece of music. Where do you start? 

Textual note: The first line of stanza three should read, and by no means one of the worst;

God, I needed the bathos of that last addition.

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## ktd222

> This poem attempts to describe events that are so horrific that faith in even the most simple good is shaken. The little lines that we cling to--little religious phrases, prayers, poetry, whatever it is--to help us face the worst in life are in danger of becoming completely obliterated. The "kindly light" is a simple phrase, so simple we just accept it as a basic truth. I don't think such prases are maudlin in this context. Instead they demonstate the hideous inadequacy of something that seems so basic and true to deal with such an overwhelming situation, just as the Polish man is unable to hold fast to even such a basic conviction as not wanting to bury another alive. How could anyone describe the things this poem deals with and not have their language come across as hopelessly ineffective to deal with such things?


Do you know what is so horrific about the second ritual that it drains the faith of the Jews? It's the 'casual' way in which the ritual is performed. Not in the name of God. Not because the person being condemned has acted in opposition to a divine set of laws. Just for the amusement of the Nazi guards.
A ritual without a religious function. How does one plead that they've done nothing to go in opposition to their God's laws if the ritual is without a religious basis? This is the very thing that the poem portrays to me. 

Side note: There is a passiveness recognizable in the latter ritual. As if it's not the guards themeselves that are carrying out these murders but parts of their uniform. Does this make sense to anyone? 




> This poem brings two specific incidents out into the light, forcing us to consider them in hideous detail and to realize that in the time that seperates them nothing has changed.


I think the basis of the latter ritual is what makes it more horrific: because not only are we to consider a physical pain, but also a pshycological 'pain' as well.

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## The Unnamable

> Just for the amusement of the Nazi guards.


Also, to prove a point? The Pole initially refuses to carry out such an atrocity  our sense of humanity takes a last stand against evil. There is a shred of decency left and I am sure we would all like to think that we would refuse in the same position. Then, as PL said, that shred is obliterated. 




> it's not the guards themeselves that are carrying out these murders but parts of their uniform. Does this make sense to anyone?


Yes  The dehumanization is complete  even the guard is metonymically identified only as his Luger. -Edward Hirsch

There is a poem by Thom Gunn called _Innocence_ that deals with this dehumanisation by war. If anyone has it, please post it or send it me. I dont have a copy here.

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## Virgil

Well, I knew I wasn't going to be on anyone's Christmas card list with my post.

If picking an emotional subject is all it takes to write a great poem, then why don't we all write a poem about how Saddam Hussien gased the Kurds and we could all be published and great poets. Just selecting a Nazi horror scenario does not make a great poem. It's what you do with it. The "Crow" poem a few weeks back and just by memory I'm thinking of Sylvia Plath's "Mary's Song", also on similar subjects are way more artful than this. Frankly I don't see anyone talking about the poetics. You are all mesmorized by the subject. I remember writing a similarly emotionally charged poem when I was an undergrad in college, and frankly it was crap. But I picked a subject along these lines. Am I a great poet?




> A movie, eh? Did you know, Virgil, that Hecht based this part of the poem on an actual documented incident that happened near Buchenwald?


Actually I suspected it, although I wasn't 100% sure. I remember seeing a documentary on the event. So what? It's what the poet does with it, otherwise I can filter through history and find lots of subject matter for poetry.




> Having just read a poem I thought of as bleak, stark, and overwhelming I was amazed to see Virgil's response describing it as "maudlin," since this seemed so very much the reverse of my initial response. Having looked over the poem again I think I understood what Virg. meant about such lines as the "kindly light" having the ring of a text like a catechism. If there are some "maudlin" means of expression present though (and I don't think the diction of the poem generally could be characterized as maudlin) I would still interpret them very differently.


Even "quivering chin?" Urgghh!




> The "kindly light" is a simple phrase, so simple we just accept it as a basic truth.


In what way? It's a personification of light. To personify inanimate things is a poetic strategy, but to endow them with emotion is rediculous. If that is the point of the poem and it was the only emotional stretch, I could accept it, but the poem is filled with melodrama.




> How could anyone describe the things this poem deals with and not have their language come across as hopelessly ineffective to deal with such things?


So if I find other examples of poems that deal with horrific events and the poet finds the proper poetic language to express it, you'll admit your statement is wrong? It is a cop-out to claim that the subject matter is so horrific that he's forced as his only alternative to resort to maudlin, trite expressions.




> As T S Eliot wrote, After such knowledge, what forgiveness?


Now there's a poet. I would love to compare Eliot to this.

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## Virgil

> Do you know what is so horrific about the second ritual that it drains the faith of the Jews? It's the 'casual' way in which the ritual is performed. Not in the name of God. Not because the person being condemned has acted in opposition to a divine set of laws. Just for the amusement of the Nazi guards.
> A ritual without a religious function. How does one plead that they've done nothing to go in opposition to their God's laws if the ritual is without a religious basis? This is the very thing that the poem portrays to me.


I can almost buy into this. I see your point. It is a Godless ritual, isn't it. Perhaps if you fleshed this idea out more you might salvage some of this poem for me. But it's going to be hard to overcome "quivering chin."

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## The Unnamable

Virgil, I have no desire to change your mind over this poem  think what you wish about it, I really dont care. However, for the sake of anyone reading this section of the thread, I think your assumptions, reasoning and reading should be firmly challenged. I think this is an important poem and have used it with students in the past. Id hate to think that future students might have only your unchallenged views to consider when they research the poem. I will, therefore, respond to the things youve said.




> *If picking an emotional subject is all it takes to write a great poem*, then why don't we all write a poem about how Saddam Hussien gased the Kurds and we could all be published and great poets.


No one has said this  if you argument has to rely on such facile misrepresentation, then you are off to a poor start.




> Just selecting a Nazi horror scenario does not make a great poem.


I repeat  no one has said it does. If you are saying that Hecht has done nothing more than simply select a Nazi scenario, then you are wrong. _You_ might not have noticed his skill but that certainly doesnt mean that it isnt there.




> It's what you do with it. The "Crow" poem a few weeks back and just by memory I'm thinking of Sylvia Plath's "Mary's Song", also on similar subjects are way more artful than this. Frankly I don't see anyone talking about the poetics. You are all mesmorized by the subject.


None of the three people who posted comments before this response of yours (your all must refer to us) is mesmerised by the subject and your accusation that we are is crass. You then add that you dont see anyone talking about the poetics. First of all, I posted a link to some criticism that does that more than adequately and therefore saw little point in adding my own. If it generates further questions or analysis, thats fine. Secondly, this poem is so powerful that counting the number of syllables and compartmentalising it into neat sections (an activity I know you value highly) seems not only an inadequate way of responding to the poem but also, if taken as the sole criteria by which it should be judged, positively inane.




> I remember writing a similarly emotionally charged poem when I was an undergrad in college, and frankly it was crap. But I picked a subject along these lines. Am I a great poet?


Let me get this right  _you_ wrote a poem similar in emotional intensity to this when you were an undergraduate? Yes, and I once built a nuclear generator in my dads garden shed for a science classes. It didnt actually work but it was very similar to ones that do.




> Actually I suspected it, although I wasn't 100% sure. I remember seeing a documentary on the event. So what? It's what the poet does with it, otherwise I can filter through history and find lots of subject matter for poetry.


When you saw the documentary to which you refer, did you think to yourself, Melodrama  might make a great movie  a maudlin movie? 




> Even "quivering chin?" Urgghh!


The point is that Hecht has deliberately focused on this image  the victims are reduced to something less than whole people. In this case the man is reduced to his fear; it's all that's left of him  its part of the dehumanisation Hecht is showing us. Your inability to see it as anything other than melodramatic is _your_ failure, not the poets. 




> In what way? It's a personification of light. To personify inanimate things is a poetic strategy, but to endow them with emotion is rediculous.


Why is it any more ridiculous than personification _per se_? I assume because personification is a technical label that you have been trained to accept as a legitimate poetic strategy. Besides, the phrase is a religious one, which is how it is being used in this context. It appears in hymns and Im sure there are Christians on the Forum who could give precise references for other examples of its use.




> It is a cop-out to claim that the subject matter is so horrific that he's forced as his only alternative to resort to maudlin, trite expressions.


Who is claiming this? Im not, PL isnt, nor is ktd222. The point is that such an intensely emotionally charged piece must work harder than usual to avoid being maudlin or melodramatic. This is precisely why I mentioned Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. They, like Hecht in my opinion, succeed. Once again, the fact that you have to resort to misrepresenting what has been said only demonstrates the ineptitude of your reasoning.




> Now there's a poet. I would love to compare Eliot to this.


I find it quite sad that you have to resort to such tactics as this  my poet is better than your poet! Besides, if you display the same insensitivity to Eliot that you demonstrate in your comments on Hecht, I doubt the comparison would achieve much.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

While I can appreciate Virgil's POV, and think that TU was unjustly harsh on him, I must say that I agree with most of the comments above. The poem is far more than mere melodrama. I hadn't read it before and initially found it disturbing but lacking in emotional depth - I have since revised this view. TU's comments about maintaining a sense of detachment, to whit, presenting the facts _as_ facts, without additional colouration, make sense to me. The subject matter is _so_ brutal and shocking that any attempt to exagerrate it would be impossible or callous; all analogies and similes would be pale substitutes for the reality of the scenes described.

It is moving and horrific but the juxtaposition of the two scenes works well. I disagree that they show that 'nothing has changed' - there is an added layer of dehumanisation in the nazi scene that is absent in the earlier one - all dignity, humanity and hope is removed from the Pole prior to his death - the heretic is only killed, horribly killed, but ultimately, _only_ killed.

I can't say I like this poem. But I doubt its purpose is to be liked.

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## Virgil

> Virgil, I have no desire to change your mind over this poem  think what you wish about it, I really dont care. However, for the sake of anyone reading this section of the thread, I think your assumptions, reasoning and reading should be firmly challenged. I think this is an important poem and have used it with students in the past. Id hate to think that future students might have only your unchallenged views to consider when they research the poem.


That's fine. I don't expect to change anyone's mind. It's a politically correct subject, and it takes a lot of pursuading power, of which I'm either wrong (so be it) or I don't have the ability.




> I repeat  no one has said it does. If you are saying that Hecht has done nothing more than simply select a Nazi scenario, then you are wrong. You might not have noticed his skill but that certainly doesnt mean that it isnt there.


Frankly other than KTD, I'm the only person who has pointed to aspects of the poetry. You're "Wow" in your first post didn't do it for me. I said there are elements to the poem which are good, and if no one points it out later in the week, I will. 




> None of the three people who posted comments before this response of yours (your all must refer to us) is mesmerised by the subject and your accusation that we are is crass. You then add that you dont see anyone talking about the poetics. First of all, I posted a link to some criticism that does that more than adequately and therefore saw little point in adding my own.


Actually KTD has been fairly objective. No I didn't read the web site, if I get a chancce I will. But let me tell you, I'm not into group think. I know that criticism comes and goes. My master's thesis was on D.H. Lawrence and I can tell you critics got him horribly wrong for the first several decades after his death. Except for a stray comment or two, it's not worth reading any Lawrentain schorlarship published before the late sixties. So if they can be wrong about him and ultimately revise their thinking, a bunch of critics can be wrong about the Hecht poem. What is it you call it - ideology? I'm being as honest in my reading as posible. what's your fear, I may pursuade somebody?




> Let me get this right  you wrote a poem similar in emotional intensity to...


No, I said emotionally charged.




> Yes, and I once built a nuclear generator in my dads garden shed for a science classes. It didnt actually work but it was very similar to ones that do.


  :FRlol:  That's funny. But you're not going to get me angry at you. I've seen your face now and you're not that intimidating.  :Wink:  




> When you saw the documentary to which you refer, did you think to yourself, Melodrama  might make a great movie  a maudlin movie?


No, the form and aethetics were quite different. Same thing applies to your Levi and Weisell comment.




> Who is claiming this? Im not, PL isnt, nor is ktd222.


What are you talking about. I quoted Petrarch making that claim right above my comment.




> It appears in hymns and Im sure there are Christians on the Forum who could give precise references for other examples of its use.


