WHAT'S THE BEST POEM OUT OF THESE POEMS 2

think it's 'september, 1916', isn't it?

ah i've confused two of his. september 1913, i'm thinking.

they're both all time greats though

John D is pretty much OTM for me too, tho' I've got no Latin, so I'll ignore your rubric up top and take Virgil in Dryden's translation. Second place is maybe not taking Hopkins as seriously as I should - tho' he's pretty obviously a titan of sound & observation & energy, he's not someone who affects me the way he did once (was thinking the other day the desolation sonnets leave me cold now); I feel more bludgeoned by Sibyl's Leaves than enthused, or taken, or engaged.

Haven't read much of A. What I did read was fine, but that American make-it-new tradition doesn't do that much for me. I do read it, but I tend to be critical-disengaged with it - like my head picks at it, with pleasure, but I don't hear it quite as easily, or with such pleasure as the trad English line.

Same with that English Cambridgey School-of-Prynne stuff, which is what I guess this Heames guy is coming from.

Saw Dakota once. It was ok, but I like the page.

I'm in a library, so I'm going to look at some Rexroth. Let's see if this... Dragon and the Unicorn is any cop. May report back. (This book mentions the poll poem as 'A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy', btw.)

you know who's under-repped-for is archibald macleish

Oops. I remembered the title slightly wrong. Bad. Yes, it is indeed "A Prologomenon".

Same with that English Cambridgey School-of-Prynne stuff, which is what I guess this Heames guy is coming from.

HAHAHAHAHA Ian Heames studied at Gonville & Caius under Prynne's DIRECT tutelage! However could you guess, eh...Prynne has proven very difficult for me to decipher, but Heames and I have enjoyed a good poetic discourse - lots of useful ideas, and the dude's economy with an image is startling. That's possibly my favourite of his works.

J0hn, please post an example!

Here's an extract from A Prologomenon To A Theodicy (it's actually REALLY quite long, this is like 1/20th of it): http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1920s.htm#From%20A%20PROLEGOMENON%20TO%20A%20THEODICY

(it includes the bit I got my ILX username, dissertation title, eventual bandname from, although in A"O"A it's spelt like this not like that)

pretty sure it's 'the general conic of the wing' as well; the transcriber is unreliable

Are you sure? Rexroth looks big on the Greek & I reckon he's going to go for 'u' as a transcription of omicron-upsilon, rather than 'eu' (which is usually epsilon-upsilon.) Anyone with proper ancient Greek, plz feel free to school me.

Um, while we're at it, and sorry, I wouldn't do this if it didn't keep coming up bcz I hate being a pedant when off-duty (am sub-editor) prolEgomena, prolEgomenon.

am in shame 4evah

it is spelt 'acoleuthic' in A"O"A, for sure, there's an explanation here (we've already had this discussion!): Can a brother get a 77 invite?

never saw those contenderizer posts <3

Yes, I remember, that's what made me hunt down the word and stare at its etymology a week or two ago - I assumed you were right about Rexroth's spelling, but just now I saw a chunk of no-translation Greek at the start of this book I'm looking at, along with the spelling I'd expect in that transcription & I started wondering if something hadn't slipped somewhere. But I am dropping this. I am not telling nobody how to spell nothing, esp since my user name is the kind of thing a 5-year-old child would pick.

Wallace Stevens would trump any of the US names here for me: I think I am just a sucker for a traditionally pretty line (and a philosophy that bears a simpler relationship to Romantic Imagination aesthetics).

so do we all get to have one of these threads now?

start one and see

maybe in a week or two. too far from my books and still haven't started my MES reads poll

*is excited*

Yeah, these two threads have made for a lively ILB day. More of them, I say, judiciously spaced. Also this:

my MES reads poll

I Cannot wait.

am listening to the song 'Hurricane Edward' right now (by coincidence)...the dude is plainly one of the great contemporary english poets

3 prophets of the English nation: Milton - Blake - Smith.

i even posted about 'hip priest' earlier today...i've been on the most indescribably massive MES kick recently

ok can we use this as a quick nominations thread? i know i've forgotten some. here's as far as i got last time -

- vladimir nabokov, 'bend sinister'
- colin wilson, 'ritual in the dark'
- mailer, 'deer park'
- camus (duh), 'the fall'
- m r james, count magnus
- h p lovecraft, 'the strange case of charles dexter ward'
- luke rhinehart, 'the dice man'

Ape

You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father,

who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

I've had enough monkey, cried father.

