She is as in a field a silken tentAt midday when the sunny summer breezeHas dried the dew and all its ropes relent,So that in guys it gently sways at ease,And its supporting central cedar pole,That is its pinnacle to heavenwardAnd signifies the sureness of the soul,Seems to owe naught to any single cord,But strictly held by none, is loosely boundBy countless silken ties of love and thoughtTo every thing on earth the compass round,And only by one's going slightly tautIn the capriciousness of summer airIs of the slightlest bondage made aware.
- R. Frost, The Silken Tent
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:47 (fourteen years ago) link
my mid-to-late century homies:
bishoplarkinpongekeesmacniece
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:50 (fourteen years ago) link
"The Subverted Flower":
She drew back; he was calm:"It is this that had the power."And he lashed his open palmWith the tender-headed flower.He smiled for her to smile,But she was either blindOr willfully unkind.He eyed her for a whileFor a woman and a puzzle.He flicked and flung the flower,And another sort of smileCaught up like fingertipsThe corners of his lipsAnd cracked his ragged muzzle.She was standing to the waistIn golden rod and brake,Her shining hair displaced.He stretched her either armAs if she made it acheTo clasp her - not to harm;As if he could not spareTo touch her neck and hair."If this has come to usAnd not to me alone -"So she thought she heard him say;Though with every word he spokeHis lips were sucked and blownAnd the effort made him chokeLike a tiger at a bone.She had to lean away.She dared not stir a foot,Lest movement should provokeThe demon of pursuitThat slumbers in a brute.It was then her mother’s callFrom inside the garden wallMade her steal a look of fearTo see if he could hearAnd would pounce to end it allBefore her mother came.She looked and saw the shame:A hand hung like a paw,An arm worked like a sawAs if to be persuasive,An ingratiating laughThat cut the snout in half,And eye become evasive.A girl could only seeThat a flower had marred a man,But what she could not seeWas that the flower might beOther than base and fetid:That the flower had done but part,And what the flower beganHer own too meager heartHad terribly completed.She looked and saw the worst.And the dog or what it was,Obeying bestial laws,A coward save at night,Turned from the place and ran.She heard him stumble firstAnd use his hands in flight.She heard him bark outright.And oh, for one so youngThe bitter words she spitLike some tenacious bitThat will not leave the tongue.She plucked her lips for it,And still the horror clung.Her mother wiped the foamFrom her chin, picked up her comb,And drew her backward home.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:50 (fourteen years ago) link
that frost stuff is nice, did he continue writing after adolescence?
srsly u yanks are cute.
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:51 (fourteen years ago) link
y u i orta
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:52 (fourteen years ago) link
:D
nah i've not read much frost, it doesn't help that he's thought only in junior poetry/english cycles this side of the ocean tbh
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:53 (fourteen years ago) link
write-in voting for robert burns
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:56 (fourteen years ago) link
there are more heavy hitters polls to come
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:58 (fourteen years ago) link
I know the tradition on ILM would be "let's do twenty polls at once" but I figured let's get this big q out of the way and then continue
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 30 May 2010 13:59 (fourteen years ago) link
Next poll:
English schoolsAmerican schools
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:03 (fourteen years ago) link
private or public?
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:06 (fourteen years ago) link
from what I'm told of Ireland I don't think the worst Manchester ghoul will be able to do aught but bow before the masters :(
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:17 (fourteen years ago) link
Finally voted. It was Shakespeare coz yknow he's Shakespeare (OR WAS HE???).
The Frost quoted here not doing much for me tbh - still where I was upthread and mostly hit by the earlier stuff (just reread 'Out, out' and hell yes). This feels woolier, less concrete, and the poet's sticking his head in a bit more; sounds ok, but I feel like I'm in the Graves league (which yes is a place I like to be), not the Yeats true vision league.
― woof, Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:21 (fourteen years ago) link
It was Shakespeare coz yknow he's Shakespeare
Or rather, he persuaded me right now because of that opaque inwardness that he's got - minds talking to themselves, jumping from image to image, losing you sometimes, picking at and around something and stretching language far to do it. When a Shakespeare contemporary gets difficult, it's often because you're missing an allusion; with Yeats, it's sometimes because he's wandered into private-symbol world (and sometimes it's because he's talking bollocks); with Shakespeare it's like he's thinking and discriminating and turning inwards - like he (in the sonnets) or a character are in an difficult argument with themselves (mid-late drama especially - Corialanus, Timon), stepping s'ways, skipping ahead, cutting back, reacing for images to articulate it.