And I'm sure they're quite sincere and I'm sure Hecht is quite sincere. However it's still trite as poetry goes.




> I find it quite sad that you have to resort to such tactics as this  my poet is better than your poet!


Oh come on, that's not what I'm doing. Comparison is a critical method.




> God, I needed the bathos of that last addition.


Frankly I do think you wallow in bathos. A Freudian would have a field day with you.

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## Virgil

> TU's comments about maintaining a sense of detachment, to whit, presenting the facts _as_ facts, without additional colouration, make sense to me.


But that's not correct. He is coloring the narrative: "howled for the Kindly Light", "pitful dignity", "drained away their souls", "quivering chin". That's part of what's problematic.

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## The Unnamable

> what's your fear, I may pursuade somebody?


I think thats something I need never worry about.

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## Petrarch's Love

> If picking an emotional subject is all it takes to write a great poem, then why don't we all write a poem about how Saddam Hussien gased the Kurds and we could all be published and great poets. Just selecting a Nazi horror scenario does not make a great poem. It's what you do with it. The "Crow" poem a few weeks back and just by memory I'm thinking of Sylvia Plath's "Mary's Song", also on similar subjects are way more artful than this. Frankly I don't see anyone talking about the poetics. You are all mesmorized by the subject. I remember writing a similarly emotionally charged poem when I was an undergrad in college, and frankly it was crap. But I picked a subject along these lines. Am I a great poet?


Virgil--I know that you had a very different reaction to this poem than I and some others did, but that doesn't mean you can assume that I, or anyone else is "mesmorized" by the subject to the extent that we can no longer be objective about the poem's merits as a literary work. I'm not going to say I didn't have a deeply emotional reaction to this poem, but I have a deeply emotional reaction to most good poetry I can think of. That's part of the purpose of poetry. I've certainly read other poems on this, or some similarly horrific subject which I have not felt were so moving and powerful as this one. I can think of things I've read which I have definately thought of as "melodramatic" or "maudlin" and which I am conscious of as depending upon a sensationalist quality to move the reader. If I had thought this poem fell into that category I would have had no problem making a statement to the effect that, while I found the subject a powerful and difficult one well worth our remembrance, I did not find the poetry itself very interesting. This was not the case with this poem for me. It may not be the most artistically brilliant poem I've ever come across, but I don't think it's lacking in artistic merit, or that it's basing itself upon melodrama. 



> Frankly other than KTD, I'm the only person who has pointed to aspects of the poetry.


I thought that I had begun addressing some of the poetic elements of this poem when I examined Hecht's use of the phrase "kindly light" and attempted to analyse the nature of the voice in the narrative, but you seem to claim I've been avoiding the poetics entirely in some sort of blindly overemotional response, so I'll try again:




> So if I find other examples of poems that deal with horrific events and the poet finds the proper poetic language to express it, you'll admit your statement is wrong? It is a cop-out to claim that the subject matter is so horrific that he's forced as his only alternative to resort to maudlin, trite expressions.


You've missed my point entirely. I was not trying to claim that he is "forced as his only alternative to resort to maudlin, trite expressions." I was trying to say that he is intentionally using expressions that we might think of as trite, truisms in our day to day life, but using them in the context of some truly horrific events. I was interested in the way he is employing his language to create a certain effect. A phrase like the "kindly light," which comes from the refrain of a popular hymn, as well as having been used in much devotional poetry, only seems trite to us because it's something we take for granted as something we've hear over and over. In situations of extreeme horror, even situations of deep personal grief when a person doubts everything they had ever taken for granted as good in the world, such "trite" phrases suddenly take on new meaning. Have you ever noticed that Christians who pray when they are upset and afraid almost enevitably turn to the Lord's Prayer? They don't go into some long poetic discourse, they turn back to the simplicity of the words they learned by rote in Sunday school (I'm sure there are similar equivilants for other religions, I'm just not as familiar with other traditions). In a poem which revolves around the question of whether we can hold on to those good things we take for granted, I think the use of phrases we take for granted gives the poem a particular power and simplicity.  Rather than trying to be more conspicously artful, which I think might come across as maudlin, Hecht chooses to employ sparing, simple phrases carefully juxtoposed with cold, hard fact. 




> Even "quivering chin?" Urgghh!


Yes, even "quivering chin." I'm not going to say it's my favorite line in the poem or anything, but I don't find it as awful as you do. Or maybe I should say that I do find it awful, but in a different way. It's a phrase which, on its own I can entirely see you labelling as melodramatic, but I find in the context of the poem that it comes off differently. It serves to break the momentum of the stanza. In the line before we've just heard that "much casual death had drained away their souls." I think a lot of people writing such a poem might have either stopped the thought with that line or tried in some way to go on describing what that means. The absurdly pitiful, almost maudlin, character of the phrase "quivering chin" insists upon bringing the poem back again to a baser level. What anyone would crave at this point in the description of a person being buried alive is the relief of some sort of elevation, some sort of larger perspective--maybe a further comment on the souls of the two jews, maybe some sort of narrative commentary--as a relief from the intensity of the situation. What we get instead is an extreme close up of a "quivering chin," that might, anywhere else seem almost comical. I think that the absurd, really ridiculous quality of the phrase reflects something absurd and repulsively ridiculous present in the scene itself. 




> Do you know what is so horrific about the second ritual that it drains the faith of the Jews? It's the 'casual' way in which the ritual is performed. Not in the name of God. Not because the person being condemned has acted in opposition to a divine set of laws. Just for the amusement of the Nazi guards.
> A ritual without a religious function. How does one plead that they've done nothing to go in opposition to their God's laws if the ritual is without a religious basis? This is the very thing that the poem portrays to me.


I think KTD is on to something by saying the big difference between the episodes is the religious justification. I also think she's highlighting something important in saying that the "casual" nature of the Nazi episode is what gives it a greater sense of horror. I think the "casual" is very much at the heart of this poem--what we think of casually, what we say casually and what we say and do with true conviction. This is what I've been trying to get at in discussing the use of "trite" or "cliche" language in this poem. It is the language of religion, of sympathy, of human kindness which normally we _casually_ take for granted that is at stake in this poem. There has been a reversal in this poem. Death is now the thing described of as "casual" and the belief in "light" of any kind is no longer something that can be casually asserted. The poem denies us the balm of an elevated language, forcing us to struggle to maintain even the most basic and cliched terms--things we just assume are safe and thus not worth considering--in the face of monstrous fact. 




> Side note: There is a passiveness recognizable in the latter ritual. As if it's not the guards themeselves that are carrying out these murders but parts of their uniform. Does this make sense to anyone?


Yes, KTD I had noticed that. There are some interesting perspectives on that in the essays Unnamable posted the link to. One critic read this as encouraging us to identify with the Nazi perpetrators. I had not immediately read it in that light myself, but when you think about it, this poem could very easily be seen from the perspective of the Nazi holding the lugar. All we really see of him is the gloved hand and the boot, just the way you would see yourself during this scene. I think it's interesting that everyone seems to assume there is more than one guard. Unless I missed something, there's no indication that there isn't just one single Nazi perpetrator.

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## kilted exile

Ok, I normally keep myself out of replying to these threads (never actually studied literature/poetry - only small knowledge about terminology etc), however I do read them - when I can follow what you are all talking about  :Wink:  

However, I have to say I really enjoyed this weeks poem. I disagree with Virgil I dont see it as trite at all, and I like the "quivering chin" image it allows me to visualize it perfectly.

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## Shanna

> Why do I get the feeling that Shanna is Unnamable under a different log in?


Perhaps because we are both equally incomprehensible to you?




> Unfortuantely Hecht is striving for melodrama.


Why do I get the feeling so often that you are talking out of your hat?




> And even the narrative: The Pole switches places with the Jews, they bury him to his neck, they dig him out, and then he buries the Jews, and then *they* shoot him. Would make a great movie, a maudlin movie.


Incidentally, Virgil, _they_ do not shoot him. _They_ are the two Jews, who by this time have been buried alive. So who shoots the Pole, Virgil? Surprise! _Its the German officer!_ Bet you didn't realise there was a fourth character in the picture, did you? Who do you think has been holding the gun in his hand the whole time? Who do you think has been giving all these orders? Please re-read the poem on the basis of this last enlightening bit of information. I have nothing else to say to you. I just told you because I figured: if you're _going_ to be slinging insults at something, you _might as well_ know what its about, right?

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## ktd222

> Incidentally, Virgil, _they_ do not shoot him. _They_ are the two Jews, who by this time have been buried alive. So who shoots the Pole, Virgil? Surprise! _Its the German officer!_ Bet you didn't realise there was a fourth character in the picture, did you? Who do you think has been holding the gun in his hand the whole time? Who do you think has been giving all these orders? Please re-read the poem on the basis of this last enlightening bit of information. I have nothing else to say to you. I just told you because I figured: if you're _going_ to be slinging insults at something, you _might as well_ know what its about, right?


I don't think we're given any indication that anyone has been buried alive.
The Luger shoots the Pole, not the officer. The Luger is in the Glove, and the Glove is not specified to be worn by anyone.
A Voice gives the orders, again, not specified whom the Voice belongs to.

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## Shanna

*Lu·ger* n. 
A German semiautomatic pistol introduced before World War I and widely used by German troops in World War II.

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## The Unnamable

Do you really believe this, *ktd222*? I mean, do you think that the gun itself rather than the person firing it should face a trial? Perhaps you think the glove is a disembodied entity floating around in space? Are malicious gloves the real reason for the extermination of six million human beings in gas chambers?

Apparently, there was a pair of satin mittens in the dock at Nuremberg.

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## ktd222

> *Lu·ger* n. 
> A German semiautomatic pistol introduced before World War I and widely used by German troops in World War II.


So what? If Hecht did not say the German soldier was holding the Luger then how are you suppose to know? Hecht is introducing a passiveness for a reason.

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## Shanna

> Do you really believe this, *ktd222*? I mean, do you think that the gun itself rather than the person firing it should face a trial? Perhaps you think the glove is a disembodied entity floating around in space? Are malicious gloves the real reason for the extermination of six million human beings in gas chambers?
> 
> Apparently, there was a pair of satin mittens in the dock at Nuremberg.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:

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## Shanna

> So what? If Hecht did not say the German soldier was holding the Luger then how are you suppose to know? Hecht is introducing a passiveness for a reason.


Have you heard of the term 'metonymy'?

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## ktd222

> Do you really believe this, *ktd222*? I mean, do you think that the gun itself rather than the person firing it should face a trial? Perhaps you think the glove is a disembodied entity floating around in space? Are malicious gloves the real reason for the extermination of six million human beings in gas chambers?
> 
> Apparently, there was a pair of satin mittens in the dock at Nuremberg.


When did 'trial' come into play? I thought we are discussing the poetry introduced by Hecht in this poem.

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## ktd222

> Have you heard of the term 'metonymy'?


Yes. Have you heard of the word 'assumption' and the phrase 'use what your given'?

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## Shanna

> When did 'trial' come into play? I thought we are discussing the poetry introduced by Hecht in this poem.


Ah. Right. Of course.

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## Virgil

> Perhaps because we are both equally incomprehensible to you?
> 
> Why do I get the feeling so often that you are talking out of your hat?


Sorry to get offf on the wrong foot with you Shanna.
My first statement you quote, I was just being a little facetious. I don't think a little humor is that bad. The second quote I dispute. I gave quite a detailed presentation of my thinking, and frankly more detailed than anyone who likes the poem. If you wish to not talk out of *your*  hat, you should take point by point my arguemnets and refute them. I don't see you doing that.

Incidentally, Virgil, _they_ do not shoot him. _They_ are the two Jews, who by this time have been buried alive. So who shoots the Pole, Virgil? Surprise! _Its the German officer!_ Bet you didn't realise there was a fourth character in the picture, did you? Who do you think has been holding the gun in his hand the whole time? Who do you think has been giving all these orders? Please re-read the poem on the basis of this last enlightening bit of information. I have nothing else to say to you. I just told you because I figured: if you're _going_ to be slinging insults at something, you _might as well_ know what its about, right?
Sorry if I messed up the antecedants of my pronouns. I am quite aware there is at least one Nazi (I prefer to use that term rather than German; I don't wish to disparge a whole people) officer. I don't think I flung any insults at the poem. I said there were good elements to it that if no one points out by the end of the week I will. I said I am in sympathy with Hecht's moral point. It's just my appraisal of the poem is not as high as everyone else's.

