MacGuffin's Poetry Corner

[MacGuffin]

Every Monday {okay, some Mondays}, I am going to post a famous poem for analysis and conversation.

Why? I have three main reasons.

1) To educate myself. I am very ignorant when it comes to poetry. I last took an English class in high school, and that was composition. I have never really studied poetry in any way.

2) To educate others. I suspect many INTPs are far more comfortable discussing programming or science. Perhaps others will learn something.

3) To facilitate discussion. Have to have quality threads in addition to the fun ones, or this forum becomes stagnant.

So I hope to learn, first and foremost. If anyone has any resources to help me/others better understand poetry in general - please share. After all, I am far more familiar with 80s pop music lyrics than Tennyson.

The one thing I admire about poetry is the ability to convey complex moods, events, places, people, and ideas with just the right words and phrasing. I am not long-winded myself, so I find that command of the language attractive.

If anyone has a well-known poem they think we should discuss, let me know and I will probably post it.

[MacGuffin]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



-William Carlos Williams (1923)

[Rhu]

Communist and racist! You just made the List, MacGuffin.

[MacGuffin]

I decided to start with "The Red Wheelbarrow" because it is a simple poem.

Too simple in fact for me. Anytime one can put this much analysis (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/wheelbarrow.htm) into a handful of lines makes me wonder if people aren't just stretching the meaning.

Wikipedia tells me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Wheelbarrow):
Williams was trying to veer away from what he saw as the "European" verbosity of his peers (T. S. Eliot, for example), to create a typical "American" image with his poem.

Obviously the poem is very visual: "red" "glazed" "rain" "water" "white"
The poem reminds me of a still life painting, but other than the beauty of the image it provokes, I am not sure what else I am supposed to take from it.

When it comes to a few lines of poetry I prefer another poem by Williams, and the final reason why I started with him:


It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

[Avengardh]

I would just like to add that I love the chicken motive.

Also: this is a cool idea.

[MacGuffin]

I would just like to add that I love the chicken motive.

Also: this is a cool idea.
Too bad there is no chook emoticon on here.

I hope it is a good idea. I think I may have pushed the INTPs too far out of their comfort zone. God knows I have no idea what I am talking about.

[Avengardh]

Too bad there is no chook emoticon on here.

I hope it is a good idea. I think I may have pushed the INTPs too far out of their comfort zone. God knows I have no idea what I am talking about.

Poetry is, in my opinion very intuitive. When analyzing it there are only about several styles and ways you can interpret it, I never really got why you needed to put it in a box; but I guess patterns need to be documented :mellow:.

The Chook Lives within all of us, including your clown's hair ^_^.

[Ghost-Girl]

I usually don't care much for poetry that's so simple. Williams evokes an image of a red wheelbarrow, covered in rain water, next to chickens, but does that image mean anything to him?
It's a little lacking in purpose for me.

[Eileen]

Williams is an imagist - the point is the image. :) I'm also fond of "This is Just to Say" by him, and of the parody by Kenneth Koch, which is freakin' hilarious.

[Ghost-Girl]

I think I may have pushed the INTPs too far out of their comfort zone. God knows I have no idea what I am talking about.
Oh, but this is closer to my comfort zone than a lot of other threads have been! Then again, I'm more literary than mathematical.

What does the parody say?

[MacGuffin]

Williams is an imagist - the point is the image. :) I'm also fond of "This is Just to Say" by him, and of the parody by Kenneth Koch, which is freakin' hilarious.
Post it!

So was I right that it is basically nothing more than a still life painting?

I guess I need more. More depth and meaning.

[Rhu]

I usually don't care much for poetry that's so simple. Williams evokes an image of a red wheelbarrow, covered in rain water, next to chickens, but does that image mean anything to him?
It's a little lacking in purpose for me.

Much that is interesting about both poetry and prose is what meanings can be read into it.


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

What depends on the wheelbarrow? Or who? Why is it red? Is there a deeper statement here?



glazed with rain
water
Clean, slick. Wet. What could this signify?


beside the white
chickens
And who are these guys? Clucking hens? Does the white mean they are good guys? Is Frank Perdue here anywhere? Why did he have to die? He was a tough man who made a tender chicken!

[MacGuffin]

What depends on the wheelbarrow? Or who? Why is it red? Is there a deeper statement here?
That first line throws me. Is there some deeper meaning? I can't find one.

[Rhu]

I don't know. I think the wheelbarrow is a pretty clear symbol of industry of somesort... Perhaps cargo transport, or something.

[Ghost-Girl]

Much that is interesting about both poetry and prose is what meanings can be read into it.
Yeah, with poetry this simple, you can really go crazy with the hidden meanings.

Pick a scenario and fit it to the poem.

War? The red whellbarrow in the rain represents all the people fighting for what they believe in, in adverse conditions. Everything depends on them to protect the innocent (white) and cowardly (chickens.)

[Avengardh]

That first line throws me. Is there some deeper meaning? I can't find one.

It sounded to me as if the wheelbarrow is resting there, the moment is the fact that it's glazed with rain water, it's needed somewhere [perhaps just then], but at the moment it's simply resting.

Now, maybe it's also saying it's not exactly the first choice in whatever job it is about to embark, I mean, it's just there next to chickens? What does that say about its importance?

Or is it broken and needing a fix?

That's what I got.

[Ghost-Girl]

That first line throws me. Is there some deeper meaning? I can't find one.

Well, the whole poem depends on it.

[MacGuffin]

Well, the whole poem depends on it.
I'm gonna go ahead and say no, reading anything more into it is futile.

It's just a wheelbarrow.

[nottaprettygal]

That first line throws me. Is there some deeper meaning? I can't find one.

I don't think that the first line has a meaning. It's all about the imagery of the poem, not about defining "so much."

I was thinking that perhaps the rain made the wheelbarrow appear a more vivid and shiney shade of red, which in turn made the chickens standing next to it appear even whiter. Eh...I'm trying to say something about the calm that comes after a storm and how things can appear clearer or at least different.

Bah. I'm just going to go back to brooding.

[Ghost-Girl]

I'm gonna go ahead and say no, reading anything more into it is futile.

It's just a wheelbarrow.
I should have been more specific. The whole poem depends on the wheelbarrow being in the poem.

Edit: Hey, i'm a senior member! Neat.

[MacGuffin]

I was thinking that perhaps the rain made the wheelbarrow appear a more vivid and shiney shade of red, which in turn made the chickens standing next to it appear even whiter. Eh...I'm trying to say something about the calm that comes after a storm and how things can appear clearer or at least different.
That is how it looks in my head.

[Rhu]

I see hands, probably my own, reaching out to grasp the handles. I see myself driving the wheelbarrow into the chickens, who cluck and flap and scatter as I dash harmlessly through.

I see my boot splashing in clear water as I weave the wheel, but not my feet around a giant puddle.

And that's where things start branching off into plots involving using it as a boat in the neighbors' pond, smuggling eggs across the border, or wielding the wheel barrow as a weapon against the interdimentional aliens that have come to take over our world, because they want our tasty white chickens.

[nomir_dva]

That first line throws me. Is there some deeper meaning? I can't find one.

Perhaps it's just that we should pay more attention to simple images like this chicken-beleaguered red wheelbarrow, that many of the most significant things in life are easily overlooked.

[Ivy]

Mac, I feel like I've discussed Red Wheelbarrow with you before. Is that just deja vu or am I remembering a real thing?

The accepted interpretation, if I recall correctly, is along the lines of Rhu's comment-- civilization itself rests on simple machines, of which the wheelbarrow is one. For me, that almost seems like straining at gnats and swallowing camels, which sort of ruins poetry. I like the ambiguity of an un-analyzed poem, which is why I've always leaned towards the still-life reading of this one.

[MacGuffin]

Mac, I feel like I've discussed Red Wheelbarrow with you before. Is that just deja vu or am I remembering a real thing?

The accepted interpretation, if I recall correctly, is along the lines of Rhu's comment-- civilization itself rests on simple machines, of which the wheelbarrow is one. For me, that almost seems like straining at gnats and swallowing camels, which sort of ruins poetry. I like the ambiguity of an un-analyzed poem, which is why I've always leaned towards the still-life reading of this one.
Nope it was mgb (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=2769). Azurwarrior has it in his sig too. Fuckin' Ne messing with my head...

Anyway, you were an English major, right?

[Ivy]

Nope it was mgb (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=2769). Azurwarrior has it in his sig too. Fuckin' Ne messing with my head...

Anyway, you were an English major, right?

Why, yes. Yes I was. Not a very good one, I'm afraid-- I did a lot of skimming. I did manage to read all of that poem, though.

[MacGuffin]

Why, yes. Yes I was. Not a very good one, I'm afraid-- I did a lot of skimming. I did manage to read all of that poem, though.
Good job.

Well I think Eileen is too, so I'm throwing in with the two English major's opinions.

[Ivy]

Good job.

Well I think Eileen is too, so I'm throwing in with the two English major's opinions.

The pressure! Must... be... correct!

[MacGuffin]

The pressure! Must... be... correct!
Was my grammer correct in the previous post? The possesive plurals mess me up sometimes.

[Ivy]

Was my grammer correct in the previous post? The possesive plurals mess me up sometimes.


Well, I think Eileen is too, so I'm throwing in with the two English majors' opinions.

I think.

[MacGuffin]

I suspected.

[Ivy]

So now that I've established myself as schoolmarmish and pedantic...

We have a whole week before the next poem and we've already figured this one out. What now? Want to pick apart the meter?

[Eileen]

So now that I've established myself as schoolmarmish and pedantic...

We have a whole week before the next poem and we've already figured this one out. What now? Want to pick apart the meter?
*high fives the schoolmarm!*

[MacGuffin]

Go ahead... Feeler weirdos.

[Eileen]

If you want a more complicated imagist, I recommend Wallace Stevens. He's one of my favorites.

[Rajah]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



-William Carlos Williams (1923)

I have always hated, hated this poem. Hated. The simplicity of language, the imagery, so much information packed into concise phrasing! Whatever.

[MacGuffin]

I have always hated, hated this poem. Hated. The simplicity of language, the imagery, so much information packed into concise phrasing! Whatever.
What do you like?

[macr0]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

-William Carlos Williams (1923)

When I read it, I just want to anticipate what is going to happen next. It looks like a setup. Maybe the wheel barrow is going to fall on the chicken and trap it. Since it's the 1920's, maybe the wheel barrow(government) is falling on the chicken (alcoholics).

Maybe the chicken is going to hop up in the wheel barrow and sit in it. Maybe the dumb chicken is the Allied from WWI and the Wheel Barrow is the Central Powers.

Ahh!!!!!!!!!

I hate poetry.

[MacGuffin]

Ahh!!!!!!!!!

I hate poetry.
Shhh! It's okay. The evil poem is gone now. Think about linear algebra.

[Ivy]

When I read it, I just want to anticipate what is going to happen next. It looks like a setup. Maybe the wheel barrow is going to fall on the chicken and trap it. Since it's the 1920's, maybe the wheel barrow(government) is falling on the chicken (alcoholics).

Maybe the chicken is going to hop up in the wheel barrow and sit in it. Maybe the dumb chicken is the Allied from WWI and the Wheel Barrow is the Central Powers.

Ahh!!!!!!!!!

I hate poetry.

:lol:

Nicely done.

[Sackanaka]

The words are like raindrops on the tongue.

I like poems with nice sound.

[C.J.Woolf]

When I read it, I just want to anticipate what is going to happen next. It looks like a setup. Maybe the wheel barrow is going to fall on the chicken and trap it. Since it's the 1920's, maybe the wheel barrow(government) is falling on the chicken (alcoholics).

Maybe the chicken is going to hop up in the wheel barrow and sit in it. Maybe the dumb chicken is the Allied from WWI and the Wheel Barrow is the Central Powers.

Ahh!!!!!!!!!

I hate poetry.
Red wheelbarrow? White chickens? An allegory of the Russian Civil War, perhaps?

Poetry has always kinda intimidated me. Maybe this thread will help me.

Maybe.

[azurwarrior]

I think you have a good idea. I tried to participate in poetry workshops and CW (Advanced) at two universities a long time ago. Usually I was intimidated by all the verbose, loud talking extraverts. I got good grades for writing but not class participation (lol).
BTW, I recommend http://www.eliteskills.com both as an online writing workshop and for info on poetry.
You know, WCW and Einstein are probably not as far apart as they may seem. Williams directly confronted ideas about randomness and the universe in a famous underground book no one ever mentions in college.
The name of his book is "Kora in Hell-Improvisations."
It's been years since I read it but his ideas were along the line of writing over a period of time and seeing if there were chance connections that could not have occurred without some other kind of order, defying reason. (Also, as a medical doctor, this type of questioning was considered, well, radical, among his colleagues)...

[MacGuffin]

Thanks azur for the link.

I wonder how much my first choice was unconsciously influenced by your sig. (http://www.intpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=445616#post445616)

[azurwarrior]

I see hands, probably my own, reaching out to grasp the handles. I see myself driving the wheelbarrow into the chickens, who cluck and flap and scatter as I dash harmlessly through.

I see my boot splashing in clear water as I weave the wheel, but not my feet around a giant puddle.

And that's where things start branching off into plots involving using it as a boat in the neighbors' pond, smuggling eggs across the border, or wielding the wheel barrow as a weapon against the interdimentional aliens that have come to take over our world, because they want our tasty white chickens.

