the biscuit tin (my 13th poem of the year)
sirblob
robin in the fall,
but colin only looked at me
and never kissed at all.
strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
robin's lost in play,
but the kiss in colin's eyes
haunts me night and day.
Leila
I like it- Like a childrens rhyme, but a little darker. Submit to a
publisher of gothic fairy tales:-)
GeeLily
David Sweeney
"sirblob" <sirb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1172746501.4...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
That's beautiful.
Graceland Sugir
"David Sweeney" <David.S...@btinternet.com> wrote in message news:7qudnecdmu7s9nrY...@bt.com...
Is nice.
--
-------------------------------------------
AJ - http://ClitIns.Com e In.
(800 folders. -- kiddie-filtered -- FREE,
Usenet Porn.)
Dennis M. Hammes
Perfectly modern, it still has the flavor of having been written
4-500 years ago.
Yes.
--
-------(m+
~/:o)_|
I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.
http://scrawlmark.org
OB
Charming poem. Why biscuit tin?
Graceland Sugir
"OB" <nevil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1172846664....@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com...
Because they have multiple bins for dough?
(and this poem relates multiple boiz)
SleepyHead
You're not a ghost writer for Tim Burton are you?
Publius
_ZnrYnZ2dnU...@onvoy.com:
> sirblob wrote:
>
>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>> robin in the fall,
>> but colin only looked at me
>> and never kissed at all.
>>
>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>> robin's lost in play,
>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>> haunts me night and day.
>>
>
> Perfectly modern, it still has the flavor of having been written
> 4-500 years ago.
> Yes.
It is memorable. That is saying something.
Karla
Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
Karla
>Why biscuit tin?
--
--
Graceland Sugir
"Karla" <kar...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote in message news:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com...
Well, yes. Blatant copyright violation. Why not sue the guy/girl.
Heh...
At least report them to Rice. No?
Sara's precious words don't mean anything to you?
Have I told you that you are an idiot today?
Like yesterday, only it is today.
--
-------------------------------------------
AJ - http://ClitIns.Com e In.
(800 folders. -- kiddie-filtered -- FREE,
Usenet Porn.)
>
landyman_alby
Karla wrote:
Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale.
She called it "The Look":
Doh!
Sugir Jinn
"Graceland Sugir" <aj...@here.nu> wrote in message news:xqWdndRHRO0QMHXY...@giganews.com...
>
> "Karla" <kar...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote in message news:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com...
>> In article <1172846664....@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
>>>
>>>On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>>>> robin in the fall,
>>>> but colin only looked at me
>>>> and never kissed at all.
>>>>
>>>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>>>> robin's lost in play,
>>>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>>>> haunts me night and day.
>>>
>>>Charming poem.
>>
>> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>>
>> http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>
> Well, yes. Blatant copyright violation. Why not sue the guy/girl.
> Heh...
>
> At least report them to Rice. No?
I killfiled sir-whatever long ago... can you handle it,
stud?
Sugir Jinn
"landyman_alby" <landym...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1172878305....@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>
> Karla wrote:
>
>
> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale.
> She called it "The Look":
>
> Doh!
...and me so stupid.
I like the "Biscuit Tin" ...hopefully with biscuits.
...a little honey?
Publius
>> On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>>> robin in the fall,
>>> but colin only looked at me
>>> and never kissed at all.
>>>
>>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>>> robin's lost in play,
>>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>>> haunts me night and day.
>>
>>Charming poem.
>
> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>
> http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>
> Karla
Thanks for posting that credit. The comments on the page also reminded me why
poetry can be so absorbing.
babsli...@yahoo.com
> Karla <karl...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote innews:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com:
Oh I seem to like sir whatever he's m'called.
This post was reminding me to do something and finally!!!
I remembered...
Does anyone know how to use my space?
I made a profile, but it seems to be only for the uber cool and the
young.
Anyone mind showing me the ropes?
www.myspace.com/babslinkster
Karla
>
>"Karla" <kar...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote in message news:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com...
>> In article <1172846664....@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
>>>
>>>On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>>>> robin in the fall,
>>>> but colin only looked at me
>>>> and never kissed at all.
>>>>
>>>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>>>> robin's lost in play,
>>>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>>>> haunts me night and day.
>>>
>>>Charming poem.
>>
>> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>>
>> http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>
>Well, yes. Blatant copyright violation. Why not sue the guy/girl.
>Heh...
>
>At least report them to Rice. No?
>
>Sara's precious words don't mean anything to you?
Hopefully, others reading this thread know a little more about copyright
law than this poster.
Project Gutenberg includes four volumes of Sara Teasdale's poetry. This
poem is included in two of the volumes. On the title page for LOVE SONGS,
under "Copyright Status", Project Gutenberg informs us that this work is
not copyrighted in the U.S.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/442
Since many works prior to 1922 are no longer under copyright in the U.S.,
this makes sense "The Look" was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of a
1917 edition.
So, I would question whether this is a "blatant copyright violation" as
this poster claims. The original poster, "sirblob" has re-titled it "the
biscuit tin" but left Ms. Teasdale's original words intact. Sirblob appears
to be claiming this poem as his own by adding, after the subject line, "my
13th poem of the year". I am inclined to tag it 'plagiarism', not a
copyright infringement.
To plagiarize is to take (ideas, writings, etc.) from (another) and pass
them off as one's own.
Copyright, on the other hand, is the exclusive right to the publication,
production, or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical, or
artistic work, or to the use of a commercial print or label, granted by law
for a specified period of time to an author, composer, artist, distributor,
etc.
Definitions of 'plagiarize' and 'copyright' are from Webster's New World
Dictionary, Fourth Edition.
Since, to our knowledge, Ms. Teasdale's poem is not copyrighted, it's
unlikely that the use of the poem is infringment or a "blatant copyright
violation." :)
Here's another Sara Teasdale poem:
FROM THE NORTH
THE northern woods are delicately sweet,
The lake is folded softly by the shore,
But I am restless for the subway's roar,
The thunder and the hurrying of feet.
I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat
Against the image of the tower that bore
Me high aloft, as if thru heaven's door
I watched the world from God's unshaken seat.
I would go back and breathe with quickened sense
The tunnel's strong hot breath of powdered steel;
But at the ferries I should leave the tense
Dark air behind, and I should mount and be
One among many who are thrilled to feel
The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.
Sara Teasdale
Sugir Jinn
<babsli...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1172879702....@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 2, 5:50 pm, Publius <m.publ...@nospam.comcast.net> wrote:
>> Karla <karl...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote innews:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com:
>>
>>
>>
>> >> On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>> >>> robin in the fall,
>> >>> but colin only looked at me
>> >>> and never kissed at all.
>>
>> >>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>> >>> robin's lost in play,
>> >>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>> >>> haunts me night and day.
>>
>> >>Charming poem.
>>
>> > Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>>
>> >http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>>
>> > Karla
>>
>> Thanks for posting that credit. The comments on the page also reminded me why
>> poetry can be so absorbing.
>
> Oh I seem to like sir whatever he's m'called.
Yeah, but blatat plagiarism is pretty sleezy.
...even if it is leaning towards education uses.
> This post was reminding me to do something and finally!!!
> I remembered...
> Does anyone know how to use my space?
> I made a profile, but it seems to be only for the uber cool and the
> young.
> Anyone mind showing me the ropes?