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## ktd222

> Sorry to get offf on the wrong foot with you Shanna.
> My first statement you quote, I was just being a little facetious. I don't think a little humor is that bad. The second quote I dispute. I gave quite a detailed presentation of my thinking, and frankly more detailed than anyone who likes the poem. If you wish to not talk out of *your*  hat, you should take point by point my arguemnets and refute them. I don't see you doing that.


Hey, its only Tuesday.

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## The Unnamable

> So what? If Hecht did not say the German soldier was holding the Luger then how are you suppose to know? Hecht is introducing a passiveness for a reason.


Okay, I can see where you are coming from but you are pushing it to ridiculous extremes. It doesnt say that a one-armed Colobus monkey from Glasgow is holding the gun, either. Should we consider it as a serious possibility?

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## Virgil

> Do you really believe this, *ktd222*? I mean, do you think that the gun itself rather than the person firing it should face a trial? Perhaps you think the glove is a disembodied entity floating around in space? Are malicious gloves the real reason for the extermination of six million human beings in gas chambers?
> 
> Apparently, there was a pair of satin mittens in the dock at Nuremberg.


That being said, ktd does have a point. I don't know the significance of why Hecht phrases it this way (and given all the melodram I point out in the poem, it is not beyond question to think that this is more melodrama, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now) but it is very consciously done.

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## ktd222

> Okay, I can see where you are coming from but you are pushing it to ridiculous extremes. It doesnt say that a one-armed Colobus monkey from Glasgow is holding the gun, either. Should we consider it as a serious possibility?


I'm just trying to see what Hecht has created by doing this.
Maybe it does have to do with the Nazi soldier, but to a lesser extent, or else he would have included the Nazi with a more prominent role in the poem, say, the actual body of the Nazi?

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## Shanna

> That being said, ktd does have a point. I don't know the significance of why Hecht phrases it this way (and given all the melodram I point out in the poem, it is not beyond question to think that this is more melodrama, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now) but it is very consciously done.


I'm still trying to work out what you could possibly mean by an argument as garbled as this.

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## The Unnamable

> I'm just trying to see what Hecht has created by doing this.


Your question has already been answered above. He uses metonymy for a reason. This is Ellen Miller Casey, not Shanna:

It condemns the German soldier by its amazing use of metonymy and the passive voice. The soldier is a void, to be inferred only from a Luger and its glove and a riding boot.

Like a nicely fitting glove, that pretty much covers it. The officer has no shred of humanity  he is nothing more than the murderous ideology represented by the uniform in which he stands. He has become something less than human. Besides, if you were the Pole, what would you look at?

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## Shanna

> Would make a great movie, a maudlin movie. And it might not be a bad movie, but a movie or a novel has space to develop character and in the words of one of my creative writing teachers "earn" the emotion. That's why Tolstoy in his large novels can get away with melodrama, there is enough space to develop it. And that's why a greeting card sounds so trite, there is no space to develop, I prefer to use the word "earn", the emotion. Here in 32 lines you have not one, but two vague stick figure melodramas that don't earn the emotion that's packed here.


Exactly WHAT MELODRAMA are you going on about? And no, a greeting card does not sound trite because there is no space for development, you could have it go on for miles and it would still be as nauseating. It is trite because the idea at its core is a cliche, because it is based entirely on cheap values. There _is_ no emotion packed there. It is hollow. It is not the volume of poetry that overcomes that limitation, but an awareness of the abyss between what is genuine and what is contrived. You, obviously, don't have any such awareness, so exactly _what_ right do you have to call Hecht's poem trite?

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## The Unnamable

If you are still there, *kilted exile*, the Colobus monkey from Glasgow was not in any way meant as a slur on your good self.  :Biggrin:

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## ktd222

> Your question has already been answered above. He uses metonymy for a reason. This is Ellen Miller Casey, not Shanna:
> 
> It condemns the German soldier by its amazing use of metonymy and the passive voice. The soldier is a void, to be inferred only from a Luger and its glove and a riding boot.
> 
> Like a nicely fitting glove, that pretty much covers it. The officer has no shred of humanity  he is nothing more than the murderous ideology represented by the uniform in which he stands. He has become something less than human. Besides, if you were the Pole, what would you look at?


I don't see him just condemning the soldierl. I see the 'act', and yes, I see how horrible it is, but I don't see the Nazi soldier as part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem. This may be more of the poem's purpose:

_No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot._

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## The Unnamable

> I don't know the significance of why Hecht phrases it this way


Now _that_, I agree with. 




> and given all the melodram *I point out* in the poem,


  :FRlol:  You gotta love it.

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## The Unnamable

> I don't see the Nazi soldier as part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem.


You dont think Hecht has any beef with Nazis?  :Eek2:

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## ktd222

> You dont think Hecht has any beef with Nazis?


I don't care. I don't think he cares about the Nazis, at least not in this poem. I think he only cares about the victims.

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## Shanna

> Except for a stray comment or two, it's not worth reading any Lawrentain schorlarship published before the late sixties. So if they can be wrong about him and ultimately revise their thinking, *a bunch of critics can be wrong about the Hecht poem*. What is it you call it - ideology?


Oh, and I take it you're the best judge of that? 
_That_ is the full extent of your argument? If they were wrong about Lawrence, they can sure as hell be wrong about Hecht - and that's supposed to convince anyone here?



> what's your fear, I may pursuade somebody?


 :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:

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## The Unnamable

> I don't care. I don't think he cares about the Nazis, at least not in this poem. I think he only cares about the victims.


He might not care _for_ them but he certainly cares _about_ them.

When in a hole....

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## ktd222

> He might not care _for_ them but he certainly cares _about_ them.
> 
> When in a hole....


Not in this poem.

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## ShoutGrace

> I don't see him just condemning the soldierl. I see the 'act', and yes, I see how horrible it is, but I don't see the Nazi soldier as part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem. This may be more of the poem's purpose:
> 
> _No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
> Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
> Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
> And settled upon his eyes in a black soot._


I agree with this. I think that the Nazi soldier plays a part just as the others, but part of the poem's purpose - and the aspect that struck me most forcefully - is the description (accusation?) of the fact that not only was the act allowed, without any 'saving' light, but that the act was also 'unremembered', almost. Unremembered is not the word I want to use, however. 'No prayers or incense rose. . . '. There is a word which sums up that feeling but my head isn't working right now.

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## Shanna

> Unremembered is not the word I want to use, however. 'No prayers or incense rose. . . '. There is a word which sums up that feeling but my head isn't working right now.


Dictionary.com says there is no such word as 'uncommemorated', which I find funny.

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## Xamonas Chegwe

> Dictionary.com says there is no such word as 'uncommemorated', which I find funny.


I think there used to be such a word but nobody bothered to write down anything about it. It's buried in an unmarked sentence somewhere.

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## ShoutGrace

> I think there used to be such a word but nobody bothered to write down anything about it. It's buried in an unmarked sentence somewhere.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:  





> Dictionary.com says there is no such word as 'uncommemorated', which I find funny.


So do you agree, Shanna? With my thought, that is.

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## Shanna

There lies the difference between the two incidents described in the poem, and perhaps the purpose of the juxtaposition - that in the first, there are people around who ensure that the burning man was:

Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;
And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,
That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility.

Whereas in the second incident, there's no one. The Pole bled to death alone, unremembered, uncommemorated, nobody prayed for his soul and his body lay there for years afterwards, gathering soot. PL, in her first or second post about this poem, said somewhere that nothing's changed, in all these years. But I think the poet's point is that it _has_ changed. Its grown worse.

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## The Unnamable

*ktd222*, do I have this right? In _this_ poem Hecht doesnt care about the Nazi soldier? The fact that he has portrayed him as behaving with almost incomprehensible, unfathomable cruelty should not be taken as any indication that, _in this particular poem_ (which Hecht has dedicated to Hannah Arendt), he is at all concerned with his behaviour? Is the soldier in any way responsible for his actions? Is he merely a victim of Nazi ideology, just like the people he buries alive or shoots?

*Shout Grace*,
You agree with ktd222s comments (at least the ones you quoted). You also don't see the Nazi soldier as part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem. My own explanation for those last four lines appears to be different from yours (I think  Im not really sure what you are saying). I think that there are no prayers or incense because there is no loving God. At the risk of offering more trite, maudlin and melodramatic bathos that only serves to demonstrate my desperate need for psychiatric treatment (an ad hominem comment that our reliable mods appear to have missed), Ill quote Elie Wiesels _Night_:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my Faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. 

Elie Wiesel _Night_

Obviously, Hecht isnt simply saying that all the evil in the world is the result of one lone Nazi soldier - but surely you cant believe that the poet ignores or even exonerates him? Of course its not about blaming an individual soldier  Hecht doesnt individualise him, but to say that the Nazi soldier is not a part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem is rather extreme, wouldnt you say?

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## ktd222

I think we've all keyed on one of the poetic elements in use in this poem: passive voice. In this way, Hecht is able to focus our attention on the vivid horror in detail about what the Jews had to grow through, and at the same time, exclude the perpetrator from this act, as far as 'face time' and our attention is concerned. At first reading I also saw Nazis associated with these torturings being carring out on the Jews, but after further re-readings I found the Nazi(edit) purposefully absent from the poem. I obviously can't identify(emotionally) with a boot, or luger, or eye, but I can definitley identify with human beings.

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## ShoutGrace

> Obviously, Hecht isnt simply saying that all the evil in the world is the result of one lone Nazi soldier - but surely you cant believe that the poet ignores or even exonerates him? Of course its not about blaming an individual soldier  Hecht doesnt individualise him, but to say that the Nazi soldier is not a part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem is rather extreme, wouldnt you say?


I think that it would be. I more than likely misrelated my thoughts. I was saying that in my reading of the poem, the fact that the divine intervention did not occur, that no 'saving' interference burst through and onto the scene, and the author's reiteration of that fact, are what affected me most deeply. 




> I think that there are no prayers or incense because there is no loving God.


As it relates to the author's intent, right? Meaning that both Hecht (implicitly), and Wiesel (explicitly), declared the absence (or disproof?) of God in these two works?


---EDIT--- Oh, are you saying that the 'prayers and incense' constitutes the act of divine interference that never took place?




> Yes, the thrust of this poem is not based on the concerns about the Nazi soldier.


I think that I do agree with that. I think that the author is 'calling out' both the acts and the lack of providence. At least more so than the soldier.

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## ktd222

> *ktd222*, do I have this right? In _this_ poem Hecht doesnt care about the Nazi soldier? The fact that he has portrayed him as behaving with almost incomprehensible, unfathomable cruelty should not be taken as any indication that, _in this particular poem_ (which Hecht has dedicated to Hannah Arendt), he is at all concerned with his behaviour? Is the soldier in any way responsible for his actions? Is he merely a victim of Nazi ideology, just like the people he buries alive or shoots?


Yes, the thrust of this poem is not based on the concerns about the Nazi soldier.

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## Scheherazade

> *More Light! More Light!*
> _For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt_
> 
> Composed in the Tower before his execution
> These moving verses, and being brought at that time
> Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
> "I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."
> 
> Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
> ...


Moving the poem to the present page.

This is the first time I come across this poem so without any prior impressions: I find this poem somewhat detached but not lacking commitment or emotional depth. It makes me feel as if I am looking at some photos or watching those events through some camera lens; seeing only where camera is directed (the glove, the lugger, the boot, the chin, blistered legs...). Of course, there is someone holding that camera and my view of the scenes are limited with their directions.

Even though as a 'viewer', we can only see the things Hecht is pointing at, I don't think that he is putting the words into the reader's mouth either. I keep thinking that if I was watching this scene, this is how I would have described them had I been asked to be 'objective' (I am not claiming poetic grandiose here, which I have none, but simply saying that, in my opinion, the poet achieves to describe what he sees, without resorting to colourful adjectives etc). In the light of this description, I feel it is up to me, as a reader, to decide how I feel about all this and take a stand if necessary.