IMO (ONLY-don't shoot me, these are just guesses) I think this is exactly what the poet is getting at. All these things to an individual person. Chiaroscuro is there and important. So are thoughts, ideas, and humor. Life and the person is ultimately what is important.
Without the red wheelbarrow? Nothing. Without the individual life? Nothing. This is all about life. No individual? No wheelbarrow. So, LIFE depends on a red wheelbarrow.
Life and its environment are one. It is profoundly significant.
The object? Random. The red wheelbarrow could just as easily be cold plums in the refrigerator, as it was in another poem of his or the sun, wind, water on the wheelbarrow or nourishment, as with the chickens. It could be dust or love or even taxes (hopefully not taxes, though :)
Anyways, without the individual, all that is gone. And of course this applies to individuals and also to the collective humanity.
There is also a philosophical idea that the simplest things (or ideas) are often the most profound....
And, another thing I thought of is that Williams did not write about tenets(sp.) of philosophy, or quantum physics by compiling formulas and equasions only a few would undrestand.
Rather he taught these ideas using ordinary examples so all could benefit, and was, in that sense, compassionate...
AND, DO the random objects make US random, because THEY are..........?

[shaytana]

mmmm glazed chicken.

[indie]

*sigh*

MacG you . . . you redundant meanie!!

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=6189

[joecancer]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



-William Carlos Williams (1923)

maybe the red wheelbarrow is going to carry the chickens back to the farmhouse for cooking after they're slaughtered. Therefore, dinner depends on this wheelbarrow working properly.

or maybe the wheelbarrow is just meant to symbolize the inherent meaning of existence, and thus the meaning to exist for every one of us.

[MacGuffin]

*sigh*

MacG you . . . you redundant meanie!!

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=6189
I blame my Ne, yet again.

[Pan]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens



-William Carlos Williams (1923)

I also think it's best seen as imagery. What depends upon the wheelbarrow could be many things, the most obvious being Agriculture, Industry, Human Endeavour, chicken-feeding, yada yada - but what it actually is doesn't really matter. The most important thing about the first line is that it makes the wheelbarrow important and active - which makes the imagery much more vivid. Imagine if he had written:

A red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

stands beside the white
chickensI'm pretty sure no-one would give a shit about that wheelbarrow. Note that the ambiguity heightens the effect as well:

Agriculture depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickensIt's much better, but still pretty banal. By leaving the question open he engages your N - and when you try to figure out (even subconsciously) why the wheelbarrow is important it makes the imagery more vivid.

[Rajah]

maybe the red wheelbarrow is going to carry the chickens back to the farmhouse for cooking after they're slaughtered. Therefore, dinner depends on this wheelbarrow working properly.

or maybe the wheelbarrow is just meant to symbolize the inherent meaning of existence, and thus the meaning to exist for every one of us.

I think the latter. Feh.


(Have I mentioned I hate this poem?)

[abathur]

I think we're looking too big when we substitute large institutions or systems for "so much."

So much depends on this red wheel barrow because it is a tool, a relatively small tool, used on relatively small farms, by a single person. The livelihood of a single family, to some extent, depends on this tool. Lives, dreams, aspirations.

Would it ruin the imagist interpretation if beside, here, really means, "other than"?

[MacGuffin]

I
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

II
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

III
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

IV
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

V
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

- John Keats (1820)

[MacGuffin]

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is one of the most famous English poems ever. Much like the last poem it is a meditation on an object. I prefer this one by a wide margin.

The poem was written by John Keats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats) during the English Romantic movement. There is plenty of analysis (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/urn.html) on the internet.

The language is more florrid than I like, a poem written like this in the present age would be pretentious. The last two lines are the most famous, containing, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".

I had a bunch more written up, but I lost it. Dammit! Love to hear other's interpretations. I believe the main theme is the embrace of the abstract, which is interesting since it arises out of physical object.

Keats is an interesting figure. Dead of tuberculosis at age 26, he managed to create in his short time one of the more impressive bodies of work by any artist.

His epitaph on his gravestone (no name even listed) reads: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

P.S. formatting indents around here sucks! I gave up.

[Ivy]

Yay, it's poetry day! Keats is one of my favorite Romanticists, behind Blake and Coleridge. (I concentrated on the Romanticists for my useless degree. I wouldn't concentrate on them again if I could do it over.)

Some say that without the threat of early death (he was sickly his entire life) he would not have had the fire lit under him to write like he did.

[MacGuffin]

Yay, it's poetry day! Keats is one of my favorite Romanticists, behind Blake and Coleridge. (I concentrated on the Romanticists for my useless degree. I wouldn't concentrate on them again if I could do it over.)
I expect a thesis then!


Some say that without the threat of early death (he was sickly his entire life) he would not have had the fire lit under him to write like he did.
I think I remember reading he thought he would die early. His obvious talent and early death reminds me of 60s rock stars (Hendrix, Joplin, etc.) 140 years later. Almost as if he was the prototype for everlasting fame.

[Ivy]

I had a bunch more written up, but I lost it. Dammit! Love to hear other's interpretations. I believe the main theme is the embrace of the abstract, which is interesting since it arises out of physical object.

About this. It is about an object, but moreso about the scene on the object-- the player of the pipes whose song must be imagined to be heard, the lovers can never kiss but neither can they age. The idea that ideas can remain when everything temporal wastes away. (Especially poignant in light of his consumption.)

[Ivy]

I expect a thesis then!

Good luck with that!


I think I remember reading he thought he would die early. His obvious talent and early death reminds me of 60s rock stars (Hendrix, Joplin, etc.) 140 years later. Almost as if he was the prototype for everlasting fame.

Yeah, that's an interesting parallel I hadn't thought of. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse and a vast portfolio of respected art.

[MacGuffin]

About this. It is about an object, but moreso about the scene on the object-- the player of the pipes whose song must be imagined to be heard, the lovers can never kiss but neither can they age. The idea that ideas can remain when everything temporal wastes away. (Especially poignant in light of his consumption.)
Yeah that too. His epitaph, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water", implies an ephemeral existence. Seems that this subject weighed heavily on his mind. Little of our physical existence will survive even a small fraction of that urn. Instead immortality becomes our ideas, or maybe if we create an urn of our own.

[raincrow007]

I like Keats.

Odd though that you didn't pick this one (http://www.bartelby.net/126/47.html)for us to try to pick apart -- you know, it being that time of year and whatnot. ;)

[MacGuffin]

I like Keats.

Odd though that you didn't pick this one (http://www.bartelby.net/126/47.html)for us to try to pick apart -- you know, it being that time of year and whatnot. ;)
We could do that one later!

So many poems...

[Ivy]

Raincrow, I thought you were going to link to the one about the hand. I forget the name.

Edit: found it. (http://www.poemtree.com/poems/ThisLivingHand.htm)

[raincrow007]

Raincrow, I thought you were going to link to the one about the hand. I forget the name.

Ahh, this one (http://www.john-keats.com/main.htm)? One of my favorites.

Edit: dammit! :P

[MacGuffin]

I bet Keats got all kinds of pussy with that one!

[MacGuffin]

"Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens is supposed to be something of a response to Keats:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Exactly what this poem rebuts, I'm not sure, but it evidently requires a lot of academic posturing about, among other things, anti-imperialism (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/jar.htm).

[CreativeChaos]

I like Sacred Poetry. Just saying. Even though I'm Agnostic. I like poems with deep meaning.

[azurwarrior]

I wrote this intended as a simple "aside" to Wallace Stevens, using the jar as the focal point.

SWEET DIXIE, THE CONFEDERATION, AND....

The jar left in Tennessee. Gray. Silent. Potent.
Unhinged.... They say,
if you put the jar up to your ear,
you can still hear the Rebel Cry,
wrapped in the desolate, whipping winds.

In the foulmouthed, South wilderness growth,
The grey jar can be relied on
to cloud the reflection of
the Yankee blue-hued skies,
Still
making their audacious
presence known
here in Dixie.

Cities, towns,
and more and more cities and towns...
Only the jar is capable
of celibacy here.
Nothing else is,
it seems...

An old man said:
Round here,
fell many rows of men,
right here in Tennessee.
And the survivors,
unhinged.
The children of the 1812 heros,
Mauled, slaughtered
and grounded forever.
Here, they all lay inert
in these burial grounds.
Only the insensible,
gape-mouthed jar,
stands erect,
now.

[MacGuffin]

Sylvia Plath's "Ennui" is an unpublished sonnet appearing for the first time ever in print today at Virginia Commonwealth University's Blackbird Journal (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/index.htm). I first read about this in yesterday's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001128.html).

The poem was written while Plath was a student at Smith. She was musing on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. FSF evidently was a large influence on her work.

I love the title.

Due to copyright, I am providing the link instead of the text:

"Ennui" (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/ennui.htm)

Introduction and background to the poem (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/intro-ennui.htm).

[Jasz]

Sylvia Plath's "Ennui" is an unpublished sonnet appearing for the first time ever in print today at Virginia Commonwealth University's Blackbird Journal (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/index.htm). I first read about this in yesterday's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001128.html).

The poem was written while Plath was a student at Smith. She was musing on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. FSF evidently was a large influence on her work.

I love the title.

Due to copyright, I am providing the link instead of the text:

"Ennui" (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/ennui.htm)

Introduction and background to the poem (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/intro-ennui.htm).

i have just familiarized myself with baudelaire's flowers of evil which is very much centered around dealing with ennui

[Rajah]

Thanks for linking to this, MacG. I really enjoyed this poem. The first four lines are brilliant. I also loved "jeopardy is jejune" and "tilts at terror." It shows what Plath would become.

I can definitely see her Gatsby inspiration. Having read exactly zero Henry James novels, I wanted to learn the significance of the "Jamesian grove." My intensive five minutes of internet research led me to James' Daisy Miller. I hadn't realized Gatsby drew from this -- or, more precisely, I may have known this when I last read Gatsby (I was 15).



EDIT: I also think when her profs read this poem, they deemed it exceptional, but told Plath she should get out more, develop a hobby. She probably should have heeded the advice. :)

[MacGuffin]

I'm thinking about rereading Gatsby.

I should read Henry James... sometime...

I also need to read more Plath. What are your favorites of hers?

[Rajah]

I also need to read more Plath. What are your favorites of hers?

Here are a few:


Daddy - Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

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.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.




Insomniac - Sylvia Plath

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole ---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue ---
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.



Fever 103

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ---

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ---
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ---
To Paradise.



Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand in foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

[MacGuffin]

Thank you!

[MacGuffin]

I was thinking of Yeats for a near future post myself.

[attila_the_hunny]

In Plaster by Sylvia Plath

I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was

Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.
I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold.
I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer.
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior!
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist.
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her:
She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages.

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain,
And it was I who attracted everybody's attention,
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up --
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality.

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it.
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience:
She humored my weakness like the best of nurses,
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.
In time our relationship grew more intense.

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish.
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,
As if my habits offended her in some way.
She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces
Simply because she looked after me so badly.
Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal.

She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful --
Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.
Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case
Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.
She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp --
I had forgotten how to walk or sit,
So I was careful not to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself.
Living with her was like living with my own coffin:
Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully.

I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit.
I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her,
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.

[MacGuffin]

I love that one, I have had it constantly open in an Opera tab at home for the past six months or so.

[azurwarrior]

I also need to read more Plath. What are your favorites of hers?

The Bell Jar. It's prose, BTW. I don't have a link, but you can get a copy from Amazon.com or anywhere like that. It's written in a 'confessional" style, kind of reminds me of Anne Sexton's work also for that reason.

[azurwarrior]

i have just familiarized myself with baudelaire's flowers of evil which is very much centered around dealing with ennui

Do you have a link? A pipe?

[azurwarrior]

[QUOTE=azurwarrior;453281]
Dixie.

Cities, towns,
and more and more cities and towns...
Only the jar is capable
of celibacy here.
Nothing else is,
here in Southland, Tennessee...

Note: I can't believe you let me get away with that!
Note to self: One of these days, I'll post a picture of the back of my old car after some good 'ol boy drunk tore off half of my rear spoiler with his bare hands during a little "disagreement," one night.
I had a bumper sticker on it that had a Confederate flag (anethema to me!)...but it had one of those CIRCLES.... with a SLASH!.... through it... AND it said:

YOU LOST!!! GET OVER IT!!!"

which gives an interesting effect, in the photo...like the war isn't over...

..............Am I way out of line?

Tell me,
what DOES Wallace Stevens mean:

"[The jar did] not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee."

at the end of the poem?...........?Birds and bushes reproduce. Inanimate objects don't. How does (or does?) this tie in with Southern stereotypes, in the 20th century?

[Ghost-Girl]

Daddy - Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
...

I heard a recording of Plath reading that poem. It was absolutely frightening and wonderful.

How about some Edna St. Vincent Millay (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/millay03.html)? I like her.

[azurwarrior]

Maybe I should post some of the above in the "We Didn't Start the Fire" (by Billy Joel) Thread...
Anyway, when I was in school (back in the last century) in English classes we started with the oldest works to the newest. For some reason, we never seemed to have enough time to read any postmodern works at the end of the semester.
If anyone has any postmodern poetry they'd like to post, I'd really like to read it!
Mac?
Anyone else?

[azurwarrior]

How about some Edna St. Vincent Millay (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/millay03.html)? I like her.

Wow! That was incredible! Although, I'll have to go back again, and read more carefully. There's a lot there.