> www.myspace.com/babslinkster
>
I have one too... I need to reactivate, since Karla thinks she
owns every word of her worthless poems-attempts.
Talk in email.
Sugir Jinn
"Karla" <kar...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote in message news:cliju2172mevrpabh...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 15:00:42 -0800, "Graceland Sugir" <aj...@here.nu> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Karla" <kar...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote in message news:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com...
>>> In article <1172846664....@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
>>>>
>>>>On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
>>>>> robin in the fall,
>>>>> but colin only looked at me
>>>>> and never kissed at all.
>>>>>
>>>>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
>>>>> robin's lost in play,
>>>>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
>>>>> haunts me night and day.
>>>>
>>>>Charming poem.
>>>
>>> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>>>
>>> http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>>
>>Well, yes. Blatant copyright violation. Why not sue the guy/girl.
>>Heh...
>>
>>At least report them to Rice. No?
>>
>>Sara's precious words don't mean anything to you?
>
> Hopefully, others reading this thread know a little more about copyright
> law than this poster.
Hopefully more than you.
>
> Project Gutenberg includes four volumes of Sara Teasdale's poetry. This
> poem is included in two of the volumes. On the title page for LOVE SONGS,
> under "Copyright Status", Project Gutenberg informs us that this work is
> not copyrighted in the U.S.
The usage was education fair-use, and without value.
The Usenet copy is valueless.
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/442
>
> Since many works prior to 1922 are no longer under copyright in the U.S.,
> this makes sense "The Look" was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of a
> 1917 edition.
>
> So, I would question whether this is a "blatant copyright violation" as
> this poster claims. The original poster, "sirblob" has re-titled it "the
> biscuit tin" but left Ms. Teasdale's original words intact. Sirblob appears
> to be claiming this poem as his own by adding, after the subject line, "my
> 13th poem of the year". I am inclined to tag it 'plagiarism', not a
> copyright infringement.
You responded...
Pester me some more...
File papers on me for SeaIsle.wmv
You fester.
>
> To plagiarize is to take (ideas, writings, etc.) from (another) and pass
> them off as one's own.
>
> Copyright, on the other hand, is the exclusive right to the publication,
> production, or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical, or
> artistic work, or to the use of a commercial print or label, granted by law
> for a specified period of time to an author, composer, artist, distributor,
> etc.
And "Derivitive" works that make/lose no money.... Think.
>
> Definitions of 'plagiarize' and 'copyright' are from Webster's New World
> Dictionary, Fourth Edition.
>
> Since, to our knowledge, Ms. Teasdale's poem is not copyrighted, it's
> unlikely that the use of the poem is infringment or a "blatant copyright
> violation." :)
:)
babsli...@yahoo.com
> <babslinks...@yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:1172879702....@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> > On Mar 2, 5:50 pm, Publius <m.publ...@nospam.comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Karla <karl...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote innews:esa80...@drn.newsguy.com:
>
> >> >> On Mar 1, 5:55 am, "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>> strephon kissed me in the spring,
> >> >>> robin in the fall,
> >> >>> but colin only looked at me
> >> >>> and never kissed at all.
>
> >> >>> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
> >> >>> robin's lost in play,
> >> >>> but the kiss in colin's eyes
> >> >>> haunts me night and day.
>
> >> >>Charming poem.
>
> >> > Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>
> >> >http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
>
> >> > Karla
>
> >> Thanks for posting that credit. The comments on the page also reminded me why
> >> poetry can be so absorbing.
>
> > Oh I seem to like sir whatever he's m'called.
>
> Yeah, but blatat plagiarism is pretty sleezy.
> ...even if it is leaning towards education uses.
YA sleezy... if you are doing it for a benefit of some sort. Why do
you think Sir Blob will be doing this??? Money maybe? Plagiarizing
some crap, for money. Ya... must be.
Here.. for money.
Seriously, something is copyrighted immediately after you have written
it. Why bother going through all of the paying of dues to get
something copyrighted on paper. If you see that someone has used your
something you have written for their own financial benefit, you can
sue without having a paper saying its copyrighted really. You just
have to prove that you were the initial person to write it. Really,
have you not written something and then saw it a hundred times a
hundred different ways after??? Do those people track you down and sue
you??
Show me something original, that has never ever been mentioned
poetically before and I'll show you a young man with so many reasons
why there but for fortune go you or I.
> > This post was reminding me to do something and finally!!!
> > I remembered...
> > Does anyone know how to use my space?
> > I made a profile, but it seems to be only for the uber cool and the
> > young.
> > Anyone mind showing me the ropes?
> >www.myspace.com/babslinkster
>
> I have one too... I need to reactivate, since Karla thinks she
> owns every word of her worthless poems-attempts.
>
> Talk in email.
>
my space?? or email??? Where art thou sugir?
> -------------------------------------------
> AJ -http://ClitIns.Come In.
babsli...@yahoo.com
EXAMPLE using HAUNTS ME NIGHT AND DAY....
http://www.google.ca/search?q=haunts+me+night+and+day&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Sugir Jinn
<babsli...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1172954912....@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
Me... never yet. Still sleazy.
>
> Seriously, something is copyrighted immediately after you have written
> it. Why bother going through all of the paying of dues to get
> something copyrighted on paper.
$45 gives you the right to sue for more money.
> If you see that someone has used your
> something you have written for their own financial benefit, you can
> sue without having a paper saying its copyrighted really. You just
> have to prove that you were the initial person to write it. Really,
> have you not written something and then saw it a hundred times a
> hundred different ways after??? Do those people track you down and sue
> you??
> Show me something original, that has never ever been mentioned
> poetically before and I'll show you a young man with so many reasons
> why there but for fortune go you or I.
If you can tell me the $$$ in stolen poetry, ...
(I still don't need it)
>
>> > This post was reminding me to do something and finally!!!
>> > I remembered...
>> > Does anyone know how to use my space?
>> > I made a profile, but it seems to be only for the uber cool and the
>> > young.
>> > Anyone mind showing me the ropes?
>> >www.myspace.com/babslinkster
>>
>> I have one too... I need to reactivate, since Karla thinks she
>> owns every word of her worthless poems-attempts.
>>
>> Talk in email.
>>
> my space?? or email??? Where art thou sugir?
Email, I guess. IM if my connection works for voice.
Sugir Jinn
<babsli...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> EXAMPLE using HAUNTS ME NIGHT AND DAY....
> http://www.google.ca/search?q=haunts+me+night+and+day&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
>
Sure, but that is a tired phrase.
There are an infinite number of fresh, original images.
--
-------------------------------------------
AJ - http://ClitIns.Com e In.
babsli...@yahoo.com
> <babslinks...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > EXAMPLE using HAUNTS ME NIGHT AND DAY....
>
> Sure, but that is a tired phrase.
Okay then, how about A is for Apple??
> There are an infinite number of fresh, original images.
ya sure. And my name is babs.
I don't IM yet. so email is best i think.
I'll be back after a few winks.
Have to catch up on my beauty sleep.
> -------------------------------------------
> AJ -http://ClitIns.Come In.
Sugir Jinn
<babsli...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1172956512.8...@n33g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 3, 3:08 pm, "Sugir Jinn" <a...@here.nu> wrote:
>> <babslinks...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> > EXAMPLE using HAUNTS ME NIGHT AND DAY....
