collapses on itself v nicely
― Aimless, Friday, 20 January 2012 19:50 (twelve years ago) link
thanks to alfred for posting frost's 'desert places.' never read that before; utterly gorgeous.
is there a consensus on the best frost collection to own?
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 20 January 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
The collected Frost is really one of the rare COMPLETE collections you need own. He only wrote two volumes of fluff (his last two).
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 January 2012 21:25 (twelve years ago) link
we should do more of these
― junior dada (thomp), Friday, 20 January 2012 22:40 (twelve years ago) link
my sophomore HS english teacher had to drive frost to and from the airport when he was in college. he described him as 'the crabbiest old bastard i've ever met.'
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 20 January 2012 23:13 (twelve years ago) link
SEPTEMBER 1913by William Butler YeatsWhat need you, being come to sense,But fumble in a greasy tillAnd add the ha’pence to the penceAnd prayer to shivering prayer, untilYou have dried the marrow from the bone;For men were born to pray and save?,Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave.Yet they were of a different kind,The names that stilled your childish play,They have gone about the world like wind,But little time had they to prayFor whom the hangman’s rope was spun,And what, God help us, could they save?Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave.Was it for this the wild geese spreadThe grey wing upon every tide;For this that all that blood was shed,For this Edward Fitzgerald died,And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,All that delirium of the brave?Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet could we turn the years again,And call those exiles as they wereIn all their loneliness and pain,You’d cry ‘Some woman’s yellow hairHas maddened every mother’s son’:They weighed so lightly what they gave.But let them be, they’re dead and gone,They’re with O’Leary in the grave.
100th anniversary of publication, and all is changed, changed utterly (not likely)
― his LIPS !!! (darraghmac), Saturday, 7 September 2013 16:16 (ten years ago) link
in the pub, with a friend, he's just gone to drain the weasel, read that while he was away. and well, it moved the hell out of me. time to get a pint.
― Fizzles, Saturday, 7 September 2013 16:30 (ten years ago) link
this is the best thread on ilx
― k3vin k., Friday, 24 January 2014 18:08 (ten years ago) link
Old ILE's dead and goneIt's with Passantino in the UK
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 January 2014 18:08 (ten years ago) link
just sent the second coming to a client wanting to know why things don't work as well as they used to. v much looking fwd to response.
― the only thing worse than being tweeted about (darraghmac), Friday, 23 May 2014 11:42 (ten years ago) link
should've sent him Lear's last monologue
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 23 May 2014 12:06 (ten years ago) link
some guy studying political science barf was introduced to me at a party the other night and the person introducing us said of him "he's very passionate" and i said "but about what" and he said "taking over the world" barf and i said "see, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity" and he looked perplexed
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 23 May 2014 12:23 (ten years ago) link
no response :(
― the only thing worse than being tweeted about (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 May 2014 21:43 (ten years ago) link
tbh its maybe a tack worth taking more often
I would like us to do this all over again, picking different lines and verses and offerings, I wouldn't even pick on frost this time. we should do it every year, without repeats.
― cpt navajo (darraghmac), Friday, 11 July 2014 22:38 (nine years ago) link
ts big dogs 2014 edition #1: dostoyevsky vs austen
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Friday, 11 July 2014 22:45 (nine years ago) link
oh yeah def but i meant like for these two itt
― cpt navajo (darraghmac), Friday, 11 July 2014 22:54 (nine years ago) link
today, a catTHE CAT AND THE MOON
by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
HE cat went here and thereAnd the moon spun round like a top,And the nearest kin of the moon,The creeping cat, looked up.Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,For, wander and wail as he would,The pure cold light in the skyTroubled his animal blood.Minnaloushe runs in the grassLifting his delicate feet.Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?When two close kindred meet,What better than call a dance?Maybe the moon may learn,Tired of that courtly fashion,A new dance turn.Minnaloushe creeps through the grassFrom moonlit place to place,The sacred moon overheadHas taken a new phase.Does Minnaloushe know that his pupilsWill pass from change to change,And that from round to crescent,From crescent to round they range?Minnaloushe creeps through the grassAlone, important and wise,And lifts to the changing moonHis changing eyes.
― your favourite misread ILX threads (darraghmac), Friday, 25 July 2014 10:56 (nine years ago) link
imagine being so good you can write that for a bloody cat tho
― your favourite misread ILX threads (darraghmac), Friday, 25 July 2014 10:58 (nine years ago) link
I remember at school, and English was my subject, mind, that sailing to Byzantium was only nonsense, whispers caught in the wind and the odd image of echoing history, a scatty lament, nothing more. read it again tonight and welp
THAT is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees- Those dying generations - at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress,Nor is there singing school but studyingMonuments of its own magnificence;And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fireAs in the gold mosaic of a wall,Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,And be the singing-masters of my soul.Consume my heart away; sick with desireAnd fastened to a dying animalIt knows not what it is; and gather meInto the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 25 August 2014 22:45 (nine years ago) link
maybe its been mentioned earlier but reading yeats in school i found his delusional sad-sack obsession with maud gonne pitiful and led to some gratuitous bitterness in his poems.
