Poem of the Week '10

[Il Penseroso]

List of poems available in this thread:

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff by A.E. Housman (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56492)

The Drunken Boat by Rimbaud (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=914845&postcount=4)

anyone lived in a pretty how town by ee cummings (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=962956&postcount=8)

The Forsaken by Duncan Campbell Scott (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=965038&postcount=28)

Seeing For A Moment by Denise Levertov (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=967740&postcount=38)

The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=970794&postcount=56)

'The Imperfect Enjoyment' by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=973088&postcount=69)

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape by John Ashbery (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=975518&postcount=87)

Mr Bleaney by Phillip Larkin (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=977771&postcount=92)


For the new year's week, and discussion:

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff
A.E. Housman

‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, 15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse, 20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot 25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where, 30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, 35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet, 40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure 45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head 55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told. 75
Mithridates, he died old.

[GypsyDream]

I am new to litnet and have been checking out the different forums. I wanted to comment on the poem I just read since I enjoy that particular one.
I have read that poem by A.E. Housman before- nice. I love the comarison made between ale and poetry or verse. He, in a sense, seems to make the poem more "brisk" by stating that "there's brisker pipes than poetry". I had not read Housman before this poem. It did make me more interested in his work.

[Sapphire]

A.E. Housman is a great poet, in my eyes. It is just... some of his poems are so long - it is easy to remember only parts of it. As for the above poem, I could have sworn that it was only these lines:

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
:lol: Hence missing all the rest :mad2: Oops... glad that's changed now. At least for another year ;)

I have to admit though: I don't quite see the use of the last verse, the one about the King. It's an interesting story in itself - the poisener being poisened by its own poison. But what has it got to do with melancholic poetry and the idea that there is more evil than good in this world?

[Alexander III]

Lets try and get this thread going again !

Rimbaud - The Drunken Boat



As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carring away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;

Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,

Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

[bhamtya]

a poem on death......
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Under night close
Death rose to greet me.
I turned; looked back,
Though nothing beckoned –
No one cried or mourned.

Scorned by all
– My fellow race –
I shed the byes to empty space, then
Gazed upon the stony face
Of Death anon, and
So chose our treaty.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010

[Sebas. Melmoth]

John Donne, Holy Sonnets

No. 10

Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, not yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

[Pryderi Agni]

Nice...one of my all-time favorites.

[Scheherazade]

I would like to revive this thread, which used to be one of my favorites:



* We will post a new poem every week to be discussed by our members.

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

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

* When you participate in this thread, please keep in mind that there will be opinions that are different from yours. We are not here to persuade others or to make them think like ourselves but simply to share our own interpretations and views with each other.

* Any off topic posts are likely to be edited/deleted.

* PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS: READ THIS BEFORE POSTING:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17515


Since we missed the Monday, for this week only, we will post the poem on a Tuesday.


anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain


e.e. cummings


Love Cummings' poetry (though I do not claim to understand and appreciate it as it should be); this is one of his poems that makes me ponder a lot.

[Regit]

What are some of those thoughts, if you don't mind sharing them?

[Scheherazade]

Hey, Regit. It's been ages since we saw you posting. Is it the love of this particular poem that brings you back?
What are some of those thoughts, if you don't mind sharing them?That my grammatical knowledge and understanding of English language will never be enough to understand this poem! :p

It reminds me of this little poem I read when I first started learning English:
This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done The main reason I keep thinking about this poem is the grammatical challenges it presents. Cummings' use of "anyone", "someone" and "noone" change their grammatical catagory. They are not pronouns anymore but act as "nouns"/"names". And he does this for other words: Eg, "never", "same" and "isn't":

they sowed their isn't they reaped their same

said their nevers they slept their dream

And in the very first line, "anyone lived in a pretty how town", "how" becomes an adjective.

Behind all this grammatical "confusion", there seems to be a lonely sole named, "Anyone", who finds the love with "noone" even though he was ignored by other men and women who (think they) are "someone" maybe?

Do we all like to think we are "someone" and treat others like "anyone"/"noone"?

:p

[Jassy Melson]

I love all of cummings' poems because they defy analysis, which I think all true poetry does.

[Scheherazade]

I love all of cummings' poems because they defy analysis, which I think all true poetry does.That might be the case for most of Cummings' poetry (not sure what you mean by "true poetry") but it is a lot of fun to try.

[L.M. The Third]

It reminds me of this little poem that I read when I first started learning English:

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done


Thanks for sharing that!

[Regit]

Hi Scheherazade!
Do you think that cummings meant to create a kind of grammatical code for the poem that we have to decipher in order to understand it? Or maybe he just wanted to turn words into blocks of sounds so that he can rearrange them into something like a song? Of course there is much and subtle craft in it that are still to be discussed; but I think, as you said, if we look at this poem from a grammatical point of view, it will always be difficult to understand. I don't know, but my first impression is a poet having a lot of fun playing in a childish way with concepts that are not childish at all. So to understand him, first we must also copy him and disregard grammar and just play?

[Virgil]

Hi Scheherazade!
Do you think that cummings meant to create a kind of grammatical code for the poem that we have to decipher in order to understand it? Or maybe he just wanted to turn words into blocks of sounds so that he can rearrange them into something like a song?

Hi Regit. Nice to see you again. :)

I'm not a big fan of cummings, mainly because there is no reason that I can see other than ideosyncratic play for the word order. It's fun, it's cute, but I don't find depth to it.

As to this poem, I think the central thrust is to capture the scope of life by setting emotions and desires and the movement of life beside the movement of nature: "they sowed their isn't they reaped their same" set against "autumn winter spring summer". In addition, the emotions and desires seem relatively trivial and petty and it seems that the characters seem to miss the importance of life.

[OrphanPip]

Ya, I think I've read somewhere that Cummings was heavily influenced by Cubism in art, and the dadaist like Gertrude Stein, so there's a certain intentional lack of obvious coherence to it.

I think Virgil's reading is pretty good, to add to what he's said, its interesting how that sort of refrain seems to shift scales, from seasons, to celestial bodies, to individual desires. I'm not sure there's anything to that.

Another interesting thing Cummings does in this poem is that the refrain disappears for a bit in the 7th and 8th stanzas, as the speaker goes on about the death of "anyone," instead of seasons we get "earth" and "spirit," sorta emphasizing that finality of death, it encompasses everything. Then in the last stanza he brings us back to the 2nd stanza by repeating the "Women and Men" and going on to repeat both of the main refrains, this seems to emphasize that sense of people wasting their life in triviality, and maybe it undermines how grand and final death really is if people just go on with their triviality after you die..

[Regit]

I think I partly agree with Virgil here. Certainly at first glance anyway. I hesitate to conclude that it lacks depth, though. I think being playful and cute is more a vehicle than the object of the poem. For me it's more a matter of taste.

Could someone explain to me why the order of the seasons was changed? Is it just for the effect of creating movement of time, or is there significance to the particular orders.

Ps. Is it just me or did this thread need a touch of controversy to thrive? ;)

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ah, it’s been ages since I read a cummings poem and I’ve not read many by him at all.

Anyway, looking at this poem quickly, I would agree that just because he uses a simplistic, almost child-like voice here, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the poem carries any less depth because of it. It may be true that as a whole his work doesn’t, I don’t know, but just going from this poem it seems to carry something of depth.

In answer to why the poem shifts the seasons, perhaps this is just another way to visually express the passing of time?

I think that it could be argued that the poet here is expressing something about the need to return to a child-like way of viewing the world, to wonder and to see the world afresh or at least to see and understand the shortness of it. It seems to lament how people are blind to the things around them as they carry on sowing and reaping (in other words of course the daily grind). The line about the children who as they grow up forget “down they forgot as up they grew” merely shows a continuation of this.

I like the second line “(with up so floating many bells down)” and get the strong impression of a little village church with the bells ringing out on a Sunday and the people going about their daily lives, it is a pleasant image that the poem later laments when we return to the bells in the lines “Women and men(both dong and ding)”. Here he seems to be comparing the ringing to the passing of life, the brevity of it perhaps?

[Scheherazade]

Or maybe he just wanted to turn words into blocks of sounds so that he can rearrange them into something like a song? I agree with you to a certain degree but we cannot disregard the fact that Cummings does not pick random words or make up new ones such as "jabberwocky" like Carroll did. I cannot help wondering why it is "anyone" or "noone" are chosen by him to deliver his message in this poem.

It is almost touching in my opinion: He is "anyone" (could be anyone of us?) and he is loved by no one... And guess what? "Noone" does love him!

So sweet! :goof:
I'm not a big fan of cummings, mainly because there is no reason that I can see other than ideosyncratic play for the word order. It's fun, it's cute, but I don't find depth to it.Say it ain't so!