I agree with ktd that the change between the two scenes is very striking and one of the most noteworthy things in the poem, in my opinion. However, Hecht's purposeful detachment, while not lacking emotion, gets the first prize, I believe.

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## Virgil

> It condemns the German soldier by its amazing use of metonymy and the passive voice. The soldier is a void, to be inferred only from a Luger and its glove and a riding boot.
> 
> Like a nicely fitting glove, that pretty much covers it. The officer has no shred of humanity  he is nothing more than the murderous ideology represented by the uniform in which he stands. He has become something less than human. Besides, if you were the Pole, what would you look at?


I agree with this. Also the nice fitting glove suggests the efficiency of the Nazi.

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## Virgil

> Exactly WHAT MELODRAMA are you going on about? And no, a greeting card does not sound trite because there is no space for development, you could have it go on for miles and it would still be as nauseating. It is trite because the idea at its core is a cliche, because it is based entirely on cheap values.


Cheap values like love or honoring your mother or father or congratulating someone for a rite of passage? If you consider those cheap, I wonder what your core values are. They are trite becuase they have been deflated of individuality, not because they are cheap.

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## Virgil

> Obviously, Hecht isnt simply saying that all the evil in the world is the result of one lone Nazi soldier - but surely you cant believe that the poet ignores or even exonerates him? Of course its not about blaming an individual soldier  Hecht doesnt individualise him, but to say that the Nazi soldier is not a part of what Hecht is trying to convey in the poem is rather extreme, wouldnt you say?


ktd, I have to agree with Unnamable here. The Nazi soldier is part of the drama. But you know you had me thinking about the ritual aspect to the drama you brought up earlier. I'm beginning to agree. The drama has a feeling of a choreographed ritual. In a religious ritual, say like the conversion of bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ every Sunday morning, the power behind the ritual is the Godhead itself. In Hecht's little drama, the "god in the machine" if you will, the power behind the ritual, is not really the Nazi soldier, but the Luger. And so the image of the Luger is paramount to that of the soldier. 

I'm beginning to really like your understanding of what's transpiring as ritual.

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## Petrarch's Love

Since it's become an issue, I thought I'd quote my earlier response to KTD's initial mention of the disembodied nazi (I think the comments got lost in an overly long post in which I tried to respond to too much at once  :FRlol:  ):




> Yes, KTD I had noticed that. There are some interesting perspectives on that in the essays Unnamable posted the link to. One critic read this as encouraging us to identify with the Nazi perpetrator. I had not immediately read it in that light myself, but when you think about it, this poem could very easily be seen from the perspective of the Nazi holding the lugar. All we really see of him is the gloved hand and the boot, just the way you would see yourself during this scene. Imagine that this is being filmed. The camera, which you the reader are looking through, would be positioned from the point of view of the Nazi holding the lugar.


Whether you buy this argument or not I think it points to one reason for the minimalist description of the Nazi. Hecht doesn't want it to be an individual with a face who we can direct our hatred against. He's making it clear that the Nazi could be anyone who could wear a glove and boots. I think KTD is partly right in that this poem is not concerned with one individual Nazi soldier. It is, however, very much concened with Nazis (not chimps from Glasgow  :Biggrin: ).

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## Petrarch's Love

> Cheap values like love or honoring your mother or father or congratulating someone for a rite of passage? If you consider those cheap, I wonder what your core values are. They are trite becuase they have been deflated of individuality, not because they are cheap.


Virg--I think in your response to Shanna you've hit on what makes the "trite" phrases of this poem work. What I tried to argue earlier (at too long length?) was that it is not the individual phrase, but the context of the phrase that makes it "trite." In this poem these phrases are being individualized. They are brought to bear in the context of two situations where they represent the sorts of "core values" you describe. They are reinvested with the individuality and meaning that makes them significant rather than maudlin.

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## The Unnamable

> Yes, the thrust of this poem is not based on the concerns about the Nazi soldier.


To which question is yes a reply? You can play with semantics all you want but there is no doubt in my mind that Hecht is bothered by Nazis and I take the poems title to be significant. No one appears to have mentioned/ considered the title yet.

If you know some History, you will know that Weimar was considered the birthplace of Humanism. Goethes dying words (and I dont want to get into a debate about whether or not these actually were his dying words; Hecht has used them as if they were) are a plea for enlightened humanism but in this poem, there is no light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill. The poem insistently excludes the possibility of the moral light of either God or Humanism:

Not light from the shrine at Weimar
Nor light from heaven
No light, no light in the blue Polish eye
And settled upon his *eyes* in a *black soot*.

The light of humanism is not only denied but also replaced by physical and moral darkness. That this appalling event takes place near Weimar makes it all the more terrible in Hecht's eyes. The Nazis held rallies in the National Theatre at Weimar as early as the mid 1920s.




> Oh, are you saying that the 'prayers and incense' constitutes the act of divine interference that never took place?


Im saying that there _is_ no loving God  neither in the poem nor in my view of things. The world we inhabit is, as the comment from Kent in _King Lear_ goes, cheerless, dark and deadly.

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## Petrarch's Love

> I agree with almost all of what you say and this isnt nitpicking for the sake of it but when you say that nothing has changed, I would argue that, horribly, it has. Which one of the deaths in the poem strikes people as the worst and why?





> PL, in her first or second post about this poem, said somewhere that nothing's changed, in all these years. But I think the poet's point is that it has changed. Its grown worse.


Since this came up twice I thought I'd respond (that is unless Virg's suggestion that you're one and the same sticks  :Biggrin:  ). You're both right of course. In the context of the poem things have gotten worse. Maybe it would have occured to me to say so if I hadn't been reading Titus Andronicus for class at the time (it's been a cheery week of reading), but somehow in that context it seemed as though human nature itself hadn't changed as much as the efficiency of their methods. But I digress. You're absolutely right in the context of this poem, and I ought to have said as much. I think KTD is right in pointing to the lack of social and religious recognition as the key factor in setting up the second scene as even more horrific. I think there's also something more terrifying about the fact that it's psychologically and spiritually devastating. You always imagine that your comfort in such a situation would be that they can harm the body but never your inner core. In the Nazi situation the victims are stripped of everything.

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## Virgil

> Virg--I think in your response to Shanna you've hit on what makes the "trite" phrases of this poem work. What I tried to argue earlier (at too long length?) was that it is not the individual phrase, but the context of the phrase that makes it "trite." In this poem these phrases are being individualized. They are brought to bear in the context of two situations where they represent the sorts of "core values" you describe. They are reinvested with the individuality and meaning that makes them significant rather than maudlin.


Yes, I understood that when you made your argument before. However, I still think it's a cop-out on the poet's part to resort to trite phrases. The trite phrases may add this layer to the poem that you point out, but it's still not poetry, at least those phrases. He could have made the same point with original lines.

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## The Unnamable

> unless Virg's suggestion that you're one and the same sticks


Dont you start as well! Shanna is clever but, well

While Im here  you made an outrageous claim earlier that _everyone_ had assumed there was more than one Nazi  I didnt and I demand an apology. Also, a Colobus monkey is NOT a chimp. Chimps are apes  monkeys arent, although both are Primates. You should know that as an expert in Renaissance Literature. Why does everyone misquote me?

(Do I really need to use a smiley?)

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## Petrarch's Love

> He could have made the same point with original lines.


He could not have made the same point with original lines. Original lines would not have resonated within the reader in the same way, as things that we've heard over and over again. Using the title of a well known hymn is going to have a much different effect on someone who's familiar with that hymn than anything the poet could have come up with.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Dont you start as well! Shanna is clever but, well
> 
> While Im here  you made an outrageous claim earlier that everyone had assumed there was more than one Nazi  I didnt and I demand an apology.


Alas! I had no idea I'd fallen into the trap of generalization! Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! My apologies, since I obviously meant everyone except The Unnamable One.



> Also, a Colobus monkey is NOT a chimp. Chimps are apes  monkeys arent, although both are Primates.


And alas once more! Please pardon my innacuracy. I am but a humble mortal primate myself. 



> You should know that as an expert in Renaissance Literature. Why does everyone misquote me?


Because it's such fun?



> (Do I really need to use a smiley?)


No more than I do I hope.

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## ktd222

> To which question is yes a reply?





> ktd222, do I have this right? In this poem Hecht doesnt care about the Nazi soldier? The fact that he has portrayed him as behaving with almost incomprehensible, unfathomable cruelty should not be taken as any indication that, in this particular poem (which Hecht has dedicated to Hannah Arendt), he is at all concerned with his behaviour? Is the soldier in any way responsible for his actions? Is he merely a victim of Nazi ideology, just like the people he buries alive or shoots?


Aren't all of your questions here concerning the Nazi soldier?

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## Virgil

> He could not have made the same point with original lines. Original lines would not have resonated within the reader in the same way, as things that we've heard over and over again. Using the title of a well known hymn is going to have a much different effect on someone who's familiar with that hymn than anything the poet could have come up with.


I said I could have accepted "Kindly Light" if it was the only melodramatic phrase. But what about : "drained away their souls", "quivering chin", "pityful dignity"?

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## Shanna

> Dont you start as well! Shanna is clever but, well


BUT WELL _WHAT_, EXACTLY..?

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## Isagel

> I can't say I like this poem. But I doubt its purpose is to be liked.


At first I had the same reaction. I did not like this. I also found myself saying things like - "well, it gives a reaction, but is it really poetry? It seems like more like prose. And I am not sure if I think it is good". Now, don´t hit me. I have given it careful thought and I think that it was a reaction to the documentary style, but also something caused by the emotions of the poem. 
Hecht writes about things that are repulsive, and I think that my first response was a reaction to that. I was repulsed, and I guess that is what he wanted. 

We all like to believe in a kindly light, or some last dignity. In this poem as PL wrote there is none. 

If you have patience I will tell you an anecdote. It is related to the poem. 
I was traveling in Germany, and came across a small town. It was fit for a postcard. They made good wine there and we had to much before deciding to go and try to visit the castle on the hill. The castle was not for visitors, but on the way half hidden was a small grave yard. The sign said that this was a resting place all all who died during the second world war in this small town. Jews, soldiers, prisoners of war, children and adults. Side by side. There was a poem on the wall. It was about brothers torn from brothers, and how heaven would at last "open the heart of peace". And it seemed like a closure at the time. A kind comfort, while looking at the lush trees and the lovely valley. And Hecht shows it to be a lie. There is no kindly light in this death. Just fear that breaks people as easily as bullets. We cry for light and get fire that turns our bones to ashes. And then we are gone, and the heaven does not open.

"No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot."

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## ktd222

Anyhow, when Hecht states 'much casual death had drained away their souls,' I don't think that the draining away of their souls is only as a result of the ritual being performed by the Nazi guard without a religious basis on his part, but also the opportunity given to the victim to speak to his god. 
In the first ritual the victim is permitted this 'pitiful dignity':_And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,/That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility._ 
While in the latter ritual the opportunity for prayer is not even given: _No prayers or incense rose up in those hours_

And I think this gets to the matter of the poem: that prayers are in some way needed to acknowledge to Christ that one believes in Him; therefore, Christ will judge all men's fate based on the victim's soul's tranquility. 

So the last paragraph goes as follows:
_No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot._

The prayer or incense is what rises up to speak with God. Just as in the beginning paragraph when Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt composed 'these *moving*  verses,' the verses is itself an acknowledgement of Christ, as well what *moves* up and speaks directly with Christ for you. 
There is movement in this poem!
And in the end I think that part of the victim, the 'acknowledging part', is what has drained away. 
And in the same way, this is why the 'Ghosts from the ovens' at the end are mute. Because the opportunity for acknowledgment of Christ in life(aloud) is lost by not standing behind one's faith and speaking up. 
Therefore you have this cycle at the end of the poem where the Ghost continually seem to try to rise, but instead sift down through crisp air, 'and settle upon his eyes in a black soot.' The ghosts themselves have, in a way, lost the 'light', and now is described as 'black soot'; which incidently is what is covering the Polish eye from seeing light. 

PS: tell me where I'm rambling and I will try to clear up my thoughts.

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## kilted exile

> If you are still there, *kilted exile*, the Colobus monkey from Glasgow was not in any way meant as a slur on your good self.