[Rajah]

I heard a recording of Plath reading that poem. It was absolutely frightening and wonderful.Thanks for telling me about this.. I can't wait to hear it. Hope I can find it somewhere... :)

[MacGuffin]

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

THE END

-Edgar Allen Poe (1845)

[MacGuffin]

One of the most famous American poems, "The Raven" has been criticized and parodied since it?s publication (I like the Simpson's version in the first Halloween episode). I probably should have done this one last week for Halloween, but better late than never. Besides the weather grows dark and dreary as we head towards winter outside the window.

Lenore is the narrator's deceased beloved. The lonely narrator tries to distract himself from her memory by reading some books of "forgotten lore". He is interrupted by the bird of the title tapping at his door. After letting it in, the raven perches upon a bust of Pallas (Athena). Asking it's name, the raven replies, "Nevermore".

The narrator realizes the bird is not really answering him, but repeating what it learned from an "unhappy master", probably much like the narrator himself. Despite knowing this, the narrator persists on asking it questions, fueled in part by his grief and slowly increasing madness over his obsession with Lenore. The raven replies "nevermore" to each question, finally culminating in the narrator asking if he will see Lenore again, perhaps in heaven. The raven's final "nevermore" pushes the narrator over the brink where his soul "Shall be lifted - nevermore!"

The narrator and Lenore are probably stand-ins for Poe and his deceased wife Virginia, who died at an early age. The raven was inspired by the raven named "Grip" from the novel Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. Grip taps at a shutter door in the novel like in the poem and can speak as well. Dickens himself owned three ravens during his life, all named Grip.

This poem never fails to depress me with its melancholy imagery, and send me into an introspective mood. Even the cheesy 80s music I'm currently listening to cannot budge my disposition.

I really, really like it.

Picture of Poe's grave I took in Baltimore:

http://www.intpcentral.com/uploads/poegrave.jpg

[JBHunt]

Thanks for your post.
http://media.ign.com/boards/images/icons3/simpsons_bartRaven.gif
150 years after Poe's death they name an entire football team inspired by this one poem.

[stopharian]

Mac

I'm lovin the Raven and the follow up material.

Also lovin your poetry thread. I wanna post a couple later in the week, but before I go I would like to post the world's shortest poem.

Since I was a child I had always thought that it was written by Ogden Nash, but apparently it is attributed to a couple of authors and the writer is unknown. Coincidentally I also never knew the title of the poem which in my mind changes the entire meaning of the poem.

this is it:

Fleas

Adam
Had 'em.



Apparently sometimes it is given an alternate title which clarifies its meaning:

Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes

Adam
Had 'em.



BUT
As I mentioned I never was aware of any of the titles until a few years back, and so for me the entire meaning was changed. I always just knew the poem as:

Adam
Had'em

by Ogden Nash


Hence to me the poem was always about humanity and brotherhood or more simply "fatherhood". As in the Idea that the poem was an answer to the question who is the father of all humans/who had all these kids? Adam Had'em

A simplistic interpretation to be sure but I always enjoyed it.

Either way, it is definitely the shortest poem ever written

[MacGuffin]

I like Ogden Nash, there is one I'm planning on posting soon.

[azurwarrior]

It's fun getting a surprise poem on Monday! I look forward to it.
Here's a few random thoughts on The Raven:

The Baltimore Ravens are scary at home. Their purple and black colors (just like in the poem) and the team's logo on their helmets look fantastic.

But the Pittsburgh Steelers need to turn the football over "nevermore!"
Especially in the g-damn Red Zone.

Photo opportunity: a raven lands on top of Poe's tombstone.

The 3 beats in "nevermore" are much more effective than 2 beats of "no more" would be.

Who or what is "Seraphim?"

This poem probably gets more creepy with age. Victorian images like "velvet" chairs, (gas) "lamp-light,""chamber door" were much more commonplace when he wrote the poem. Indeed, they were new and fashionable. Not so scary.
Now they are often seen as scary, haunted, etc. (At least in horror movies).

Maybe their ghost stories took place in "scary, olden, Colonial" houses (?)

The bust of Pallas (sp.) had that effect. It was ancient, even then.
I'm not sure about the Plutonian images. I think these both are old (Greek? Latin?) names.
Probably some mythical or archetypal significance.
Maybe someone will clarify?
Also, Pluto is a long long way away. (longing?) I'm not sure when they discovered the planet Pluto. And now it's not even considered a planet (I guess). So readers in the present have very new associations right now.
(Though not of cosmic importance, still interesting).

Also, Lenore rhymes with "days of yore" "nevermore" "gore" "tore" "lore."
(It also rhymes with whore, but I'm sure that's not intended).
Or maybe it is? Since Lenore is gone...sex...nevermore.
........That IS scary.
(Nevermind).

[stopharian]

couple of answers......

1. Interestingly both the ravens and the steelers live in fear of the mighty broncos.

2. Seraphim is plural for seraph which is a type of high ranking angel or in this case I think just a convenient synonym for angel..........the ones dispensing the drug of forgetfulness, nepenthe.

3. the bust was of Pallas an incarnation of athena the goddess of wisdom or intellect (the black figure of the raven is perching on and subduing reason), the only reason that I mention it is that Pallor or whitened skin is also a creepy victorian concept

4. Pluto was discovered in like the '30s

[MacGuffin]

Pluto also refers to the underworld. Hence the raven may be a messenger from the dead, aka Lenore.

[azurwarrior]

Cool! Thank you for your clarifications.

[Carebear]

The Raven, (supposedly) read by Nighthawk Christopher Walken (http://home.online.no/~heiamork/theraven.mp3)with some eerie sounds in the background and an el-guitar.

[stopharian]

Awesome recording Carebear

I dont know why but the raven always reminds me of this poem........The highwayman


The Highwayman
By Alfred Noyes

Part One
I
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV
And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-

V
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

Part Two
I
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching-
Marching-marching-
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

II
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through the casement, the road that he would ride.

III
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say-
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till here fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like
years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

VI
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs
ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did
not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up strait and still!

VII
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him-with her death.

VIII
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * *

X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding-
Riding-riding-
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

[Rajah]

Awesome recording Carebear

I dont know why but the raven always reminds me of this poem........The highwayman

I almost posted this earlier. I remember the first time my mother read me this poem, I was about 8. When she finished I told her it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. Later, when I began to understand love and sacrifice -- the latter an especially foreign concept to an 8-year-old -- I grew to love the poem.

[dunee]

I like Ogden Nash, there is one I'm planning on posting soon.
I always found "Very like a Whale" (where he mocks Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib") rather genius.

(Its best when read right after the Byron poem :) )

Very Like a Whale
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket
after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of
snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

[Rajah]

"Making a Clean Breast of It" - Noam D. Plum
(First published in Light Quarterly)

(Three of four men, according to a survey) would rather take a shower with a beautiful celebrity than with their partner. ... "I'm not surprised," said lifestyles counselor Carol Wise. ?Reuters

Wise Wise
Replies,
"It's no surprise.
It's thighs?
Not ties?
That tantalize.

"True love's the prize?
It's otherwise.

"If four comprise
The sampling size,
Three guys
Revise
Their picks. Love dies.

"The fourth one lies."

[stopharian]

All this goddamn poetry is making weepy..I'm gettin all F-pussy over here.......also

All this goddamn poetry is getting me hot and bothered(whether or not Rajah suspects the sincerity of my gender:( ), but Im saving the Neruda for later.

Here is a little number about natural phenomenon as rapist:


Federico Garcia Lorca

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

[azurwarrior]

Interestingly both the ravens and the steelers live in fear of the mighty broncos.

The New (2006 Season) Nightmare of the Ravens and Steelers

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot.
Had they heard it?
The horsehoofs ringing clear. The Broncos came scoring,
Scoring, Scoring!

(Had to get "SCORING!" in there somewhere, after the previous poem)........ LOL.

[Rajah]

Enjoy this, the best poetry ever. (http://www.slate.com/id/2153364)

[Ivy]

Rajah, that link changed my life.

[MacGuffin]

CLI

Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

-William Shakespeare (published 1609)

[MacGuffin]

I don't have much to say about this one, that isn't already covered by the excellent analysis at The amazing web site of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Commentary. Sonnet 151. (http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/151comm.htm) (scroll halfway down for a line-by-line analysis)

Yes, the imagry is as phallic as you think it is.

I was pleased to learn a new Latin proverb:

penis erectus non habet conscientiam = "a standing prick has no conscience"

[MacGuffin]

I suppose the phallic imagry scared the women and INTP virgins off.

[Ivy]

I have a total huge headache but I'm earmarking this one for future rumination! Love the Shakespeare sonnets, maybe even more than the plays.

[MacGuffin]

I have a total huge headache
Yes. "Not now dear, I have a headache."

[Ivy]

Yes. "Not now dear, I have a headache."

I guess it was a Pavlovian response upon perceiving a phallic symbol.

[Ivy]

I just remembered that I never came back to Sonnet 151 after my "headache."

My word! *fanning self with a doily*

[azurwarrior]

I was pleased to learn a new Latin proverb:

penis erectus non habet conscientiam = "a standing prick has no conscience"

How educational! And very, very true!
So, I , too, was pleased to learn that proverb. I am going to post it back in the "adult" section of my Video Store. (Where boredom is the enemy)...
How wonderful that something coined so long ago can still be used to procure....coins....lol.

[azurwarrior]

I liked the Sonnet, too. Very sensual and rich and earthy. I think it is difficult writing about themes like this because so many have already written about it.
Love and conscience are themes that still ring very true, today.
I didn't know the audiences of plays had all those hints and references, either. (ha ha).
I always thought the whole matter was stodgy and boring.
The way they were taught in my High School, anyways.
If teachers expanded the course material to admit these topics are universal, not "improper."students might want or even need to read it.
I'll bet LOTS of kids would actually WANT to read it....they might seek it out.
Oh, well, that's my 2 cents.

[azurwarrior]

There is a lot of phallic imagery in that Sonnet. You know, I seem to remember that a noted woman writer (Virginia Woolf)? (Mary Wolstoncraft(sp.) Shelley)? made a claim to the effect that if
Shakespeare had been born a woman, rather than writing, she's have been "doing the dishes..."
I think they weren't necessarily refering to just content, of course. Although it's interesting to speculate how Shakespeare's works might be altered if this was actually the case.
Women at that time were often not educated in school. Who knows what works of art might have been written?
It's also said that the author "named" Anon was often a woman. Maybe there's a lady "Shakespeare" there, somewhere...?

[MacGuffin]

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us-don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

-Emily Dickinson (18??)

[MacGuffin]

Emily Dickinson, Patron Saint of Introverts.

Only published 10 poems in her life, her fame came after her death.

Not that she wanted it, as you can see from this poem. She identified with the outsiders. Those that did not seek fame and attention. She views those attention-whoring people as like frogs, croaking for recognition, but only playing to an admiring bog.

Instead she sought intimacy in the outsiders like her. No need for the world's attention. Or in other words, EXTRAVERTS! STFU! (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=15052)

She was strange. I dig her.

Posting an Emily Dickinson poem means I now get to post one of my favorite bits of dialog from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Giles: Oh, Emily Dickinson.

Buffy: We're both fans.

Giles: Yes, uh, she's quite a good poet, I mean for a...

Buffy: A girl?

Giles: (quietly)...for an American.

[Ivy]

Too bad they didn't have headphones back then in the olden days.

I like that one. I've not read much Emily Dickenson. It seems like she is taught a lot in grade school, which seems to me a testimony to her layers of meaning. Anyone can get something from a Dickenson poem, but there are secrets in them as well.

[MacGuffin]

Plus the fact you can sing most of her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas" or "Gilligan's Island Theme Song" or other songs with the same meter.

[Rhu]

Too bad they didn't have headphonez back then in the olden days.

hello, miss dickinson

i would like to romance you by reading your poetry.

with love,
h

ps. please respond

[Ivy]

hello, miss dickinson

i would like to romance you by reading your poetry.

with love,
h

ps. please respond

Too good they didn't have headphonez back then in the olden days.

[MacGuffin]

I swear to Gödel Rhu, if he shows up on my thread because you invoked his name...

Rhu
http://blogs.starwars.com/static/img/image-selector/full/misc/05.jpgMacG

[Rajah]

I swear to G?del Rhu, if he shows up on my thread because you invoked his name...No worries. It wasn't spelled correctly. It's supposed to be headfonez.



Oh.

[azurwarrior]

Plus the fact you can sing most of her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas" or "Gilligan's Island Theme Song" or other songs with the same meter.
Actually, I know of some musicians (one is a female, BTW) who transpose Dickenson's lyrics onto contemporary beats and rhythms.
(And it works great)!

[MacGuffin]

Actually, I know of some Hip-Hop artists (one is a female, BTW) who transpose Dickenson's lyrics onto contemporary beats and rhythms.
Links?

[Ghost-Girl]

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us-don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

-Emily Dickinson (18??)
That's my favorite line in the poem, but it doesn't seem to fit the rhyme scheme.

I like Emily Dickenson most of the time. Her poem There is No Frigate like a Book always annoyed me. However, I do like this one:

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

[azurwarrior]

Links?

I read about them in a newsletter from the Berklee College of Music (Boston) a while back.
Type "Berklee, Emily Dickenson" into Google. Then click on the first link. It should take you right to the article.

[azurwarrior]

[QUOTE=Ghost-Girl;471320]That's my favorite line in the poem, but it doesn't seem to fit the rhyme scheme.

Yeah. And the focus seems a little different. Like an 'aside." Perhaps that is related somehow to the ideas about "standing out?"

[headfonez]

Bwuahahahahaha

[Ghost-Girl]

Bwuahahahahaha

What?