Many ideas/emotions are discussed and explored by many poets over and over again. I think the poets who deliver their messages with the most original means are the most memorable and unique ones.
In addition, the emotions and desires seem relatively trivial and petty and it seems that the characters seem to miss the importance of life.My interpretation is that it is our presence in this world that is trivial actually and we assume/pretend it is significant and somehow we matter... Worry about trivialities but these are nothing compared to those things that are permanent (sun and moon etc). I think the casual way he mentions the death of "anyone" is an indication of this:

one day anyone died i guess

No shock, no mourning, no tragedy: "Busy folks" carry on with their own lives; even the poem does not end there.
this seems to emphasize that sense of people wasting their life in triviality, and maybe it undermines how grand and final death really is if people just go on with their triviality after you die..Again, I am not sure if that is what Cummings is getting at. Our existence does not mean much... Nor does our death.
I think that it could be argued that the poet here is expressing something about the need to return to a child-like way of viewing the world, to wonder and to see the world afresh or at least to see and understand the shortness of it. It seems to lament how people are blind to the things around them as they carry on sowing and reaping (in other words of course the daily grind). The line about the children who as they grow up forget “down they forgot as up they grew” merely shows a continuation of this. I also agree with this. There is a kind of a sadness in the way human activities and futility of it all are described. We are so self-deluded that we believe what we do matters.
Could someone explain to me why the order of the seasons was changed? Is it just for the effect of creating movement of time, or is there significance to the particular orders.I think it signifies the permanency of the natural order and system; no matter from which angle you look at it, things keep moving in a certain order without failing, regardless of what happens in the human-created world.
Ps. Is it just me or did this thread need a touch of controversy to thrive? ;)Controvery is always good (so are a little advertisement, bribery and nagging :p).

[LitNetIsGreat]

Great stuff Scher, I must say. I fear that I agree with your comments on this poem. Also, not to knock dear old Virgil, but it seems that there are plenty of 'meaty' things to discuss here with this one (though I accept that the fellow may have been speaking generally).

I like in particular the idea of "noone" and "someone" as if he is referring generally to all of us, humankind, not just one or two individuals - he's observing us all here! “Women and men (both little and small)” who “cared for anyone not at all” which is rather bleak, but actually true at the same time as we are so caught up in our little worlds we often forget or overstep our own importance.

One of the strongest lines for me in the piece is “busy folk buried them side by side” I mean gosh - quick burial and then move on back to the reaping and sowing, sadly true??? :(

[OrphanPip]

Well I don't think the poem gives us any direct evidence to think that there isn't a nihilistic tendency in all of this. Cummings himself was a pretty devout Christian, and just from that fact I'm inclined to think he is criticizing the superficiality of the day to day lives of people, but he's not necessarily saying it's all hopeless. There is something sad in this poem, probably reinforced by the anonymity and the curt treatment of death. What that sense of sadness arises from, I think, is the fact that Cummings relies on the reader's response of certain sacred ideas, that life should matter.

[Silas Thorne]

Just my own reactions. I share a few perceptions with that of others. I think this poem is beautiful and while it is sad,it is happy too. It describes life and death as a natural process like the seasons, and night and day.
'with up so floating many bells down' seems to me to be heaven above (or even just the clouds), with churches below.
'anyone' is, according to the way I read it, no one is particular, and in this sense may also be 'someone' or 'everyone'. For 'anyone' 'sang his didn't he danced his did', just as women and men 'sowed their isn't they reaped their same', and 'someones and everyones' 'laughed their cryings and did their dance'. 'noone stooped to kiss his face' whether or not someone actually did, for in the sense of the natural movement of the seasons it may have been as if noone was there, and the dead person wouldn't know anyway.
'busy folk buried them side by side/ little by little and was by was' doesn't seem at all negative. People have to move on with things. And the 'little' matches the 'little and small' referring to people in an earlier stanza, that people are little and small compared to the process of time and the seasons. They all are the 'were', and the other people are of course busy with their own lives, naturally. The cycle of the seasons goes on, and the cycle of the sun and moon. Pleasure and sadness cycles through lives. It's sad, but it's happy too.There are cycles to all life and the natural world.
Perhaps the snow refers to the piling up of time. In another poem 'Somewhere I have never travelled' Cummings seems to link snow with death.
Just a few thoughts.

Maybe the 'cared for anyone not at all' is caring for a particular group, but not the all.

[Virgil]

... to add to what he's said, its interesting how that sort of refrain seems to shift scales, from seasons, to celestial bodies, to individual desires. I'm not sure there's anything to that.

Yes, and I think he's after a universal scope by doing that, creating a feeling that our lives are part of a cosmic whole.


Could someone explain to me why the order of the seasons was changed? Is it just for the effect of creating movement of time, or is there significance to the particular orders.

Two reasons that I see. First the obvious, for the rhyme. Second it creates a sense of movement of time. Don't you think?


Ps. Is it just me or did this thread need a touch of controversy to thrive? ;)
We can satisfy that if you want. :p


I think that it could be argued that the poet here is expressing something about the need to return to a child-like way of viewing the world, to wonder and to see the world afresh or at least to see and understand the shortness of it. It seems to lament how people are blind to the things around them as they carry on sowing and reaping (in other words of course the daily grind). The line about the children who as they grow up forget “down they forgot as up they grew” merely shows a continuation of this.
Good point. I do agree that the word play in his best poems seem to urge us to return childhood. It reminds me of JD Salinger in the sense that they both Romanticize childhood.


It is almost touching in my opinion: He is "anyone" (could be anyone of us?) and he is loved by no one... And guess what? "Noone" does love him!

I agree. The lack of a specific identity universalizes the events.


So sweet! :goof:Say it ain't so!

Many ideas/emotions are discussed and explored by many poets over and over again. I think the poets who deliver their messages with the most original means are the most memorable and unique ones.
I'm not saying he's a poor poet. He's a good poet, but I couldn't include him in the great poets of the century. He's no Yeats, Eliot or Stevens.


My interpretation is that it is our presence in this world that is trivial actually and we assume/pretend it is significant and somehow we matter... Worry about trivialities but these are nothing compared to those things that are permanent (sun and moon etc). I think the casual way he mentions the death of "anyone" is an indication of this:
I think that's a really good reading. :)

[shortstoryfan]

To me, the e.e. cummings poem is a poem of pattern, pair, opposite, and associative language. It uses these elements to create a pseudo-narrative, but I don't think the devices used are exact enough to be called a code. Organization is achieved by the use of rhyme and repeated lines. So, the form is very important. You also have what I will call "voices" that come in as interruptions/overtones, but not everyone may see this--it could be only me, because I see the poem as so associative. Also, certain repetitions work in various ways. You can read "noone" in more than one way at different points in the poem. Let me give some examples.

In Line 1, we have the first strange bit, "pretty how town". As already mentioned, "how" acts as an adjective here. But I kind of hear it also as, "how pretty". So you get this echoing voice or overtone, or associative voice saying "how pretty", which is exactly how the town is being described.
Then you have in Line 4, two uses of opposites, the first use of opposites or pairs: sang/danced and didn't/did.
In the next stanza, he begins with the pairing of women and men, but surprises us with the pairing of little and small. Normally with "both" before them we would expect little and big. It's interesting because "big" is kind of an off rhyme with "did". Also, the use of "both" makes you think of the meaning of both. Both usually is used with two different things, but isn't it kind of true that you can be both smart and intelligent? Or beautiful and lovely? So what is "both", really? Then the stanza completes with, the pairing of sowed/reaped and isn't/same. Maybe "isn't" is not a logical pairing, but with the possessive "their" proceeding it, one can kind of make a jump and see that "their isn't" is not the same. It's something unlike them. Not theirs.
The next stanza begins with children, which kind of plays off of "women and men" in the last stanza, as a pair. The parents, "women and men" didn't care for anyone, but the children see something they do not--the budding romance of anyone and noone. The pairing line in this stanza doesn't work like some of the others. You have down/up as a pair but then you play off of up to get "grow up". And he's given forgetting a direction, which we don't normally associate with it, but in some odd way, to me it makes sense that you would forget down...down into the subconscious, back in the memories?

I could go through the rest of the poem, but it would end up being a huge post. But I will say that "noone" is used to represent a person, and also...is just noone. So, "anyone" either died loving "noone" or anyone died with noone to love him. It's about the outsider, the mob mentality, differences and likenesses. Hopefully I don't sound drunk.