You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the

trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough,

said father.

I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said

mother.

Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay

the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured

skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These

aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.

Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread,

said mother.

Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into

its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother.

I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a

jockstrap, screamed father.

Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything

more than simple meat, screamed mother.

Well what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates?

screamed father.

Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature?

That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after

we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after

breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband,

that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ?

I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night,

cried father.

Russell Edson

GamalielRatsey to thread.
In the meantime:

Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan.
Something by Wyndham Lewis - Apes of God? Is anything directly referenced?

<3 russell edson

got to see him read in RI about 10 years ago

omg that edson is CLASSIC slow-build comic poetry

(dood did ya get mah ilxmail?)

Oh, and Philip Dick, obviously.

There's some Melody Maker thing with Mark Smith's ten cultural artifacts of the moment from like '82 I have a memory of seeing (not in '82) that has two or three specific choices. I can't think if I saw it online or in the liner notes of a reissue or something. Grr.

the Laocooon or Pyrrhus or Hector dream parts alone would've been enough to make this poll rigged from the start

book 2 is the best book, right? anyone wanna bat for 4?

the bit where priam's family is slaughtered is up there but the hector dream possibly wins it, may poll book 2 at some point

ok I can't find this fucking poem I want to post but here's a google book link to Blades

http://books.google.com/books?id=yWBGj_ivnZIC&pg=PA282&dq=ck+williams+blades+poem&ei=c1UVS5aNCoKmkASC8rXeCw#v=onepage&q=ck%20williams%20blades%20poem&f=false

Something by Wyndham Lewis - Apes of God? Is anything directly referenced?

Yes, not Apes, though - 'post office, Rotting Hill' (from their cover of Jingle Bell Rock).

What else, what else. Reckon thomp has it covered. Great God Pan certainly.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem or rather the intro to Milton by Blake of course (are we doing poems as well?)
Smith quotes The Call of Cthulu at the beginning of The Post Nearly Man, if that counts.

A choice of Dr Faustus representations (I think Smith said he got the idea of the song from some woodcuts or something, a folk version of the tale, so make of that what you will).

Morning of the Magicians is quoted fairly heavily in Before the Moon Falls if my memory serves me right, but you could argue he's just referencing things like the Nine Unknown Men (oh wait - that's Putta Block isn't it), rather than quoting the book itself.

Struggling to think of any more novels tho. I would but I'm stupid busy at the moment, and want to think a bit more about stuff that is mentioned (not to leave out singing 'You keep reading me the Booker Prize' for Book of Lies - oh yes, that's another one -

The Book of Lies - Aleister Crowley. There must be more.

The poems? Oh, um, pass for the moment, need to check out the Rexroth, reread the Virgil, think about Gerard Manley Hopkins AGAIN (he's never quite done it for me, but there are moments when I think he might) and I haven't read A, and possibly think I'm not likely to soon.

Yeats is great, love Browning. More, more - there's always more to read thank God.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Thread

lol @ WAS THERE ANOTHER TROY FOR HER TO BURN

Troy 2: Wilder Horses

can't believe I missed a Stevens discussion.

Gotta go Hopkins, all due respect to REDUCING LOAD (nsfw).

What need you, being come to sense
but fumble in a greasy till

Zing thread 1913 imo

lol @ WAS THERE ANOTHER TROY FOR HER TO BURN

why

^^^

oh i just meant it was a very in character post, obv it's a wonderful poem/line

otm

fair enough

the answer is probably the hopkins i guess

my man

Constipated Oppen and the like almost make me angry now. I devoted entirely to much time to this stuff in the past.

I like my objectivists simple-minded: Reznikoff.

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed - my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy -
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

for the day that's in it

happy birthday<3

Constipated Oppen and the like almost make me angry now. I devoted entirely to much time to this stuff in the past.

Picked up Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers by Oppen for a buck the other week. I don't think I'll read it, blurb by Perloff or no blurb by Perloff. A lot of it seems awfully callow.

When round 3 we ask