Indeed not after all there are few monkeys in glasgow, however, there are many uneducated apes but most of them prefer primitive weapons such as hammers and sharpened golf clubs to the confusing gun with all its moving parts.

(just as a point of reference, in glasgow terminology I would be refered to as a "hun", strange eh?)

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## Petrarch's Love

> I said I could have accepted "Kindly Light" if it was the only melodramatic phrase. But what about : "drained away their souls", "quivering chin", "pityful dignity"?


In one of my earlier posts I addressed how I thought at least one of these lines, the "quivering chin," worked as an example of a purposeful rejection of more elevated language in this poem. It's sometimes not really a matter of what phrases a poet is using as much as the way he/she is employing them, and I think that what others have been referring to as "documentary style" diction works well towards creating the effect this poet is striving toward. I simply don't feel that they're melodramatic lines and you do. I suppose we may just have to leave it at that. I'd be interested in hearing what you liked about this poem though, since you said earlier that there were some things you thought good.

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## The Unnamable

*Ktd222*,
Why is it that the Jews do not hesitate in burying the Pole alive even after he has taken a stance by refusing to do the same with them? The answer Hecht provides is that much casual death had drained away their souls, which I take to mean that they are so desensitised by the treatment they have previously received as members of a race that has been systematically annihilated, so brutalised that they have no core values of decency left. They are utterly broken. The only thing that I see in this poem that _could_ be described as trite is the offering of religious condolence. 




> The prayer or incense is what rises up to speak with God. Just as in the beginning paragraph when Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt composed 'these moving verses,' the verses is itself an acknowledgement of Christ, as well what moves up and speaks directly with Christ for you. 
> There is movement in this poem!


I have no idea what you mean here. First of all, Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt *did not* compose any verses (at least not in this poem  I have no idea if they wrote limericks to each other in private). They are two people to whom Hecht has dedicated his poem. Do you actually _read_ what people post? I provided information about them in #946. They are *not* participants in the poem, if that is what the garbled comments above are actually saying. Earlier you said, If Hecht did not say the German soldier was holding the Luger then how are you suppose (sic) to know? and then added, Have you heard of the word 'assumption' and the phrase 'use what your (sic) given'? Correct me if I am wrong but you appear to be saying that we should only focus on what is provided in the poem. Yet now you have no qualms about making a statement like the Ghost (sic) continually seem to try to rise. Where is the evidence for this? What does it mean, anyway? Are you suggesting in some way that Hechts purpose in this poem is to show us the true way to God and offer us some kind of religious hope? There is no hope offered. All light has been extinguished, which is why I said that I found the poem unanswerable.

Your comments lead me to believe that you have read the critics in the links I posted above. May I suggest you read them again but this time make _understanding them_ your focus, rather than simply trying to ransack them for an argument.

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## ktd222

> *Ktd222*Your comments lead me to believe that you have read the critics in the links I posted above. May I suggest you read them again but this time make _understanding them_ your focus, rather than simply trying to ransack them for an argument.


I have read none of the sort. I've contributed to a lot of poems in this thread and not only to the ones analyzed by the site you suggest-which makes me think your the one who goes on the internet and finds an answer that matches yours before you give people the post to the site.

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## ktd222

> *Ktd222*,
> Why is it that the Jews do not hesitate in burying the Pole alive even after he has taken a stance by refusing to do the same with them? The answer Hecht provides is that much casual death had drained away their souls, which I take to mean that they are so desensitised by the treatment they have previously received as members of a race that has been systematically annihilated, so brutalised that they have no core values of decency left. They are utterly broken. The only thing that I see in this poem that _could_ be described as trite is the offering of religious condolence.


Geez, look who is analyzing the poem like it's a history report.

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## ktd222

> *Ktd222* I have no idea what you mean here. First of all, Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt *did not* compose any verses (at least not in this poem  I have no idea if they wrote limericks to each other in private). They are two people to whom Hecht has dedicated his poem. Do you actually _read_ what people post?


Good, you focus on that background information and not the poem. 

How else would you read the opening lines:
_For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt
Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses,_

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## ktd222

> *Ktd222*
> Do you actually _read_ what people post? I provided information about them in #946. They are *not* participants in the poem, if that is what the garbled comments above are actually saying. Earlier you said, If Hecht did not say the German soldier was holding the Luger then how are you suppose (sic) to know? and then added, Have you heard of the word 'assumption' and the phrase 'use what your (sic) given'? Correct me if I am wrong but you appear to be saying that we should only focus on what is provided in the poem. Yet now you have no qualms about making a statement like the Ghost (sic) continually seem to try to rise. Where is the evidence for this? What does it mean, anyway? Are you suggesting in some way that Hechts purpose in this poem is to show us the true way to God and offer us some kind of religious hope? There is no hope offered. All light has been extinguished, which is why I said that I found the poem unanswerable.


Ya, I read your post, with a spark of analysis here and there, and then your posts were drowned in useless information. 
Why don't you read these lines from the poem:
_No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot._
Its all there. And what is going on in this last stanza correlates back to the first ritual. I'm really sorry you can't see the movement in the poem.

There is hope offered. The person with 'legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap bubbled and burst' seems to still hold firm to his 'faith' in the midst of all the pain the person is experiencing.

But the Jews also seem to go through a sort of horrific ending to their lives, yet I don't hear any of them reaffirming and standing behind their faith.

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## The Unnamable

> Good, you focus on that background information and not the poem. 
> 
> How else would you read the opening lines:
> For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt
> Composed in the Tower before his execution
> These moving verses,


First of all, I wouldnt set it out differently from the way the poet has done:

*More Light! More Light!*
_For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt_

Composed in the Tower before his execution

Then I would consider the possibility that _Composed_ could be an adjective as well as a verb.




> I have read none of the sort.


Perhaps you should consider doing so?




> -which makes me think your the one who goes on the internet and finds an answer that matches yours before you give people the post to the site.


I dont need to go searching for anything other than the _verbatim_ quotations (I like to offer _accurate_ quotation): Ive read a lot of books, you see.




> Geez, look who is analyzing the poem like it's a history report.


The fact that Hecht has dedicated his poem to two actual historical characters, has quoted the dying words of a third and bases his poem on a historical event is obviously irrelevant and a poem about the atrocities of the Holocaust should equally obviously not consider historical reality  poems exist in an ahistorical, aesthetic void, dont they?

As I said earlier, when in a hole

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## Isagel

> _No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
> Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
> Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
> And settled upon his eyes in a black soot._
> Its all there. And what is going on in this last stanza correlates back to the first ritual. I'm really sorry you can't see the movement in the poem.
> 
> There is hope offered. The person with 'legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap bubbled and burst' seems to still hold firm to his 'faith' in the midst of all the pain the person is experiencing.


It is strange. We quote the same part and get different lessons from it. 
I thought that the idea was that hope did not help him, faith did not help because no kind light came, and that the last stanza confirms that lack of hope. I thought the poems title asking for light was an echo of his plea. 
So I can´t see the movement you refer to - at least not in the same way as you do.

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## The Unnamable

> and then your posts were drowned in *useless information*.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol: 

I'm sure Hecht would agree with you. That's why he bothered to mention Arendt and quote Goethe.

Miss Jones, take a letter:

Dear Mr. Hecht, I liked your poem but where are the similes and metaphors, where is the onomatopoeia, where is the opportunity to reduce it to a technical exercise in literary criticism? Ive just learned how to scan poetry but you blind me with historical information. How do you expect me to sound clever when you insist on mentioning such useless things? Still, its a nice poem about hope.

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## ktd222

> First of all, I wouldnt set it out differently from the way the poet has done:
> 
> *More Light! More Light!*
> _For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt_
> 
> Composed in the Tower before his execution
> 
> Then I would consider the possibility that _Composed_ could be an adjective as well as a verb.


The same poem that I printed out has those two lines above as part of the same stanza. 





> Perhaps you should consider doing so?


No, seems to have messed you up pretty good.




> I dont need to go searching for anything other than the _verbatim_ quotations (I like to offer _accurate_ quotation): Ive read a lot of books, you see.


Wow, good for you buddy...and?





> The fact that Hecht has dedicated his poem to two actual historical characters, has quoted the dying words of a third and bases his poem on a historical event is obviously irrelevant and a poem about the atrocities of the Holocaust should equally obviously not consider historical reality  poems exist in an ahistorical, aesthetic void, dont they?
> 
> As I said earlier, when in a hole


As I showed in my post, the copy I have have the two lines you mentioned in the same stanza which changes the meaning of the opening lines. 
If I look at the poem with the opening two lines as is, then yes, the poem becomes a dedication; but that still doesn't take away that it's 'moving verses'.
Yes, it is irrelevant. It's a poem, and poems have poetic elements: thats what I'm looking for more than background information.

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## The Unnamable

> Yes, it is irrelevant. It's a poem, and poems have poetic elements: thats what I'm looking for more than background information.


That hole just keeps getting bigger - you'll soon be through to the Earth's core. Be careful your shovel doesn't melt.  :Biggrin:

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## The Unnamable

> I thought that the idea was that hope did not help him, faith did not help because no kind light came, and that the last stanza confirms that lack of hope. I thought the poems title asking for light was an echo of his plea.


And in this you are right, of course.

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## ktd222

> I'm sure Hecht would agree with you. That's why he bothered to mention Arendt and quote Goethe.
> 
> Miss Jones, take a letter:
> 
> Dear Mr. Hecht, I liked your poem but where are the similes and metaphors, where is the onomatopoeia, where is the opportunity to reduce it to a technical exercise in literary criticism? Ive just learned how to scan poetry but you blind me with historical information. How do you expect me to sound clever when you insist on mentioning such useless things? Still, its a nice poem about hope.


Where is Goethe in the poem? 
Yes, I think he would appreciate a person who is able to see what type of poetic elements he uses.

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## ktd222

> Ive just learned how to scan poetry but you blind me with historical information. How do you expect me to sound clever when you insist on mentioning such useless things? Still, its a nice poem about hope.


Its sad to say but what I've just learned about poetry seems to be more than you know about poetry.

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## chmpman

> If I look at the poem with the opening two lines as is, then yes, the poem becomes a dedication; but that still doesn't take away that it's 'moving verses'.


The moving verses were composed about the martyr, in a Tower, and only highlight the, in an essence, detached thinking of those who gave the scene its 'pitiful dignity'. This is contrasted in the historically realistic view taken of the Holocaust situation.

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## ktd222

Unnamable, 

you seem to have forgotten a poem about the 'horizontal'.  :FRlol:

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## ktd222

> The moving verses were composed about the martyr, in a Tower, and only highlight the, in an essence, detached thinking of those who gave the scene its 'pitiful dignity'. This is contrasted in the historically realistic view taken of the Holocaust situation.


Who composed the 'moving verses'? 
_Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."_

edit: do you think this could be the same verse that the martyr is declaring?

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## ktd222

> It is strange. We quote the same part and get different lessons from it. 
> I thought that the idea was that hope did not help him, faith did not help because no kind light came, and that the last stanza confirms that lack of hope. I thought the poems title asking for light was an echo of his plea. 
> So I can´t see the movement you refer to - at least not in the same way as you do.


Its not suppose to be a literal light in which you witness while living on earth.

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## ktd222

> That hole just keeps getting bigger - you'll soon be through to the Earth's core. Be careful your shovel doesn't melt.


I'm underneath the ton of bull your shoveling over me. Will someone please lend a hand?

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## chmpman

Let me preface this by saying that I agree with The Unnamable's, and I believe Isagel's, ascertation that the religious references of the last stanza show that a divine presence was nowhere to be found. (Let me know if I misrepresent your words)

I would say the martyr, but it is still a sentiment at odds with the historically realistic view of what has happened in the German wood. The time shift is a shift between historically different ideological concerns of existence and divine presence.

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## The Unnamable

Sorry for the delay  I had a student to help or should I say I had to pass on to a student some useless historical knowledge?




> Where is Goethe in the poem?


Try the title  always a good place to start. Oh, and try finding out why Hecht mentions Weimar while you are looking for the title.




> Yes, I think he would appreciate a person who is able to see what type of poetic elements he uses.