[Scheherazade]

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain


e.e. cummings


Posting the poem again to be able to follow the discussion more easily.

he is criticizing the superficiality of the day to day lives of people, but he's not necessarily saying it's all hopeless.I agree with you that he is criticising the superficiality of the life but I cannot see any indication of hope in this poem suggested by the poet himself. Can you point out where in the poem you can see this, please?
'busy folk buried them side by side/ little by little and was by was' doesn't seem at all negative. It is not a negative thing and, yes, people do need to move on; however, it is sad considering the effort humanbeings put into their life and they are forgotten as soon as they die as if they have not been there at all... That life goes on with or without us just the same.
In Line 1, we have the first strange bit, "pretty how town". As already mentioned, "how" acts as an adjective here. But I kind of hear it also as, "how pretty". So you get this echoing voice or overtone, or associative voice saying "how pretty", which is exactly how the town is being described. Personally speaking, I love Cummings' first lines... He manages to capture his readers and I like the "how pretty" association you mention.
But I will say that "noone" is used to represent a person, and also...is just noone. So, "anyone" either died loving "noone" or anyone died with noone to love him. It's about the outsider, the mob mentality, differences and likenesses.Enjoyed reading your analysis of pairings in the poem, SSF.

In my opinion, however, Cumming is using the story of "anyone" and "noone" to remind us that we are nothing more than "anyone" and "noone"- even though we might like to think differently - rather than telling a story of an outsider.

[Silas Thorne]

Yes, I agree with a few others, and with your point here, Sher, it does actually seem as if the poet is saying there's no real significance to life apart from life itself. Everyone's life is full of dancing, laughter, tears, hopes and grief, but ultimately it all ends in death and everything moves on as it always has done, hence the return to 'reaped their sowing and went their came'.
This 'reaping their sowing' on one level refers to the actual fruit of their efforts, but also seems to be 'what you sow so shall ye reap', I think ,people get what they deserve in life. If this is the case, there may be hope in this. Perhaps what they 'reap' is heaven? 'Went their came' is another version of 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'.
I agree with shortstoryfan on this 'pretty how town' line. As at the beginning I wanted to read it the line as 'pretty old town', I'm wondering if this is also a deliberate distortion too from 'pretty old' as time seems to have little real meaning in the human world of the poem.

[Scheherazade]

I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in this discussion this week and it'd be great if someone else posted a new poem tomorrow for us to discuss and enjoy next week.

:)

[OrphanPip]

Well I'll step up to the plate and post a controversial poem that most people won't be familiar with. For context, this is a poem written by one of the most prominent Canadian poets of the late 19th century. D.C. Scott is a very controversial figure, heavily influenced by American Transcendentalism, his poetry is notable as some of the first poems to depict native culture in detail, though there is still a touch of the Romanticized noble savage. What makes Scott particularly controversial is that he also served as the head of Department of Indian Affairs for the Canadian government and was involved in the forcible removal of children from native communities to assimilate them into Canadian culture. His poetry is condemned by some as outright racist and degrading, while others view it as an honest attempt at depicting a dying way of life.

Important for understanding this poem is that the second part depicts the Inuit practice of abandoning the sick on ice drifts, for the good of the community in a land of scarce resources.

The Forsaken by Duncan Campbell Scott

I
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,
Or slept in the lacings
Of the warm tikanagan.
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing
Of millions of iceflakes
Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of the storm
In the deeps of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took of her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a gray-trout,
Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,
Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one:
Tramped for two days,
On the third in the morning,
Saw the strong bulk
Of the Fort by the river,
Saw the wood-smoke
Hand soft in the spruces,
Heard the keen yelp
Of the ravenous huskies
Fighting for whitefish:
Then she had rest.

II

Years and years after,
When she was old and withered,
When her son was an old man
And his children filled with vigour,
They came in their northern tour on the verge of winter,
To an island in a lonely lake.
There one night they camped, and on the morrow
Gathered their kettles and birch-bark
Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,
Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands,
Left her alone forever,
Without a word of farewell,
Because she was old and useless,
Like a paddle broken and warped,
Or a pole that was splintered.
Then, without a sigh,
Valiant, unshaken,
She smoothed her dark locks under her kerchief,
Composed her shawl in state,
Then folded her hands ridged with sinews and corded with veins,
Folded them across her breasts spent with the nourishment of children,
Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,
Saw two spangled nights arise out of the twilight,
Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,
Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing:
Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging
Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;
They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,
Covered her deep and silent.
But in the frost of the dawn,
Up from the life below,
Rose a column of breath
Through a tiny cleft in the snow,
Fragile, delicately drawn,
Wavering with its own weakness,
In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,
Persisting still in the sight of the sun
Till day was done.
Then all light was gathered up by the hand of God and hid in His breast,
Then there was born a silence deeper than silence,
Then she had rest.

[Buh4Bee]

I'm curious to know what people think about the poem in terms of the story quality. It reads like prose. Part II seems more like a list of events. As one who is attempting to develop a deeper understanding of what does and doesn't work in poetry, I am not sure how to judge this on technical merit.

This is a powerful poem thematically.

[OrphanPip]

I'm curious to know what people think about the poem in terms of the story quality. It reads like prose. Part II seems more like a list of events. As one who is attempting to develop a deeper understanding of what does and doesn't work in poetry, I am not sure how to judge this on technical merit.

This is a powerful poem thematically.

I have a feeling that's the influence of Whitman on Scott's poetry. It is very much prosaic, though it does make use of a sort of repetition and I don't think the line breaks are entirely arbitrarily. I also think there's an attempt by Scott, in the first part especially, to take on a sort of Romanticized native perspective. The second part is certainly less, I suppose, "poetic." It seems to me as if it's deliberate, and I think it does have a sort of feel of a cold recitation of events.

Here's an excerpt from a Whitman poem:

"Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths."

I don't think you'd be alone, Jersea, in saying that you're not sure it entirely works as poetry. I think Whitman is a better poet than Scott, and pulls it off a bit better.

Edit: I think there's a deliberate oral quality to the poem, which I think is intentionally done to try and give it an "Indian" quality.

[Scheherazade]

Edit: I think there's a deliberate oral quality to the poem, which I think is intentionally done to try and give it an "Indian" quality.I agree with this. I am not familiar with the Indian literature but I could not help but feel as if I was reading a tale of some sort especially in the second half.

I am not sure why this is considered contraversial but I have enjoyed reading it and, whether we like to admit it it or not, all over the world, the treatment the elderly receives leaves a lot to be desired.

[OrphanPip]

I agree with this. I am not familiar with the Indian literature but I could not help but feel as if I was reading a tale of some sort especially in the second half.

I am not sure why this is considered contraversial but I have enjoyed reading it and, whether we like to admit it it or not, all over the world, the treatment the elderly receives leaves a lot to be desired.

It's mostly only controversial because of what Scott's historical legacy has been for the native community in Canada.

Scott essentially tried to lead a systematic cultural genocide against Canada's native communities. Despite the amount of poetry he seems to have written Romanticizing native cultures and people, and his extensive knowledge, for the period, of native culture.

"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill."

His policies caused years of suffering for generations of native Canadians.

Edit: But on the subject of the poetry itself. You bring up a good point about how this reflects a certain universal truth of the way older generations are tossed aside and supplanted by their children. I'm not sure Scott would have seen it as such though.

Edit2: On the topic of native literature, that which got published tended to be written in the same form as the popular Victorian poetry of the period. Probably the most famous native poet of the late 19th century was Pauline Johnson, she was half Mohawk and half English-Canadian. She used to perform her poetry on stage, doing half dressed in native clothing, then switch into a Victorian dress to perform the second half of her show. She was famous enough to have her poetry published in the UK and the US, and to manage to tour England and the United States to perform her poetry. Though she tended to draw on native themes, her poetry was clearly Victorian in style. Apparently, Margaret Atwood has recently written an opera libretto about her life. I quite like this dramatic monologue written by her:

Cry of an Indian Wife

My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet tomorrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you'll suffer from the white man's hand?
Here is your knife! I thought 'twas sheathed for aye.
No roaming bison calls for it today;
No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game:
'Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host.
Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost.
Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union Jack,
Nor raise Thy hand against this stipling pack
Of white-faced warriors, marching West to quell
Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel.
They all are young and beautiful and good;
Curse to the war that drinks their harmless blood.
Curse to the fate that brought them from the East
To be our chiefs--to make our nation least
That breathes the air of this vast continent.
Still their new rule and council is well meant.
They but forget we Indians owned the land
From ocean unto ocean; that they stand
Upon a soil that centuries agone
Was our sole kingdom and our right alone.
They never think how they would feel today,
If some great nation came from far away,
Wresting their country from their hapless braves,
Giving what they gave us--but wars and graves.
Then go and strike for liberty and life,
And bring back honour to your Indian wife.
Your wife? Ah, what of that, who cares for me?
Who pities my poor love and agony?
What white-robed priest prays for your safety here,
As prayer is said for every volunteer
That swells the ranks that Canada sends out?
Who prays for vict'ry for the Indian scout?
Who prays for our poor nation lying low?
None--therefore take your tomahawk and go.
My heart may break and burn into its core,
But I am strong to bid you go to war.
Yet stay, my heart is not the only one
That grieves the loss of husband and of son;
Think of the mothers o'er the inland seas;
Think of the pale-faced maiden on her knees;
One pleads her God to guard some sweet-faced child
That marches on toward the North-West wild.
The other prays to shield her love from harm,
To strengthen his young, proud uplifted arm.
Ah, how her white face quivers thus to think,
Your tomahawk his life's best blood will drink.
She never thinks of my wild aching breast,
Nor prays for your dark face and eagle crest
Endangered by a thousand rifle balls,
My heart the target if my warrior falls.
O! coward self I hesitate no more;
Go forth, and win the glories of the war.
Go forth, nor bend to greed of white men's hands,
By right, by birth we Indians own these lands,
Though starved, crushed, plundered, lies our nation low . . .
Perhaps the white man's God has willed it so.

http://www.nancympeterson.com/images/Walkpauline-joh-210-exp.jpg
http://regardingplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/paulinejohnson_archives.jpg

[Jassy Melson]

I view this as just another example of a didactic poem

[Scheherazade]

It's mostly only controversial because of what Scott's historical legacy has been for the native community in Canada.