[azurwarrior]

435-by Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-
Much Sense-the starkest Madness-
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail-
Assent-and you are sane-
Demur-you're straitway dangerous-
And handled with a Chain-

c.1862

[MacGuffin]

I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was

Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints.
I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold.
I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer.
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior!
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist.
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her:
She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages.

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain,
And it was I who attracted everybody's attention,
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed.
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up --
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality.

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it.
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience:
She humored my weakness like the best of nurses,
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.
In time our relationship grew more intense.

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish.
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself,
As if my habits offended her in some way.
She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded.
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces
Simply because she looked after me so badly.
Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal.

She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful --
Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.
Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case
Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.
She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp --
I had forgotten how to walk or sit,
So I was careful not to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself.
Living with her was like living with my own coffin:
Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully.

I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit.
I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her,
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.

-Sylvia Plath

[MacGuffin]

I almost forgot today. attila had put this up as her favorite Plath poem earlier, and it is mine too. I have it constantly open in a tab in my Opera at home.

Some read it as sort of a mental condition, like bipolarism. I view this poem as Plath looking at herself going through a change, to become a new person. The old person is nearly gone, and she hates her. But eventually she comes to realize that the old self was an important part, and she will not forget her.

I think of this poem when I struggle with change within myself too. Another damn birthday gone by. Another year closer to the grave. Not who I was, not yet who I will be.

[MuseedesBeauxArts]

With all the talk of Emily Dickinson, I think this (http://www.intpcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=351635&postcount=62) needs to be included. :smooch:

[MacGuffin]

how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
LOL, I loved that!

[MuseedesBeauxArts]

LOL, I loved that!

Shhhh!!! You're giving away the punchlines!

I would post links to the poems he alludes to, but I'm too lazy.

[azurwarrior]

Wasn't she a lesbian IRL? And he a straight guy? Not intending any disrespect.
It's just that I thought I read that, somewhere. Maybe I'm wrong.

[azurwarrior]

(Huh. Must be a minimalist work)...:huh:
Yes, I know. It's Tuesday now...

[azurwarrior]

FYI-Here's a site that posts a new poem every day.
http://www.poems.com

[MacGuffin]

Dammit I forgot.

[MacGuffin]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost (1916)

[MacGuffin]

Time for some Robert Frost bitches!

Um... sorry.

"The Road Not Taken" is one of the most famous American poems, and its author, one of the most famous American poets.

The final few lines:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Are the most well-known. Most people read this poem as an expression of challenge. To take the less traveled path, to not go along with the masses and crowds. That idea is well regarded in modern life, even if it rarely becomes a literal method for most people.

But there is ambiguity in the poem: "I shall be telling this with a sigh". Does the narrator regret taking the less traveled road?

I think the marvel of its construction is you can read it either way: good or bad. How you read it is probably how you view your life, the choices you made, and whether you regret the roads you took.

The dammed thing about being a P is I try to take both roads.

[nottaprettygal]

I've always gotten the sense that the poem is less about the actual roads and more about making a decision. Frost tells us that the roads are very similar when he that they were worn "really about the same." Also, in the next stanza he says that they are equal.

What has made all of the difference is that he actually made a choice to travel one of the roads. Which one he travelled and its result is insignificant.

There's a J interpretation for ya'.

[MuseedesBeauxArts]

In one of my lit classes, we talked about the speaker almost practicing revisionist history with his own life. If you examine the first lines, he says that the paths are essentially equal: "just as fair," "worn them really about the same," "both that morning equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black." And yet he says that much later in life, he will speak of taking the road less travelled. But was it really less-travelled, or is that just what he will tell himself so that he can live with his decision?

[camille]

I read it as an expression of equally desirable choices.


"Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same"

He knows that both choices will give him a desirable journey and would like to take them both. But in life we must often choose between two good opportunities.
One might choose between Road One, staying home with her children and Road Two, accomplishing satisfaction in the workforce. Either road would bring her great joy. Bonding, nurturing of her children, enlightening little minds or working her mind, developing personally satisfying bonds with her peers. Both roads will end at a desired outcome. But one must choose.

"Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back."

He knew how we always look back, 'if only'.
One must accept that we may dream about other roads we have passed by but once we make the choice to take a path it never circles back, only continues forward with curves and crossroads.

[bergenski]

I've always gotten the sense that the poem is less about the actual roads and more about making a decision.
I think I agree with you on this. I think there is real eagerness in the traveler to experience both roads and that is why it is with a sigh that he has to say that he will pick just one and will likely not be able to experience the other. I think he thinks both roads are equally good, and, as you say, what has made all the difference is that he has chosen one, not so much that it is the one less travelled by.

[MacGuffin]

I've always gotten the sense that the poem is less about the actual roads and more about making a decision. Frost tells us that the roads are very similar when he that they were worn "really about the same." Also, in the next stanza he says that they are equal.

What has made all of the difference is that he actually made a choice to travel one of the roads. Which one he travelled and its result is insignificant.

There's a J interpretation for ya'.

Damn Js. Are the roads really equal, or is that just a lie the narrator is telling himself?

See:

In one of my lit classes, we talked about the speaker almost practicing revisionist history with his own life. If you examine the first lines, he says that the paths are essentially equal: "just as fair," "worn them really about the same," "both that morning equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black." And yet he says that much later in life, he will speak of taking the road less travelled. But was it really less-travelled, or is that just what he will tell himself so that he can live with his decision?
Of course, one can look at it that way. When he describes the roads as being equal, that is at the outset of his decision on that morning. Only at the end does he describe one as less traveled. So maybe there is some revisionism going on.


I read it as an expression of equally desirable choices.


"Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same"

He knows that both choices will give him a desirable journey and would like to take them both. But in life we must often choose between two good opportunities.
One might choose between Road One, staying home with her children and Road Two, accomplishing satisfaction in the workforce. Either road would bring her great joy. Bonding, nurturing of her children, enlightening little minds or working her mind, developing personally satisfying bonds with her peers. Both roads will end at a desired outcome. But one must choose.

"Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back."

He knew how we always look back, 'if only'.
One must accept that we may dream about other roads we have passed by but once we make the choice to take a path it never circles back, only continues forward with curves and crossroads.
Jeez, I should have chosen to post Frost earlier.

Do you see the poem as having regret? Can you regret if both choices are equal? Or is the narrator lying about that equality (see above)?

[Ivy]

I've always approached this one like a Choose Your Own Adventure. Your choices affect your future in ways you can't predict. "Way leads on to way," he says, to mean you can't go back and choose another path (unless you cheat, like I always do with those books). Even if you get back to that place, you won't be on the same walk or at the same point in your life that you were when you made the original choice.

Also notice that it is called "The Road Not Taken," not "The Road Less Travelled." He's not really talking about the one he DID take, he's talking about the one he DIDN'T take. He can never take that path on that walk again.

[MacGuffin]

I've always approached this one like a Choose Your Own Adventure. Your choices affect your future in ways you can't predict. "Way leads on to way," he says, to mean you can't go back and choose another path (unless you cheat, like I always do with those books). Even if you get back to that place, you won't be on the same walk or at the same point in your life that you were when you made the original choice.

Also notice that it is called "The Road Not Taken," not "The Road Less Travelled." He's not really talking about the one he DID take, he's talking about the one he DIDN'T take. He can never take that path on that walk again.
Ok, this is weird. I was thinking of those Choose Your Own Adventure books myself earlier in regards to this poem. I always went back and chose the different ones to see all the different endings. Soooooo P.

Yes, good call on the title of the poem.

[Ivy]

Ok, this is weird. I was thinking of those Choose Your Own Adventure books myself earlier in regards to this poem. I always went back and chose the different ones to see all the different endings. Soooooo P.

Yes, good call on the title of the poem.

Yeah, I never read one straight through-- but I did have an elaborate system for navigating the tree of possibilities. Once again I defy categorization!

I was hoping to avoid another tired Schroedinger's Cat metaphor, but it probably fits better. (Although, Noah objects to my use of the Cat as a metaphor for infinite possibilities that become less and less infinite as you make choices, but screw him. I like it.)

[Jennywocky]

I've always approached this one like a Choose Your Own Adventure.

Adventure? Sometimes it feels more like "Pick Your Own Poison."

(Sorry. Give me 24 hours to get over my angst. I promise to be more chipper tomorrow. Maybe.)


Your choices affect your future in ways you can't predict. "Way leads on to way," he says, to mean you can't go back and choose another path (unless you cheat, like I always do with those books).

Gasp! Ivy??! No! I'm appalled.

Well, I did too. There were just too many good endings to take just one, and too many bad endings to not want to go back and try again.

I think that is perhaps the worst part about life: You can't see where you could have been, if only... You only know the answer to the paths you've chosen. You don't know if things COULD have been better.

(Then again, that guy in Harlan Ellison's story "The Cheese Stands Alone" wanted to find out the best moment of his life and discovered that it happened when he was ten, playing little league. So if all of your choices would have ended in tragedy, I suppose it would be worse to know you have nothing else in life to look forward to.)


Even if you get back to that place, you won't be on the same walk or at the same point in your life that you were when you made the original choice.

Yes. I look back sometimes and wish I could make some decisions again, with the wisdom of my years. But if I hadn't chosen what I did back then, then I wouldn't have gotten to where I'm at now. There was no way to avoid the mistakes and the pain, not without changing the "me" I currently am and perhaps for the worse in the long run.


Also notice that it is called "The Road Not Taken," not "The Road Less Travelled." He's not really talking about the one he DID take, he's talking about the one he DIDN'T take. He can never take that path on that walk again.

Too many decisions. Too "J" for me. I think I'll fall back on "The Road Goes Ever Ever On" -- P happiness, in a nutshell. :)

[Rhu]

I like this poem. Enough that I made its many ambiguities part of my research project in an attempt to apply machine learning concepts to people answering a multiple choice quiz on the subject.

I might post the link to it later, if I remember.

Though I'm really not sure I'd want people submitting information and skewing my results.

[MacGuffin]

I like this poem. Enough that I made its many ambiguities part of my research project in an attempt to apply machine learning concepts to people answering a multiple choice quiz on the subject.

I might post the link to it later, if I remember.

Though I'm really not sure I'd want people submitting information and skewing my results.
Yeah post it!

[camille]

Do you see the poem as having regret? Can you regret if both choices are equal? Or is the narrator lying about that equality (see above)?

No, it is about indecision. Not that one way is better than the other but the NOT knowing what would have happened. He didn't write the poem about himself. It was about a friend who had entered the military and gone off to war. He wrote the first stanza while sitting on his couch in New England. Several years later he picked it back up because he couldn't stand NOT to finish the piece.
We are hard on ourselves. 'If only I had taken the other road things would be better for myself and those around me.' But no one ever knows this for sure. This is where we get back to the dreaming. We create all these scenerios how the other path would play out because when then road curves, we need something to hold onto. The thought that things could have been better at least leaves us with a little hope that the next straight path will be easy.

[MacGuffin]

No, it is about indecision. Not that one way is better than the other but the NOT knowing what would have happened. He didn't write the poem about himself. It was about a friend who had entered the military and gone off to war. He wrote the first stanza while sitting on his couch in New England. Several years later he picked it back up because he couldn't stand NOT to finish the piece.
We are hard on ourselves. 'If only I had taken the other road things would be better for myself and those around me.' But no one ever knows this for sure. This is where we get back to the dreaming. We create all these scenerios how the other path would play out because when then road curves, we need something to hold onto. The thought that things could have been better at least leaves us with a little hope that the next straight path will be easy.
Indecision is a killer alright. From the P perspective, I will try to keep my options open as long as possible, even though some options may close themselves to me by doing that.

Indecision can give rise to regret too.

[nottaprettygal]

Ok, this is weird. I was thinking of those Choose Your Own Adventure books myself earlier in regards to this poem. I always went back and chose the different ones to see all the different endings. Soooooo P.

Yes, good call on the title of the poem.

Hey, even the Js go back to test out the many scenarios. I mainly did it because my first choice always involved me dying.


Are the roads really equal, or is that just a lie the narrator is telling himself?

I suppose it could be a lie. I actually never really thought about this until today, but it makes a lot of sense. Clearly, he keeps explaining to us that the roads are equal, but in the last stanza he indicates otherwise.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by, "

The "I" ending one line and beginning the next has a sense of arrogance to it on the surface. "Me! I did this! Praise me!" But internally, he appears to be reassuring himself that he did indeed take the one less travelled whether or not it's actually true.

[MacGuffin]

I suppose it could be a lie. I actually never really thought about this until today, but it makes a lot of sense. Clearly, he keeps explaining to us that the roads are equal, but in the last stanza he indicates otherwise.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by, "

The "I" ending one line and beginning the next has a sense of arrogance to it on the surface. "Me! I did this! Praise me!" But internally, he appears to be reassuring himself that he did indeed take the one less travelled whether or not it's actually true.
I like this interpretation myself.

And what camille said earlier:

He didn't write the poem about himself. It was about a friend who had entered the military and gone off to war. He wrote the first stanza while sitting on his couch in New England. Several years later he picked it back up because he couldn't stand NOT to finish the piece.
doesn't seem to matter so much since Frost obviously meant to write the poem from the 1st person perspective. Whether Frost personally felt this way is immaterial, the narrator of the poem does.

[Ivy]

doesn't seem to matter so much since Frost obviously meant to write the poem from the 1st person perspective. Whether Frost personally felt this way is immaterial, the narrator of the poem does.

It's true that it was inspired by his friend, an indecisive hiking partner. Frost liked to roleplay in his poetry. He would have been totally into WoW today.