Of course he would  his sole purpose in writing the poem was to give his readers some techniques to spot. Some poets are Romantics, some Modernists and some are Imagists. Hecht was a committed member of the Little Jack Horner School of Poetry. Whats that on the end of your thumb? The atrocity Hecht uses is purely incidental to this far more important and valuable pastime. 




> Its sad to say but what I've just learned about poetry seems to be more than you know about poetry.


I am more than happy for others to make up their own minds about that. Mind you, youve got a good chance  you obviously know more than Hecht. He was stupid enough to think that historical facts are significant.

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## ktd222

> Sorry for the delay  I had a student to help or should I say I had to pass on to a student some useless historical knowledge?
> 
> 
> Try the title  always a good place to start. Oh, and try finding out why Hecht mentions Weimar while you are looking for the title.


[/QUOTE]
I will if you try my suggestions...as if  :FRlol:

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## ktd222

> Let me preface this by saying that I agree with The Unnamable's, and I believe Isagel's, ascertation that the religious references of the last stanza show that a divine presence was nowhere to be found. (Let me know if I misrepresent your words)
> 
> I would say the martyr, but it is still a sentiment at odds with the historically realistic view of what has happened in the German wood. The time shift is a shift between historically different ideological concerns of existence and divine presence.


Ya, I would say the martyr too. What do you see that differs between the two rituals?

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## chmpman

This has just gotten silly.

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## The Unnamable

> I will if you try my suggestions...as if


That's a bit like asking Michael Schumacher if he fancies a spin in a Sinclair C5.  :Biggrin:

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## ktd222

> That's a bit like asking Michael Schumacher if he fancies a spin in a Sinclair C5.


Sorry, I don't know who this Schumacher fellow is.

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## ktd222

> Try the title  always a good place to start. Oh, and try finding out why Hecht mentions Weimar while you are looking for the title.


Ya, _More Light More Light_  is the title. But where, where in the first ritual does the martyr ask for 'more light' as if the Light is present, in some degree, in this world.

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## Scheherazade

*Ktd222 and The Unnamable>* Please deal with your personal disagreements and differences through PMs and try to stay on topic while discussing the poems. Your recent posts, which seem to concentrate more on passing personal comments on each than on the poem at hand, not only make it hard for others to follow the discussion but also spoil what is meant to be an informative discussion for us all.

Any off topic posts are likely to be edited/deleted.

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## jackyyyy

Interesting to read the back and forthe here. I have fallen into the trap many times, trying on the one hand to deal solely with the information as presented in the 'piece' versus the piece and other background information. Background can include information on the author, historical notes and even personal biases. Seems we have at least two ways of approaching it. I believe there has to be a level playing field and some rules of engagement when approaching the task, else a lot more correcting posts occur and or people end up at loggerheads.

Either decide to deal with the piece in exclusion of outside elements or with inclusion of outside elements. And then, everyone should be on the same page the same way.

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## Virgil

> Anyhow, when Hecht states 'much casual death had drained away their souls,' I don't think that the draining away of their souls is only as a result of the ritual being performed by the Nazi guard without a religious basis on his part, but also the opportunity given to the victim to speak to his god. 
> In the first ritual the victim is permitted this 'pitiful dignity':_And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,/That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility._ 
> While in the latter ritual the opportunity for prayer is not even given: _No prayers or incense rose up in those hours_
> 
> And I think this gets to the matter of the poem: that prayers are in some way needed to acknowledge to Christ that one believes in Him; therefore, Christ will judge all men's fate based on the victim's soul's tranquility. 
> 
> So the last paragraph goes as follows:
> _No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
> Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
> ...


You're not rambling at all. When I first read the poem, I read the two narratives as parallel episodes, the second reaching for the first as a touchstone of horror. Under that reading, it is melodramatic and frankly mediocre. But as you point out, these are not parallel episodes but contrasting episodes, each episode a ritual. The first narrative is an ironic re-enactment of a crixifiction, the cruxifiers performing the ritual sanctioned by their religion (and therefore by its power) while the cruxified is appealing to his religion for understanding. The second ritual is completely devoid of religion with the Luger as the power of the choreographed motion. In many ways this recalls T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the perversion of ritual because it has been stripped of religious virility. The three dead call to mind a trinity, an inverted holy trinity. The blood of the Pole could in another time be seen as the blood of Christ cruxified. You're right about no one in the second ritual standing behind any religion.

Compare the lines: "And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ, / That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility" with "No prayers or incense rose up in those hours / Which grew to be years, and every day came mute / Ghosts from the ovens". Prayers verses no prayers, Christ as judge ultimately as to what transpired in the first episode verses mute ghosts, the silence as a sort of sterility.

Thank you ktd. You have salvaged this poem for me. I still don't care for the trite phrases, but the narrative justapositions adds a complex dimension to this poem.

----------


## The Unnamable

> Background can include information on the author, historical notes and even personal biases. Seems we have at least two ways of approaching it. I believe there has to be a level playing field and some rules of engagement when approaching the task, else a lot more correcting posts occur and or people end up at loggerheads.


One of the problems with that is that it just isnt possible to detach _any_ piece of written language from its historical context. However, this poem presents further complications  the very title requires knowledge that isnt made explicit anywhere in the poem.

I dont have any _personal_ disagreements with *ktd222*  I am not disputing any aspect of his or her personality or character  _I am_ disputing his or her methods of reading poetry  not to denounce the person but to help clarify aspects of the poem. I maintain that a degree of historical knowledge is vital to a clear understanding of _this_ poem. A reader is better equipped if he or she knows that Goethes words provide Hecht with his title and, as I said above, Weimar is mentioned for a reason.




> Either decide to deal with the piece in exclusion of outside elements or with inclusion of outside elements. And then, everyone should be on the same page the same way.


How would you suggest we do this in the case of this specific poem? 

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. *But* he did refuse.

Hasnt Hecht deliberately echoed Goethes words here (albeit in negative form)? Isnt the suggestion that the Pole was motivated by simple common decency in his refusal? We might expect the humanistic ideals of Weimar and Goethe or the ideals of a supposedly loving God to influence him but they dont appear to. Nevertheless, (But) he refuses.

----------


## apple jiang

oh, it takes too much of my time reading your posts.............  :Brickwall:

----------


## The Unnamable

> oh, it takes too much of my time reading your posts.............


Then dont.  :Confused:  Its not a requirement of forum membership.  :Biggrin:

----------


## Isagel

About historical knowledge - does anyone know who the person in the first part was?
I don´t think he made it up, or choose it by coincidence. Perhaps there are more reasons to why he links these different events together the way he does. 

Virgil and ktd222 - I have to think about the idea as the two events as contrasting each other. I do not really see it, but I´ll try and look at it from that perspective.There are differences of course, but I do not see the same contrast as you do, just levels of horror.
Perhaps some knowledge about the first person will make it easier.

----------


## jackyyyy

> How would you suggest we do this in the case of this specific poem? 
> 
> Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
> Nor light from heaven appeared. *But* he did refuse.
> 
> Hasnt Hecht deliberately echoed Goethes words here (albeit in negative form)? Isnt the suggestion that the Pole was motivated by simple common decency in his refusal? We might expect the humanistic ideals of Weimar and Goethe or the ideals of a supposedly loving God to influence him but they dont appear to. Nevertheless, (But) he refuses.


I think you are correct to bring in all the information at your disposal to make available for our disposal, as others do all the time, and because we DO want to extract the most and best from the piece. Like this, people may question the source of a decision before taking up the point. I know you do that when you attach references, and that, for sure, increases the requirement to get informed. Frankly, we have to, else sometimes the point we're making looks like it was plucked from thin air. Obviously, Poem of the Week is given 'a week'. Ktd made me chuckle when I read, "But, its only Tuesday!" (something like that). I am indicating here, for 'some' poems, maybe a week is simply not enough given the enormity of it all, unless of course some boundaries, and realistic expectations are set. That does not mean to give up, just we should be realistic. I could write about cross-purposefullness here, I think there is an onus on the writer to be as efficient as possible when presenting their point.

----------


## Scheherazade

> *More Light! More Light!*
> 
> For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt
> 
> Composed in the Tower before his execution
> These moving verses, and being brought at that time
> Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
> "I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."
> 
> ...


 


> Virgil and ktd222 - I have to think about the idea as the two events as contrasting each other. I do not really see it, but I´ll try and look at it from that perspective.There are differences of course, but I do not see the same contrast as you do, just levels of horror.
> Perhaps some knowledge about the first person will make it easier.


Isagel, I agree with you that one of the differences between the first and second scenes is the level of horror. The first one is an execution of a person who claims to be innocent. I have read it a few times but I cannot find any obvious clues that it is based on religious grounds. ('The Tower' reference made me wonder if it could be Thomas More but he was beheaded and no gunpowder was involved. However, what is important, I feel, is that the person is given the chance to pray and also, more importantly, he feels the need to pray; he still believes in and trusts his God.

In the second scene, we observe another execution but this time we are given specifics (Jews, Pole, Weimar, Luger), which helps us to pinpoint what is exactly happening (and why). In my opinion, the level of horror is greater because of the style of the execution (buried alive and shot) but what is more horrifying and strikingly different from the first incident is that there is a resignation in the actions of the Pole and the Jews.

I think the line 'Much casual death had drained away their souls.' refers to many murders they have been witnessing in the concentration camps; so many that they seem numb and surely enough to make them give up. Unlike the first person executed in the earlier part of the poem, they don't feel the need to pray or express their faith in their dying moments because they are, maybe, convinced that they are deserted by their God. 

I think 'no light', which is repeated in the poem a few times, is used to emphasise this fact; ie, no divine hope, no trust and no belief.

Also, I think the fact that the German soldier is described merely as a glove, Luger and boot, signifies that his identity as an individual is not essential for this poem.

----------


## The Unnamable

> About historical knowledge - does anyone know who the person in the first part was?


This is from Ellen Miller Casey  one of the links posted above:

Though not a specific figure, the victim evokes such men as the Protestant martyrs Nicholas Ridley and High Latimer, whose last words before being burned to death in 1555 were, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out" (Ann Hoffman 294).

I hope that helps.

----------


## Isagel

Thank you. That thing with the gunpowder that did not light up left me with a nagging feeling that I should know what person it was.

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## ktd222

_



Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."

Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.
His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap
Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.

And that was but one, and by no means one of the worst;
Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;
And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,
That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility.


_

Did you all happen to catch the rhyming patterns at the end of each line?

The first ritual:
Stanza 1/ Stanza 2/ Stanza3 
L1:execution/ horrible/ worst 
L2:time/ ignite/ dignity
L3:thus/ sap/ Christ
L4:crime/ light/ tranquility

Look at the first ritual and see how L2 and L4 have perfect rhymes: time/crime, ignite/light, dignity/tranquility; while L1 and L3 of the first three stanza's do not rhyme at all: execution/thus, horrible/sap, worst/Christ. 
I guess if you looked at the rhyming pattern in the context of the first ritual, you can see that, by the consistent rhyming pattern, there seems to be a certain order to the ritual, even though it displays martyrdom scene taking place. That order may be, if I had a guess, could be in the purpose of the ritual? But at the same time, the non-rhyme of L1 and L3 gives the first ritual a sort of disorder to the scene as well. What that disorder may be, who knows, but again, if I had a guess it would probably do something with the Light? Any comments?

_



We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot


_

The second ritual:
Stanza4/ Stanza 5/ Stanza 6/ Stanza 7/ Stanza 8
L1:wood/ hill/ souls/ eye/ hours
L2:hole/ refuse/ chin/ earth/ mute
L3:down/ glove/ came/  glove/ air
L4:Pole/ Jews/ in/ death/ soot

But in the second ritual, you initially have the same rhyming pattern of the first ritual where L1 and L3 do not rhyme while L2 and 4 rhyme; until you reach stanza 7 in which L1 and L3 still are not rhyming, while L2 and L4 is a half rhyme: earth/death. Then moving to the last stanza(8) both L1 and 3, and L2 and 4 all do not rhyme. Look at how the disorder inside the order, if you well, becomes completely unravelled into disorder. The poem becomes discombobulated at the end, or should I say the second ritual becomes discombobulated. Why; I don't know; any comments? Does this fit with what ya'll been thinking about the poem?