Scott essentially tried to lead a systematic cultural genocide against Canada's native communities. Despite the amount of poetry he seems to have written Romanticizing native cultures and people, and his extensive knowledge, for the period, of native culture.Interesting. It is hard to guess this by reading only the poem you posted.

As for the second one... Despite the poet's interesting origin, it does not feel like a poem.

[OrphanPip]

Interesting. It is hard to guess this by reading only the poem you posted.

As for the second one... Despite the poet's interesting origin, it does not feel like a poem.

Doesn't feel like a poem? It's a dramatic monologue in standard iambic pentameter and heroic couplets. It fits into the form of a dramatic monologue perfectly. This was a very popular form of poetry during the Victorian era, "Ulysses" by Tennyson and "My Last Duchess" by Browning are famous examples.


I view this as just another example of a didactic poem

Duh?

It was written for and performed at a political rally. The point was to differentiate, thematically, the poetry of an actual Indian poet from the period, from Scott's poetry that is rather just about Indians.

The poem is specifically about the North-West rebellion of the Metis against the Canadian government, which was violently crushed, but split the country politically as the Metis are Catholic and French speaking and were strongly supported by the French Canadians in Quebec. And the poem is actually highlighting the similarities between white and native people, and it several times advocates reconciliation rather than violence. However, it is a dramatic monologue, and the character of the Indian Wife ultimately has no choice in the matter and can only wish her warrior husband well and support the war (just like the white wives).

I would contrast the emotional Indian Wife, with the stoic dedicated old woman from the Scott poem. The woman from Scott's poem is rough, defiant, perhaps heroic, and acting very different from how white people would maybe be expected to behave under those harsh conditions. Johnson's Indian Wife on the other hand deliberately draws attention to her similarity to the white wives, and at least she has a voice. I wouldn't merely dispense with the poem because it is definitely didactic and political, it wasn't nothing to take this kind of political stance in the period. I think, in general, a wife sending a husband or son off to war is an interesting topic for a dramatic monologue, even if it leads to the inevitable anti or pro war message. It is, though, Johnson's most political writing by far, usually she was a pretty standard imperialist who often played up her loyalty to Canada and the British Empire whenever she could, she was also half English after all.

[Scheherazade]

I am familiar with "Dramatic Monologues"; however, the latter poem you posted seems to try a little too dramatic for my liking... Probably because, as you mentioned, it was written for a political rally. It reminds me of speeches delivered on national days to stir the blood with the additional bonus of rhyming couplets.



Please don't forget to post a new poem tomorrow!

[OrphanPip]

I am familiar with "Dramatic Monologues"; however, the latter poem you posted seems to try a little too dramatic for my liking... Probably because, as you mentioned, it was written for a political rally. It reminds me of speeches delivered on national days to stir the blood with the additional bonus of rhyming couplets.


I'm going to have to disagree with it not having a poetic feel, it is definitely heavily dramatic since it was written for performance, like a Shakespearean soliloquy, rather than to be read, but the diction and meter is clearly poetic. To say it's not a poem strikes me as a bit extreme when this is a pretty standard example of performance poetry from the period.

Anyway, I don't think it's all that great a poem, but it's thematically interesting and gives a different Victorian Canadian perspective on Indians than what is found in Scott's poem.

[Virgil]

Ok, if it's not too early in the week, and since i'll be at work unable to post in the morning, I hope it's ok if I post the next poem of the week. Here's one from a poet that has caught my eye in recent years. She's relatively well known, though not overwhelmingly. Here's one I've not analyzed deeply, so i'm hoping to be surprised by its depth. Let's see.


Seeing For A Moment
by Denise Levertov

I thought I was growing wings—
it was a cocoon.

I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire—
it was deep water.

Eschatology is a word I learned
as a child: the study of Last Things;

facing my mirror—no longer young,
the news—always of death,
the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling,

nevertheless
I see for a moment
that's not it: it is
the First Things.

Word after word
floats through the glass.
Towards me.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you very much for posting the poem for this week, Virgil. I am not familiar at all with Denise Levertov so am not sure what to expect.

After the first reading, I had to search for Eschatology as I am not familiar with this concept in Christianity either (which, I assume, what Levertov is refering to in this poem). After a quick glance at Wiki, if the last things are "death, judgement, heaven, and hell", I am wondering what the "First Things" (S5) might be... Birth as opposed to death?

Will read the poem again and ponder about it some more when I have more time later on :)

[OrphanPip]

Thank you very much for posting the poem for this week, Virgil. I am not familiar at all with Denise Levertov so am not sure what to expect.

After the first reading, I had to search for Eschatology as I am not familiar with this concept in Christianity either (which, I assume, what Levertov is refering to in this poem). After a quick glance at Wiki, if the last things are "death, judgement, heaven, and hell", I am wondering what the "First Things" (S5) might be... Birth as opposed to death?

Will read the poem again and ponder about it some more when I have more time later on :)

Maybe not birth, but a new start?

I take the first line, "I thought I was growing wings," to feed into an image of a winged spirit or the like. But she's playing off of the image of a caterpillar growing wings in a cocoon. Instead of an end, it becomes a beginning. That seems to be the general trend throughout the poem.

I'm not sure about the depth of the poem, but I think it is very well written, and quite clever. We can't really get what she's at with the first two stanzas until we get to stanzas 3-5.

[Scheherazade]

Maybe not birth, but a new start?Yes, I agree that "First Things" do imply new beginnings but I was wondering if it was possible to find equivalents of "Last Things" (ie "death, judgement, heaven, and hell").


I take the first line, "I thought I was growing wings," to feed into an image of a winged spirit or the like. But she's playing off of the image of a caterpillar growing wings in a cocoon. My interpretation of "growing wings" and "cocoon" is that even though there was an expectation to turn into a butterfly (something beautiful and independent -because it can fly?), there was only a cocoon (a hollow shell, a burden), that limits movement and freedom maybe? Also, a cocoon that does not lead to wings must be such a disappointment.

I am not comfortable with the "stepping into the fire" and "deep water" imagery... Does that mean the persona expected to face up to some challenges but they proved too much (drowned?)?

Is it the poem urging us not to concentrate on the end results at the end of our lives but celebrate the achievements or, more explicitly, the beginnings we bring about?

[Silas Thorne]

I read the wings and fire as either flying up or falling down to Heaven or Hell. The cocoon seems to stifle and trap the freedom of wings to fly, in the same way as the deep water stifles the image of the flames. This seems to clash with the idea of death, for in the poem I see the idea of dying as a process of seeing thing anew ie dying to the past. And perhaps the cocoon and deep water could picture returning to the womb and living the life anew? Or reincarnation perhaps?


I think there is a significance to the fact that just after 'First Things' there is 'Word after Word', as in the beginning was the word, and that things are not ending but life is coming anew, or there is the freedom to reconceptualize everything in the present. The writer's past is seen again in the new light of the present, and so it is no longer something negative and dead. It also rejects the negative conception of the world presented by the news media perhaps, that things are moving to death and that all news is bad news, and that she is no longer young, for she says 'that's not it' later on in the poem.

[OrphanPip]

Yes, I agree that "First Things" do imply new beginnings but I was wondering if it was possible to find equivalents of "Last Things" (ie "death, judgement, heaven, and hell").

My theological knowledge is fairly limited, so I have no idea, maybe Virgil could enlighten us. Although, Silas does bring up the obvious, though I missed it, allusion to Genesis in "Word after word," the "First Things" could also be a reference to those opening lines of Genesis.



My interpretation of "growing wings" and "cocoon" is that even though there was an expectation to turn into a butterfly (something beautiful and independent -because it can fly?), there was only a cocoon (a hollow shell, a burden), that limits movement and freedom maybe? Also, a cocoon that does not lead to wings must be such a disappointment.

I am not comfortable with the "stepping into the fire" and "deep water" imagery... Does that mean the persona expected to face up to some challenges but they proved too much (drowned?)?

Is it the poem urging us not to concentrate on the end results at the end of our lives but celebrate the achievements or, more explicitly, the beginnings we bring about?

