Poetry Bookclub 2

[Virgil]

Well at least I am not completely alone. Usually whenever I mention her name, people have a tendency to look down their noses at me, like I am such unsophisticated pauper because I happen to enjoy her work.

Really? I've known lots of sophisticated poetry readers like Plath. I studied her in college.

Or they presume that the only reason I must like her is because it is just the cliche thing to do based upon the popularity given to her life story and past, and that I could not just genuinely happen to enjoy reading her work.

Well, her life story does grab some people. But I think her poetry stands up pretty well.

I do not think everyone must like her, but I am tired of others pulling the snob card out, just becasue I do.

Ah, don't worry. She's a fine poet. Died way too young. Actually she's better than her husband Ted Hughes.

[Dark Muse]

Ah, don't worry. She's a fine poet. Died way too young. Actually she's better than her husband Ted Hughes.

Here here to that. I tried reading Hughes work, and it really did not do it for me.

[Jozanny]

The rest of you can do as you like. I go in and out of things, and I am out right now on the forums, and the only reason I stopped by this evening was so quasi would cease pming me. I am not feeling well and I have been trying as best I can despite ailing to get back to *my* work. I am tired, stressed, and my brother and sister are whining that they want me to pay their damn mortgages and I'd like to bust both their heads.

I know all the regular posting voices here pretty much, including mine, and I am bored with it, for now. Have fun, good luck, happy holidays, and see you all around.

[quasimodo1]

JoZ, this might not be polite, and I am not without empathy, especially about your siblings, but sometimes you are absolutely hilarious.

[Virgil]

The rest of you can do as you like. I go in and out of things, and I am out right now on the forums, and the only reason I stopped by this evening was so quasi would cease pming me. I am not feeling well and I have been trying as best I can despite ailing to get back to *my* work. I am tired, stressed, and my brother and sister are whining that they want me to pay their damn mortgages and I'd like to bust both their heads.

I know all the regular posting voices here pretty much, including mine, and I am bored with it, for now. Have fun, good luck, happy holidays, and see you all around.

Jozy I understand. I will always look for you here on lit net. I liked the Roethke Macabre poem you highlighted. I just need a lttle time to think about it before I say anything.

[Jozanny]

JoZ, this might not be polite, and I am not without empathy, especially about your siblings, but sometimes you are absolutely hilarious.

That's what they tell me old man , but I am taking time off from my distractions here, just for a little while. I will probably be back before turkey day. I do not hate Plath; her tropes are just same old same old, like Eliot. I'd rather do an author more under the radar, but not just now.

Smooches

[mortalterror]

There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages.

I well consider all that ye haue sayd,
And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
And changed be:

Forgive my obtuseness, but the Ovidian nature of the poem is not so obvious to me. The Yeats is straight forward enough. Roethke is careful to cite it. He fairly beats us over the head with his allusion and it would be tough to miss in any event. Where my comprehension breaks down, what I don't quite get, is how besides the passage you've already quoted above Roethke reminds you of Ovid.

I'm not sure you are misinterpreting Roethke so much as I fear you may be misreading Ovid. Truly, there is a metamorphosis in the passage described, but let's not confuse any topoi with the writers who wrote them best. We say of a sonnet that it bears the stamp of Petrarch, but is Petrarch to be defined or confined to a sonnet? Was he not first a writer of latin epic? Should his letters to classical authors be dismissed out of hand? Ovid wrote several books: historical, pedagogical, epistolary. His finest was The Metamorphoses. Indeed, it was. But even The Metamorphoses is not solely about metamorphoses. What was Ovidian about The Metamorphoses were the narratives, the humor, the emphasis on love, not the metamorphoses themselves. There are many writers of sports and hunting which do not remind me of Hemingway. It is rather the manner of his treatment which so characterized his stories, a particular view of the world. Consequently, not every change of state is an overt reference to Ovid.

The structure of the Roethke poem reminds me a bit of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, with it's seemingly disconnected parts containing an overriding theme; but there the resemblance ends. Roethke's method is his own and not Eliot's. His conceits, his interests, his style, as well as the places he draws on for inspiration are all very different. I wouldn't call this an Eliotic poem, especially because I don't think that The Wasteland represents the quintessential Eliot mode.

I don't mean to belabor the point, but as I already said, I don't quite get what you mean when you call Four for Sir. John Davies Ovidian. If you have other reasons for doing so besides the brief transformation passage I would love to hear more about it. I'd especially like to know what parts of Ovid you are likening it to; since my copy of The Metamorphoses is nearly 400 pages long with many transitions and conversions.

[Petrarch's Love]

Forgive my obtuseness, but the Ovidian nature of the poem is not so obvious to me. The Yeats is straight forward enough. Roethke is careful to cite it. He fairly beats us over the head with his allusion and it would be tough to miss in any event. Where my comprehension breaks down, what I don't quite get, is how besides the passage you've already quoted above Roethke reminds you of Ovid.