[MacGuffin]

It's true that it was inspired by his friend, an indecisive hiking partner. Frost liked to roleplay in his poetry. He would have been totally into WoW today.
You are such a geek!

[Rhu]

Yeah post it!

Here it is. (http://68.49.232.191/) Note that there is limited data at present to make predictions at present, so don't be surprised if it thinks you are an african american atheist from the northeast. :)

Also... pardon the design. I wasn't going for extra credit in web design and I was basically teaching myself asp.net a year ago in order to make it run... If it runs at all. It's a little buggy.

And thanks for spoiling it, Ivy. Grr.

[Ivy]

You are such a geek!

I know. I'm telling this with a sigh.

Only by proxy, though. I never played WoW or NWN or AD&D or any of those things. I did try Marvel Heroes once but I couldn't get into it.

[MacGuffin]

Thanks Rhu, I entered my answers.

[bergenski]

The "I" ending one line and beginning the next has a sense of arrogance to it on the surface. "Me! I did this! Praise me!" But internally, he appears to be reassuring himself that he did indeed take the one less travelled whether or not it's actually true.
I think it shows his ambivalence at having to make the decision, or perhaps the seriousness with which he has to make the choice and the time he gave it. Or perhaps the finality that comes because he is sure he will never be able to go back and take the other path. Or maybe it is technical, the two "I"'s.

[azurwarrior]

..."Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same..."

Another possibility here might be that there are forces/powers/fate/determinism that decide which path to go in advance OR that the higher purpose will be met regardless. And the paths are equal, in this light(?)
(I'm probably not saying that right)...


"And that has made all the difference."

This is what always "got" me about this poem. I want answers, dammit. Black and white, not shades of gray.
And just when I think OK. Take the more difficult or unpopular path. "That has made all the difference."
That is really what I am supposed to be "getting."
Glad that somebody has the answers. Because I don't.
But I re-read the work again, it keeps drawing me back again. And it goes back to where I say "Yeah, but if..."




Robert Frost (1916)[/QUOTE]

[targo]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost (1916)


Yes it's a good poem indeed.

Like in life we stand before 2 roads and wonder which way to go. Yes the poem seems to have contradicting thoughts, with wanting to take the road less travelled yet they were equally travelled. But you have to wonder if the road less travelled is the road that he(Frost) typically wouldn't take, that it was out of character for him, yet felt compelled for some reason to take the road. Sometimes when we step back from a situation and look at it objectively we are given more clarity and then therefore do something that isn't typical for our character yet seems to make all the difference.

[Ghost-Girl]

My high school decided to butcher up the last stanza that poem and put it on the back of a sweatshirt...

Two roads diverged at [insert high school name here]
etc. etc.

It was horrible.


As for the poem itself, I've always enjoyed Frost and this one isn't any exception. A nice commentary on the choices one makes throughout life.

[camille]

..."Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same..."

Another possibility here might be that there are forces/powers/fate/determinism that decide which path to go in advance OR that the higher purpose will be met regardless. And the paths are equal, in this light(?)
(I'm probably not saying that right)...

I think what he was doing was questioning how much foresight we have because we can't really tell if one path is better than the other. The paths were equal because they both have a beginning, middle, and end. There is nothing more that can be concluded other than that. One does not know where any path will take him, he just assumes one might be better than the other.


"And that has made all the difference."

This is what always "got" me about this poem. I want answers, dammit. Black and white, not shades of gray.
And just when I think OK. Take the more difficult or unpopular path. "That has made all the difference."
That is really what I am supposed to be "getting."
Glad that somebody has the answers. Because I don't.
But I re-read the work again, it keeps drawing me back again. And it goes back to where I say "Yeah, but if..."

I think it is more in sweet jest. Have you ever had one of those friends who constantly says, "If only I had taken the first exit we would have been there by now," or "If only I had gone to bed earlier last night then I would have woken earlier and we wouldn't be rushing."

Frost loved botany. He tried farming several times but was never successful. Frost and Edward spent a lot of time out in the woods together. Edward was constantly saying, "If only I had taken you down the other path we could have seen such and such plant. But then I couldn't have shown you this plant."

That is what he meant with

"I will be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence"

His buddy was always questioning his decisions and talking about them. It was an overexaggerated description of remarks Edward made about his own decisions.
It isn't about the tough road. IT doesn't matter which road he takes because either will make all the difference. In a sense, he was saying that you should be happy with the decision you make because every decision influences your life. You can't stop at the next fork until you decide which path to take now and be happy with that decision.

[MacGuffin]

It isn't about the tough road. IT doesn't matter which road he takes because either will make all the difference. In a sense, he was saying that you should be happy with the decision you make because every decision influences your life. You can't stop at the next fork until you decide which path to take now and be happy with that decision.
I think that is a good philosophy, but does that go against human nature? Are we not always reconsidering our choices?

[camille]

I think that is a good philosophy, but does that go against human nature? Are we not always reconsidering our choices?

We are always reconsidering our choices but that does not mean that we are dwelling on them like Edward did.
That is what he meant by "ages and ages". Edward was always dwelling on his decisions, not questioning them to learn and move on.
I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic and she told me once that drinking was the best and worst decision she had ever made. If she hadn't started drinking she would have finished college and perhaps had a decent life. But she did start drinking, now in recovery she helps teens with drinking problems, helping them pave a path much better than the one she chose. But she didn't know for sure where the other path would have taken her anymore than she knew the drinking path would have taken her to the crisis center and helping others.

[MacGuffin]

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

-Dylan Thomas (1945)

[MacGuffin]

No analysis today, I want to see what others think. Only

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea

Those two final lines I love to death.

[Pan]

Damn. I always forget how much I like Dylan Thomas.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me of my lost childhood on Monday fucking morning. Sweet of you, really.

*goes to work*

[MacGuffin]

Damn. I always forget how much I like Dylan Thomas.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me of my lost childhood on Monday fucking morning. Sweet of you, really.

*goes to work*
Ah, regret and loss!

So yummy. Gotta love that Si tertiary function!

[nottaprettygal]

No analysis today, I want to see what others think. Only

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea

Those two final lines I love to death.

I like those too (probably because they are the most morbid ones in the poem). This one seems pretty easy to understand. When he was younger, time let him be, but in the end it becomes apparent that death is inevitable.

Obviously, the word "green" was used throughout the poem, but I didn't question its meaning until the last time it was used. Is "green and dying" a good thing? Is it saying that he is just as naive and immature now as he was in his youth? I dunno. I always have trouble determining whether "green" is a positive word or not.

[Rajah]

I like those too (probably because they are the most morbid ones in the poem). This one seems pretty easy to understand. When he was younger, time let him be, but in the end it becomes apparent that death is inevitable.

Obviously, the word "green" was used throughout the poem, but I didn't question its meaning until the last time it was used. Is "green and dying" a good thing? Is it saying that he is just as naive and immature now as he was in his youth? I dunno. I always have trouble determining whether "green" is a positive word or not.I think in this case, green is good. I love the use of green, white, and gold throughout, and how it's evocative of spring.

[Rhu]

Obviously, the word "green" was used throughout the poem, but I didn't question its meaning until the last time it was used. Is "green and dying" a good thing? Is it saying that he is just as naive and immature now as he was in his youth?
Taken with the other final line, or the rest of that stanza, even--yes. It sounds like he was so enthralled by his youth that he never stepped beyond it, and was filled resultantly by a regret at never advancing into another season.


I dunno. I always have trouble determining whether "green" is a positive word or not.
It isn't necessarily positive or negative. It is newness and springtime--there's connotations of liveliness, hope, chance to grow, but also inexperience and naivete.

[MacGuffin]

I like those too (probably because they are the most morbid ones in the poem). This one seems pretty easy to understand. When he was younger, time let him be, but in the end it becomes apparent that death is inevitable.

Obviously, the word "green" was used throughout the poem, but I didn't question its meaning until the last time it was used. Is "green and dying" a good thing? Is it saying that he is just as naive and immature now as he was in his youth? I dunno. I always have trouble determining whether "green" is a positive word or not.
It is my favorite color, so I want to say it is positive. Perhaps he is "green" throughout his life: "green and golden" in his youth, now "green and dying". Young at heart?

I don't find the final lines that morbid. Maybe I should considering it is about death.

P.S. Dylan Thomas drank himself to death at age 39. Supposedly his last words were "After 39 years, this is all I've done." I could really go for some brilliant green absinthe right now. Fucking Monday mornings is right.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/artists/vincent-van-gogh/vangogh-absinthe.jpg

[nottaprettygal]

I don't find the final lines that morbid. Maybe I should considering it is about death.


You're right. It's not necessarily morbid. Then again if you consider Rhu's interpretation that he never bothered to step beyond his youth, it's pretty sad. He's still playing and climbing, unaware of time, just like when he was young. There's something endearing about that in one sense. Like you said, maybe it implies that he was just young at heart. On the flip side, there's something lugubrious about being green if it implies that he failed to mature and grow throughout the course of his life.

[MacGuffin]

You're right. It's not necessarily morbid. Then again if you consider Rhu's interpretation that he never bothered to step beyond his youth, it's pretty sad. He's still playing and climbing, unaware of time, just like when he was young. There's something endearing about that in one sense. Like you said, maybe it implies that he was just young at heart. On the flip side, there's something lugubrious about being green if it implies that he failed to mature and grow throughout the course of his life.
I don't truck with Rhu's interpretation. Otherwise the nostalgic/melancholic tone at the end doesn't make as much sense. Regret he never grew up? To me he is looking back on his youth, not that he is still trapped in it.

[Rajah]

I don't truck with Rhu's interpretation. Otherwise the nostalgic/melancholic tone at the end doesn't make as much sense. Regret he never grew up? To me he is looking back on his youth, not that he is still trapped in it.
I thought this was an interesting read:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/dylanthomas/bibliography/pages/fern_hill.shtml

[Rhu]

I don't truck with Rhu's interpretation. Otherwise the nostalgic/melancholic tone at the end doesn't make as much sense. Regret he never grew up? To me he is looking back on his youth, not that he is still trapped in it.
The youth he makes reference to could have been any yesterday; literal or figurative. The apparent distance that could be taken as age, to me, is that moment where you look back on who you are and everything you've been and say, "What a fool I have been! I've lived a fool's life, and I'll die a fool's death!"

I don't know. The idea that anchors me in this interpretation is the reference to the final line: "Though I sang in my chains like the sea."

To me that sounds like a sudden, quiet realization of drowning in something deep, wide, and expansive (you know like the sea--like the rest of the poem).

[azurwarrior]

[QUOTE=MacGuffin;496116]No analysis today, I want to see what others think. Only

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea

Ok. No analysis. While I was reading it, it all seemed kind of sing-songy, pleasant, light like fairies dancing around. Silly, not a care in the world.
And it just kept continuing like that to me and I decided to stop trying to make sense of it, just go along with it, sort of like the wind in the poem.
Meaning no disrespect, it was sort of like getting high on pot (I've heard).
(Of course I would never smoke it. That would be illegal)...
I felt sort of like I feel when I'm playing slow or medium tempo on a bass drum or tympani in an orchestra, just going along with it, feeling the joyful pulse.
Then the last 2 lines took away the innocence. I felt them in my gut. I know those chains in time, and changes. They are music too.
IT was gone and there was no going back...

[MacGuffin]

Ok. No analysis. While I was reading it, it all seemed kind of sing-songy, pleasant, light like fairies dancing around. Silly, not a care in the world.
It is sing-songy. I believe Dylan Thomas wrote it after making a vow to simplify his poetry. Still powerful imagery and underlying themes. Can't keep those big thoughts tramped down.

[camille]

A rewriting of Adam and Eve's fall from grace and how it relates to middle adulthood.

[Jasz]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost (1916)

i think frost went a little bit too far and should not have included the last sentence, it is overkill/ doesn't add anything new, only takes away from the masterful last four lines.

[MacGuffin]

A rewriting of Adam and Eve's fall from grace and how it relates to middle adulthood.
Yes that imagery is there. Do you think that it is just that or a personal spin on the myth?


i think frost went a little bit too far and should not have included the last sentence, it is overkill/ doesn't add anything new, only takes away from the masterful last four lines.
It certainly puts a twist on the meaning of the poem, casting doubt exactly what was written above that line.

[camille]

He was raised in a deeply religious family. The trips to his aunt's were as close as one could get to Paradise.

He really picked up on the creation story after Adam was made lord over all. The child in the story really justs exists, does not act. The majority of the verbs are not actions of the child. "Time let.." much like a 'parent lets'. Time=Creator to Adam and Time=Parent to child.

Eden/Farm are states of changeless happiness yet from the beginning there is an overseer(Time).
As children we are told how things are and our structure is shaped by a world that existed before us...much like Adam.
The coming of knowledge or following from grace comes when we understand the world ISN'T set and structured as our parents had made it out to be, but is everchanging which begets choice or free will.
Adults are guardians responsible for leading our children out of grace and into knowledge. Which is why he wrote 'follow him from grace' as opposed to 'fell from grace'. He is suggesting that God was leading us not tempting us to find knowledge.
The chains are a continuum of time.....embracing the past yet bearing him for the future.
So he is actually talking about the transition between childhood and adulthood not just reminiscing on the past....an old man looking back at childhood.
I think he chose the creation story because it is widely recognized, colorful, beautiful imagery.

[MacGuffin]

Oh awesome, thank you!


He really picked up on the creation story after Adam was made lord over all. The child in the story really justs exists, does not act. The majority of the verbs are not actions of the child. "Time let.." much like a 'parent lets'. Time=Creator to Adam and Time=Parent to child.