I think it's entirely possible, but I'm leaning a bit more towards them being an invocation of heaven or hell (as Silas said). There's a disappointment of expectations occurring, though I'm not sure if the cocoon and water convery something negative or positive.

I think there may something in your conclusion. Though, I think what's occurring here is more of a retrospective inspection of past events, the mirror is reflecting the speaker after all. The speaker expected certain things, and they didn't occur. And then the speaker seems to paint a miserable picture of how the world is, but then contradicts that misery. I don't think it's just about celebrating our achievements, but re-examining and reinventing our perceptions of the past and the world around us. The last stanza gives me the most trouble, as I'm not exactly sure how to take those words, other than as a Biblical allusion.

[Virgil]

I'm not going to reply individually, but here are my thoughts.

First Levertov is a poet who in mid to late life did have a spiritual conversion and wrote a good deal of religious poetry afterward, though I wouldn't say exclusively so. This poem I found was written in 1984, right around that spiritual conversion.

The poem is about a transition, either into a coming death (she would have been entering her sixties when this was written), or into her new spiritual mindset, or both. Growing wings from a cocoon is almost a cliche for a transition.

Fire is a purgation (purification, or the burning off of the old) while water is a baptism, an acceptance into the new, which are similar in some respect, but the water is so much more gentle.

Eschatology is what she says it is, the study of the end of things, but it will be seen as ironic in the sense that this is a new beginning, whether she's talking about her death or her new life.

Facing the mirror she sees what the title refers to, "the moment," presumably first of death and then the life she now believes beyond. "Word after word" is an interesting pun. She is a poet and now she has new themes to write about, but the Word is a reference to Christ, who is referred to as the Word.

A nice poem. I have no idea what the dog reference is about.

[Scheherazade]

Especially after reading Virgil's brief background information on the poet, I agree that there is a religious significance to the poem. I wonder, after experiencing some kind of spritual awakening, if the persona feels that all is not in vain and what seems to be the end (death) is actually a beginning (afterlife and all)?

So, any comments on "the dogs"?

[Silas Thorne]

Perhaps the dogs in the neighborhood are disturbed from their sleep because of the wailing of the sirens of police and ambulances, due to violence and death in the speaker's area. That may link with the lines of 'the news, always of death'. The dogs may also howl because of death, or because they see death coming.
I can't help feeling that the water and the cocoon refer to the protection of the womb.

[Paulclem]

The dogs remimded me of the "dogs of war" - the ageing process - the body at war with itself - the reflection providing the sudden evidence of ageing and mortality to which it is referring.

[Virgil]

Especially after reading Virgil's brief background information on the poet, I agree that there is a religious significance to the poem. I wonder, after experiencing some kind of spritual awakening, if the persona feels that all is not in vain and what seems to be the end (death) is actually a beginning (afterlife and all)?

Yes I agree.

[AdoreroDio]

When I read the section about the dogs it reminded my of mythology, the idea of hell's hounds. It was presumed that you heard them howling before you died, they were hunting after souls to feed on and send to Hades.....maybe it is just another reference to the end (namely death and specifically what comes after)?

[Jake10]

I view the poem as the cycles we go through in our experiences. “I thought it was time to grow wings -- It was a cocoon” We dive into new fields of study, work or social groups, expecting the flamboyant fun and challenges, but then we realize there is always a lot to learn, just as the caterpillar needs to remain in the cocoon for so long before it can fly. We often misjudge and take offence, when in fact we’re just stepping into water; we’re not being burned. We feel like children having to learn complicated new words, even though we are old in the mirror. After the honeymoon, there is always disappointment, the novelty wears off and we face problem after problem, sometimes it feels like death and howling, noisy dogs. But, that’s not it. There is a wonder in life, which makes us want to do it all over again when the struggle is at an end, because after the word flows through the glass towards me I have grown as a person.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Sorry I've been really busy of late. I'd read the poems, but not had much time to post.

I agree with what is said about the poem, in regards to viewing death as a potential new beginning and the obvious religious significance of that. I can't help but thinking however, that there are a few terms that aren't particularly fresh - it doesn't seem a very original piece and the ending for me seems a little abrupt.

[Paulclem]

I thought I was growing wings—
it was a cocoon.

I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire—
it was deep water.

I see this as representing worldly pursuits - that they are deceptive. Wings - freedom?
Fire - intoxication/ passion/ emotion

Both of these stifled by the reality represented by the water and cocoon.
I agree with the religious symbolism, a reflection upon a life, and a new start - religious and also poetic.

Incidentlly, I like the word eschatology - I used to keep a tally of how many times one of my lecturers used to use it - well, overuse it.

[Virgil]

Sorry I've been really busy of late. I'd read the poems, but not had much time to post.

I agree with what is said about the poem, in regards to viewing death as a potential new beginning and the obvious religious significance of that. I can't help but thinking however, that there are a few terms that aren't particularly fresh - it doesn't seem a very original piece and the ending for me seems a little abrupt.
I agree it's not particularly fresh in places. It does start with a cliche. I happen to like the ending. I think that's the most original part of the poem:

Word after word
floats through the glass.
Towards me.
As too abrubt, what else did you feel she needed to say? She's capturing a moment facing a mirror and looking into her life and beyond.


Incidentlly, I like the word eschatology - I used to keep a tally of how many times one of my lecturers used to use it - well, overuse it.
Really? What kind of classes were they? Maybe the teacher was implying the end of your school, like failing out. :wink5:

[Paulclem]

I agree it's not particularly fresh in places. It does start with a cliche. I happen to like the ending. I think that's the most original part of the poem:

As too abrubt, what else did you feel she needed to say? She's capturing a moment facing a mirror and looking into her life and beyond.


Really? What kind of classes were they? Maybe the teacher was implying the end of your school, like failing out. :wink5:

I like the ending too.

He was a lecturer in The new testament. It was part of my Englsh Literature and Religion Combined Arts Degree. It was a great course. He may well have been looking at me too!

[LitNetIsGreat]

As too abrubt, what else did you feel she needed to say? She's capturing a moment facing a mirror and looking into her life and beyond.

Hmm, maybe, maybe it was just the way I read it at the time?

New poem then?

I'll stick something up shortly if that is OK?

[LitNetIsGreat]

OK, how about "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes?
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/ted-hughes/the-thought-fox/

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

[Paulclem]

A brilliant poem about poetic inspiration. I read this first whilst doing my A'Levels, and it stayed with me until I came back to it years later.

I like the fox as a metaphor for inspiration - that seems to have a life of its own within the poet's own head. It hints at some nature muse that may or not appear. Apparently Hughes had had writer's block and this poem broke it.

[Virgil]

Oh I have really grown to admire Ted Hughes. I can't help but feel that D.H. Lawrence would have loved Hughes's work. This is not complicated, but it's nicely done. This really grabs me: "Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox/It enters the dark hole of the head." That phrasing "of fox" is brilliant because the "real" fox has morphed into the poetic inspiriation.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I've not read that much of Hughes, but I think I might have to read a few this week - Hughes week?! It's interested how he uses animal metaphors within his work like with the crow, the fox here etc. I really get the quietness in this poem, perhaps because he references the clock twice which gives this poem its sense of peace. The fox is brilliantly drawn too: "A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;/Two eyes serve a movement, that now/And again now, and now, and now". I like the sense of movement which contrasts with the inner peace and calm of the figure inside. More to come at a later stage.

[Scheherazade]

An interesting poem and I like the imagery provided.

How do you interpret these lines?

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

[OrphanPip]

An interesting poem and I like the imagery provided.

How do you interpret these lines?

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come



I just take them at face value as a description of the fox's shadow moving behind him as it moves across a clearing. I'm not sure how to take the shadow being lame, while the body is bold. It kind of imbues the fox with an ethereal quality. I get a sense that when we are first introduced to the fox, it has a very physical presence, which I think derives from that immediate description of the "now, and now, and now." It then becomes gradually more ethereal, until it is but a sensation, as it becomes a stink of fox.

[Paulclem]

An interesting poem and I like the imagery provided.

How do you interpret these lines?

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come



There's an intermingling of the idea of a real fox, and inspiration . I think - as the poem is about inspiration - the prints in the snow could be the writing on the page which is complete by the end of the epiphany. His fingers are moving on a blank page.

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

The midnight moment's forest is in his imagination, but there's something else separate that enters - the fox. I think the fox is a great metaphor for inspiration - they are secretive, nocturnal - it's set at night, shy, and they don't - as Hughes has been experiencing - turn up when you want them to.

[Buh4Bee]

I think it is something that can be understood pretty literally. I understood the visual image as the path the "inspiration" takes as it is born into reality.

[Virgil]

An interesting poem and I like the imagery provided.

How do you interpret these lines?

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come



I was going to respond, but then I saw Paul's response. I think he got it just right.