There are bits of that around him in Fulke Greville and Donne maybe (the latter a gen down, so picking it up from the playhouses?), but it's never really allied elsewhere to such a straight-up prettypretty lyrical gift.
Anyway that is why I voted Shakespeare today.
― woof, Sunday, 30 May 2010 17:20 (fourteen years ago) link
I also admit that everything I'm praising could just be textual corruption.
It was very difficult for me to vote for Shakespeare given how much some of Yeats means to me. "But I, being poor, have only my dreams/I have spread my dreams under your feet/tread softly for you tread on my dreams"? All love poetry after that might as well go hang, that's as good as it's going to get. But then, you know, Will S.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man! Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing; here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool. Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, You owe me no subscription: then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
I mean
you know
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, 30 May 2010 17:30 (fourteen years ago) link
lol at ppl shitting on robert frost
― max, Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:20 (fourteen years ago) link
shakespeare is so ridiculous
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:45 (fourteen years ago) link
ly amazing
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:46 (fourteen years ago) link
xxp do you file that thought under comedy, poetry or scat porn, though?
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:46 (fourteen years ago) link
passive-aggressive finickiness disguised as wit
― cozen, Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:47 (fourteen years ago) link
nah i cut all the pass-agg out of my diet tbph, but this is the shakespeare/yeats poll and frost will have his due consideration soon, i look fwd to more exposure.
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 19:50 (fourteen years ago) link
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 14:51 (8 hours ago) Bookmark
haha
― nakhchivan, Sunday, 30 May 2010 22:49 (fourteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:01 (fourteen years ago) link
i'm literally perning in a gyre with excitement
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Mid-late-20th-Century:
Sceptr'd Isle
MacNeiceLarkinHill
God's Country
StevensMerrillBerrymanAmmons
― alimosina, Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:43 (fourteen years ago) link
My favorite Merrill poem. The last stanza kills me.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:43 (fourteen years ago) link
For Lear WS needed almost superhuman self-control. For all his gyres I don't think Yeats could go there.
― alimosina, Monday, 31 May 2010 02:11 (fourteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:01 (fourteen years ago) link
this is no country... for yeats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
― max, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:04 (fourteen years ago) link
^^^^ mods, plz change thread title
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 31 May 2010 23:05 (fourteen years ago) link
nu-Shakespeare could be posting to Tumblr rite now -- would we know it? O_O
― ksh, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:12 (fourteen years ago) link
They knew it then, we'd know it now.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 02:31 (fourteen years ago) link
Didn't vote but I followed the arguments and while I sensed a lot more affection for Yeats I knew (and so did everybody) that it wasn't going to be enough.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 08:59 (fourteen years ago) link
thread took moral high ground of recognising greatness of both rather than turning it into a flamewar contest.
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:34 (fourteen years ago) link
that was aerosmith's intention though
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:37 (fourteen years ago) link
Nah -- we used it as an excuse to post great poems.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:37 (fourteen years ago) link
well it transpired as Robert Frost Is Awesome but yeah, great thread
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:39 (fourteen years ago) link
I spent a fair amount of drive time today thinking about what to make heavy hitters poll #2 - what's anybody wanna do?
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:48 (fourteen years ago) link
dare we approach Virgil's rostrum
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:51 (fourteen years ago) link
*I* would be down for something involving GMH but I'm aware I'm pretty much alone on that. Go with your gut, dude
Thomas Hardy vs D.H. Lawrence
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (fourteen years ago) link
virgil vs dante
or homer vs milton
― goole, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (fourteen years ago) link
Flaubert vs Nabokov
― every time i pull a j/k off the shelf (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (fourteen years ago) link
Albarn vs Gillespie
― bageled by dementeds (HI DERE), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (fourteen years ago) link
oh wait I got it now
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:56 (fourteen years ago) link
dickinson vs whitman
― max, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:13 (fourteen years ago) link
oh you already started it
lets get some women up in these polls tho, and by women, i mean, emily dickinson
max OTM iirc
― ksh, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:14 (fourteen years ago) link