I can't but appreciate a poet who is conscious about utilizing means other than his words to reinforce what is being put forth in the poem. Everytime I read this poem I find something new.

----------


## Virgil

ktd

Let me summarize the rhyming pattern this way: 

The L1 and L3 of each stanza don't rhyme except for the third stanza where worst/Christ I would consider a slant rhyme. So I would conclude that the L1/L3 rhymes are not pattern forming, except if you may consider that one slant rhyme to provide emphasis.

The L2 and L4 of each stanza do exihibit a pattern. They are full rhymes in the first six stanzas. But in the last two, stanzas 7 and 8, they become slant rhymes: earth/death and mute/soot. 




> The poem becomes discombobulated at the end, or should I say the second ritual becomes discombobulated. Why; I don't know; any comments? Does this fit with what ya'll been thinking about the poem?


I don't know if I would call it discombobulated, but it does shimmer with emphasis. Another nice observation.

BTW, are you telling us the truth that you're not in college yet?

----------


## Regit

> Are you telling us the truth that you're not in college yet?


That would explain a lot.

----------


## Shanna

> That would explain a lot.


  :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:

----------


## Shanna

> Look at the first ritual and see how L2 and L4 have perfect rhymes: time/crime, ignite/light, dignity/tranquility; while L1 and L3 of the first three stanza's do not rhyme at all: execution/thus, horrible/sap, worst/Christ. 
> I guess if you looked at the rhyming pattern in the context of the first ritual, you can see that, by the consistent rhyming pattern, there seems to be a certain order to the ritual, even though it displays martyrdom scene taking place. That order may be, if I had a guess, could be in the purpose of the ritual? But at the same time, the non-rhyme of L1 and L3 gives the first ritual a sort of disorder to the scene as well. What that disorder may be, who knows, but again, if I had a guess it would probably do something with the Light? Any comments?


Oh but that's just perfect. Let's ignore the content, let's not even bother with foreign-sounding, complicated references like "Weimar" - I mean, who needs all that "bull" anyway, huh? Let's slander and harangue relentlessly anyone who _dares suggest_ that _history_ (of all things) might have any significance at all over and above being useless, irrelevant facts force-fed into our brains which are already saturated with who knows what sort of sludge, let's declare that all _their_ years of patience and learning count for nothing, let's insult them, let's drive them all out of this putrid hellhouse, because frankly we'd rather just believe the simplest, most commonplace, most ridiculous untruths in the world, than go to the trouble of actually listening to a point of view different from ours, or making the effort to understand it, right? And then, when we've done all that, when we've silenced everything but our own ignorant, complacent, raucous screeches, let's sit back on our sainted laurels and discuss - (drum roll, please) - *the rhyme scheme!!*  :Nod:  

Of course it makes perfect sense.

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## Shanna

Virgil, what is a 'crixifiction'?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Look out ktd, she's got a noose and I don't think she's afraid to use it!  :FRlol:  (Just kidding, both of you).

To give ktd credit where credit is due, I thought some of her earlier comments on this poem were fairly insightful. I thought she was setting up some good observations about comparing the two narratives in terms of their place as rituals and examining the presence (or, more particularly, absence) of religion in the poem, and I think her look at the rhyme scheme is meant as an addition to these earlier remarks, not as an exclusive take on the poem.

That being said, ktd, I've been quite surprised while catching up to the happenings on this thread to see you so vehemently suggesting that history has _no_ place in this poem, and I can see how such a suggestion might open you up to charges of being overly pedantic. A poem is not only form but content, and the content of this particular poem explicitly relies on some understanding of the historical contexts described. I don't really want to re-open a bitter debate, but remain puzzled as to why you are so invested in taking an absolute stance against admitting any kind of historical knowledge from outside the poem. If there's some way we could agree to discuss this issue in a respectful fashion, I would be interested to hear your response.

I'd like to take your analysis of the rhyme scheme as a starting point to my questions. You've nicely outlined how it works--half the lines rhyming in each stanza and half not, with an increasing use of slant rhyme as the poem progresses. I would agree with you that I think this connects with your earlier points about an increasing lack of ritual. What you've got here is how the poet is going after a certain effect, and what that general effect is. What you need is to connect this with why he is going to the trouble to create this effect. On the most basic level isn't it to draw a comparison between two moments in history? And wouldn't it then be helpful to know at least a little something about the two periods described? How else are we supposed to come away with anything from this poem? I don't see how you can actually leave history out of it altogether. I think you're also right to connect this shift in both ritual and rhyme to the "light" mentioned in the poem. Could you understand this mention of "light" without any special outside knowledge? Of course you could. Since it's an old metaphor for truth, knowledge, faith, and generally good things, almost any reader could probably appreciate that the light is fading to darkness in this poem--becoming (like the slant rhyme?) increasingly distorted and then extinguished. All the same, if you happen to know that the poem's title comes from Goethe's dying words, doesn't that add a dimension to the poem, and to the understanding of what the poet is about? Doesn't it add an extra layer of irony to the setting of the second scene at Weimar? It also gives us a hint that the poet is not only using the metaphor of light in its most general sense (though I think that's one level of meaning at play), but has taken pains to set up that light as a specific allusion to humanism--surely both a word and a concept that are deeply important in thinking about the way humanity is portrayed in this poem.

----------


## ktd222

> ktd
> 
> Let me summarize the rhyming pattern this way: 
> 
> The L1 and L3 of each stanza don't rhyme except for the third stanza where worst/Christ I would consider a slant rhyme. So I would conclude that the L1/L3 rhymes are not pattern forming, except if you may consider that one slant rhyme to provide emphasis.


Ya, I was thinking that. Maybe it was the late night but when I say it outloud 
I don't hear even the half-rhyme.




> The L2 and L4 of each stanza do exihibit a pattern. They are full rhymes in the first six stanzas. But in the last two, stanzas 7 and 8, they become slant rhymes: earth/death and mute/soot.


This one I have to disagree. Mute/soot, when I say it outloud don't even sound like a half-rhyme.





> I don't know if I would call it discombobulated, but it does shimmer with emphasis. Another nice observation.


If I take mute/soot as not rhyming at all then maybe not discombobulated, but definetly unravel. 




> BTW, are you telling us the truth that you're not in college yet?


No. Believe what you want. I just love poetry.

----------


## ktd222

:Confused:  


> That would explain a lot.


Oh, you didn't come into 'Poem of the Week' to contribute to poems.  :Confused:

----------


## ktd222

> Oh but that's just perfect. Let's ignore the content, let's not even bother with foreign-sounding, complicated references like "Weimar" - I mean, who needs all that "bull" anyway, huh? Let's slander and harangue relentlessly anyone who _dares suggest_ that _history_ (of all things) might have any significance at all over and above being useless, irrelevant facts force-fed into our brains which are already saturated with who knows what sort of sludge, let's declare that all _their_ years of patience and learning count for nothing, let's insult them, let's drive them all out of this putrid hellhouse, because frankly we'd rather just believe the simplest, most commonplace, most ridiculous untruths in the world, than go to the trouble of actually listening to a point of view different from ours, or making the effort to understand it, right? And then, when we've done all that, when we've silenced everything but our own ignorant, complacent, raucous screeches, let's sit back on our sainted laurels and discuss - (drum roll, please) - *the rhyme scheme!!*


Shanna, I not the only one doing the 'slandering'. Are you going to get at a point? BTW, Hecht created the rhyme scheme, not me.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> Virgil, what is a 'crixifiction'?


Shanna, you may not want to throw stones at typos unless you're absolutely certain you'll never mis-spell anything yourself.  :Biggrin:  (This is the voice of experience talking). There's also the fact that you'd have to take on the fearsome Unnamable as well (not something I would relish given the fact we've got pics of him wrestling tigers with his bare hands) about "High Latimer" in one of his posts above (actually a typo I found quite amusing given the high and mighty quality of Hugh Latimer's rhetoric) . :Wink:

----------


## ktd222

> That being said, ktd, I've been quite surprised while catching up to the happenings on this thread to see you so vehemently suggesting that history has _no_ place in this poem, and I can see how such a suggestion might open you up to charges of being overly pedantic. A poem is not only form but content, and the content of this particular poem explicitly relies on some understanding of the historical contexts described. I don't really want to re-open a bitter debate, but remain puzzled as to why you are so invested in taking an absolute stance against admitting any kind of historical knowledge from outside the poem. If there's some way we could agree to discuss this issue in a respectful fashion, I would be interested to hear your response.


To a degee...I don't want to be blinded by it.





> I'd like to take your analysis of the rhyme scheme as a starting point to my questions. You've nicely outlined how it works--half the lines rhyming in each stanza and half not, with an increasing use of slant rhyme as the poem progresses. I would agree with you that I think this connects with your earlier points about an increasing lack of ritual. What you've got here is how the poet is going after a certain effect, and what that general effect is. What you need is to connect this with why he is going to the trouble to create this effect. On the most basic level isn't it to draw a comparison between two moments in history? And wouldn't it then be helpful to know at least a little something about the two periods described? How else are we supposed to come away with anything from this poem? I don't see how you can actually leave history out of it altogether. I think you're also right to connect this shift in both ritual and rhyme to the "light" mentioned in the poem. Could you understand this mention of "light" without any special outside knowledge? Of course you could. Since it's an old metaphor for truth, knowledge, faith, and generally good things, almost any reader could probably appreciate that the light is fading to darkness in this poem--becoming (like the slant rhyme?) increasingly distorted and then extinguished. All the same, if you happen to know that the poem's title comes from Goethe's dying words, doesn't that add a dimension to the poem, and to the understanding of what the poet is about? Doesn't it add an extra layer of irony to the setting of the second scene at Weimar? It also gives us a hint that the poet is not only using the metaphor of light in its most general sense (though I think that's one level of meaning at play), but has taken pains to set up that light as a specific allusion to humanism--surely both a word and a concept that are deeply important in thinking about the way humanity is portrayed in this poem.


A little, yes. And I'm sure I discussed my views on the two rituals in earlier discussions. About Goeth, not really, the comparison between the title _More Light More Light_  and whether there is light in the poem itself is sufficient. A poem shouldn't have to be a history project. You get that the poem is talking about humanism from one line out of the thirty-four lines? Wait, not even one line but one word in one line.

----------


## The Unnamable

> (drum roll, please) - *the rhyme scheme!!*


But most by Numbers judge a Poet's Song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse tho' thousand Charms conspire,
Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear,
Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.


So by false Learning is good Sense defac'd.
Some are bewilder'd in the Maze of Schools,
And some made Coxcombs Nature meant but Fools.
In search of Wit these lose their common Sense,
And then turn Criticks in their own Defence.

Pope _An Essay on Criticism_

----------


## ktd222

_History plays the minor role
in poems, as do the page
and words on the page are 
not the same.

If than, then I sit and pick
my nose to know that words
did not matter so; but let
my thoughts run wild with
the naked man that doesn't
need clothes for support._


ME

----------


## The Unnamable

I take your point about typos, *PL*. I long ago decided to ignore the appalling spelling on this site dedicated to writing, even though I feel its a bit like flashing your dirty underwear in public. However, some typos are really funny. Did you know that Amon *Goeth* is the Nazi played by Ralph Fiennes in _Schindler's List_?

I also think you are wasting your time trying to reason. The convictions that Goethe is unimportant to the poem and that providing historical information turns a poem into a History project are so ludicrous that they dont deserve to be considered, let alone reasoned with politely. Some people will even dismiss Alexander Pope in pursuit of a ridiculous belief. These same people usually expect to be considered sane critics of poetry.

With one eye on Shanna's avatar, I can't help being reminded of the expression, "give 'em enough rope".

----------


## The Unnamable

> BTW, Hecht created the rhyme scheme, not me.


Hecht? Wasn't he the one who also provided a title that quotes Goethe?

----------


## ktd222

> Hecht? Wasn't he the one who also provided a title that quotes Goethe?


I don't know, did he? Where am I, or should I see that in the poem?

----------


## The Unnamable

> I don't know, did he? Where am I, or should I see that in the poem?