>> >http://www.google.ca/search?q=haunts+me+night+and+day&ie=utf-8&oe=utf...
>>
>> Sure, but that is a tired phrase.
>
> Okay then, how about A is for Apple??
>
>> There are an infinite number of fresh, original images.
>
> ya sure. And my name is babs.
ya.
jack austin
ok, i don't really care if you're an asshole, i'm a fan.
i'm reading the rest too;
all that poo
makes for some great shit.
jack
Will Dockery
> "sirblob" <sirbl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> strephon kissed me in the spring,
> >> robin in the fall,
> >> but colin only looked at me
> >> and never kissed at all.
>
> >> strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
> >> robin's lost in play,
> >> but the kiss in colin's eyes
> >> haunts me night and day.
>
> >Charming poem.
>
> Yes it is, and also original to Sara Teasdale. She called it "The Look":
>
> http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
Wow... the guy goes through the trouble of copy-and-pasting the poem /
and/ giving it a new title but somehow "forgets" to copy-and-paste the
author's name.
Sara Teasdale
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Teasdale
Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1883 - January 29, 1933), was an American
lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis,
Missouri.
Teasdale's major themes were love, nature's beauty, and death, and her
poems were much loved during the early 20th century. In 1918 she won
the Columbia University Poetry Society prize (the forerunner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and the annual prize of the Poetry Society
of America for her volume, Love Songs. Her style and lyricism are well
illustrated in her poem, "Spring Night" (1915), from that collection.
Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was not
until she was nine that she was judged healthy enough to begin school
- a private school for children just one block away from her home. In
1898 she attended Mary Institute, and the following year she enrolled
in Hosmer Hall, from which she graduated in 1903. Her influences
included the actress Duse, whom she never saw perform, the British
poet Christina Rossetti, and numerous trips to Europe, beginning in
1905.
In 1913, Teasdale was courted by two admirers. The poet Vachel Lindsay
fell in love with her and at one point was sending her long, fantastic
love letters on a daily basis expressing his true love. He asked her
to marry him, but though she had deep feelings for Vachel, she instead
married Ernst Filsinger, a wealthy businessman in 1914 when she was
thirty years old. The following year they moved to New York City,
which became her home for the rest of her life. Teasdale and Lindsay
remained fond but platonic friends throughout their lives, and Lindsay
said that she was his life's "most inspiring, most satisfying friend."
She was the inspiration for what Lindsay believed to be his greatest
poem, "The Chinese Nightingale".
Teasdale was very much a product of her Victorian upbringing, and she
was never able to experience in life the passion that she expressed in
her poetry. She was not happy in her marriage, and she divorced
Filsinger in 1929, against his wishes. Teasdale's health further
declined. On the morning of January 29, 1933, in her New York City
apartment, Teasdale took an overdose of sleeping pills, lay down in a
warm bath, fell asleep, and never woke up again. Her last, and some
say her finest, collection of verse, Strange Victory, was published
posthumously that same year. In 1931, two years before Teasdale's
suicide, Vachel Lindsay, her friend and former suitor, had also
committed suicide.
In 1994 Sara Teasdale was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
--
The Tuesday Afternoon Show Episode 39:
The Dangling Clock
Scotto and Uncle John comment on the Academy Awards, explain the
Tuesday Afternoon Drinking Game and take one more shot at The History
of Death as Sam tries Schrodinger's Ale, Uncle John unveils his latest
B-Movie Pick, we get an update on The Bear Suit Guy and Scotto brings
back Story Time. Featuring musical guests, Shadowville All-Stars.
http://www.johnhmaloney.com/tuesdayshow/index.htm
"Dream Tears" by Dockery-Mallard:
http://www.myspace.com/shadowvilleallstars
George Dance
>
> Project Gutenberg includes four volumes of Sara Teasdale's poetry. This
> poem is included in two of the volumes. On the title page for LOVE SONGS,
> under "Copyright Status", Project Gutenberg informs us that this work is
> not copyrighted in the U.S.
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/442
>
> Since many works prior to 1922 are no longer under copyright in the U.S.,
> this makes sense "The Look" was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of a
> 1917 edition.
>
> So, I would question whether this is a "blatant copyright violation" as
> this poster claims. The original poster, "sirblob" has re-titled it "the
> biscuit tin" but left Ms. Teasdale's original words intact. Sirblob appears
> to be claiming this poem as his own by adding, after the subject line, "my
> 13th poem of the year". I am inclined to tag it 'plagiarism', not a
> copyright infringement.
>
Agreed: sirblob is a plagiarist.
> To plagiarize is to take (ideas, writings, etc.) from (another) and pass
> them off as one's own.
>
> Copyright, on the other hand, is the exclusive right to the publication,
> production, or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical, or
> artistic work, or to the use of a commercial print or label, granted by law
> for a specified period of time to an author, composer, artist, distributor,
> etc.
>
> Definitions of 'plagiarize' and 'copyright' are from Webster's New World
> Dictionary, Fourth Edition.
>
> Since, to our knowledge, Ms. Teasdale's poem is not copyrighted, it's
> unlikely that the use of the poem is infringment or a "blatant copyright
> violation." :)
>
> Here's another Sara Teasdale poem:
>
I didn't like that one. Here's one of Teasdale's more philosophical
poems:
There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
-- Sara Teasdale
Karla
wrote:
Admirable in that she attempts to write about nature, and not just mankind.
Teasdale, in this poem, evidences some growth in consciousness. There's not
the 'poor us' voice of, say, Arnold that we hear at the end of "Dover
Beach":
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath neither joy, no love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Teasdale's poem still embraces that dichotomy of mankind vs. nature, a
consciousness which will be the end of the whole. Nature, here, knows
nothing of the ways of humans ("not one will know of the war..."; "not one
would mind, neither bird nor tree, / if mankind perished utterly..."). I
wonder in what camp she placed domesticated animals. My cats know and mind.
Teasdale can't help herself, most noticeably in the last lines, from
personifying nature ("Spring herself, when she woke at dawn / Would
scarcely know that we were gone."). Yet, there's a lot of truth in that
line. If we flip it, consider what we would notice if nature was gone, if
such a thing is possible, we'd find out just how connected we are to
'nature'. I cannot imagine not being able to see what she describes in the
first three stanzas.
For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
each of us to our memory there. Spring at the end, awaking at dawn, subtly
suggests a new world beginning again. I root for the line of the bats this
time!
Karla
George Dance
> On 11 Mar 2007 10:31:36 -0700, "George Dance" <georgedanc...@yahoo.ca>
> wrote:
>
> >On Mar 3, 4:08 pm, Karla <karl...@sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote:
>
> >> Project Gutenberg includes four volumes of Sara Teasdale's poetry. This
> >> poem is included in two of the volumes. On the title page for LOVE SONGS,
> >> under "Copyright Status", Project Gutenberg informs us that this work is
> >> not copyrighted in the U.S.
>
> >>http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/442
>
Thank you for analyzing this; it sounds to me as if you've a much
deeper familiarity with poetry than I, but that's great as it means I
can learn from you; so I'll try to follow along. Arnold's poem,
IIIRC from my school days, is an example of the 'pathetic fallacy' -
humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
haven't been able to find it again.
(BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
artificial and manmade).
> For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
> three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
> is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
> of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
> each of us to our memory there.