[LitNetIsGreat]

The midnight moment's forest is in his imagination, but there's something else separate that enters - the fox. I think the fox is a great metaphor for inspiration - they are secretive, nocturnal - it's set at night, shy, and they don't - as Hughes has been experiencing - turn up when you want them to.

Good point there, very interesting. I'm going to read a little Hughes today, I'm especially interested in his use of animal metaphors, think I'm going to read a few of the crow poems - wonder how they differ or are similar to the fox here?

[Scheherazade]

There's an intermingling of the idea of a real fox, and inspiration . I think - as the poem is about inspiration - the prints in the snow could be the writing on the page which is complete by the end of the epiphany. His fingers are moving on a blank page. I also think the snow and prints can be a refence to the writing on a page.

Do you think "lame shadow" is his work in progress? In its "hollow body", something "bold" is developing?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Good point there, very interesting. I'm going to read a little Hughes today, I'm especially interested in his use of animal metaphors, think I'm going to read a few of the crow poems - wonder how they differ or are similar to the fox here?

Well I think that was a bit of an ambitious aim really, flicking through his collection (which I haven't looked at for a few years) his work is crammed full of animal metaphor of all description! (What's that crow all about, strange but interesting?)

Just to bring the poem back up again.

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

[Paulclem]

I also think the snow and prints can be a refence to the writing on a page.

Do you think "lame shadow" is his work in progress? In its "hollow body", something "bold" is developing?

It could well be - I hadn't thought of that.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

This is an interesting stanza.

Is Hughes saying something about the nature of poetic inspiration in his view? I haven't read an awful lot of his stuff, but I remember someone on a documentary saying the focus upon animals and birds has a shamanistic quality. Perhaps he means nearer - earthier than a star.

On the star - it did remind me of the star of Bethlehem. Is he saying he's a shaman rather than a follower of christ?

[Silas Thorne]

Sorry to jump in leaving questions unanswered, (though maybe that is a good thing too for poetry sometimes :)) as I've decided to put a poem on here for discussion. As I'm not sure how much of it will get through the censors, here's a link to the unedited version:
http://ethnicity.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/imperfect.html

'The Imperfect Enjoyment' by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
Both equally inspired with eager fire,
Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.
With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace, [5]
She clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face.
Her nimble tongue, Love's lesser lightening, played
Within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed
Swift orders that I should prepare to throw
The all-dissolving thunderbolt below. [10]
My fluttering soul, sprung with the painted kiss,
Hangs hovering o'er her balmy brinks of bliss.
But whilst her busy hand would guide that part
Which should convey my soul up to her heart,
In liquid raptures I dissolve all o'er, [15]
Melt into sperm, and spend at every pore.
A touch from any part of her had done't:
Her hand, her foot, her very look's a ****.

Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys, [20]
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o'er
My panting bosom, "Is there then no more?"
She cries. "All this to love and rapture's due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?"

But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive, [25]
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent,
And rage at last confirms me impotent. [30]
Ev'n her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms no more
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore.
Trembling, confused, despairing, limber, dry, [35]
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point, oft tried,
With virgin blood ten thousand maids have dyed;
Which nature still directed with such art
That it through every **** reached every heart — [40]
Stiffly resolved, 'twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor aught its fury stayed:
Where'er it pierced, a **** it found or made —
Now languid lies in this unhappy hour,
Shrunk up and sapless like a withered flower. [45]

Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?
What oyster-cinder-beggar-common whore [50]
Didst thou e'er fail in all thy life before?
When vice, disease, and scandal lead the way,
With what officious haste dost thou obey!
Like a rude, roaring hector in the streets
Who scuffles, cuffs, and justles all he meets, [55]
But if his king or country claim his aid,
The rakehell villain shrinks and hides his head;
Ev'n so thy brutal valour is displayed,
Breaks every stew, does each small whore invade,
But when great Love the onset does command, [60]
Base recreant to thy prince, thou dar'st not stand.
Worst part of me, and henceforth hated most,
Through all the town a common ****ing-post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling ****
As hogs do rub themselves on gates and grunt, [65]
May'st thou to ravenous chancres be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste away;
May strangury and stone thy days attend;
May'st thou ne'er piss, who did refuse to spend
When all my joys did on false thee depend. [70]

And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee.

Note: Actually a lot of offensive words did get through. The stars are mostly for the C word, which is probably the most offensive single word in English today.

[Delta40]

Bravo! I really like this poem Silas. How effectively he portrays the self flogging man must give himself in more ways than one to perform when it matters to him most!

[OrphanPip]

Rochester's a funny poet. You got to love how he so effortlessly moves from that elevated classical tone into the vulgarity of self-chastisement, it emphasizes that disappointment so very much.

Aphra Behn wrote a poem of similar topic but from the women's perspective, http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_disappointment.html

[Silas Thorne]

Rochester's a funny poet. You got to love how he so effortlessly moves from that elevated classical tone into the vulgarity of self-chastisement, it emphasizes that disappointment so very much.

Aphra Behn wrote a poem of similar topic but from the women's perspective, http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_disappointment.html

I didn't know about the Aphra Behn one. Thanks!

But he doesn't just chastise himself does he? Though the speaker turns himself into no more than a static sex-toy in his own mind he also turns all the prostitutes he has been with into filthy pigs, abusing and dehumanising them in the process (lines 63-5).

I love how he personifies little John though.

[Virgil]

Now I need to go take a cold shower. :D

[Silas Thorne]

I've always admired the beauty of the presentation of his words in the first two stanzas here, and the vehemence of his abuse later on in the poem.
I feel that that 'cinder' and 'flame' in line 33 reminds me of Shakespeare's sonnet 73 a little.
Any more thoughts?

[Virgil]

I'm not familiar with this poet and poem Silas. Where is he from and when was this written?

[OrphanPip]

I'm not familiar with this poet and poem Silas. Where is he from and when was this written?

He was a libertine poet, and courtier of Charles the II, during the Restoration.

"Love a woman? You're an ***.
'Tis a most insipid passion
To choose out for your happiness
The idlest part of God's creation.

Let the porter and the groom,
Things designed for dirty slaves,
Drudge in fair Aurelia's womb
To get supplies for age and graves.

Farewell, woman! I intend
Henceforth every night to sit
With my lewd, well-natured friend,
Drinking to engender wit.

Then give me health, wealth, mirth, and wine,
And if busy Love intrenches,
There's a sweet, soft page of mine
Does the trick worth forty wenches."

It just drips aristocratic self-entitlement and recently imported French libertine values.

[Silas Thorne]

Here's a few links about Rochester:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilmot,_2nd_Earl_of_Rochester
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/rochester/
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/earl-rochester-john-wilmot.html


He was a very interesting individual of his time. I remember once reading his life story, which I enjoyed a great deal. He didn't only write poetry like the one I have put on here, and wrote some incredible satirical pieces, such as 'A Satyre Against Reason and Mankind', as well as some very touching love poems, such as 'A Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover', and 'The Mistress'.

[Buh4Bee]

I truly laughed as I read my way through this poem.

"When vice, disease, and scandal lead the way,
With what officious haste dost thou obey."

These are great lines!

Thanks for sharing Sylas.

It is nice to see poetry written so well about such a pornographic topic.

[Silas Thorne]

Thanks for giving your opinion on the poem. I think it's mainly due to the quality of his poetic expression that he could get away with what other people couldn't.

[Buh4Bee]

Surprisingly, I have heard of him before. I know OrphanPip mentioned Rochester was a libertine poet. I suppose that this kind of "talent" brought him quite a bit of exposure. I can imagine all the ladies in their closets giggling as they read this piece.

[Paulclem]

There's not much analysis compared to some of the other posted poems. Do you think the subject matter excludes?

[Buh4Bee]

He was a libertine poet, and courtier of Charles the II, during the Restoration.

"Love a woman? You're an ***.
'Tis a most insipid passion
To choose out for your happiness
The idlest part of God's creation.

Let the porter and the groom,
Things designed for dirty slaves,
Drudge in fair Aurelia's womb
To get supplies for age and graves.

Farewell, woman! I intend
Henceforth every night to sit
With my lewd, well-natured friend,
Drinking to engender wit.

Then give me health, wealth, mirth, and wine,
And if busy Love intrenches,
There's a sweet, soft page of mine
Does the trick worth forty wenches."

It just drips aristocratic self-entitlement and recently imported French libertine values.

I agree with your statement about aristocratic self-entitlement. Although interesting, I don't particularly care for the libertine personality.

[Silas Thorne]

There's not much analysis compared to some of the other posted poems. Do you think the subject matter excludes?

Yes, you are right, there isn't much analysis. I don't necessarily think lack of discussion is due to the subject matter, just that it isn't as open for different interpretations as some other poems posted here. Next time I'll throw out an out-there John Ashbery poem for a range of varied responses. :)

[Paulclem]

I agree that the poem is less open to interpretation, but only one Lady has posted upon the poem. I think the subject matter has affected the discussion. I'm not being censorious, just making an observation.