I was responding to _your_ point, here. Your argument above supports the claim that if Hecht put it there, it must be significant/valid. All I ask for is some consistency. Your second question is inane.

----------


## ktd222

> I was responding to _your_ point, here. Your argument above supports the claim that if Hecht put it there, it must be significant/valid. All I ask for is some consistency. Your second question is inane.


ok...Hecht is the author of this poem as far as I know. Goethe, I can't see by looking at the poem. So your question is:_Hecht? Wasn't he the one who also provided a title that quotes Goethe?_ So the answer is I don't know.
Your not asking the same question between the two posts.

----------


## chmpman

ktd, how can you take a reference to a Luger and infer that he is writing about a Nazi soldier during WWII but not be open to the possibility that the references to Goethe and Weimar are meant to suggest humanism in a historical context? Obviously history is needed to understand the poem, or you could not see the man burnt at the stake as a Christian martyr or that the second scene is taking place in WWII.

----------


## Shanna

> Shanna, you may not want to throw stones at typos unless you're absolutely certain you'll never mis-spell anything yourself.  (This is the voice of experience talking).


I'll risk it. Right now I am completely, absolutely sure I want to throw stones at everything in sight. I do not have your _unbelievable_ tact (er, limoncello, perhaps?) - I used to, though, I think I've lost it since, or chucked it into the nearest well - nor do I think the benefit of it is deserved by most. 




> There's also the fact that you'd have to take on the fearsome Unnamable as well (not something I would relish given the fact we've got pics of him wrestling tigers with his bare hands) about "High Latimer" in one of his posts above (actually a typo I found quite amusing given the high and mighty quality of Hugh Latimer's rhetoric) .


  :FRlol:  Like I said, I'll risk it. Its well worth the superhuman effort it calls for.

----------


## ktd222

> ktd, how can you take a reference to a Luger and infer that he is writing about a Nazi soldier during WWII but not be open to the possibility that the references to Goethe and Weimar are meant to suggest humanism in a historical context? Obviously history is needed to understand the poem, or you could not see the man burnt at the stake as a Christian martyr or that the second scene is taking place in WWII.


Again, history in degrees. And because I don't want to play Six Degrees of Separation.

----------


## Shanna

Here you go, ktd:



> The title of the poem comes from what were (supposedly) Goethes dying words.


That was the _first_ post on this thread about this poem. 

Er, I thought you said you _did_ actually read what people wrote?

----------


## ktd222

> Here you go, ktd:
> 
> That was the _first_ post on this thread about this poem. 
> 
> Er, I thought you said you _did_ actually read what people wrote?


Where are you going with this? This is neither here nor there. We're talking about it now, so we'll deal with it now. I'm not sure what your trying to get out of this thread.

----------


## The Unnamable

> There's also the fact that you'd have to take on the fearsome Unnamable as well (not something I would relish given the fact we've got pics of him wrestling tigers with his bare hands) about "High Latimer" in one of his posts above (actually a typo I found quite amusing given the high and mighty quality of Hugh Latimer's rhetoric) .


Thats what I get for relying on someone else! As Im sure you can tell, I copied and pasted the comment from the website on which it appeared. When I rely on my own resources, I almost never make such errors. But thanks for pointing out _that websites_ typo for me.  :Biggrin:

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> However, some typos are really funny. Did you know that Amon Goeth is the Nazi played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List?


  :FRlol:  That is funny. 





> Thats what I get for relying on someone else! As Im sure you can tell, I copied and pasted the comment from the website on which it appeared. When I rely on my own resources, I almost never make such errors. But thanks for pointing out that websites typo for me.


I rather thought that might be the case...but it was so tempting to think you might not really be infallible after all.  :Biggrin:  




> I'll risk it. Right now I am completely, absolutely sure I want to throw stones at everything in sight.


Have fun.  :FRlol:  



> I do not have your unbelievable tact (er, limoncello, perhaps?)


 I just wanted to clarify that my little spelling question in my comments to Virg's poem honestly was due to my uncertainty as to whether there's an alternative spelling rather than attempts at tact (which you're right that I have been guilty of on other occasions). I think I have seen it spelled with an "e" before, but while I was in Italy I thought I usually saw it with an "i."

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## Jay

Please, stay on topic and refrain from personalizing your posts.

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## Petrarch's Love

> To a degee...I don't want to be blinded by it.


Neither do I, but I don't think anyone here has suggested anything radically divorced from what is present in the language of the poem. 




> About Goeth, not really, the comparison between the title More Light More Light and whether there is light in the poem itself is sufficient.


I acknowledged that it certainly could be sufficient. That's not really the question. The question is whether the reader obtains additional information about the poem and a deeper perspective on its project with the knowledge that the title is a quote from a famous thinker.




> A poem shouldn't have to be a history project.


Of course not. I object as much to people who overhistoricize poetry as I do to those who get caught up in overly pedantic points about prosody. Either approach is attempting to add to an understanding of the poem via external analysis. That doesn't mean that I'm going to blanketly refuse to allow any sort of historical reading any more than I'm going to refuse to consider an analysis of the rhyme scheme. 



> You get that the poem is talking about humanism from one line out of the thirty-four lines? Wait, not even one line but one word in one line.


This is where I'm puzzled by your argument. You're someone who's insisting on a close reading with attention to detail in the author's rhyme and choice of words etc, and yet you argue that an entire line quoted from another source-- and not only that, the line that forms the title of the poem--is insignificant. Are you actually trying to say that any allusion to another's words in poetry should never be examined in relation to the original source? Would you say, to pick an example at random, that when T.S. Eliot uses the line "I had not thought death had undone so many" (Wasteland, ln.63) to describe a crowded London street that it is irrelevant to bring up the fact that he is quoting Dante's _Inferno_? The reader may not know that from reading the text of the poem alone if he/she is not well versed in Dante, but that doesn't mean there's no significance to his choice of quote. We're not talking about one word at random here. We're talking about a key word in the poem which is repeated several times throughout, and how it is being defined in the title of that poem. 

Incidently, when you get to college you may be interested in reading some of the critics associated with Reader Response theory. I think you might recognize some of what you're trying to express here in their position (just don't forget to read the people who point out what the potential flaws are in such views as well).

Also, just a friendly suggestion. Most people aren't terribly successful trying to match poetic wits with Alexander Pope (myself most definately included  :Wink:  ).

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## Shanna

> You're not rambling at all. When I first read the poem, I read the two narratives as parallel episodes, the second reaching for the first as a touchstone of horror. Under that reading, it is melodramatic and frankly mediocre. But as you point out, these are not parallel episodes but contrasting episodes, each episode a ritual. The first narrative is an ironic re-enactment of a crixifiction, the cruxifiers performing the ritual sanctioned by their religion (and therefore by its power) while the cruxified is appealing to his religion for understanding. The second ritual is completely devoid of religion with the Luger as the power of the choreographed motion. In many ways this recalls T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the perversion of ritual because it has been stripped of religious virility. The three dead call to mind a trinity, an inverted holy trinity. The blood of the Pole could in another time be seen as the blood of Christ cruxified. You're right about no one in the second ritual standing behind any religion.
> 
> Compare the lines: "And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ, / That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility" with "No prayers or incense rose up in those hours / Which grew to be years, and every day came mute / Ghosts from the ovens". Prayers verses no prayers, Christ as judge ultimately as to what transpired in the first episode verses mute ghosts, the silence as a sort of sterility.
> 
> Thank you ktd. You have salvaged this poem for me. I still don't care for the trite phrases, but the narrative justapositions adds a complex dimension to this poem.


Again, wow. I had no idea enjoying poetry could be such hard work. Everything you say here is forced, twisted out of its original context and jammed into another, one you'd - quite simply - like to believe, making the end result quite ungainly. Its like a malformed baby. Its just sad. Never mind what the poet wanted to say, never mind what the critics have said, never mind the references to actual, physical places and people, never mind what is glaringly obvious - we'll do with it as we please, we'll make of it what we choose. They _were_ wrong about Lawrence after all, now, weren't they? Congratulations, Virgil, you just killed it. I really think you can stop beating it now, though, its _quite_ dead, believe me. 

Oh and.. Virgil? what is a 'justaposition'?

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## Logos

You know "Shanna", for someone who really seems to dislike this site so much, you sure spend an awful lot of time here. Yes I can see you.

And you sure spend an awful lot of time criticizing others for their spelling mistakes and such. Your constant petty invective and negativity is unwelcome.

*This is your one official warning, any more of it and you will be banned.*

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## ktd222

> Neither do I, but I don't think anyone here has suggested anything radically divorced from what is present in the language of the poem.


really? I would like to deal with the poem and not focus on how horrible these scenes are, to me. Not talk about how 6 million Jews died in the hand of the Nazis, and what I think about that. 




> I acknowledged that it certainly could be sufficient. That's not really the question. The question is whether the reader obtains additional information about the poem and a deeper perspective on its project with the knowledge that the title is a quote from a famous thinker.


again, really? I always find myself veering off into morality issues when I focus more on additional information and not the poem. 




> Of course not. I object as much to people who overhistoricize poetry as I do to those who get caught up in overly pedantic points about prosody. Either approach is attempting to add to an understanding of the poem via external analysis. That doesn't mean that I'm going to blanketly refuse to allow any sort of historical reading any more than I'm going to refuse to consider an analysis of the rhyme scheme.


again, use of history to a degree. I think one can easily get lost and end up in historical perspectives. Did anyone mention rhyme scheme this week? Or movement in the poem this week? 





> This is where I'm puzzled by your argument. You're someone who's insisting on a close reading with attention to detail in the author's rhyme and choice of words etc, and yet you argue that an entire line quoted from another source-- and not only that, the line that forms the title of the poem--is insignificant.


Say this again, please? I don't follow. I never said the title of the poem was insignificant. Different aspects of the poem have more 'weight' than other aspects. I can only cover and discuss one aspect at a time. Most of you seem to do a full sweep in one sitting.




> Are you actually trying to say that any allusion to another's words in poetry should never be examined in relation to the original source? Would you say, to pick an example at random, that when T.S. Eliot uses the line "I had not thought death had undone so many" (Wasteland, ln.63) to describe a crowded London street that it is irrelevant to bring up the fact that he is quoting Dante's _Inferno_? The reader may not know that from reading the text of the poem alone if he/she is not well versed in Dante, but that doesn't mean there's no significance to his choice of quote. We're not talking about one word at random here. We're talking about a key word in the poem which is repeated several times throughout, and how it is being defined in the title of that poem.


No, I'm saying be careful you don't get lost. And maybe you should pick this week's 'Poem of the Week' as an example. Lets not be too random.




> Incidently, when you get to college you may be interested in reading some of the critics associated with Reader Response theory. I think you might recognize some of what you're trying to express here in their position (just don't forget to read the people who point out what the potential flaws are in such views as well).


I'll keep this in mind. 




> Also, just a friendly suggestion. Most people aren't terribly successful trying to match poetic wits with Alexander Pope (myself most definately included  ).


again, what? I don't follow.

Have you read my perspective in the form of a poem in response to a poem by Pope showing his perspective? It's still a rough draft, but hey...

_History plays the minor role
in poems, as do the page
and words on the page are 
not the same.

If than, then I sit and pick
my nose to know that words
did not matter so; but let
my thoughts run wild with
the naked man that doesn't
need clothes for support._


ME  :FRlol:

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## ktd222

> Again, wow. I had no idea enjoying poetry could be such hard work. Everything you say here is forced, twisted out of its original context and jammed into another, one you'd - quite simply - like to believe, making the end result quite ungainly. Its like a malformed baby. Its just sad. Never mind what the poet wanted to say, never mind what the critics have said, never mind the references to actual, physical places and people, never mind what is glaringly obvious - we'll do with it as we please, we'll make of it what we choose. They _were_ wrong about Lawrence after all, now, weren't they? Congratulations, Virgil, you just killed it. I really think you can stop beating it now, though, its _quite_ dead, believe me. 
> 
> Oh and.. Virgil? what is a 'justaposition'?


It makes sense to not only me. I would like to hear your perspective on the type of poetic elements, if you will, on this poem. You seem to like 'dishing' but, would you like to actually participate in the poem analysis?

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