I like the way she appeals to four different senses: smell as you
note, feel or touch ('soft' rain), hearing ('sound', 'singing',
'whistling'), and sight through vivid colour ('tremulous white',
'feathery fire'). It really does make you feel that you're there
seeing it. But though we can see it, we're not a part of it; as the
second lines in the last three verses remind us.
It's nice the way she emphasizes that contrast through the use of
meter. When she's talking about nature, she mixes iambs and anapests
freely, giving that part of the poem a spontaneous, anarchic feel
(reinforced by the word 'wild', and the way the images shift so
quickly). But in those second lines of the last three stanzas, where
she moves from sensing to thinking (about man and his concerns0, she
slips immediately into strict iambic tetrameter. To my mind, that
really reinforces our apartness from nature - our imprisonment in our
own troubles, as opposed to its spontaneity. We can observe, but we
can't be a part.
> Spring at the end, awaking at dawn, subtly
> suggests a new world beginning again. I root for the line of the bats this
> time!
>
> Karla
I opt for the raccoons. 8) Seriously, my hope is that the 20th
century alienation that Teasdale seems to sense so vividly here - the
separateness, rigidity, and even meaningless of humanity and its
concerns - that's plagued us all through this past century, gets
addressed in the new one.
Dennis M. Hammes
Exercise for poets: point out a half dozen places (even without
reasons, or saying which bad technique was substituted for a good
one) that this is a not-very-good poem, and at least one thing that
makes it not very good philosophy.
Exercise for editors: point out why it sold to its readership.
Exercise for teachers: point out why it sold to babies subsequently.
--
-------(m+
~/:o)_|
I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.
http://scrawlmark.org
Dennis M. Hammes
Right; she can't manage a fellowship with even one human, after
having managed none with any of the bits of nature she /points/ to.
>
> "Ah, love, let us be true
> To one another! for the world, which seems
> To lie before us like a land of dreams,
> So various, so beautiful, so new,
> Hath neither joy, no love, nor light,
> Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
> And we are here as on a darkling plain
> Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
> Where ignorant armies clash by night."
It's a bit lengthy for an oath, but its fellowship with it's "(ah,)
love" stands against all comers, some of which it names -- including
the love itself, that clashes with confused alarm.
>
> Teasdale's poem still embraces that dichotomy of mankind vs. nature, a
Teasdale's poem embraces nothing -- not its objects, not its reader,
not even itself -- and that is its fault.
> consciousness which will be the end of the whole. Nature, here, knows
> nothing of the ways of humans ("not one will know of the war..."; "not one
> would mind, neither bird nor tree, / if mankind perished utterly..."). I
> wonder in what camp she placed domesticated animals. My cats know and mind.
> Teasdale can't help herself, most noticeably in the last lines, from
> personifying nature ("Spring herself, when she woke at dawn / Would
> scarcely know that we were gone."). Yet, there's a lot of truth in that
> line. If we flip it, consider what we would notice if nature was gone, if
> such a thing is possible, we'd find out just how connected we are to
> 'nature'. I cannot imagine not being able to see what she describes in the
> first three stanzas.
>
> For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
> three stanzas don't annoy.
>
Actually, it rather does, as it isn't there to unite images into
themes or themes into ideas; it's there merely to prove she knows
enough words that she can alliterate some of them. I.e., the
alliterations announce only themselves, not any other connections in
the words so joined.
>
>
> The prophetic first few words "there will come"
> is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
> of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
> each of us to our memory there. Spring at the end, awaking at dawn, subtly
> suggests a new world beginning again. I root for the line of the bats this
> time!
>
> Karla
>
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After all the thumbs slammed in breeches, legs in vices,
After the troop trains' causing grapefruit crises,
If one, telling a robin or watching blossom fall
Should say, "That is not what I meant, no, not at all"?
>
>>There Will Come Soft Rains
>>
>>There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
>>And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
>>
>>And frogs in the pools singing at night,
>>And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
>>
>>Robins will wear their feathery fire,
>>Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
>>
>>And not one will know of the war, not one
>>Will care at last when it is done.
>>
>>Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
>>If mankind perished utterly;
>>
>>And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
>>Would scarcely know that we were gone.
>>
>> -- Sara Teasdale
Dennis M. Hammes
The Pathetic Fallacy is the concept/assertion that nature has
feelings -- pathos -- /at all/, which assertion Teasdale finally
makes directly as well as implicitly.
Arnold specifically states that the attributes he mentions do not
give a damn for the lovers or the love, indeed that the love itself
is no natural a phenomenon that it will have no hand in its own
direction.
> humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
> none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
> Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
> have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
> everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
> in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
> other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
> the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
> that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
> that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
> humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
> haven't been able to find it again.
>
> (BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
> probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
> the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
> pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
> artificial and manmade).
>
What about that new breed, the cross between a bull terrier and a shitzu.
>
>
>>For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
>>three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
>>is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
>>of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
>>each of us to our memory there.
>
>
>
> I like the way she appeals to four different senses: smell as you
> note, feel or touch ('soft' rain), hearing ('sound', 'singing',
> 'whistling'), and sight through vivid colour ('tremulous white',
> 'feathery fire'). It really does make you feel that you're there
> seeing it. But though we can see it, we're not a part of it; as the
> second lines in the last three verses remind us.
>
> It's nice the way she emphasizes that contrast through the use of
> meter. When she's talking about nature, she mixes iambs and anapests
> freely, giving that part of the poem a spontaneous, anarchic feel
> (reinforced by the word 'wild', and the way the images shift so
> quickly). But in those second lines of the last three stanzas, where
> she moves from sensing to thinking (about man and his concerns0, she
> slips immediately into strict iambic tetrameter. To my mind, that
> really reinforces our apartness from nature - our imprisonment in our
> own troubles, as opposed to its spontaneity. We can observe, but we
> can't be a part.
>
You really think what she was doing was observing?
'Cos if you do, the rest of your philosophy follows.
So, okay, what was she observing?
>
>
>>Spring at the end, awaking at dawn, subtly
>>suggests a new world beginning again. I root for the line of the bats this
>>time!
>>
>>Karla
>
>
>
> I opt for the raccoons. 8) Seriously, my hope is that the 20th
> century alienation that Teasdale seems to sense so vividly here - the
> separateness, rigidity, and even meaningless of humanity and its
> concerns - that's plagued us all through this past century, gets
> addressed in the new one.
>
>
>
>>>There Will Come Soft Rains
>>
>>>There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
>>>And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
>>
>>>And frogs in the pools singing at night,
>>>And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
>>
>>>Robins will wear their feathery fire,
>>>Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
>>
>>>And not one will know of the war, not one
>>>Will care at last when it is done.
>>
>>>Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
>>>If mankind perished utterly;
>>
>>>And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
>>>Would scarcely know that we were gone.
>>
>>> -- Sara Teasdale
>
>
>
>
OB
The poem uses a weasel technique of suggesting while denying:
"I'm not saying Bush is the greatest President we've ever had, but..."
"I'm not saying Nature is cuddly and caring, but..."
... "but", the frogs sing joyfully, the robins "wear" their colour
proudly, the trees display bridal modesty, and "Nature", whoever "she"
is, can be guaranteed to be still around even after humanity has
liquidated itself.
By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
"Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
real world, i.e. babies. QED?
