May I [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

Bii

07-25-2007, 07:20 AM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

Jerry Newman © July 24, 2007

I like this Jerry, but I'm a little unsure as to whether the poem is directed towards a friend, or something more. Perhaps it's the reference to comradeship which throws me here - based on that I'd be inclined to think friend, but the poem is couched in subtly romantic terms, so I'm not sure if it's meant to be more? If more, I'd be more inclined to use 'companionship', but that's me, and you're not me!

firefangled

07-25-2007, 09:02 AM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

I like this Jerry, but I'm a little unsure as to whether the poem is directed towards a friend, or something more. Perhaps it's the reference to comradeship which throws me here - based on that I'd be inclined to think friend, but the poem is couched in subtly romantic terms, so I'm not sure if it's meant to be more? If more, I'd be more inclined to use 'companionship', but that's me, and you're not me!

The etymology of this word includes the meaning of "quartermates." So it is directed in my opinion so as to be something more. It is what we learn of soldiers who become totally responsible and dedicated to each other. In terms of friendship, it falls in the category of true companion, someone who knows everything about you, even (particularly) your darkest acts and secrets, someone you would die for. This is evident in the last two lines. The wine of deep remembering is so rare in this world and the courtesy of my heart must be taken acknowledging the full weight of the words. This is an act of courtesy far beyond the ken of 21st century manners.

firefangled

07-25-2007, 09:03 AM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

I like this Jerry, but I'm a little unsure as to whether the poem is directed towards a friend, or something more. Perhaps it's the reference to comradeship which throws me here - based on that I'd be inclined to think friend, but the poem is couched in subtly romantic terms, so I'm not sure if it's meant to be more? If more, I'd be more inclined to use 'companionship', but that's me, and you're not me!

The etymology of this word includes the meaning of "quartermates." It is directed in my opinion so as to be something more. It is what we learn of soldiers who become totally responsible and dedicated to each other. In terms of friendship, it falls in the category of true companion, someone who knows everything about you, even (particularly) your darkest acts and secrets, someone you would die for. This is evident in the last two lines. The wine of deep remembering is so rare in this world and the courtesy of my heart must be taken acknowledging the full weight of the words. This is an act of courtesy far beyond the ken of 21st century manners.

firefangled

07-25-2007, 09:05 AM

it even deserves to be posted twice.....lol...I am a technical writer in real life...can you believe it...I'm suppose to figure these user interfaces out easily

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 09:22 AM

I like this Jerry, but I'm a little unsure as to whether the poem is directed towards a friend, or something more. Perhaps it's the reference to comradeship which throws me here - based on that I'd be inclined to think friend, but the poem is couched in subtly romantic terms, so I'm not sure if it's meant to be more? If more, I'd be more inclined to use 'companionship', but that's me, and you're not me!

Candidly, "comradeship" is the word that came up spontaneously, but I think if I had stopped to ask whether "companionship" or "friendship" might do equally well or better I might have rejected them as too mild, although I doubt I could have articulated the brilliant defense of "comradeship" that firefangled makes (above). He does get at the depth of commitment, of warriors - if necessary - against adversity, the innate adversity to 'perfect' love that appears to be innate in a world in which, even if there were not wars, suspicion, xenophobia, there would be the grind of earning a living, maintaining a semblance of dignity &c.

Did I specifically have a lover in mind, albeit an anonymous, generic one? Yes, but a lover who would first and last be a friend.

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 09:26 AM

it even deserves to be posted twice.....lol...I am a technical writer in real life...can you believe it...I'm suppose to figure these user interfaces out easily

I do believe it because you say so but doubt that that is in some more meaningful way your "real" life.

symphony

07-25-2007, 09:36 AM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

Jerry Newman © July 24, 2007
I promise to eat them voraciously. :) The best way to accept romance is to shove it down ur throat. ;)

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 09:39 AM

I promise to eat them voraciously. :) The best way to accept romance is to shove it down ur throat. ;)

Thank you, but no - I don't think that's the best way to accept or offer romance and neither would that person who wrote that extraordinary poem about buying the rose from the street person!

Pendragon

07-25-2007, 09:39 AM

And may I
Return your invitation,
Understanding the meaning behind
The sharing of salt?

Age old is the tradition,
Few today who recall,
That never with one's enemies
Would one dare eat salt.

Lest one should lose honor
For the cruelty of treason,
In passing one's self off as friend
To gain a liar's advantage...