― everyday sheeple (Michael B), Monday, 25 August 2014 23:51 (nine years ago) link
true, yet even unworthy sentiments weren't wasted on him, looking at the outputs he generated from them. even if twere relevant tbh
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 25 August 2014 23:54 (nine years ago) link
whenever he writes an empty booming phrase like "the artifice of eternity" he belts me with "Of hammered gold and gold enamelling/To keep a drowsy Emperor awake."
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 25 August 2014 23:57 (nine years ago) link
a belt of hammered gold would be alright imo
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Tuesday, 26 August 2014 00:04 (nine years ago) link
otm
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 August 2014 00:15 (nine years ago) link
Yeats really really getting to me lately, like I open and read and am completely drowning within a few lines
― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:02 (nine years ago) link
this is no country... for yeats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
― max, Monday, May 31, 2010 7:04 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:15 (nine years ago) link
thread making me think i should give frost another chance
i don't know why i posted upthread about being embarrassed by yeats because i had been obsessed with him as a teenager. teenagers otm.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:16 (nine years ago) link
i would have voted shakespeare but this is really hard.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:17 (nine years ago) link
all otm
got a good compendium of Yeats and yeah maybe I just need my Shakespeare performed for me, cf my hopkins , but nobody reads like Yeats imo
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:18 (nine years ago) link
btw, regarding the discussion upthread, dickinson is our american genius, surely? i'm willing to believe frost is better than i know but there's no way he's that good.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:28 (nine years ago) link
She's more "original" in the formal sense.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:29 (nine years ago) link
Consume my heart away; sick with desireAnd fastened to a dying animal
;_;
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:29 (nine years ago) link
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,I sought it daily for six weeks or so.Maybe at last, being but a broken man,I must be satisfied with my heart, althoughWinter and summer till old age beganMy circus animals were all on show
;_; ;_; ;_;
late Yeats is so raw
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:30 (nine years ago) link
I was youtubing poetry to ease the idleness of food preparation yday and I remembered this thread and looked up frost and had a go and the person reading it was an *american* person and I know the fault is in me and the stuff reads well up thread but I had to drop a potful of good roosters just to get to Richard Burton growling something about farms and youth I have some work yet to do with frost I admit
xp raw is a v good word its brutal at times
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:33 (nine years ago) link
faw:
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:34 (nine years ago) link
raw too
the first poem i ever memorized was "Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty" and i didn't even have to try because the lines
When my arms wrap you round I pressmy heart upon the lovelinessthat has long faded from the world
just stuck in my head indelibly upon first reading. how does he do that?
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:34 (nine years ago) link
Shakespeare was a creep:
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember'd not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:38 (nine years ago) link
all those sonnets that are like, you're super-hot, you should go plow some lady so that your hotness lives on creep me out the worst.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 15:39 (nine years ago) link
but then there's Lear, so
"Adam's Curse" is the bomb. When I used to teach poetry explaining the narrative to students provoked excellent responses. It has the quiet revelations of a short story but the compression of a great lyric.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 1 September 2014 15:42 (nine years ago) link
when you are old and grey has a slap in it too, tbf
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 1 September 2014 16:02 (nine years ago) link
the procreation sonnets are kind of 3rd-tier but I like them as an opening to the semi-narrative of the sequence - like Shakespeare has taken on this weird family politics patronage job where he's trying to persuade a good-looking young aristo to turn out a kid to keep the line up, but then bang sonnet 18 forget about having babies, shakespeare is in love.
― woof, Monday, 1 September 2014 16:05 (nine years ago) link
the beat drops
― nakh is the wintour of our diss content (darraghmac), Monday, 1 September 2014 16:05 (nine years ago) link
In Shakespere's day infant/child mortality was extremely high (I'm thinking around 30%) and life expectancy for those who successfully reached adulthood was still only about 50. Death was very, very real to those people and when they wrote about how fleeting life and love and beauty were, they weren't kidding.
― Aimless, Monday, 1 September 2014 16:25 (nine years ago) link
i take seriously that those early sonnets are about mortality. it's the triangulation that's creepy. and interesting, later in the sonnets.
― horseshoe, Monday, 1 September 2014 16:49 (nine years ago) link
Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin
'Erected to the memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien'
O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water, preferably, so stillyGreeny at the heart of summer. BrotherCommemorate me thus beautifullyWhere by a lock niagarously roarsThe falls for those who sit in the tremendous silenceOf mid-July. No one will speak in proseWho finds his way to these Parnassian islands. A swan goes by head low with many apologies, Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges - And look! a barge comes bringing from AthyAnd other far-flung towns mythologies.O commemorate me with no hero-courageous Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.
― fedora, wherever it may find her (darraghmac), Sunday, 14 September 2014 03:51 (nine years ago) link
I'm just gonna, having let that mature, offer aero or whoever their pick against kavanagh, as a way of getting the ball rolling here
― local eire man (darraghmac), Friday, 20 February 2015 12:39 (nine years ago) link
Dylan Thomas might make a good match-up.
― woof, Friday, 20 February 2015 12:50 (nine years ago) link