I might as well share the wealth

My comprehensive paper on Elizabeth Bishop is due Monday at 5 p.m. As I have learned from the dear Mrs. Stairet's class, I can pretty much write a 10-page paper of b.s. in less than 4 hours. Granted there are still some holes and I need to find some more secondary support, but overall I'm rather pleased with myself. Here is one of the poems I included in my in-depth analysis, from her collection Questions of Travel:


On the unbreathing sides of hills
they play, a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up;

a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one of their father's tools,
a mattock with a broken half
the two of them can scarcely lift.
It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads
effulgence in the thunderheads,

weak flashes of inquiry
direct as is the puppy's bark.
But to their little, soluble,
unwarrantable ark,
apparantly the rain's reply
consists of echloalia,
and Mother's voice, ugly as sin,
keeps calling to them to come in.

Children, the threshold of the storm
has slid beneath your muddy shoes;
wet and beguiled, you stand among
the mansions you may choose
out of a bigger house than yours,
whose lawfulness endures.
Its soggy documents retain
your rights in rooms of falling rain.

The dew is in your beard

Found this on my iTunes playlist while I was looking for something new to listen to. Jack Kerouac reading his poem "Abraham," with some piano in the background.

Wires, Philip Larkin

Wires

The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires

Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.

-Philip Larkin


Writing a paper on Larkin, and this one may not make the cut for my topic, but I love it, so I had to share it.

i think this could be applicable

I AM NOT FLATTERED

I am not flattered that a bell
About the neck of a peaceful cow
Should be more damning to my ear
Than all the bombing planes of hell
Merely because the bell is near,
Merely because the bell is now,
The bombs too far away to hear.

--Robert Francis

more Stevie

Once again, piggy-backing on Alyssa. Hope she has a strong back.

Edinburgh Festival recording, 1965.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


Also, the BBC interview with Derek Hart.

Stevie Smith's "Bag-snatching in Dublin"

It had Dublin in the title, so I thought I'd share it with you.


BAG-SNATCHING IN DUBLIN

Sisely
Walked so nicely
With footsteps so discreet
To see her pass
You'd never guess
She walked upon the street.

Down where the Liffey waters' turgid flood
Churns up to greet the ocean-driven mud,
A bruiser fix
Murdered her for 6/6.

--Stevie Smith

More Ezra, Walt; reference "you're supposed to be excited to be living, or something"

This was originally a comment, but once I threw in a poem I was afraid the comment field would ruin the line spacing. Sorry folks.

I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I mean, as a poem. I always get uncomfortable when I feel like a poet is talking so directly. More Ezra Pound than Walt Whitman, I suppose. Your man Jack London did have his hand on beat poetry long before it was mainstream, though, that's for sure.

Which reminds me:

A Pact

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman--
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root--
Let there be commerce between us.

-Ezra Pound

I love it--this is Pound at his most self-reflective: there is no "persona" to be reckoned with. There is no Hugh Selwyn Mobeley, no Prufrock, just himself. But it comes across as sincere, not condescending to Whitman. The line "Now is a time for carving," is so Whitman (mostly just because of the word "Now") but instantly made me think of "Petals on a wet, black bough." from In a Station of the Metro. Maybe it's just the sound, even. Both of these have the same goal of immediacy, of something temporary made permanent. Bringing this to a whole new level, Pound would perform his poetry with a hand drum. He did not (to my knowledge) live in Greenwich Village and wear turtlenecks, but he was a beat none the less (albeit a fascist beat--what's more counter-culture than treason?).

So, I'm an advocate for studying Whitman as a "literary text" (and London, sorry, this got off-topic) but I'm also an advocate for shouting good ol' Ezra while standing in a forest, or maybe at the top of some cliff somewhere.