Pendragon

7/25/07

symphony

07-25-2007, 09:49 AM

Thank you, but no - I don't think that's the best way to accept or offer romance and neither would that person who wrote that extraordinary poem about buying the rose from the street person!

:D yeah well chewing the courtesy of ur heart would have been too much.
damn i'm the most unromantic person i ever met!

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 09:55 AM

:D yeah well chewing the courtesy of ur heart would have been too much.
damn i'm the most unromantic person i ever met!

Well, it is said "Scratch a cynic and you will find an idealist..."

Scratch an unromantic person and you will find------?

symphony

07-25-2007, 10:07 AM

Well, it is said "Scratch a cynic and you will find an idealist..."

Scratch an unromantic person and you will find------?
an unromantic person :brickwall

Countess

07-25-2007, 10:57 AM

an unromantic person :brickwall

Scratch an unromantic person and you will find a realist.

I was birthed from realists - pragmatic, practical people. We look at each other like :alien: and try to be nice to the weirdo staring back.

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 10:59 AM

:D yeah well chewing the courtesy of ur heart would have been too much.
damn i'm the most unromantic person i ever met!

There are those who claim to be unromantic
in consequence of which, they’re seldom frantic,
dopey-eyed or fizzle-minded.

If they need happiness they can always find it
in works by Kant or Schopenhauer
which they calmly, dispassionately devour

hour after after hour of laid-back hour.
They look at life through unblurred lenses
and are seldom found within love’s high fences

but underneath it all you know
there’s a torrent of something just waiting to blow!

Countess

07-25-2007, 11:00 AM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

Jerry Newman © July 24, 2007

I like it but I'm curious. You chose "bread", "salt" and "wine", which could be viewed within a Judeo-Christian context (Jesus was the bread and the wine and yet the salt of the earth.)

Also, while in the first three lines you used food imagery to convey your thought, in the last line, you chose "courtesy", which breaks from the first three lines. Did you select it to indicate closing, or for some other reason?

Yes, I'm analyzing it. Some poetry can be analyzed and some not. This one lends itself to consideration...

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 11:07 AM

Scratch an unromantic person and you will find a realist.

I was birthed from realists - pragmatic, practical people. We look at each other like :alien: and try to be nice to the weirdo staring back.

Lily Tomlin: "Reality is just a collective hunch."

You do know that loonie-bins all over the world are filled with "realists"!

And may I offer my proud emendation of the French: "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" (To understand everything is to pardon everything), to which I respond: To understand everything is to understand nothing.

Countess

07-25-2007, 11:20 AM

You do know that loonie-bins all over the world are filled with "realists"!]

Really? (A bad pun, I know) I thought it was just the jaded romantic idealists who ended up locked away for their own protection.

And may I offer my proud emendation of the French: "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" (To understand everything is to pardon everything), to which I respond: To understand everything is to understand nothing.

Ooh, I love it when a man speaks French to me. If you write a poem in French I will swoon, even if you are discussing the logistics of removing crabs from your person.

PS: I like your quote better, you Nihilist. :D

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 11:43 AM

Ooh, I love it when a man speaks French to me. If you write a poem in French I will swoon, even if you are discussing the logistics of removing crabs from your person.

I did once, you know, many, many years ago. It began:

La vente, la vente noir,
viens sur les terraces
de ma tete...

but damned if I remember the rest of it. Would you, perhaps, settle for Yiddish, as I was assigned to write one in a Yiddish conversation class I wrote once:

YIDDISH

Shvach iz di shprach
uhn knappe ge-endikt.
Tsurissen fun moil iz di tsung.
Verbs fun zachverter,
vi kinder fun ihrer elteren,
zenen opgezundert.
Es bleibt nit kein gantsen zatz.
Nor an otem basetzt zich
--di klentste preposityeh:
"fuhn," oder "mit," oder "tsu".

for those of you whose Yiddish education was lacking, the translation is:

Yiddish

The language is weak,
and almost done in.
The tongue has been ripped from the mouth.
Verbs from nouns,
like children from their parents,
have been cleaved.
Not one whole sentence remains.
Only a breath carries on
--the smallest preposition:
"from," or "with," or "to."

Here Yiddish is meant to stand for the Yiddish speakers of Eastern Europe, who were all but wiped out by the Nazis, and in the final line, the prepositions are meant to indicate that we remaining Jews still recall where we come from, our community with each other, and the sense that we have a future we are going to.