[Silas Thorne]

Who wants to choose the poem for this week, or should I choose that Ashbery poem I was thinking of? :)

[Buh4Bee]

post-it- why not?

[Silas Thorne]

OK, here goes:

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape by John Ashbery


The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.”
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant
To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched
Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach


And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.
“M’love,” he intercepted, “the plains are decked out in thunder
Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched
The part of his head under his hat. The apartment
Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant
Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my country.”


Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.
Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach
When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!”
But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. “Thunder
And tears are unavailing,” it read. “Henceforth shall Popeye’s apartment
Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched.”


Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched
Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment
And all that it contains, myself and spinach
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder
At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant


Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant
Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched
Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder.”
She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.”
“But you can’t do that—he hasn’t even finished his spinach,”
Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.


But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment
Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant
Here,” thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from spinach
Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over”—she scratched
One dug pensively—“but Wimpy is such a country
Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder


Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177258

[Scheherazade]

Just a reminder:
[B]
* The same person cannot post another poem within the same month/four weeks.

(Just to be able to give everyone an opportunity to post their choice of poems).


I am not familiar with Ashbery and will read/post my thoughts later on.

(I was extremely busy with school last week; sorry for neglecting this thread).

[Silas Thorne]

Oops, sorry, it seems that that rule passed into the realm of forgetting. If anyone wants to, post another and I will scratch this one.

[Scheherazade]

Oops, sorry, it seems that that rule passed into the realm of forgetting. If anyone wants to, post another and I will scratch this one.It was a reminder for coming weeks, Silas. We can discuss this one this week.

[Paulclem]

I'm not familiar with this poet, and I'm looking for a lead into the imagery he is employing.

The comments below seem consistent with the poem as read it. Clearly there are recurrent themes - the spinach, scratching, cartoon figures, and a narrative where Popeye has gone to live in the country whilst Olive takes sweetpea, but I'm unsure what he's getting at. Is it some comment upon the influence of screen culture on everyday life?

he characterizes himself as having been described as "a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism

Although renowned for his complex, post-modern and opaque work

From his Wikipedia page.

[Paulclem]

So I'll post a poem this week.

Mr Bleaney by Phillip Larkin.

This link will take you to the poem, and a sound recording of Larkin reading it out.

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7077

I like a jolly whizz.

[Silas Thorne]

Sorry for not commenting until now. I like this poem and the excellent use of enjambment throughout, though I get a little lost in the last sentence, which starts at the beginning of the second to last stanza. Also, the rhyme on 'nature' and 'sure' seems to be quite different from the perfect rhyming the rest of the way through the poem. Maybe I'm reading it with a different pronunciation to him (unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to his reading of the poem in my office).
It's a rest home, right? I love the way he describes the room as 'one hired box', as if it was a coffin. As it has no place for books, no coathooks etc, it might as well be. The 'four aways' are the four holidays away from the place, yes? The frame seems to be the plan he fits into other people have organised for his days away.
It seems the narrator of the poem shares the same fate as Mr Bleaney described in the last stanza, as well as sharing his room, and that he reflects on his own fate through that man.
I'm not sure why he plugs his ears up with cotton wool though. Is there someone else in the room using the TV?

[Buh4Bee]

I also just got around to reading this poem. I think that Mr. Bleaney is a very ordinary character, although quite noble. I was also struck by the room description and lack of personal possessions and furniture. I suppose that is the way it is in an old folks home, who knows. I was wondering how the narrator is connector or related to the deceased. Maybe he is a son or a person who worked for him.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you very much for getting the discussion going, Silas. :)
It's a rest home, right? My impression is that it is a rented room; something like a B&B maybe?
I'm not sure why he plugs his ears up with cotton wool though. Is there someone else in the room using the TV?The persona in the poem is the person who rents the room after Mr B, I believe, and it was Mr B who had persuaded the landlady to buy a TV (or radio?) for the room. The new comer claims not to enjoy it but not sure why he turns it on if that is the case.
I was wondering how the narrator is connector or related to the deceased. Maybe he is a son or a person who worked for him.I think the narrator is the person who replaces Mr B in the room. He gets to know Mr B through the landlady's chatter: There are speech marks in the first, second and third stanza, which indicate that certain things are quotes/direct speech.

I quite like this poem; it is quite interesting that even though the persona does not tell us anything about himself, since he is in a similar situation to that of Mr B's, it might be safe for us to assume that it is actually him who thinks that he deserves no matter than this bare room maybe? Rather poignant.

[Paulclem]

the rhyme on 'nature' and 'sure' seems to be quite different from the perfect rhyming the rest of the way through the poem. Maybe I'm reading it with a different pronunciation to him (unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to his reading of the poem in my office).


I think Larkin is such a good poet that the last discordant rhyme is not a mistake. It's a good point, and perhaps it reflects the discordant feeling that the narrator has about Mr Bleaney, and himself, ending up like this. A rhyme can make a poem a thing of beauty, all sewn up and tidy, whereas Mr Bleaney's life is a bit frayed around the edges.

I think in the second stanza, ther Landlady is trying to convince the narrator to do the garden by implying
"Mr Bleaney took
my bit of garden Properly in hand"
whereas in fact it hasn't been touched as it is still
"...a strip of biuding land."

[LitNetIsGreat]

Good choice. I can't say that I have read too much Larkin at all, but I think I might dip into him after this one, if time and motivation permits. I agree with your phrase "grey around the edges" I was thinking that "bleak" would be too strong a word, but your phrase just hits it. I like the way that he almost lists the items as if scanning the room "bed, upright chair, sixty watt bulb, no hook" its all a bit, well, grey, dreary, sigh, can only afford a dim 60 watt bulb etc. I like the house keeper's natter which comes to us as Scher says, second-hand - second-hand, sort of sums up the mood of the poem really, in a purposeful way. Interesting.

[Silas Thorne]

I think Larkin is such a good poet that the last discordant rhyme is not a mistake. It's a good point, and perhaps it reflects the discordant feeling that the narrator has about Mr Bleaney, and himself, ending up like this. A rhyme can make a poem a thing of beauty, all sewn up and tidy, whereas Mr Bleaney's life is a bit frayed around the edges.


Yes, I was quite sure it was a deliberate thing too, I just wasn't sure why.I think you've made a good point here about the discordant nature of such a life.

I like the dark imagery of the 'flowered curtains...fall', which makes me think of wilting flowers.This links up with the general description of the place as a worn-down place of decay and death, such as the 'tussocky, littered, building land' , the 'fusty bed' and 'the hired box' (which gives the feeling of a coffin).

That the narrator draws attention to the absence of room for books, bags or hooks, and then chooses to take the room, is interesting. It seems he chooses the room due to the absence of these things. Maybe the narrator wants to get away from his life for a while, or maybe he doesn't see the point in these things any more.

The place is called 'the Bodies'. Maybe it is a place to cease to be a person any more and just be a body. If there is little joy left in life, perhaps there is no difference between being alive in such a place or being dead.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Thanks for sharing Paul. I too enjoyed it.
I was struck by the detail; "Fall to within five inches of the sill" followed by "...a strip of building land"
Perhaps the land is perceived as a strip created by the five inch gap between the sill and the closed curtains, as much as Mr. Bleaney cares to see of the "littered" land.

Who are "they" that moved him? His children that washed their hands clean of an elderly father by exiling him to a nursing home?


.

[The Comedian]

I've listened to this poem several times now and I really enjoy it --

Notes: I think that the "set" that Mr.B egged her on to buy was something that "she" -- the landlady, I assume, purchased for herself. Perhaps the landlady lives in the adjoining room?

The last few lines. . . .when the narrator reflects on the possibility that how we live -- our house or "hired box" reflect upon our own nature reminded me of Thoreau's discussion of how he selected his house in Walden. Of course the "Mr. Bleaney" narrator only offers this connection as speculation, then later backs off of it with an "I don't know" to end the poem.

EDIT -- of course, the narrator himself now resides, at least sometimes, in the "hired box" -- and these grim reflections most likely reflect those of the narrator about himself. . .and then he extends them onto Mr. Bleaney as a way to ask if he is alone in thinking that one's residence reflects "his own nature".

[Paulclem]

The persona in the poem is the person who rents the room after Mr B, I believe, and it was Mr B who had persuaded the landlady to buy a TV (or radio?) for the room. The new comer claims not to enjoy it but not sure why he turns it on if that is the case.

When I read this I thought of the TV in the sitting room being watched by the landlady - and the narrator trying not to listen in his room.

I always thought of the narrator as Larkin surveying the scene with his poet's eye. He typifies - for me - the fifties - a bit drab.

[Buh4Bee]

The mysterious nature of this poem can be deconstructed by a very close read. There are many clues that one can use to conclude the proper meaning. I found, after reading the thread and reading a few on-line resources, that the poem makes much more sense if one is clear who the narrator is and where the poem takes place.

