''Ulysses" & My Life

[Miss Madison]

One thing that always strikes me about poetry is how words on a page can strike people at an emotional level. It's one of the remarkable effects of the written word.
"Ulysses", a poem looking at the aftermath of Homer's Odyssey, is one of Lord Alfred Tennyson's greatest inventions, in my personal opinion. I can always take extracts from the poem and use them ine everyday life.
The thought for the day is the quotation in my signature.
It sums my father up exactly. Sleeping, eating, and lazing around. Cheap. Won't let a penny squeeze by him. I don't want to sound negative about him, but then again, honesty is required.
I just had to 'vent' those feelings.

[Virgil]

Thanks Madison. I love that poem too. It describes many of men.

[Miss Madison]

^ That's very true! I contemplated long and hard about whether I was the only one having to endure an unbearable father and then decided if Tennyson is writing about it, then surely it is not an uncommon burden! Poetry does succeed in communicating such a wide variety of things.

[Quark]

Yeah, "Ulysses" is one of my favorite poems. I reminded someone about that on a Wordsworth thread I started. The lines 19-23 are particularly moving:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Although, it sounds like your dad resembles "The Lotus Eaters" more than "Ulysses".

[Miss Madison]

The Lotus Eaters.... aha, good point! But they have an excuse, their addicted to the lotus, the lotus makes them that way.