Originally Posted by firefangled
Do you know that wacky story by Borges: "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote"? In the fashion of Menard I'd almost be tempted to adopt the dress and character of a late 19th-early 20th century Irishman, fall helplessly in love with Maud Gonne and take up Mme Blavatsky & the other theosophists if I could then write like that SOB!
No I don't know that story, but...
I always thought I would fall for Maud Gonne if we met...and then he had to say, "but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face."
That cinched it. I wouldn't even ask for anything in exchange for all the grief she would have put me through. I would liked to have met her when I was 18and rallying against Viet Nam. Our letters to each other from separate prisons would be famous now.
Yeats was a bit too well behaved for Maud Gonne? He looked somewhat proper when he was young. I know he had a sense of humor and was even ribald in his writing sometimes, but that could have been his outlet.
The Cranberries sing of her in their song, Yeats' Grave.
Silenced by death in the grave
William Butler Yeats couldn't save
Why did you stand here
Were you sickened in time
But I know by now
Why did you sit here?
In the grave.
Why should I blame her,
that she filled my days
With misery or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways
Or hurled the little streets upon the great
Had they but courage
Equal to desire
Sad that Maud Gonne couldn't stay
But she had MacBride anyway
And you sit here with me
On the Isle Inisfree
And you are writing down everything
But I know by now
Why did you sit here
In the grave..
Why should I blame her
Had they but courage equal to desire
I'm in love with The Vinegar Man and Mr. Tanner, but be careful, it could just as easily be you.
"If you're going to write you better have somewhere to come from." Flannery O'Connor
WHAT! Did you write this gorgeous poem? If not, please HASTEN to add the name of the author!
I have spoken!
Well, to save you the trouble of looking it up and going through the vexation I did: Pierre Menard is an early 20th c. Frenchman who conceives a desire to write Don Quixote so, to begin with, he dresses like a Spaniard of Cervantes' time, reads all the romance novels that Cervantes read... but then decides that that is the way Cervantes wrote it so he reverts to his original habits...
At his death it is found that he had completed a certain number of chapters of Book 1, etc. Borges then quotes a paragraph from Cervantes' version, and one that Menard wrote, and the reader goes effing crazy looking from one to the other to realize that indeed every word, every g/d comma is the same...
The point? Search me....
I have no idea who wrote this but I wish I did write it. quasimodo1
Well read my reply to firefangled just above yours, and you'll see that you COULD write it!
No PrinceMyshkin, I wish I could make you that happy! But, the words and music, recorded by the Cranberries, is by their singer, Dolores O'Riordan, born September 6, 1971, in Limerick, England.
I'm in love with The Vinegar Man and Mr. Tanner, but be careful, it could just as easily be you.
"If you're going to write you better have somewhere to come from." Flannery O'Connor
(Evidently my previous posting was in the wrong place. Please forgive me, I'm new.)
Ditties for the Week of July 9-uh,oh, 13th
A Clerihew is a humorous, "pseudo-biographical" ditty invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. As a young lad he came up with the idea when he was trying to avoid doing his homework. The name of the subject, usually a celebrity, appears at the end of Line One. (So you're more likely to find a Clerihew about someone whose name is easy to rhyme, like Donald Trump or Condoleeza Rice say, as opposed to David Ignatow or Zbignew Brzezinski.)
Here’s a couple, which like Law and Order plots, are ripped off today’s headlines:
Like a veggie out of the can, that Scooter “Libby”
Essentially scot-free from being all fibby,
He’s still driving a Bentley (not a Jeep)?
I guess it pays to be pals with The Veep.
Way down in the ratings, Ms Couric, Katie,
Gussied up for the news, all flirty and date-y,
Putting sober(?) CBS execs into a lather,
Consoled, at least, that she’s not Dan Rather.
And in honor of the All Star Game that nobody watched, a baseball extra by Auntie Clerihew Shecky:
Rewind
Inside the park home run!
Safe!
Home plate ump outstretches his arms.
too late.