It is not a TV, but a radio. One can read further here:

www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=16998

[Scheherazade]

I like the way that he almost lists the items as if scanning the room "bed, upright chair, sixty watt bulb, no hook" its all a bit, well, grey, dreary, sigh, can only afford a dim 60 watt bulb etc. This listing of the items in the room almost sounds like it would in a newpaper ad for such a room but, ironically, instead of the positives, here everything -good and bad- is listed with a severe honesty.

Who are "they" that moved him? His children that washed their hands clean of an elderly father by exiling him to a nursing home?.Yes, that's my impression too that he was either put into a nursing home or died and his body was removed.
It is not a TV, but a radio. One can read further here:

www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=16998Oh, please don't do that. I really enjoy discussing poems in this thread and reading ready-made critiques somehow spoils it for me. :goof:

The word "Bodies" gives an eerie air to this poem. I even wondered whether our bodies and our presence in our bodies are compared to rented rooms ("hired box") at one point but I don't think they would work out well as a metaphor.

[Paulclem]

The reference to The Bodies sounds as though it may refer to some kind of firm. The strip of building land suggests an industrial environment, and, as Larkin was from Coventry originally, it could refer to the car industries. There was a firm I used to pass on the bus called "Carbodies".

The radio fits, but also a TV does too. I think the effect is similar.


The mysterious nature of this poem can be deconstructed by a very close read. There are many clues that one can use to conclude the proper meaning. I found, after reading the thread and reading a few on-line resources, that the poem makes much more sense if one is clear who the narrator is and where the poem takes place.

It is not a TV, but a radio. One can read further here:

www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=16998

Your link raises an interesting point about poetry Jersea. The link you posted still only represents the views of one person - or the accumulated views abosrbed by one person. In my opinion they have no more validity than yours or mine so long as an idea or opinion about the poem can be supported by the text, and perhaps references to the poet's biography. I think a poem should be able to stand on it's own without reference to the poet's bio though or it can't be a complete piece.

I'm of Scher's view - I think we can reveal the important aspects of the poem with our discussion, and if we differ to critical opinion then perhaps we are seeing it in a new light. :D

[Buh4Bee]

:eek6: Sorry to spoil the fun. I think we all pretty much in agreement about the plot of the last poem.

How about this poem next:

The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[zoolane]

Just from glance I think element of shame or unburden oneself (Edna) and made judgement being made on confession or act.

I hope you all don't remind me butt in like this. I am get more adventure now.

[zoolane]

[QUOTE=jersea;980105]:eek6: Sorry to spoil the fun. I think we all pretty much in agreement about the plot of the last poem.

How about this poem next:

The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

The second line is suggest that " you will not be able mend her, persons or action". Colourless dress= she feel not guilt maybe?
but something still is bother the writer.

The rest of this verse is about well to me, shame,anger. I sort under the illusion that act was force upon the writer.

Last two lines are some reciever judge from others but if get if no judgement was give the act will happened again.

I will get back on you all on rest of poem.

[zoolane]

:eek6: Sorry to spoil the fun. I think we all pretty much in agreement about the plot of the last poem.

How about this poem next:

The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

Edna St. Vincent Millay


Second verse could be suggest that person in question has decide with this problem is can not be solve so it actual fact she had just acceptance the reality of the situation.


Third verse be cleanse, away the brute act but no matter how much person clean themself always going to be here.

The colour reference is maybe to the mood change of the person as the poem was wrote.
Through this poem are elements of subtle self loath.

[Paulclem]

I wonder if the dress, with its colours, represents the facets of personality - and perhaps the Scottish psyche? It seems to have everything - anger, good deeds, treacheries.

It's also a garment I could not doff - as in doff your cap - unbending perhaps? Not acknowledging other authority?it suggested this with the "formal, unoffending evening".

As Zoolane points out, the wearer parhaps wishes the colours to be faded by the sun - perhaps throwing off the fiery Scottishness embodid in clan colours.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

The description of the dress calls to mind the uniforms worn by girls in private schools under the strict code of conduct enforced by the nuns.
"confession..." Even the act of confessing her sins does not free her from the bonds or guilt associated with the dress.

Going out for an innocent "unoffending" evening. The plaid dress is likened to a girdle "...lining the subtle gown" "not seen" but it is there (the guilt) restraining the freedom to break out and enjoy a night on the town.

???

.

[zoolane]

I wonder if the dress, with its colours, represents the facets of personality - and perhaps the Scottish psyche? It seems to have everything - anger, good deeds, treacheries.

It's also a garment I could not doff - as in doff your cap - unbending perhaps? Not acknowledging other authority?it suggested this with the "formal, unoffending evening".

As Zoolane points out, the wearer parhaps wishes the colours to be faded by the sun - perhaps throwing off the fiery Scottishness embodid in clan colours.

Maybe Edna is refer to male maybe in 3 verse lines:2,3. First then could be love reference.
Guilt of cheat on someone or forbid love.
Thinking about above quote from Paul. Still could act or sordid affair, lines of

'Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare; guilt stay for while until slow eased of near home.

[zoolane]

The description of the dress calls to mind the uniforms worn by girls in private schools under the strict code of conduct enforced by the nuns.
"confession..." Even the act of confessing her sins does not free her from the bonds or guilt associated with the dress.

Going out for an innocent "unoffending" evening. The plaid dress is likened to a girdle "...lining the subtle gown" "not seen" but it is there (the guilt) restraining the freedom to break out and enjoy a night on the town.

???

.

Maybe she to with meet a man and him being marry not be stay so that unoffending evening: unevent.

[Paulclem]

I think the poem works on both the interpwersonal level with the sexual undertones, ut also on othe levels - nationalistic or personal feelings. Its layers are like the actual and metaphorical clothes she wears:

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,

and

Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

[AuntShecky]

Take a look at this one, which posits universal truths without resorting to the excessive use of meaningless abstractions, using tangible objects of nature instead:

Continuities

by Walt Whitman

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

[zoolane]

Take a look at this one, which posits universal truths without resorting to the excessive use of meaningless abstractions, using tangible objects of nature instead:

Continuities

by Walt Whitman

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Lovely meanless words which form this poem.

I think represent someone who believe that nature or this planet was produce of nothing but which been made into lovely existence for the human kind. The words description brilliant from which they began and development of nature and seasons.
Favourite lines are: The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. meaning that we should not take nature or this planet for granted.

[OrphanPip]

I'm not sure it's an expression of universal truth, I would quite readily disagree with Whitman's transcendentalist view of nature. Nonetheless, there is always a loveliness to his language, he makes you want to believe him.

I'm in a bummed out mood, so here's an elegy.

Keine Lazarovitch 1870-1959 By Irving Layton

When I saw my mother's head on the cold pillow,
Her white waterfalling hair in the cheeks' hollows,
I thought, quietly circling my grief, of how
She had loved God but cursed extravagantly his creatures.

For her final mouth was not water but a curse,
A small black hole, a black rent in the universe,
Which damned the green earth, stars and trees in its stillness
And the inescapable lousiness of growing old.

And I record she was comfortless, vituperative,
Ignorant, glad, and much else besides; I believe
She endlessly praised her black eyebrows, their thick weave,
Till plagiarizing Death leaned down and took them for his mould.

And spoiled a dignity I shall not again find,
And the fury of her stubborn limited mind;
Now none will shake her amber beads and call God blind,
Or wear them upon a breast so radiantly.

O fierce she was, mean and unaccommodating;
But I think now of the toss of her gold earrings,
Their proud carnal assertion, and her youngest sings
While all the rivers of her red veins move into the sea.

[L.M. The Third]

Fascinating poem. I find the speaker's feelings to his mother more ambiguous than her character.

[Silas Thorne]

The speaker appears to say very little that is positive about his mother at all, that she was 'stubborn', 'limited' and ignorant', but in regretting her passing he shows how much he will miss her fire and her strength in being the person she was.
I think 'carnal' here must mean physical and temporal.

[OrphanPip]

The speaker appears to say very little that is positive about his mother at all, that she was 'stubborn', 'limited' and ignorant', but in regretting her passing he shows how much he will miss her fire and her strength in being the person she was.
I think 'carnal' here must mean physical and temporal.

I think that's about right. There's a real celebration of her "negative' qualities though, as if it is that passionate ignorance and overbearing behavior that Layton most fondly remembers.

I find it kind of interesting that if you look at video of Layton, you can see a bit of that character in him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl2ziCfSgTU

[L.M. The Third]

I see something condescending in some phrases (in the third verse especially), but there are also obviously elements of celebration of her spirit, even in its acrimoniousness. I find that conscious ambivalence interesting in relation to his phrase, "quietly circling my grief".

[Paulclem]

As a characterisation it seems honest and realistic. It's not a eulogy, but contains the faults and positivity of her character.