Once I was visited by some JWs who left me a Watchtower depicting,
full-page, an Edenic scene in which a lioness disported herself with a
lamb, and three humans dressed in smocks had a picnic nearby. On their
next visit, I asked them how God intended to modify the digestive
system of carnivores so that they could become vegetarians, and
whether such a gung-ho orgy of genetic modification didn't seem a bit
rich coming from a Higher Being who has forbidden even compatible
blood transfusions among members of a single species. I never saw them
again.
>
> --
> -------(m+
> ~/:o)_|
> I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.http://scrawlmark.org- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Karla
says...
Exercise for the writer/reader: keeping Teasdale's point-of-view, write your
own "very-good" poem, or re-write the poem adhering to Teasdale's couplets with
your own "very good" philosophy.
Karla
--
--
George Dance
Sure; for Arnold, the ocean is too busy moping around, being all sad
and melancholy about the war, to notice the lovers at all.
> > humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
> > none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
> > Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
> > have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
> > everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
> > in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
> > other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
> > the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
> > that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
> > that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
> > humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
> > haven't been able to find it again.
>
> > (BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
> > probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
> > the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
> > pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
> > artificial and manmade).
>
> What about that new breed, the cross between a bull terrier and a shitzu.
>
None of those in our house. Are you saying they're really artificial
animals?
> >>For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
> >>three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
> >>is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
> >>of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
> >>each of us to our memory there.
>
> > I like the way she appeals to four different senses: smell as you
> > note, feel or touch ('soft' rain), hearing ('sound', 'singing',
> > 'whistling'), and sight through vivid colour ('tremulous white',
> > 'feathery fire'). It really does make you feel that you're there
> > seeing it. But though we can see it, we're not a part of it; as the
> > second lines in the last three verses remind us.
>
> > It's nice the way she emphasizes that contrast through the use of
> > meter. When she's talking about nature, she mixes iambs and anapests
> > freely, giving that part of the poem a spontaneous, anarchic feel
> > (reinforced by the word 'wild', and the way the images shift so
> > quickly). But in those second lines of the last three stanzas, where
> > she moves from sensing to thinking (about man and his concerns0, she
> > slips immediately into strict iambic tetrameter. To my mind, that
> > really reinforces our apartness from nature - our imprisonment in our
> > own troubles, as opposed to its spontaneity. We can observe, but we
> > can't be a part.
>
> You really think what she was doing was observing?
> 'Cos if you do, the rest of your philosophy follows.
> So, okay, what was she observing?
>
Trees, birds, and frogs.
George Dance
Sure; for Arnold, the ocean is too busy moping around, being all sad
and melancholy about the war, to notice the lovers at all.
> > humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
> > none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
> > Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
> > have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
> > everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
> > in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
> > other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
> > the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
> > that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
> > that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
> > humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
> > haven't been able to find it again.
>
> > (BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
> > probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
> > the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
> > pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
> > artificial and manmade).
>
> What about that new breed, the cross between a bull terrier and a shitzu.
>
None of those in our house. Are you saying they're really artificial
animals?
> >>For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
> >>three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
> >>is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
> >>of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
> >>each of us to our memory there.
>
> > I like the way she appeals to four different senses: smell as you
> > note, feel or touch ('soft' rain), hearing ('sound', 'singing',
> > 'whistling'), and sight through vivid colour ('tremulous white',
> > 'feathery fire'). It really does make you feel that you're there
> > seeing it. But though we can see it, we're not a part of it; as the
> > second lines in the last three verses remind us.
>
> > It's nice the way she emphasizes that contrast through the use of
> > meter. When she's talking about nature, she mixes iambs and anapests
> > freely, giving that part of the poem a spontaneous, anarchic feel
> > (reinforced by the word 'wild', and the way the images shift so
> > quickly). But in those second lines of the last three stanzas, where
> > she moves from sensing to thinking (about man and his concerns0, she
> > slips immediately into strict iambic tetrameter. To my mind, that
> > really reinforces our apartness from nature - our imprisonment in our
> > own troubles, as opposed to its spontaneity. We can observe, but we
> > can't be a part.
>
> You really think what she was doing was observing?
> 'Cos if you do, the rest of your philosophy follows.
> So, okay, what was she observing?
>
Trees, birds, and frogs.
OB
> By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
> to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man
It occurred to me after posting this that a recent poem of mine
likewise personified nature, in a similar but not identical context
(Teasdale says Nature doesn't care, I say she cares in pretty much the
same way I care about pigs: for the lard and the crackling). At least
my Nature is (I think) a little less Disney than Teasdale's (and yes,
I know it's equally "not a very good poem", for other reasons).
Dengue
In with the rains, a vulture smears the hinter
branches red. Her infantry are here -
Aedes aegypti, abseiling from her cere
like a hairline crack run through the winter -
like an obscenity-covered birthday card
whose exclamation marks prefigure various
droll tearings limb from limb, on this precarious
pallet, rolling me in my very lard
and crackling. The sun's a spider in the beams
out spinning shards of broken sky in spiral;
I scream at an approaching dog, its viral
grin, for once, belying all that seems:
Nature doesn't like us very much -
She pictures us dead. I shrink, now, from her touch.
OB
George Dance
Sure; for Arnold, nature is too busy moping around, being sad and
melancholy over the Napoleonic War.
> > humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
> > none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
> > Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
> > have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
> > everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
> > in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
> > other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
> > the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
> > that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
> > that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
> > humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
> > haven't been able to find it again.
>
> > (BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
> > probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
> > the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
> > pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
> > artificial and manmade).
>
> What about that new breed, the cross between a bull terrier and a shitzu.
>
None of those in our house. Are you saying they're really artificial
animals?
>
> >>For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
> >>three stanzas don't annoy. The prophetic first few words "there will come"
> >>is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
> >>of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
> >>each of us to our memory there.
>
> > I like the way she appeals to four different senses: smell as you
> > note, feel or touch ('soft' rain), hearing ('sound', 'singing',
> > 'whistling'), and sight through vivid colour ('tremulous white',
> > 'feathery fire'). It really does make you feel that you're there
> > seeing it. But though we can see it, we're not a part of it; as the
> > second lines in the last three verses remind us.
>
> > It's nice the way she emphasizes that contrast through the use of
> > meter. When she's talking about nature, she mixes iambs and anapests
> > freely, giving that part of the poem a spontaneous, anarchic feel
> > (reinforced by the word 'wild', and the way the images shift so
> > quickly). But in those second lines of the last three stanzas, where
> > she moves from sensing to thinking (about man and his concerns0, she
> > slips immediately into strict iambic tetrameter. To my mind, that
> > really reinforces our apartness from nature - our imprisonment in our
> > own troubles, as opposed to its spontaneity. We can observe, but we
> > can't be a part.
>
> You really think what she was doing was observing?
> 'Cos if you do, the rest of your philosophy follows.
> So, okay, what was she observing?
>
Trees, birds, and frogs.
> I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.http://scrawlmark.org- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Karla
says...
>
Your remark implies that the poem needs to demonstate a management of "a
fellowship with even one human being". It doesn't. And I don't think there's any
dispute about her being part of mankind or her association with "we" in "we were
gone". Your comment also suggests that the poem needs to demonstrate a
management with bits of nature, which is ridiculous. Are you reading her poem or
what you want the poem to say?
>> "Ah, love, let us be true
>> To one another! for the world, which seems
>> To lie before us like a land of dreams,
>> So various, so beautiful, so new,
>> Hath neither joy, no love, nor light,
>> Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
>> And we are here as on a darkling plain
>> Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
>> Where ignorant armies clash by night."