Delivery to the catcher
runner slides-------------
who fires it home
cut off by the second baseman
the throw
the sprint from third
base coach waves ‘im in
finally retrieved by the center fielder
the ball ricochets against the wall
it’s heading for the corner
the runner rounding second
he still can't get it!
The right-fielder chases–
It’s going down the line!
Wait–it’s rolling–
Fair ball !
he busts out of the box
–-a line towards first
--and the swing--
center of the plate--
the pitcher deals –
Here’s the wind-up –
He’s looking for a fastball inside
Now here’s a guy who’s as good as anybody with a bat
Two outs
Nobody on.
From Questions About Angels by Billy Collins.
Questions About Angels
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.
Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?
What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?
If an angel fell off a cloud would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?
If an angel delivered the mail would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?
No, The medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.
It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.
She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
Oh how that makes me smile. Thank you for sharing angels, Fire.
I'm in love with The Vinegar Man and Mr. Tanner, but be careful, it could just as easily be you.
"If you're going to write you better have somewhere to come from." Flannery O'Connor
Emily Dickinson-
Glee! The great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.
Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls, --
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!
How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty?
Did they come back no more?"
Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.
I chose this poem because I really enjoy reading about the ocean. And this poem has truth in it. This poem describes something that happens quite often in the seafaring world; a tragedy occurs, "and only the waves reply".
But I have to admit, it was hard trying to decide whether to use Emily D or William W; they're probably my favorite... along with some others of course.
"For I am persuaded that nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
by
Robert W. Service
The Song of the Camp-Fire
I
Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame;
I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back;
Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame.
Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight;
Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold;
With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night,
They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold.
Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas;
Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands;
I will mock the marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies,
I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands.
In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown,
By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows,
On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down,
In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows;
In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine,
As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness I span;
And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign
Of unending domination, of the mastery of Man;
I, the Life, the fierce Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire;
I, the angel and the devil, I, the tyrant and the slave;
I, the Spirit of the Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire;
I, the Maker and Destroyer; I, the Giver and the Grave.
II
Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.
Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind:
By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.
Peer into my heart of solace, break your bannock at my blaze;
Smoking, stretched in lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze;
Or, it may be, deep in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.
Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard;
Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred:
O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!
For you seek the silent spaces, and their secret lore you glean:
For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean;
And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.
From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?
And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared,
(As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).
On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe;
Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through;
In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.
Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim;
Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim;
Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.
Always, always God's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light
In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night;
'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?
Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth;
Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth,
In the lusty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.
Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled;
Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed;
By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!
III
I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep;
My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn.
Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep
The stealthy silver moccasins of morn.
There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light;
It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world;
And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night
Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.
Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire;
The day of daring, doing, brightens clear,
When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire
Must only be a memory of cheer.
There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn;
There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky:
Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone;
I have served you, O my masters! let me die.
A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain,
Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow:
Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again,
Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow!
A black scar in the sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine,
Blind to the night and dead to all desire;
Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign!
Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine!
A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine,
The foot-print of a god, all-radiant Fire.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------sometimes called the poet of the Yukon, Robert Service quasimodo1
She Is Dead
“She is dead,” they said
And they gathered up the things
Of her days.
Life’s little spindle,
Her gentle ways,
The comforting words
That were left a wall
About their fears
To keep them from climbing
Into future years.
The hopes of her pleasing,
Her little vigil hours,
The chest of her maiden dreams,
The flowers of a gladder faith,
The lavender of old tears.
The linen of her fingers weaving
The garments for her children’s souls
From words writ in the Holy booke.
And the memory
Or strong caressing hands
That they had always found
Understanding.
Afterwards, in one old chest
In the room she had slept in,
They found the gentle joys
Of her waiting years-
The petals of the hopes
At her children’s birthing.
- Opal Whiteley
"I have so often dreamed of you that you become unreal." ~ Robert Desnos
To Genoveva: Your "favourite poet" being an unknown to me, had to do some looking. You are aware that an editor of the Atlantic Monthly encouraged the poet to reconstruct a collection of poems which for some reason was torn to pieces. The fragments were saved and published. I found this link useful...http://intersect.uoregon.edu/opal/ Another, if somewhat obscure, great talent. quasimodo1
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