That is interesting, I barely noticed this.

[targo]

It's amazing how we can find such beauty in such 'simple' words but when strung together they paint a picture, they draw you in. Sitting here reading you are transformed into that place, just enough colour, and imagery to capture a moment and if you breathe in you can almost 'smell' the farm.


The poem captures a peace much like childhood does, and innocence if you will. It's almost as if he is remembering the past, and there is a longing within him to be there again. It almost makes me long for the innocence of my youth, but I realize that we can live our lives in such a way that we will still have innocence. It's amazing that Thomas has written such beautiful works of art but that he was unable to see the beauty that was captured in those moments.

I can't help but wonder if there was another struggle going on. If you look deeper into what society dictates from the sexes and especially the time in which Thomas was alive and writing, it makes you wonder if this poem in some way touches on his life, and his desire to follow a mold that society dictates, as well as the longings within him to follow the path that his heart dictates.

[camille]

HE was in love with the spoken word more than the written word which I think influenced his choice of words.
He lived the life he wanted to live. It wasn't the drinking he was in love with but being viewed as a drunk, the lifestyle. His drinking definately led to his demise but he was a braggart, a manipulator....learning both of these in early childhood. But inside he was insecure and humble. He made excuses for his own infidelities but was enraged at his wife's behavior.
I think there is a huge misconception that he was obsessed with dying and was deeply depressed, always looking back hoping to alter his past. He loved his life. He didn't exactly like being poor but was content to live the way he did. He had a priviledged childhood but that wasn't what he wanted out of life. He wanted fast times, women, booze, and freedom to express himself. All of these he had. I do think he questioned his creativity and wondered if it belonged to his childhood. Which is why he considered himself a guardian in his works.

His last words...

"After 39 years, this is all I've done."

In the end he finally realized that life isn't about self indulgence.

[MacGuffin]

I think there is a huge misconception that he was obsessed with dying and was deeply depressed, always looking back hoping to alter his past. He loved his life.
Yes, I will have to do his other super-famous poem about that subject.

[targo]

will you actually post one on Christmas Day??

[MacGuffin]

will you actually post one on Christmas Day??
I'm dressed as Santy Claus, ain't I?

[targo]

I'm dressed as Santy Claus, ain't I?

well yes you are and a mighty fine looking one at that ;)

I don't know if I will get anywhere near a computer Christmas Day *sigh*

[MacGuffin]

It will be there whenever you get back.

[MacGuffin]

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

-Clement Clarke Moore (1823)

[MacGuffin]

While various American influences such as Macy's, Thomas Nast, and Coca-Cola have exerted their influence on the image of Saint Nicholas/Sint Nicolaas/Sinterklaas/Santa Claus - this poem, first published anonymously, is where the modern idea takes root.

Such is the power of a few lines.

Merry Xmas!

[MacGuffin]

Do 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.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
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 (1951)

[MacGuffin]

Back to Dylan Thomas. No wonder Robert Zimmerman took his name.

Another simple poem touching on larger issues, it was written as his father neared the end of his life. Thomas was disturbed at how his father became frail and weak in his old age. He wants to see his father as fierce as he once was, right up to the very end.

Now as another year ends and a new one begins, we are all one year closer to the end of our days.

You can hear Dylan Thomas read this poem (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377).

[Rhu]

What does [this poem] mean?
It means... It means I don't take shit from no one!

-Rodney Dangerfield, Back To School

For some inexplicable reason, every time this movie was showing on Comedy Central (it was up to twice a day for awhile), I'd drop whatever I was doing to watch it.

I'm going to pretend I'm not ashamed to admit that and go out and kick some ass, somewheres.

[amazingkae]

Every Monday, I am going to post a famous poem for analysis and conversation.

Why? I have three main reasons.

1) To educate myself. I am very ignorant when it comes to poetry. I last took an English class in high school, and that was composition. I have never really studied poetry in any way.

2) To educate others. I suspect many INTPs are far more comfortable discussing programming or science. Perhaps others will learn something.

3) To facilitate discussion. Have to have quality threads in addition to the fun ones, or this forum becomes stagnant.

So I hope to learn, first and foremost. If anyone has any resources to help me/others better understand poetry in general - please share. After all, I am far more familiar with 80s pop music lyrics than Tennyson.

The one thing I admire about poetry is the ability to convey complex moods, events, places, people, and ideas with just the right words and phrasing. I am not long-winded myself, so I find that command of the language attractive.

If anyone has a well-known poem they think we should discuss, let me know and I will probably post it.

Now I have to pull out my old poetry sources... [I find poetry wonderful, horrible, and charming all at the same time. Working to analyze it is difficult. Clearly the best kind comes frm the poetry magnets found as late night wistful commentary on the fridge.] Anything beyond Shel Silverstein I am not able to quote off the cuff.

Happy New Years, darlin'.

[amazingkae]

For some inexplicable reason, every time this movie was showing on Comedy Central (it was up to twice a day for awhile), I'd drop whatever I was doing to watch it.

I'm going to pretend I'm not ashamed to admit that and go out and kick some ass, somewheres.

One of the most poignant poetry recitations in modern history.

Happy New Years, Rhu... and thanks for all the great posts.

[MacGuffin]

For some inexplicable reason, every time this movie was showing on Comedy Central (it was up to twice a day for awhile), I'd drop whatever I was doing to watch it.

I'm going to pretend I'm not ashamed to admit that and go out and kick some ass, somewheres.LOL I thought about posting that quote myself when I came across it on wikipedia today looking up the poem.

I bet his father didn't take shit!


Now I have to pull out my old poetry sources... [I find poetry wonderful, horrible, and charming all at the same time. Working to analyze it is difficult. Clearly the best kind comes frm the poetry magnets found as late night wistful commentary on the fridge.] Anything beyond Shel Silverstein I am not able to quote off the cuff.

Happy New Years, darlin'.
Happy New Year!

The more sources for analysis, the better.

[MuseedesBeauxArts]

The form of this poem fascinates me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle). Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song" is another interesting one.

If I were jotting sloppy first-blush notes on this poem, they would probably start like this: Images of light and dark and vision throughout. Violence. Use of sound--some alliteration, also choppy rhythms. Other stuff. Etc.

[MacGuffin]

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion

-Dylan Thomas (1933)

[MacGuffin]

Okay next week I will post someone other than Dylan Thomas. I just love his work though!

Still concerned with immortality and death. This one was written when he was still a teenager. It appears these thoughts never left his mind during his entire life.

Does existential angst spur poets to write down their poems? To make their mark in the world? To outlast death?

[Rhu]

Does existential angst spur poets to write down their poems? To make their mark in the world? To outlast death?

I don't think of it so much as making a mark on the world as altering the world around them. Some writers seem to write in the more personal, implosive aspect trying to make sense of the world that they want to fill them, versus the more explosive idea of changing the world around them.

It also may not be a desire to say something for themselves. A passion for making a change that mustn't be contained by anything. Or maybe there is seen some feeling that everyone should have, but is somehow perceived to be missing. Writing may be seen by the author the only safe way to address or express it.

[MacGuffin]

I don't think of it so much as making a mark on the world as altering the world around them. Some writers seem to write in the more personal, implosive aspect trying to make sense of the world that they want to fill them, versus the more explosive idea of changing the world around them.
Then why publish?

I'd say Emily Dickinson was someone trying to make sense, rather than change the world.


It also may not be a desire to say something for themselves. A passion for making a change that mustn't be contained by anything. Or maybe there is seen some feeling that everyone should have, but is somehow perceived to be missing. Writing may be seen by the author the only safe way to address or express it.
Not sure I understand this. Can you expand on it?

[Rhu]

Then why publish?
It could be in the hope that something they can relate to comes to find them.

A little money couldn't hurt, either.



Not sure I understand this. Can you expand on it?
An aristocratic satirist sees an institutionalized injustice and carefully sets about writing a poem to expose and ridicule it.

Both he and his peers will not benefit if his writing captures anyone's interest, he may have to publish it under a pseudonym; perhaps he may not publish it at all. His writing, then, is not for personal recognition or for material gain--he doesn't want his words to belong to him, perhaps on a purely personal scale. maybe he is disgusted by his own ideas and wanted to write them out to examine.

I guess what I'm saying is that the personal need in creating a work of writing is to unburden onesself of a need for expression. There might be no broader desire on the part of the writer, though there might be broader implications both internal and external.

[camille]

The poem was written in playful competition with a friend to write a poem about immortality.
It's all about resurrection, not just ourselves, but all things.
I think it lacks the passion most of his works show.

[MacGuffin]

The poem was written in playful competition with a friend to write a poem about immortality.
It's all about resurrection, not just ourselves, but all things.
I think it lacks the passion most of his works show.
You'd think it'd be the opposite, since he was young when he wrote it. Maybe he stifled the passion on purpose? To show his "maturity"?

[camille]

At that age he didn't know love, passion, desperation....he grew as he experienced his alternative life. That is what drove him to create such beautiful works.......and why he couldn't get out of the lifestyle. He was always a brilliant writer.

[MacGuffin]

At that age he didn't know love, passion, desperation....he grew as he experienced his alternative life. That is what drove him to create such beautiful works.......and why he couldn't get out of the lifestyle. He was always a brilliant writer.
Alternative life?

[camille]

He was raised in a strict religious household, devout not only to God but to family and community. It wasn't until he walked in stride with his selfishness that he began to really create from the inside.

[MacGuffin]

He was raised in a strict religious household, devout not only to God but to family and community. It wasn't until he walked in stride with his selfishness that he began to really create from the inside.
Damn. I am getting more selfish lately. Less tolerant too.

[azurwarrior]

"And death shall have no dominion."

The phrase repeated seemed to be almost a plea or prayer that it be so. (at least to me).
Implosive in effect. (If I understand Rhu correctly).

Another thing I thought of is that philosophers and sages, at least in some eastern traditions, are asked to consider death first before all other ponderings and questions.
And when they truly perceive its nature and understand the nature of death, it is said other matters will simultaneously be made clear.

With that thought in mind, perhaps that is how Thomas came to be so knowing, later on(?)

Just a thought.

[nittanylion302]

He was raised in a strict religious household, devout not only to God but to family and community. It wasn't until he walked in stride with his selfishness that he began to really create from the inside.

If this is the case, then perhaps, "death having no dominion" means that he is releasing himself from the shackles of being confined by a religion that just might damn him to hell for any sin committed. Against the "dead white men" that arbitrarily define his morality. Rather, with death having no dominion, he is free to justify and define his own moral sense.

Though, I can also sense in the poem a kind of disgust of the flesh(meatspace, if you will), perhaps he's concluding that "death has no dominion"-my physical life is meaningless and I will be eventually eaten by worms like everyone else.

granted I know nothing about Dylan Thomas or poetry in any way, shape, or form.

[camille]

"And death shall have no dominion."

The phrase repeated seemed to be almost a plea or prayer that it be so. (at least to me).
Implosive in effect. (If I understand Rhu correctly).

Another thing I thought of is that philosophers and sages, at least in some eastern traditions, are asked to consider death first before all other ponderings and questions.
And when they truly perceive its nature and understand the nature of death, it is said other matters will simultaneously be made clear.

With that thought in mind, perhaps that is how Thomas came to be so knowing, later on(?)

Just a thought.

I love that idea. Even though I know the reason the poem was written and that it wasn't an 'I have to get this out of me' moment I still like to think he poured himself into writing this poem.

When you take a look at the verbs he uses, he is implying that the dead will walk the earth. a physical resurrection and a state of mind.


Dead men naked they shall be one...
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;

They go mad in pain because it is more difficult to realize your actions are the cause of your pain than to accept fate at the hands of another.
They sink and rise again.......live it over and over again.
Lost from their lovers, yet still feel that ache and pain. They know love which makes not having it even more despairing.

The poem continually circles back to not being able to die, to crack, to completely let go. He even states that a flower will blow no more then turns around to say the heads of characters hammer through the daisies. again, resurrection, immortality.

So he could have been pondering death and realized that nothing dies, it is recreated......be it a soul, or a flower, our actions, a circle of life.

ps, you are always so refreshing.



If this is the case, then perhaps, "death having no dominion" means that he is releasing himself from the shackles of being confined by a religion that just might damn him to hell for any sin committed. Against the "dead white men" that arbitrarily define his morality. Rather, with death having no dominion, he is free to justify and define his own moral sense.

Though, I can also sense in the poem a kind of disgust of the flesh(meatspace, if you will), perhaps he's concluding that "death has no dominion"-my physical life is meaningless and I will be eventually eaten by worms like everyone else.

granted I know nothing about Dylan Thomas or poetry in any way, shape, or form.

It's always nice to have fresh eyes on a poem. Maybe he was just getting the flesh part out in the open first because that aspect of death always seems to weigh the most on our minds.......leaving behind others, what will happen to our bodies, we do focus on the physical aspect of death, the end of physical existence.

[MacGuffin]

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
-Walt Whitman (1865)

[MacGuffin]

With apologies to azurwarrior, who posted it last year (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=11304).

I like this poem, but I suspect many INTPs may not. It seems like an attack on intellectual pursuits.

I like to think of it as a reminder, that not everything is contained in books and ideas. To go out and look at the world, rather than just think about it.

[Ivy]

I think you're right, MacG.

An NF interpretation might be that trying to reduce something to its requisite numbers and figures robs it of its ineffable magic and power.

[MacGuffin]

An NF interpretation might be that trying to reduce something to its requisite numbers and figures robs it of its ineffable magic and power.
I try to have both worlds together.

