Thursday, October 04, 2007
Isn’t every day?
As Cyberscribe points out, it’s National Poetry Day [don’t ask which nation.. - Ed] And to mark it the BBC have taken the obvious route and asked some of our local political respresentatives which poems, and why.. and some of them respond by taking the obvious route.. Now go read a poem. Or listen to one. And the poet laureate Andrew Motion, quoting Keats, “we hate poetry that has a palpable design on us”. Or listen to a Northern Star talk about her favourite poets.[24.5Mb mp3 file]
Pete Baker @ 01:29 PM
Dawkins,
I wasn’t a smartass kid. I wasn’t even just smart. I might’ve been an ass. After posting the above, I realised that I can outdo hating something from 14. Puck and Bottom. I can’t have them. Put me off Shakespeare for years. Well, months actually because we did Macbeth next. I still hate them.
Can cows go on hills? I thought they fell off if it wasn’t flat. Hopefully a new visitor centre at the Causeway will address this question with an interactive display of free presbyterians.
Posted by on Oct 08, 2007 @ 11:15 AMBe fair, pith @ 11:31 AM, it’s only Wordsworth’s insipid nature bollocks he’s distaining. That still leaves several hundred poems to work on.
I tend to the view of Brandes:
Two voices are there: one is of the deep,
And one is of an old half-witted sheep;
And Wordsworth, both are thine.Credit where it’s due, though, his early work (with the politics and suppressed eroticism) achieves the magnificent. I am always surprised that his anti-racist stuff goes unnoticed: sonnets VIII and IX from “Liberty and Independence”, perhaps?
Posted by on Oct 08, 2007 @ 11:21 AMDo not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
........
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Dylan Thomas had his good days....
Posted by on Oct 08, 2007 @ 12:15 PMpith,
Can a cow go on a hill? Hah! You’re obviously a city boy.
Let me assure you she can.
But obviously the smartest cows use the specially adapted Cowliftâ„¢.
Posted by on Oct 08, 2007 @ 12:36 PMDewi @ 01:15 PM:
Dylan Thomas seems to pursue me like Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven”:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.The bugger keeps turning up: the Wheatsheaf in Rathbone Place (where he met Caitlin Macnamara for the first time, and proposed on the spot); the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon (owned by the Macnamaras, where Thomas and Caitlin lived for two years, and where the bar is named after him); the White Horse Tavern on Hudson and 11th Street (his last resort, where he is disconcertingly in trompe d’oeil on the end wall). In all innocence, at one time of my life or another, I walked into each before realising the connection. Heck, they were recycling Under Milk Wood to sell Volkswagens recently! Nevertheless, keep him on the list, both for his prose and his poetry.
Bringing it back home (no prizes for spotting the roundabout link to Thomas), can we have Paddy Kavanagh included?
I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.And the superb little sonnet Epic:
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided: who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’
And old McCabe, stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel –
‘Here is the march along these iron stones’.
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.Posted by on Oct 08, 2007 @ 12:48 PMDawkins,
Ceci c’est pas une vache.
Posted by on Oct 09, 2007 @ 07:10 AMpith,
Nor is this one :0)
Posted by on Oct 09, 2007 @ 09:22 AM...but it is clearly about to fall off.
Posted by on Oct 09, 2007 @ 10:31 AM
