Poetic Mechanicals & bloody Laureates

[gli]

Yo Cap,

Never even considered the tree as a metaphor for a skyscraper before. Somehow, I find the imagery unsettling in that context. You've ruined the poem for me. YOU B******.

Just joking.

I'm inclined to be a bit more literal about the interpretation as and extant a force, for me death and decay, that encroaches upon the unnamed actor sitting across the expanse, but firmly riveted to a specific location and time. Many interpret this as morbid, but I don't. The tree, while gone, is still in this actor's memory and the new force is somehow connected, and recognised as both a force and a connection, between death, life and the actor's personal but universal realisation of these. I find this an affirmation of some sort.

Now, the modern allusion conjures up whole new vistas which I hadn't even contemplated before. My world view, at least as far as the poem is considered, will have to change. Interesting.

Another ditty by Edna stVM

Jesus on His Birthday

For this your mother sweated in the cold,
For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;
Up goes the man of God before the crowd;
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel
He drones your humble gospel to the proud.
Nobody listens. Less than the wind tht blows
Are all your words to us you died to save.
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!
How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.
The stone the angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

Now many wouldn't read this poem because of its religious connotations, but many religious people would rail at the message. I like this type of political poem -even if Edna didn't intend it in this context. Poetry at its best morphs beyond the author's intentions imho.

And I seem to have a fetish about trees, it seems.

slán

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

aye, gli, I read the tree as Yggdrasil in one sense ... strange how magical it is to have the same set of words or image mean something to different people ... a bag of universalities?

We're nearly at Beckett there as well with the unnamed actor

[Mod3]

Thanks for the Millay, Gli. I'm really getting into her stuff at the moment:

A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.



I think at one stage in her life she was probably the most read poet in North America (and the first woman to win the Pulitzer for poetry ... for what it is worth). Latterly, however, she has been much neglected and I think this is because of the strong political themes in her work: feminist, socialist, anti-fascist.

She was very affected by the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti (and was arrested protesting them) and her poetry, I believe, changed after that.

Our age is calling out for radical poets .... where are they? And the musicians! All lagging behind ...

I wonder why.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

We do need the artists to express what the politicians won't ... hence the notorious naked Cowen on the toilet(!) which is as political as you can get when you think about it...

I was on a job over in Washington in 2006 for a company I worked for and went to an exhibition of political cartoonists's work from Central America at a private gallery there. Having a wander around adjacent rooms I came across an installation that was quite staggering in its political effect.

It was a grave with a headstone and an American flag. On the gravestone was inscribed the 1776 Declaration of Independence, 4th of July to I think (without checking) to '17 January 2004'.

The latter date was the second inauguration of George Bush. I was really quite struck by how politically subversive that was in the heart of Washington with Homeland Security patrol cars cruising the streets outside with overweight jobsworths in uniform staring hard at everyone on the sidewalks ... I knew that stuff was internal propaganda designed to keep America Fearful and it was quite reassuring to see the work of young emerging artists being quite visceral.

Sometimes when the political mood is repressive art is all that's left as a voice...

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

A rather eerie postscript to my suggestion on this thread that someone like Morrissey is quite possibly (or should be) the poet laureate in the UK.

Another controversial scene around Morrisssey and his remark about the Chinese being a subspecies because of their treatment of animals- and I notice the photograph of Morrissey in the Guardian shows him in the garden of his house in Italy... in the background is a small blackboard and on it is written 'I am the real and proper Poet Laureate'.

Bit spooky. Is Mozza reading politicalworld.ie?

[Cáthasaigh]

[ame="www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o0Xb1uXd7s"]YouTube- The Savage Eye- Seamus Heaney "Turf"[/ame]

[Summerday Sands]

A rather eerie postscript to my suggestion on this thread that someone like Morrissey is quite possibly (or should be) the poet laureate in the UK.

Another controversial scene around Morrisssey and his remark about the Chinese being a subspecies because of their treatment of animals- and I notice the photograph of Morrissey in the Guardian shows him in the garden of his house in Italy... in the background is a small blackboard and on it is written 'I am the real and proper Poet Laureate'.

Bit spooky. Is Mozza reading politicalworld.ie?

If he is then he isn't here

Great poet though & Crumlin's finest son.

"I dreamt about you last night
and I fell out of bed twice" (Reel Around the Fountain)

"I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of" (Frankly Mr. Shankley)

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I think his greatest line and finest image (and one redolent of England) is the opening line of 'This Charming Man' and 'Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate'.

Betjeman and Larkin would have bitten their respective bottom lips with envy... I also happen to agree that when one considers his imagery, his Larkinesque eye for the English zeitgeist then he is the real and proper Poet Laureate. Nice to know he agrees with me.

[5intheface]

If he is then he isn't here

Great poet though & Crumlin's finest son.

"I dreamt about you last night
and I fell out of bed twice" (Reel Around the Fountain)

"I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of" (Frankly Mr. Shankley)

Some dizzy whore
Eighteen hundred and four.

Joyous, righteous.

[Sam Lord]

Just lost myself for a couple of marvellous hours in the new Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty.

Thought I'd share this 17th century gem:

A Glass of Beer

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will ever see
On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
Came roaring and raging the moment she looked at me,
And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day;
But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Thats brilliant ... superb example of the way Irish thought patterns breathed life and lurid violence into the English language. Delicious stuff!

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I've a pet theory that the sudden and violent laws which attempted to eradicate Irish made English the official language but it didn't stop our minds thinking still in Irish linguistic patterns.

It would be a good explanation for the fantastic gymnastics we then as a culture introduced into the English language.

[Sam Lord]

I've a pet theory that the sudden and violent laws which attempted to eradicate Irish made English the official language but it didn't stop our minds thinking still in Irish linguistic patterns.

It would be a good explanation for the fantastic gymnastics we then as a culture introduced into the English language.

Agreed 100%.

[5intheface]

Agreed 100%.

+1

On an abridged version of that theory, I have always thought that O'Nolan's late introduction to English was what gave his language such a joyous twist.

'I'll kick the jaw off your face'

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

'The lanky hank of a she' is just gorgeous in poetic terms and the strange thing is that these kind of linguistic tricks among the English are usually the result of a very good education.

In Ireland you can still hear on occasion hear a phrase from some old one that would stop an Oxford don in his tracks.