Hi Mortal--I think this can all be cleared up pretty quickly. I didn't mean to claim at all that the poem as a whole was Ovidian, which I don't think it is. I was merely bringing out the metamorphosis in the passage by Roethke which seems to have Ovid lurking around behind it (albeit in a very simple way), and saying that I got a similar sort of pleasure out of the way Roethke handles a metamorphosis bit as I do out of some of those described by Ovid (I hasten to emphasize the "some," since there are many metamorphosis descriptions in Ovid that far surpass what is offered in the Roethke passage quoted). I was just trying to get a small point across about imitation in poetry with a specific passage. I did not in any way intend to claim that this meant the entire poem had direct parallels with Ovid and certainly did not intend to claim that an allusion like this summed up the works of Ovid which, as you rightly point out, have a great deal to offer beyond a few descriptions of metamorphosis. I should probably also point out right now that, even in the passage I quoted, I don't really want to claim that Roethke is reaching the full, rich, heights of Ovid, that he is a particularly Ovidian poet, or even that the passage itself is intensely Ovidian. I think, as I believe I said in my original post, that it has something of an "Ovidian touch" which in my opinion works nicely. The Roethke passage clearly could not reach the kind of full effect that the best bits of Ovid have because, among other things, it lacks the framework, the overall vision that supports and builds up to the best passages. That overall narrative, the way Ovid's poem moves and shifts as it progresses, is, of course, one of the great pleasures of the Metamorphoses, which could not possibly be captured in Roethke's small play in this passage.

not every change of state is an overt reference to Ovid.

This is true, but I think in that particular passage he is making a slight Ovidian reference. This would be especially unsurprising given that in the poem as a whole he's responding to the poetry of the Elizabethan age, which is jam packed with Ovidian references.

I well consider all that ye haue sayd,
And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
And changed be:

As a postscript I'd like to add that it warms this Spenserian's heart to see the Mutability cantos being quoted. Now if we wanted to have a serious talk about some poetry that really and fully imitates, even rivals Ovid...

[Jozanny]

From Plath to Ovidian imitators. Gotta love you people. Even though my harried middle age wars to reduce my pleasure in discussion, I will nominate someone who I feel would reward me as a poet most, and that would be Allen Tate. The little I've picked up on him is tantalizing and full of intrigue.

Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.

And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in.

And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!

[JBI]

From Plath to Ovidian imitators. Gotta love you people. Even though my harried middle age wars to reduce my pleasure in discussion, I will nominate someone who I feel would reward me as a poet most, and that would be Allen Tate. The little I've picked up on him is tantalizing and full of intrigue.

Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.

And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in.

And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!

Oh, most certainly - none of the really popular Plath poems were even published in her life time, and I think if she didn't kill herself, people would realize how pretentious, and outright insulting her most famous "Daddy" really is. To be honest, I still find it insulting how some bourgeois girl, who had everything given to her whole life, and great opportunities, could have the nerve to compare herself with a Jew in a concentration camp. What justification does she have even, for the less controversial, but still as depressing poems? Lets be honest, none. Most people in this world go through harder times than she did (her husband didn't love her, oh well), and most don't kill themselves. I think she merely took Robert Lowell, and tried to become him, leading to a failure within her life, as everything crumbled around her, until her eventual suicide.

As for the verse, I find it like going to Bedlam on tour, but all the bedlamites are mere actors, putting on a show. But, perhaps that is just me.

[quasimodo1]

Thanks to mortalterror for joining the discussion. And JoZ, Allen Tate jumps out as one of the best suggestions for the next poet. I have to admit only a passing familiarity but the Poetry Foundation, something of an overly-austere group, had this to say of Tate: One of Tate's preoccupations was indeed "man suffering from unbelief." His modern Everyman, however, faced a more complex situation than the simple medieval morality tale hero. Michigan Quarterly Review contributor Cleanth Brooks explained, "In the old Christian synthesis, nature and history were related in a special way. With the break-up of that synthesis, man finds himself caught between a meaningless cycle on the one hand, and on the other, the more extravagant notions of progress—between a nature that is oblivious of man and a man-made 'unnatural' utopia." Even though he had periods of skepticism himself, Tate felt that art could not survive without religion. Pier Francesco Listri wrote in Allen Tate and His Work: Critical Evaluations, "In a rather leaden society governed by a myth of science, [Tate's] poetry conducts a fearless campaign against science, producing from that irony a measure both musical and fabulous. In an apathetic, agnostic period he [was] not ashamed to recommend a Christianity to be lived as intellectual anguish."

[Dark Muse]

Oh, most certainly - none of the really popular Plath poems were even published in her life time, and I think if she didn't kill herself, people would realize how pretentious, and outright insulting her most famous "Daddy" really is. To be honest, I still find it insulting how some bourgeois girl, who had everything given to her whole life, and great opportunities, could have the nerve to compare herself with a Jew in a concentration camp. What justification does she have even, for the less controversial, but still as depressing poems? Lets be honest, none. Most people in this world go through harder times than she did (her husband didn't love her, oh well), and most don't kill themselves. I think she merely took Robert Lowell, and tried to become him, leading to a failure within her life, as everything crumbled around her, until her eventual suicide..

So if someone comes from an Upper-Middle class background, they can only write nice happy little poems?

[quasimodo1]

I get your point JBI; it coincides with JoZ's take on Plath. But Muse also makes a point...when I read something like "Black Rook in Rainy Weather"...there is definately a poet there. The pretensions about the holocaust; well, where do you go with that?

[quasimodo1]

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

THE REPLY



I'm neither out nor in
Before that simple tune
As cryptic as a rune,
As fresh as salt-drenched skin.

This shivers me, I swear
A tune so bold and bare,
Yet fine as maidenhair,
Shakes every sense. I'm five
Times five a man; I breathe
This sudden random song,
And, like you, bird, I sing,
A man, a man alive.
{last two of three stanzas}

[JBI]

So if someone comes from an Upper-Middle class background, they can only write nice happy little poems?

No, but they can't say,


An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.


To be honest, as a Jew who had his whole families past history wiped out, I find this highly insulting.