No idea at all? None?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
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No idea at all? None?Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Here's one by George Oppen, with no title, just a number from his Discrete Series
2
...........Thus
Hides the
Parts -- the prudery
Of Frigidaire, of
Soda-jerking ---------
Thus
Above the
Plane of lunch, of wives
Removes itself
(As soda-jerking from
the private act
Of
Cracking eggs);
big-Business
I was thinking... he really didn't need to be discrete here, could have expanded on it. I mean, not too much, because then we would know what its about. Why does this remind of Andy Warhole?
Expanded? No, I don't think he needed to.
Not sure I've totally 'cracked' it myself, but I think it's all there, so to speak. Start at the beginning, work through to the end, go back to the beginning again. What hides the parts? The parts of what? big-Business. Down at the soda counter, we can believe we're just living a life, even that we're free. None of this is as innocent as it seems.
I'm interested in the use of capitalisations - which I've reproduced faithfully.
The Bookburning (Die Bücherverbrennung)
When the Regime ordered that books with dangerous teachings
Should be publicly burnt and everywhere
Oxen were forced to draw carts full of books
To the funeral pyre, an exiled poet,
One of the best, discovered with fury, when he studied the list
Of the burned, that his books
Had been forgotten. He rushed to his writing table
On wings of anger and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me, he wrote with hurrying pen, burn me!
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Bertolt Brecht
What a lovely poem Shanna - My avatar shows the inevitable response of the authorities. :D
Somehow this poem seems appropriate to how I feel right now.
Quote:
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art by John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Thank you Virgil. That is a poem I have long loved. I'm glad I stopped in to read it before going to bed tonight.
from Pippa Passes
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning
Love the way the rhythm complements the theme. Great image in "dew-pearled." Browning was probably looking for a rhyme for "world" and stumbled on a great image.
Since no one's puitting any out, I'll grab this opportunity. This is an anonymous tenth century Welsh poem, translated into modern English.
Quote:
Spring Song (Anonymous, translated by Wesli Court)
Earthspring, the sweetest season,
Loud the birdsong, sprouts ripple,
Plough in furrow, ox in yoke,
Sea like smoke, fields in stipple.
Yet when cuckoos call from trees
I drink the lees of sorrow;
Tongue bitter, I sleep with pain--
My kinsman come not again.
On mountains, mead, seaborne land,
Wherever man, wends his way,
What path he take boots not,
He shall not keep from Christ's eye.
A very interesting and thought provoking poem with an unusual pattern. It would appear the author has a reason to be sad in the spring, something about a kindsman.
Something nice and uplifting for a Friday morning....
Quote:
Paradise Motel
by Charles Simic
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
I lived well, but life was awful.
there were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.
On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each other's clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.
:lol: What does that all mean?
I think it's trying to say that humans are animals.
Since I missed Virg.'s poem yesterday, I thought I'd say I enjoyed it. Makes me wish I could read the original Welsh...say tenth century Welsh isn't anything like Old English is it? Well...probably not, but the translation of the Welsh poem reminds me of a lot of the things I've read in early medieval English poetry.