>
>
>It's a bit lengthy for an oath, but its fellowship with it's "(ah,)
>love" stands against all comers, some of which it names -- including
>the love itself, that clashes with confused alarm.
Arnold's poem is no different than Teasdale's re mankind vs. nature. His 'oath'
manages no fellowship with bits of nature. It offers nothing to him, and by
extension, to us. His 'oath' is more of an epiphany: world offers nothing, so we
must do, be true. Teasdale implies that mankind's ignorant armies will be the
end of man. There's no pitying noise about man's fate. It's an epiphany of sorts
too, nature's perseverance when mankind is gone.
>> Teasdale's poem still embraces that dichotomy of mankind vs. nature, a
>
>
>Teasdale's poem embraces nothing -- not its objects, not its reader,
>not even itself -- and that is its fault.
I see beauty in "wild plum trees in tremulous white". That scene alone could end
a movie, or begin the sequel.
>> consciousness which will be the end of the whole. Nature, here, knows
>> nothing of the ways of humans ("not one will know of the war..."; "not one
>> would mind, neither bird nor tree, / if mankind perished utterly..."). I
>> wonder in what camp she placed domesticated animals. My cats know and mind.
>> Teasdale can't help herself, most noticeably in the last lines, from
>> personifying nature ("Spring herself, when she woke at dawn / Would
>> scarcely know that we were gone."). Yet, there's a lot of truth in that
>> line. If we flip it, consider what we would notice if nature was gone, if
>> such a thing is possible, we'd find out just how connected we are to
>> 'nature'. I cannot imagine not being able to see what she describes in the
>> first three stanzas.
>>
>> For old school poetry, it's pretty good. The alliteration in the first
>> three stanzas don't annoy.
>>
>
>Actually, it rather does, as it isn't there to unite images into
>themes or themes into ideas; it's there merely to prove she knows
>enough words that she can alliterate some of them. I.e., the
>alliterations announce only themselves, not any other connections in
>the words so joined.
I wish you'd support your opinion, Dennis. I couldn't disagree more! Did you
read this outloud to yourself before commenting? I think not. Alliteration isn't
first for the eye. Have you forgotten?
>> The prophetic first few words "there will come"
>> is soothed by "soft rains and the smell of the ground". Indeed, the 'smell
>> of the ground' is just the kind of vague phrase that works well, leaving
>> each of us to our memory there. Spring at the end, awaking at dawn, subtly
>> suggests a new world beginning again. I root for the line of the bats this
>> time!
>>
>> Karla
>>
>
>And would it have been worth it, after all,
>After all the thumbs slammed in breeches, legs in vices,
>After the troop trains' causing grapefruit crises,
>If one, telling a robin or watching blossom fall
>Should say, "That is not what I meant, no, not at all"?
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After all the pine trees gashed for caskets, swapped for oil vats,
After troop planes' carting golden poppy flats,
If one, writing to mothers, 'for this, your children must fall'
Should say, "That is not what I meant, no, not at all"?
Karla
Karla
says...
>
The world is an attribute, Dennis? "...for the world... / Hath neither joy, no
love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain..." You're
misreading Arnold if you think he's specifically stating that it's the
attributes that don't give a damn. Don't you mean the world doesn't give a damn?
Or to put it another way, the world would "scarely know if we were gone"?
Teasdale lends feelings to nature, indeed personifies it. Strange, but I don't
read Arnold as revealing the man behind the curtain, or more appropiately, the
'no man' behind nature. Instead, it seems that he's pointing at the creator
throught the creation and deciding the creator, if there is one, doesn't give a
damn.
Flip a coin and you get Teasdale or Arnold, but the same coin.
Wait fifty years and we might not be able to personify humans if the neuro guys
have their way.
>> humans are sad, so they imagine nature sad; which Teasdale will have
>> none of. Looking at it philosophically, I'd say that's significant.
>> Arnold's pathetic fallacy comes from his worldview, in which humans
>> have their place in nature: the lords of creation, to which
>> everything else is subject, as ordained by God. That worlview died
>> in the 20th century - Darwin's theory, relativity, the horror of WWI,
>> other thigs, were blows from which it never recovered. And I think
>> the irony Teasdale substitutes - of humans slaughtering each other in
>> that Great War, while nature goes on serene and oblivious - reflects
>> that change and the new 20th century paradigm that replaced it, of
>> humanity estranged from nature. We lost our place in the world, and
>> haven't been able to find it again.
>>
>> (BTW, your comments on your pets were quite to the point on that:
>> probably a big reason people keep pets is to have a connection with
>> the natural world. My wife and I have noted that on occasion - our
>> pets are the only thing in our home, besides us, that is not
>> artificial and manmade).
>
>What about that new breed, the cross between a bull terrier and a shitzu.
I bet it would mourn the death of it's human friend/owner.
Dennis M. Hammes
> In article <nM6dnY9p0YEToGjY...@onvoy.com>, Dennis M. Hammes
> says...
>
>>Karla wrote:
>>
>
>>>"Ah, love, let us be true
>>>To one another! for the world, which seems
>>>To lie before us like a land of dreams,
>>>So various, so beautiful, so new,
>>>Hath neither joy, no love, nor light,
>>>Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
>>>And we are here as on a darkling plain
>>>Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
>>>Where ignorant armies clash by night."
>>
>>
>>It's a bit lengthy for an oath, but its fellowship with it's "(ah,)
>>love" stands against all comers, some of which it names -- including
>>the love itself, that clashes with confused alarm.
>
>
> Arnold's poem is no different than Teasdale's re mankind vs. nature. His 'oath'
> manages no fellowship with bits of nature.
>
That's its whole point, i.e., that there is no fellowship in nature,
which is /like/ the clashing of ignorant armies (we since learn that
it is not /like/ that, it is /precisely/ that).
>
> It offers nothing to him, and by
> extension, to us. His 'oath' is more of an epiphany: world offers nothing, so we
> must do, be true. Teasdale implies that mankind's ignorant armies will be the
> end of man. There's no pitying noise about man's fate. It's an epiphany of sorts
> too, nature's perseverance when mankind is gone.
>
>
>>>Teasdale's poem still embraces that dichotomy of mankind vs. nature, a
>>
>>
>>Teasdale's poem embraces nothing -- not its objects, not its reader,
>>not even itself -- and that is its fault.
>
>
> I see beauty in "wild plum trees in tremulous white". That scene alone could end
> a movie, or begin the sequel.
>
>>>>
>>>>And not one will know of the war, not one
>>>>Will care at last when it is done.
>>>>
>>>> -- Sara Teasdale
>>
Then she pretends to embrace something she already confesses will not
embrace her, indeed will not even notice she's (we're) gone.
Arnold invites us to be true to the one another -- who comprise the
armies -- who /will/ care when it is done.
Teasdale sits at her kitchen window, whining that none of what
she's praising WUUUves Her.
While her boyfriends kill each other over who's got the better
imaginary playmate.
Dennis M. Hammes
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
>
> Once I was visited by some JWs who left me a Watchtower depicting,
> full-page, an Edenic scene in which a lioness disported herself with a
> lamb, and three humans dressed in smocks had a picnic nearby. On their
> next visit, I asked them how God intended to modify the digestive
> system of carnivores so that they could become vegetarians, and
> whether such a gung-ho orgy of genetic modification didn't seem a bit
> rich coming from a Higher Being who has forbidden even compatible
> blood transfusions among members of a single species. I never saw them
> again.