PS: I like your quote better, you Nihilist. :D

In effect I consider myself the very opposite of a Nihilist but can't think of an antonym and my beloived Roget's doesn't offer one. Suggestions welcome.

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 11:46 AM

I like it but I'm curious. You chose "bread", "salt" and "wine", which could be viewed within a Judeo-Christian context (Jesus was the bread and the wine and yet the salt of the earth.)

Also, while in the first three lines you used food imagery to convey your thought, in the last line, you chose "courtesy", which breaks from the first three lines. Did you select it to indicate closing, or for some other reason?

Yes, I'm analyzing it. Some poetry can be analyzed and some not. This one lends itself to consideration...

Yes, I was aware of the second point you make. Of the bread salt and wine association with Judaeo-Christianity, I did not in truth contemplate it but would have gone ahead anyway if I had on the argument that these are basics of human existence and were so long before some of the desert people, their heads baking under the harsh Middle-eastern sun, adopted then for their own purposes.

And I thought for a while if there might be a fourth product of the earth I might use to set up the last line, couldn't think of one and went with "the courtesy of my heart" which I would defend as follows: the first three examples are clearly metaphors, as if the offerer is somewhat nervously approaching the more direct, un-metaphoric (or less so) offer of the last line - but then makes the leap.

Somewhat like a guy eying, chatting with a woman he's attracted to and suffering the anticipation of rejection before he finally reaches out and rests his hand lightly on her forearm.

Granny5

07-25-2007, 12:48 PM

May I offer you
the bread of comradeship,
the salt of truth,
the wine of deep remembering,
the courtesy of my heart...

Jerry Newman © July 24, 2007

Speaking of friendships:

Wanna be friends?

The tall and curious prince of words
Was shy about himself
He wanted information to learn the ropes
But not the situation
Who is afraid of what was said or what
Could possibly happen
Not the old woman who wanted to share
But the prince wanting information

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 12:52 PM

Speaking of friendships:

Wanna be friends?

The tall and curious prince of words
Was shy about himself
He wanted information to learn the ropes
But not the situation
Who is afraid of what was said or what
Could possibly happen
Not the old woman who wanted to share
But the prince wanting information

Thank you (I think...).

Granny5

07-25-2007, 12:57 PM

Thank you (I think...).

You are welcome.

firefangled

07-25-2007, 01:39 PM

Lily Tomlin: "Reality is just a collective hunch."

You do know that loonie-bins all over the world are filled with "realists"!

And may I offer my proud emendation of the French: "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" (To understand everything is to pardon everything), to which I respond: To understand everything is to understand nothing.

Since I first read the poem by Stevens, I have been hard pressed to think of reality other than:

Reality is an activity of the most august imagination.

Countess

07-25-2007, 01:44 PM

I did once, you know, many, many years ago. It began:

but damned if I remember the rest of it. Would you, perhaps, settle for Yiddish, as I was assigned to write one in a Yiddish conversation class I wrote once:

for those of you whose Yiddish education was lacking, the translation is:

Here Yiddish is meant to stand for the Yiddish speakers of Eastern Europe, who were all but wiped out by the Nazis, and in the final line, the prepositions are meant to indicate that we remaining Jews still recall where we come from, our community with each other, and the sense that we have a future we are going to.

In effect I consider myself the very opposite of a Nihilist but can't think of an antonym and my beloived Roget's doesn't offer one. Suggestions welcome.

Um, for some reason it lacks the same effect. :lol:

PrinceMyshkin

07-25-2007, 01:48 PM

Since I first read the poem by Stevens, I have been hard pressed to think of reality other than:

Reality is an activity of the most august imagination.

I wish I remembered more of the terminology for metric quanifications, but just look at how majestically those syllables fall into place.

Come to think of it mightn't it be fun to start a thread along the lines of my "A poem is..." in this case the header would be: Reality is and one of my contributions would likely be something like

the third and fourth stripes
on your double-breasted
pin-striped suit.

but if it appeals to you, you ought to start it as I've been Mr Thread-piggy lately.

firefangled

07-25-2007, 02:03 PM

Come to think of it mightn't it be fun to start a thread along the lines of my "A poem is..." in this case the header would be: Reality is and one of my contributions would likely be something like

but if it appeals to you, you ought to start it as I've been Mr Thread-piggy lately.

Mr. 9-5 technoman has overshot his lunch hour, so he wouldn't mind if Mr. Thread-piggy started as long as Beatrice Potter-Zellweger has no objections.