[Toonia]

Whitman appears to be placing in stark contrast the depth of infinity with the feebleness of the human mind. He is contrasting two forms of communication. The astronomer can say everything, yet nothing; while the cosmos can say nothing and yet everything.


When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Here Whitman has depicted the astronomer's attempt to quantify and subdue the infinite, making it subject to his ego/self. The astronomer uses his finite perceptions for the purpose of self exaltation (i.e. applause).


Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
-Walt Whitman (1865)Here Whitman demonstrates the necessity of subduing self, becoming subject to infinity. The silence of the night's sky tells more than all the frail and feeble words a human mind can muster. He has now placed the human mind in a more truthful and accurate relationship to the cosmos. Knowledge is more certainly gained by listening.

Listen, don't speak.

[Rhu]

Taking some abstract or concrete thing and putting it in a new context seems to be one of the most basic goals of art. I think.

I'm not sure it's an NF thing to appreciate what Whitman was saying.

[Ivy]

I try to have both worlds together.

I think it's possible. But damn, I have heard some dry-ass lectures from astronomers. Can't they try to present the figures and also preserve the ineffable magic and power?



Listen, don't speak.

Thanks, Gwen Stefani. ;)

I like your interpretation, Toonia. He's objecting to the astronomer's hubris that astronomy can be distilled to facts & figures.

[Toonia]

Thanks, Gwen Stefani. ;)anytime, sweetie :smooch:


Taking some abstract or concrete thing and putting it in a new context seems to be one of the most basic goals of art. I think.

I'm not sure it's an NF thing to appreciate what Whitman was saying.I agree with this. It's not reasonable to expect an astronomer to have an emotional response to viewing the night sky when it is their routine. The issue is more one of perspective. There is a type of blinding arrogance that can creep into intellectualism when the ending assumption is that the human mind can dominate all things.

[MacGuffin]

I agree with this. It's not reasonable to expect an astronomer to have an emotional response to viewing the night sky when it is their routine. The issue is more one of perspective. There is a type of blinding arrogance that can creep into intellectualism when the ending assumption is that the human mind can dominate all things.
The best still can do both:

It was a strange sight: a man, standing before a fountain, watching the falling water and tilting his head from side to side. Drawing closer, I saw he was rapidly moving the fingers of his right hand up and down in front of his face.

I was in the seventh grade, visiting Princeton University with my science class, and the man at the fountain was Albert Einstein. For several minutes, he continued silently flicking his fingers. Then he turned and asked, "Can you do it? Can you see the individual drops?" Copying him, I spread my fingers and moved them up and down before my eyes. Suddenly, the fountain's stream seemed to freeze into individual droplets. For some time, the two of us stood there perfecting our strobe technique. Then, as the professor turned to leave, he looked me in the eye and said, "Never forget that science is just that kind of exploring and fun."
-Mary Budd Rowe, "Teach Your Child To Wonder," Reader's Digest, May 1995, p. 177

[camille]

Whitman appears to be placing in stark contrast the depth of infinity with the feebleness of the human mind. He is contrasting two forms of communication. The astronomer can say everything, yet nothing; while the cosmos can say nothing and yet everything.

Here Whitman has depicted the astronomer's attempt to quantify and subdue the infinite, making it subject to his ego/self. The astronomer uses his finite perceptions for the purpose of self exaltation (i.e. applause).

Here Whitman demonstrates the necessity of subduing self, becoming subject to infinity. The silence of the night's sky tells more than all the frail and feeble words a human mind can muster. He has now placed the human mind in a more truthful and accurate relationship to the cosmos. Knowledge is more certainly gained by listening.

Listen, don't speak.

To add to your thoughts, if you don't mind.....

Whitman was also physically very sensitive. So combine the smoke and perfume laden room with the droning monotonous voice of the speaker, who in detail had placed information in front of him demanding that he take on the scientific approach which was quickly supplanting the traditional view on life.
So an intelligent man who had spent his entire life learning by experience...feeling out the pleasures in life..... was now seeing what he had felt and understood mapped out on a few pieces of paper in a loud, smokey lecture hall. He wasn't denying the authenticity nor was he suggesting that we cast our intellect to the wind. But to have what you have known and explored put before you so cheaply was exhasperating.
He had to escape to recharge. Get away from the noise, the droning voice, the detail.

[Ivy]

To add to your thoughts, if you don't mind.....

Whitman was also physically very sensitive. So combine the smoke and perfume laden room with the droning monotonous voice of the speaker, who in detail had placed information in front of him demanding that he take on the scientific approach which was quickly supplanting the traditional view on life.
So an intelligent man who had spent his entire life learning by experience...feeling out the pleasures in life..... was now seeing what he had felt and understood mapped out on a few pieces of paper in a loud, smokey lecture hall. He wasn't denying the authenticity nor was he suggesting that we cast our intellect to the wind. But to have what you have known and explored put before you so cheaply was exhasperating.
He had to escape to recharge. Get away from the noise, the droning voice, the detail.

Camille, I love how your comments always make the poetry more personal and insightful into the poet's life. That was always my favorite part of any lit class-- synthesizing what we knew of the author/poet's life with what they wrote, seeing the interplay, noting any incongruous bits, etc.

[camille]

thank you. I had a teacher who wouldn't allow us to comment on a reading until we could give him two details about an author's life. So it has become habit for me to read about a person before I read their works. I have to admit that many times I find their lives more fascinating than their writings.

[MacGuffin]

thank you. I had a teacher who wouldn't allow us to comment on a reading until we could give him two details about an author's life. So it has become habit for me to read about a person before I read their works. I have to admit that many times I find their lives more fascinating than their writings.
How much do we let the author's life inform our interpretation of his/her work?

[Geoff]

How much do we let the author's life inform our interpretation of his/her work?

Good point. It makes a huge difference to a cold, for example, interpretation of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, if you know about Coleridge's (drug) life. Is that good or bad? I prefer to read it without knowing and see what it instils in me.

It was certainly fun to read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and see what Douglas Adams made of it too! That for me is something like the "ultimate" reinterpretation of the poet's vision.

(as an aside, Coleridge is a personal favourite)

-Geoff

[MacGuffin]

I've thought about posting "Kubla Khan". Soon, I think.

[Ivy]

thank you. I had a teacher who wouldn't allow us to comment on a reading until we could give him two details about an author's life. So it has become habit for me to read about a person before I read their works. I have to admit that many times I find their lives more fascinating than their writings.


Me too. I wrote my thesis on Mary Shelley, and I actually hate her writing! But I love her life.


How much do we let the author's life inform our interpretation of his/her work?

I think it's possible, even preferable, to do multiple readings of a text. I, personally, don't think you can do a complete reading without knowing what their life was like and how it informed their literary choices, BUT it's also important to do a standalone reading in addition to an historical reading. My own preference is to read it cold first to get the feel of the poem itself, and then do some biographical digging.

IMHO. (Sorry songbird.)

[Toonia]

The best still can do both:Wonderful anecdote btw. You are probably correct here. There is an interesting interplay of analysis and inspiration. They seem to play off one another reaching upwards.


Camille, I love how your comments always make the poetry more personal and insightful into the poet's life. That was always my favorite part of any lit class-- synthesizing what we knew of the author/poet's life with what they wrote, seeing the interplay, noting any incongruous bits, etc.I agree with you Ivy. :banana: I really enjoyed your comments as well, camille.


How much do we let the author's life inform our interpretation of his/her work?That is an important question. There are different philosophies of aesthetics, one which is strongly contextual based in which culture, personality, influence our understanding. This also goes hand in hand with an analysis of how a work is perceived within the context it was created vs. how an outsider perceives it.

There is another perspective that views a work of art as a separate entity, a pure ideal that humans are ever reaching towards. This may be a less useful perspective in writing, since words by their nature are so strongly based on context. The contextual approach is more prevalent in the arts today.

[camille]

How much do we let the author's life inform our interpretation of his/her work?


For me, I like to know where they were and who they were with at that point in their lives. It helps me better understand them. Like taking Whitman's poem....all the interpretations given today were right on. The scientist's lecture and the way he gave out detail ruined it for Whitman. But to know how physically sensitive he was and imagine him in a lecture room sitting next to a fat slob puffing a pipe and his smelly wife creates a picture in your head. To know that he loved the human smell of workers and the smell of natural sex from women (yes, and men) and to top it off, his distain for advanced science, just makes you appreciate how he needed the stars in their most innocent unexplained sense.

also, the more you learn about a writer's background then you get a feel for them. When you read something, like Dylan's 'and death shall have no dominion' and you know that he was young, naive of sorts having not experienced that type of loss in his life, then you can see the difference in the emotion when compared to 'Do not gentle into that good night'. The first an explantion and the second a plea.

For some it is more enjoyable to experience the words....find their own meaning, how it relates to them. It all depends on what you want to get out of the reading.

[Geoff]

For me, I like to know where they were and who they where with at that point in their lives. It helps me better understand them. Like taking Whitman's poem....all the interpretations given today were right on. The scientist's lecture and the way he gave out detail ruined it for Whitman. But to know how physically sensitive he was and imagine him in a lecture room sitting next to a fat slob puffing a pipe and his smelly wife creates a picture in your head. To know that he loved the human smell of workers and the smell of natural sex from women (yes, and men) and to top it off, his distain for advanced science, just makes you appreciate how he needed the stars in their most innocent unexplained sense.

also, the more you learn about a writer's background then you get a feel for them. When you read something, like Dylan's 'and death shall have no dominion' and you know that he was young, naive of sorts having not experienced that type of loss in his life, then you can see the difference in the emotion when compared to 'Do not gentle into that good night'. The first an explantion and the second a plea.

For some it is more enjoyable to experience the words....find their own meaning, how it relates to them. It all depends on what you want to get out of the reading.

Typically I like to do both. Avoid colouring my perception by learning of the author. Decide what it means to me (if anything!). Then, read up on the author, and see what it might have meant to him.

-Geoff

[MacGuffin]

also, the more you learn about a writer's background then you get a feel for them. When you read something, like Dylan's 'and death shall have no dominion' and you know that he was young, naive of sorts having not experienced that type of loss in his life, then you can see the difference in the emotion when compared to 'Do not gentle into that good night'. The first an explantion and the second a plea.
That is how I view it. It is interesting to get behind their eyes to imagine how they viewed the creation of their work.

[camille]

Typically I like to do both. Avoid colouring my perception by learning of the author. Decide what it means to me (if anything!). Then, read up on the author, and see what it might have meant to him.

-Geoff

I do also. Generally I do a blind read several times then see what I can find on an author. I tend to read everything, both life and works, that I can find on an author and move onto another. I'm obsessive, what can I say?

[Geoff]

I do also. Generally I do a blind read several times then see what I can find on an author. I tend to read everything, both life and works, that I can find on an author and move onto another. I'm obsessive, what can I say?

At least you recognise it. For me it is more like a long term simmering, with occasional flames.

-Geoff

[camille]

haha

It really depends on the type of work I am reading whether I will study the author first or read the material. If reading a manifesto I will read it several times then study the author. If reading prose or poetry I will study the author first.

I used to think I was crazy and would try to fight the obsessive behavior but now I see that denying it makes me miserable. Better to just do it and enjoy what I get out of it.

[azurwarrior]

BTW, I think that poem was well worth posting again.
I never fail to be affected by it.
I wish I could have shown it to a lot of my high school teachers who bored me to death with cold, irrelevant facts and plain, boring info.
While I sat feeling trapped and escaped only by daydreaming.
So I could say to them "NOW do you understand...?"

I like this poem because it speaks to me. And for me.

I never really thought to place much emphasis on understanding a poet's life. I can see that is a valuable thing to do, and I will do it more in the future.
For instance, I didn't know of Walt's great physical sensitivity. It does make a difference in how I read the poem.

At this point, I probably also miss a lot of things that seem to have their basis in Christianity.
I have been practicing Buddhism for the last 23 years.
When I took a philosophy course in college, the instructor asked us who our favorite philosopher is?
I said Walt Whitman.
He immediately realized I was coming from a Eastern perspective.
(There are so many close ties)...
For the rest of the classes, I took the part of "The Artist" and a young man who had said his was Emmanual Kant took the part of "The Scientist," and we exchanged dialogue.
To me, this poem sums up the ideas beautifully.
He wrote so well of the experience beyond words...the mystical that we all experience...that enriches our lives.

[azurwarrior]

Just one more thing. When I studied Jazz, it was/is very important to understand that this was developed by Blacks in a specific context.
So why wouldn't I take the same approach to understanding poetry?

(Sorry. Just talking to myself. lol.)

[camille]

Just one more thing. When I studied Jazz, it was/is very important to understand that this was developed by Blacks in a specific context.
So why wouldn't I take the same approach to understanding poetry?

(Sorry. Just talking to myself. lol.)
we didn't learn jazz that way. I think that is why I always hated it. The movements always felt very jerky.

[camille]

At this point, I probably also miss a lot of things that seem to have their basis in Christianity.
To me, this poem sums up the ideas beautifully.
He wrote so well of the experience beyond words...the mystical that we all experience...that enriches our lives.

Why do you think you miss things because of their basis in Christianity? Is it because you aren't as familiar with Christianity or because you haven't experienced that 'awe' in the same way?
Have you read many of the American Transcendentalists?

[azurwarrior]

Well, there are many times. (I'm talking generally, here).
Ideas of 'resurrection' in the last poem, might be one of the examples.
I will try to explain...
Resurrection was one of the things I heard a lot about years ago when I was a teenager going to fire and brimstone sermons for devout born-again Christians only.