>
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
Dennis M. Hammes
> On Mar 12, 2:45 pm, "OB" <nevilemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
>>to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man
>
>
> It occurred to me after posting this that a recent poem of mine
> likewise personified nature, in a similar but not identical context
> (Teasdale says Nature doesn't care, I say she cares in pretty much the
> same way I care about pigs: for the lard and the crackling). At least
> my Nature is (I think) a little less Disney than Teasdale's (and yes,
> I know it's equally "not a very good poem", for other reasons).
Nature cares so much about the next meal she's got a Law about it:
Second Thermogoddamics.
And no, she doesn't care who knows it or not.
Law doesn't /need/ worship or "enforcment."
Law /can't/ be broken.
Teasdale's poem thinks she inherited Civilisation and it Would Be
Beautiful If -- i.e., if nobody (but esp. "the war") else contested
her claim. /Her/ "nature" /won't/, because it doesn't care.
Arnold's knows we inherit the /ruins/ of civilisation, beginning
with ourselves ("ignorant armies" of ourselves, even) -- and can't
afford the heating bill of either one. And his "nature" will collect
the bill over your cooling corpse if you let it.
>
> Dengue
>
> In with the rains, a vulture smears the hinter
> branches red. Her infantry are here -
> Aedes aegypti, abseiling from her cere
> like a hairline crack run through the winter -
> like an obscenity-covered birthday card
> whose exclamation marks prefigure various
> droll tearings limb from limb, on this precarious
> pallet, rolling me in my very lard
> and crackling. The sun's a spider in the beams
> out spinning shards of broken sky in spiral;
> I scream at an approaching dog, its viral
> grin, for once, belying all that seems:
> Nature doesn't like us very much -
> She pictures us dead. I shrink, now, from her touch.
>
> OB
>
The piece chews its own hate-disgust harder than it chews its language.
Study how Housman made Tea-Time Verses of really ugly subjects,
how the sound and definitions restrained the connotations and
relations from tearing the reader's head off all at once. (It's /so/
much more entertaining when they do it slowly.)
Dennis M. Hammes
The snow lets go the grass again
And pouts in pools the kerbs retain,
But smiling steel will stab the ice
By my unnatural device
To hack a hole where nature spread
A blanket of the loveliest lead
To sneer the storm-drain's metal maw
That plashing pools leave tootsies raw.
I do not say that nature hates,
But look at all her water gates.
George Dance
Except, of course, that none of that happens in the poem: the frogs
do nothing "joyfully," the robins do nothing "proudly," the trees
exhibit no "modesty", and "Nature" never makes an entrance (thoug
"Spring" does, though obviously only as an abstract idea in the poet's
thoughts),
OB's article is a paradigm example of what I've previously called (on
alt.philosophy) "Kantian literary criticism", though it usually goes
by the name 'Postmodern': the critic begins with an /a prior/
judgement as to what the text must be saying, and only then reads and
discovers precisely what he finds, whether it's actually in the text
or not.
In this case, OB's /a priori/ judgement, or bias, was: As a female
writing 100 years ago, Teasdale must have been incapable of writing
anything but 'fluff.' So, lo and behold, 'fluff' is what he
discovers.
Which shows exactly why Kantian, or Postmodern criticism, qualifies
as bad literary criticism: Those who share the critics' biases will
love it, those who have different biases will hate it, but no one is
one jot the wiser after reading a ream of it.
George Dance
> Karla wrote:
> > In article <nM6dnY9p0YEToGjYnZ2dnUVZ_tunn...@onvoy.com>, Dennis M. Hammes
> > says...
>
> >>Karla wrote:
>
> >>>"Ah, love, let us be true
> >>>To one another! for the world, which seems
> >>>To lie before us like a land of dreams,
> >>>So various, so beautiful, so new,
> >>>Hath neither joy, no love, nor light,
> >>>Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
> >>>And we are here as on a darkling plain
> >>>Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
> >>>Where ignorant armies clash by night."
>
> >>It's a bit lengthy for an oath, but its fellowship with it's "(ah,)
> >>love" stands against all comers, some of which it names -- including
> >>the love itself, that clashes with confused alarm.
>
> > Arnold's poem is no different than Teasdale's re mankind vs. nature. His 'oath'
> > manages no fellowship with bits of nature.
>
> That's its whole point, i.e., that there is no fellowship in nature,
> which is /like/ the clashing of ignorant armies (we since learn that
> it is not /like/ that, it is /precisely/ that).
>
The 'point' of Arnold's poem is: his protagonist wants a piece of ass
before he goes off to fight, and tries to get it by arousing his
girl's sympathy (by pointing out the 'sadness' and 'melancholy' of the
ocean).
THE DOVER BITCH
(A Criticism of Life)
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, "Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc."
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to lookin out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she really got angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.
(c.) 1959 Anthony Hecht
galathaea
> On Mar 12, 3:45 pm, "OB" <nevilemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> do nothing "joyfully", the birds do nothing "proudly", the trees do
> not exhibit "modesty", and "Nature" does not even appear (though
> "Spring" does, but obviously only in the poet's thoughts).
>
> OB's article is a fine example of what I've previously called 'Kantian
> literary criticism' (though it usually goes by the name 'Post
> Modern'): the critic decides /a priori/ what the text says, and only
> then reads the text - and finds exactly what he's determined to find,
> whether it's there or not.
>
> Which, IMV, makes OB's effort a paradigm example of bad literary
> criticism. It does nothing but oppose the author's allegeded biases
> to those of the critic. Readers who share the critic's biases will
> love it; those who do not will hate it; but no one is any bit the
> wiser after reading reams of it.
but it really is a good formula
if you are looking for a good grade in a humanities course
because you can pick very obscure conclusions
which must therefore be very profound and gradeworthy
i had this one
about spatiotemporality in wuthering heights
[...]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
galathaea: prankster, fablist, magician, liar
George Dance
In that case, you would do better to read the poems of Sara Teasdale,
since (it has since been revealed) sirblob merely plagiarized the
poem. Check out:
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Sara_Teasdale/
(You'll find the above poem in this collection under the title "The
Kiss")
George Dance
My bad. It's not called "The Kiss" but "The Look", which doesn't
appear in that collection at all. You'll have to read it at:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/937.html
But I hope that you enjoy Teasdale anyway.
Karla
OB, I really don't see what you mean. Where is the "but" in the poem? Certainly,
Teasdale paints a pretty nature, but the larger points seems to be that we kill
each other off and nature keeps on rolling. Until Fat Boy and Little Boy, it
wasn't readily evident that something else might be true.
>By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
>to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
>Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
>along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
>makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
>instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
>"Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
>and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
>that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
>any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
>certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
>fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
>visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
This is rather mixed up. Would it change what Teasdale is saying if she included
cockroaches and venus fly traps? I don't think so. In choosing to personify
nature given her theme might not be the wisest time to use such a device, but it
hadn't become anathema to do so yet.
I don't see her saying that nature would get along fine without humans, only
that nature wouldn't notice that we'd gone.
>The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
>presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
>real world, i.e. babies. QED?
So you want to change her point to your point?