I was deathly afraid of going to Hell if I didn't go to their church, and If I failed to didn't accept Jesus as my savior and become "born-again."

Is that is the "awe" you are referring to?
I wasn't one of the chosen ones.

Anyways, it's been a long time.

Something to consider here might be Western poets certainly may be writing with an intended Judeo/Christian audience in mind, which would shade their writing, at least to some degree, I would think.

So maybe I am really missing out by not being a member of the majority.
That's what i was told often.

Anyway it seems to me, at least, that a lot poetry from the West is loaded with these images/ideas.
I often miss them, unless they are pointed out.
They haven't been part of my everyday life for a long time
Those would be the gist of this, I guess.

BTW, I'm experimenting now to adapt (if that's the word) those type of ideas to Jung's theory of the Collective Unconcious now.
If I could quit being lazy.
There's SO very much I don't know.

As far as the Trancendentalists go, I was semi-obsessed (to use the word again from previous posts)with Emerson for a long time.

Every time I picked up his books they seemed to say things relevant to my own life.
Very interesting and inspirational.

I even gave a (very) ambitious talk comparing Mayahana Buddhism with The American Scholar.
And got an A.

I also used to live in Cambridge, MA and got to be in the same spaces he was in/influenced.
Harvard University, the buildings, the lecture halls, the courtyard, etc.

I seem to be more attracted to Emerson than Thoreau, for some reason.
I had to read Walden Pond and take an English final on it, but I didn't get around to reading it till the night before.
(Which could explain it, probably).

Going a little earlier to Hawthorne, et al, the Christian influence is stronger, much more obvious.
But these are some major roots of American writing/poetry., of course.

Maybe I'm really missing out on something.
After all, Christianity is the majority.
It's embedded in the culture.

But it is all interrelated...(That would be a Buddhist view. It may correspond to Christianity as well).

Notice I use the word "may."

I probably notice Christian influences more (when I'm aware of them) because of having followed the Buddhists teachings for so long.
I haven't studied the Christian tradition to nearly that extent.
So yes, it is also my unfamiliarity that is a factor.

But another thing, when I hear the word or the idea of "resurrection," or "reborn"for instance... I think of the Christian teachings.

Probably like if someone wrote about "reincarnation" for instance...That is an accepted precept (if that's the word) in Buddhism.
But that might really "stand out" to a lot of Christian readers...
Including the ones in the church of my childhood.
Bias seems inevitable.

I could either immerse myself in the teachings of Christianity,
or accept myself as an American, with all its diversity and find my own unique voice being myself.

And I relate Buddhist teachings to poetry for a fresh voice and outlook.
I hope...

Thanks for asking..

[camille]

[QUOTE]Well, there are many times. (I'm talking generally, here).
Ideas of 'resurrection' in the last poem, might be one of the examples.
I will try to explain...
Resurrection was one of the things I heard a lot about years ago when I was a teenager going to fire and brimstone sermons for devout born-again Christians only.

I was deathly afraid of going to Hell if I didn't go to their church, and If I failed to didn't accept Jesus as my savior and become "born-again."

Is that is the "awe" you are referring to?
I wasn't one of the chosen ones.

I meant that you didn't experience spirituality in the same manner. Specifically wondering if you related resurrection to reincarnation. Nothing really dies. I guess from the majority of what I have read I tend to believe they do not necessarily relate God to Nature or spirituality. And many times I do not think they are writing about Hell in the Christian sense but as a state of mind. Maybe some of the storytellers...like Poe's Eldorado and Dreamland. But I think with a basic understanding or experience, which you have, wouldn't allow you to miss much.



Something to consider here might be Western poets certainly may be writing with an intended Judeo/Christian audience in mind, which would shade their writing, at least to some degree, I would think.

So maybe I am really missing out by not being a member of the majority.
That's what i was told often.
Are you thinking of a specific? Would you mind giving me one?
I do think they write with Judeo/Christian audience in mind because that is what they know. But Bukowski and others in the sixties turned the pen away from that I believe. Ginsberg, another.


Anyway it seems to me, at least, that a lot poetry from the West is loaded with these images/ideas.
I often miss them, unless they are pointed out.
They haven't been part of my everyday life for a long time
Those would be the gist of this, I guess.
I can understand this. Do you have a picture in your head that helps you develop and lock away what you carry from one author to another? When I first began studying poetry I would read several authors from the same time period from different places. I began to get a feel for what was customary at the time....not just socially but religiously. Even if something isn't said outright, you can pick it up from different authors.


There's SO very much I don't know.
Same as everyone else. :)



As far as the Trancendentalists go, I was semi-obsessed (to use the word again from previous posts)with Emerson for a long time.

Every time I picked up his books they seemed to say things relevant to my own life.
Very interesting and inspirational.

I also used to live in Cambridge, MA and got to be in the same spaces he was in/influenced.
Harvard University, the buildings, the lecture halls, the courtyard, etc.

I seem to be more attracted to Emerson than Thoreau, for some reason.
I had to read Walden Pond and take an English final on it, but I didn't get around to reading it till the night before.
(Which could explain it, probably).

Going a little earlier to Hawthorne, et al, the Christian influence is stronger, much more obvious.
But these are some major roots of American writing/poetry., of course.
I've always been more attracted to Emerson also....probably because of the link with Whitman.
I read several articles that were published in 'The Dial' and the early American writers, their passion for America,then uncertainty they felt about it surviving to fulfill its orginal plan always appealed to me. I understood what they felt. Not just their adoration of Nature, but many of their beliefs in politics and social structure and discipline.



Maybe I'm really missing out on something.
After all, Christianity is the majority.
It's embedded in the culture.

YOu don't have to live it to understand it.



I probably notice Christian influences more (when I'm aware of them) because of having followed the Buddhists teachings for so long.
I haven't studied the Christian tradition to nearly that extent.
So yes, it is also my unfamiliarity that is a factor.

But another thing, when I hear the word or the idea of "resurrection," or "reborn"for instance... I think of the Christian teachings.

Probably like if someone wrote about "reincarnation" for instance...That is an accepted precept (if that's the word) in Buddhism.
But that might really "stand out" to a lot of Christian readers...
Including the ones in the church of my childhood.
Bias seems inevitable.

I do think certain words have a religious flair to them but many American poets have boycotted this play association and used what inspired them.

I could either immerse myself in the teachings of Christianity,
or accept myself as an American,

I'm not sure I understand this and don't know why you would have to make a choice.


And I relate Buddhist teachings to poetry for a fresh voice and outlook.
I hope...

so do I.

Thanks for asking..
enjoyed reading about it.

[azurwarrior]

Coolness! You wrote about a lot of things that are certainly food for thought. And I didn't have to pay for it, either. lol.
One thing in particular I wanted to ask you about is the link between Emerson and Whitman.
I know generally that they lived at about the same time and wrote from many of the same ideas/philosophies. Probably had similar influences.
But that's about all I know.

But speaking about Whitman's life...I realize you no doubt are aware, but others may not be.
It's interesting. (At least to me.)
So here's some details...
He worked as a nurse in the Civil War. This is described in "Drum Taps" in full gory detail...
He clearly had much compassion for others.
Of course Buddhism and Christianity are compassion based, also.

He was also gay. Many churches even today would tell him to "take a hike."
He described images like "bearded lips on bearded lips..." without apology, in the 1800's.:joft: :joft:
(Including soldiers from both sides of the conflict, BTW).
He used to "cruise" the New Jersey streetcars. (That just cracks me up.)...
And Leaves of Grass was BANNED in Boston.

(And schools to this day, often STILL censor that info. BC Tax paying and staunchly narrow-minded Parents (the very LOUD minority, I mean) would be "up in arms" screaming about that if Junior came home and mentioned it at Sunday dinner, probably).
And another thing-Whitman actually bought most of the first copies of Leaves of Grass himself, bc no one wanted to publish it or buy it.
If not for that, you and I would never have read it.
So, freelance writers take heart...

[azurwarrior]

[QUOTE=camille;522749]


I meant that you didn't experience spirituality in the same manner. Specifically wondering if you related resurrection to reincarnation. Nothing really dies.
-Of course people and things really die.
But resurrection (where people literally come out of their graves, back to life, is how it was described to us)....
No, I don't believe that.
I also don't think it that the same thing as reincarnation.
But I can see a relation to eternity, either way - without life there would be no death.

[T]hey are writing about Hell in the Christian sense but as a state of mind.
-That idea is similar to the Mahayana Buddhist idea of Hell-that these things exist within life itself, not some remote place we go after death.


Are you thinking of a specific? Would you mind giving me one?
I do think they write with Judeo/Christian audience in mind because that is what they know. But Bukowski and others in the sixties turned the pen away from that I believe. Ginsberg, another.
I mean in general, things I've read over an extended period of time. I realize there's a lot of exceptions.
But, here's one, for instance:

THE LAMB, by William Blake

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
.....Little Lamb, who made thee?
.....Dost thou know who made thee?
.....Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek and he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
.....Little Lamb, God bless thee!
.....Little Lamb, God bless thee!


I can understand this. Do you have a picture in your head that helps you develop and lock away what you carry from one author to another? When I first began studying poetry I would read several authors from the same time period from different places. I began to get a feel for what was customary at the time....not just socially but religiously. Even if something isn't said outright, you can pick it up from different authors.
-That sounds interesting.



I've always been more attracted to Emerson also....probably because of the link with Whitman.
-Please give details! Did they ever meet? Did they write about their encounters?

Thanks!

[camille]

Coolness! You wrote about a lot of things that are certainly food for thought. And I didn't have to pay for it, either. lol.
One thing in particular I wanted to ask you about is the link between Emerson and Whitman.
I know generally that they lived at about the same time and wrote from many of the same ideas/philosophies. Probably had similar influences.
But that's about all I know.



Whitman was thirty-six when he decided to publish 'Leaves of Grass'. He sent it to Emerson, a great inspiration, and Emerson returned a letter stating many wonderful things about the book. One being, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career.." Whitman then published the letter, without Emerson's permission, with the book. Emerson was upset but they still maintained a relationship until death.

Although he was inspired by Emerson, Whitman was unique in that he didn't restrict himself when discussing his sexuality. Emerson strongly believed, as did Whitman (both being transcendentalists) that every man must commune with the divinity inside himself. This is self trust. Emerson had a difficult time not only believing the people were ready for such a sexually explicit work, but that Whitman's sexuality was his assertion of self. Whitman posed that morality dictated sexual preference and to rise above that constraining code was assertion of self trust.
Emerson believed that in self trust all virtues were comprehended. He felt free enough to write about the self and self-reliance but was still bound by moral/social constraints. Whereas Whitman was a man on the open road, freely discovering himself, not bound to right or wrong as they applied to sex. Basically Emerson wrote it and Whitman wrote and lived it.....completely embodied himself in transcendentalism, self, self trust. Emerson even asked Whitman not to publish several poems because of the sexual content.

Emerson probably didn't understand Whitman's "omnisexual" preferences, or at least wouldn't attest to them in public. He believed heterosex was the only sexual relationship. So he was probably very confused by Whitman's freedom in the spirit of love and sex. But that is how Whitman explored the self, through sex, that was his divinity, his roots.The self is larger than the morals of conformity.

Song of Myself was probably the most influential piece of American Transcendentalism literature.

So you see, for Whitman to include Emerson's letter in his book was daring. He knew Emerson did not have the same views on sex and sexual content available to the public. Had he not included that letter, we probably wouldn't be reading 'Leaves of Grass'. He knew what he was doing, right or wrong. He must have been charming for them to continue their relationship despite his wrong-doing.

The Wound-Dresser is another excellent poem about his time served as a volunteer nurse in the war.
Jerome Loving's 'Walt Whitman The Song of Himself' is an excellent biography that includes details of his time in the war not easily found elsewhere.


I do see what you mean by religious overtones in the poetry but do not think that you should look at those pieces as hindering or that you cannot understand the full meaning of a piece of work. He showing the relationship between both the lamb and himself with Jesus. How Jesus became the lamb and also a child. So they are BOTH, animal and man, connected to Jesus and his death.
How does it make you feel when you read poems with Christian overtones? Do you feel lost, overwhelmed like you just can't grasp the meaning? And do you think because you are Buddhist that in some way, poems about Christianity leave a bad taste in your mouth? there are poems on certain subjects that do that to me.

[azurwarrior]

Since Em was so very accomplished in his artistic literature, and wrote about such deep ideas, and broad sentiments, I'll bet Em knew more than he let on, esp. concerning sex. That was taboo, then.
The Victorians in general, were not the prudes that they liked to be seen as, either.

[azurwarrior]

As a businessman myself, I appreciate Walt's pragmatism in including letters from Em.
Knowing how important they would surely be to promote Leaves of Grass.
Knowing all the while how Em vehemently opposed doing that.
I think Walt just may have figured sometimes you can't save your face and your ass at the same time.
LOL.
It must have taken a lot of tolerance and open mindedness on Em's part, too.
Or their friendship would have been destroyed IMHO.

[camille]

I agree with you. But that was the big diff. Whitman did not let social constraints tie him down and Emerson did. Emerson couldn't free himself. Emerson found that divinity in writing about Nature and relationships. I think he doubted Whitman's divinity as sex only because he couldn't experience it as Whitman did.....without being concerned. He might have been a closet homosexual but that held him back, or at least led him to doubt Whitman. Plus he had already created a name for himself. He didn't know that the public would embrace Whitman as they did, despite bannings and protests, etc.

[MacGuffin]

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816)