Karla
OB
The "article" you refer to is merely a comment on the text based on a
personal interpretation, and doesn't aspire to the status of "literary
criticism" (you don't go to Usenet to look for serious lit crit). The
adverbs you carp at are supplied by connotation: "singing" is /by
default/ assumed to be an expression of joy or some such emotion,
unless stated otherwise; a bird which exhibits an unusual brightness
of colour and which is said to be "wearing" that colour as if it were
a garment freely chosen, might be supposed to be proud of that colour,
"unless otherwise stated"; "tremulous white" evokes countless bad
pastorals which allude more or less explicitly to the whiteness of
bridal garments... etc. These are all associations or connotations
which seem reasonable to me (if Teasdale had included "joyfully",
would that surprise anyone? would it make any difference to anyone's
interpretation of the poem? might it not, indeed, draw the criticism
of /redundancy/?), but in any case, my point was not to assert that
Teasdale's frogs are happy or that her trees are modest, but that both
the choice of objects and the way they are described are pure cliche,
contain no actual observation of the real world (a deaf and blind
person could have written this based purely on literary
reminiscences), and contrive to present a scene which is (again, in
one poster's very humble opinion) pure Disney. The poem is as
wholesome as a Christmas card illustration, and as vacuous (again, in
the extremely humble opinion of one Usenet poster who has no
aspirations to being a literary critic).
If you read the poetry groups regularly, you'll find this happening
constantly: a poem is posted, and someone replies with a spontaneous
reaction based on connotations (sometimes surprisingly personal),
comparisons with other poems read, "I would have preferred this word",
extraneous value judgments, etc. None of this is "literary criticism"
or pretends to be. However, sometimes it's enlightening to find out
how other people respond to words, especially if you're learning to
use words better yourself.
> In this case, OB's /a priori/ judgement, or bias, was: As a female
> writing 100 years ago, Teasdale must have been incapable of writing
> anything but 'fluff.' So, lo and behold, 'fluff' is what he
> discovers.
Except, of course, that I didn't even mention the fact that the poet
was female, nor did I make any reference whatsoever to the period in
which the poem was written. Your words above are a paradigm example of
jumping to spurious conclusions based on some obscure bias of your
own. Neither the poet's sex nor the poem's age would count as factors
in my interpretation of a poem. If they did, presumably I might be
expected to find "fluff" in the poems of Emily Dickinson, whereas I am
on record on Usenet as having her in my list of all-time favourite
poets.
> Which shows exactly why Kantian, or Postmodern criticism, qualifies
> as bad literary criticism: Those who share the critics' biases will
> love it, those who have different biases will hate it, but no one is
> one jot the wiser after reading a ream of it.
Perhaps so, in this case. Although in the hypothetical case that
Teasdale was alive and had posted the poem to Usenet herself, I guess
she'd be interested to see how readers responded to it, even those who
didn't like it, and even if she considered that the reader hadn't done
the poem justice for whatever reason. I post my poems to Usenet for
exactly this purpose, and certainly don't expect "lit crit" in reply,
merely - a reaction. It's naive to expect much more than that in this
medium.
> > By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
> > to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
> > Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
> > along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
> > makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
> > instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
> > "Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
> > and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
> > that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
> > any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
> > certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
> > fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
> > visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
>
> > The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
> > presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
> > real world, i.e. babies. QED?
>
> > Once I was visited by some JWs who left me a Watchtower depicting,
> > full-page, an Edenic scene in which a lioness disported herself with a
> > lamb, and three humans dressed in smocks had a picnic nearby. On their
> > next visit, I asked them how God intended to modify the digestive
> > system of carnivores so that they could become vegetarians, and
> > whether such a gung-ho orgy of genetic modification didn't seem a bit
> > rich coming from a Higher Being who has forbidden even compatible
> > blood transfusions among members of a single species. I never saw them
> > again.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Karla
OB, I'm offended! I see I must step up my efforts - here I thought I was being
hard on you.
The
>adverbs you carp at are supplied by connotation: "singing" is /by
>default/ assumed to be an expression of joy or some such emotion,
>unless stated otherwise; a bird which exhibits an unusual brightness
>of colour and which is said to be "wearing" that colour as if it were
>a garment freely chosen, might be supposed to be proud of that colour,
>"unless otherwise stated"; "tremulous white" evokes countless bad
>pastorals which allude more or less explicitly to the whiteness of
>bridal garments... etc. These are all associations or connotations
>which seem reasonable to me (if Teasdale had included "joyfully",
>would that surprise anyone? would it make any difference to anyone's
>interpretation of the poem? might it not, indeed, draw the criticism
>of /redundancy/?), but in any case, my point was not to assert that
>Teasdale's frogs are happy or that her trees are modest, but that both
>the choice of objects and the way they are described are pure cliche,
>contain no actual observation of the real world (a deaf and blind
>person could have written this based purely on literary
>reminiscences), and contrive to present a scene which is (again, in
>one poster's very humble opinion) pure Disney. The poem is as
>wholesome as a Christmas card illustration, and as vacuous (again, in
>the extremely humble opinion of one Usenet poster who has no
>aspirations to being a literary critic).
Although, I'd agree there's a bit of the 'poem-lite' happening, I'm not sure
that every image is a cliche. Of course, it's highly likely I haven't read as
many pastoral poems, Christmas cards or seen as many Disney movies as you.
Enlighten me on where I'd find robins described as such or the sound that a
swallow makes, or even the blossoming plums.
But I'd like to take a different tact that occurred to me while reading your
latest comment. It's possible that Teasdale wanted to stab the reader with known
associations. Her first 3 couplets are pleasing images known to us either by
experience or, as you pointed out, literary experience. In the last 3 couplets,
she introduces missing (hu)man. The "aha" folds back to the beginning and those
pleasing images become something we miss, theoretically, if we accept the
possible reality in the conclusion of the poem. I'm staying in the poem now,
trying read it as Teasdale intended. I'm guessing she intended a bit of a gulp.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into it by finding it amusing that when only nature
remains, it's humanized at the end of her poem. Mother Nature! Yes!
>If you read the poetry groups regularly, you'll find this happening
>constantly: a poem is posted, and someone replies with a spontaneous
>reaction based on connotations (sometimes surprisingly personal),
>comparisons with other poems read, "I would have preferred this word",
>extraneous value judgments, etc. None of this is "literary criticism"
>or pretends to be. However, sometimes it's enlightening to find out
>how other people respond to words, especially if you're learning to
>use words better yourself.
I disagree. Very revealing about your approach here, though.
Good to know.
Karla
--
--
jack austin
>
> Wow... the guy goes through the trouble of copy-and-pasting the poem /
> and/ giving it a new title but somehow "forgets" to copy-and-paste the
> author's name.
holy shit! deja-fucking-vue. i thought you were the only one allowed
to do that, will? bugs the shit out of you, no?
>
> Sara Teasdale
>
> >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Teasdale
>
> Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1883 - January 29, 1933), was an American
> lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis,
> Missouri.
>
> Teasdale's major themes were love, nature's beauty, and death, and her
> poems were much loved during the early 20th century. In 1918 she won
> the Columbia University Poetry Society prize (the forerunner of the
> Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and the annual prize of the Poetry Society
> of America for her volume, Love Songs. Her style and lyricism are well
> illustrated in her poem, "Spring Night" (1915), from that collection.
>
> Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was not
> until she was nine that she was judged healthy enough to begin school
> - a private school for children just one block away from her home. In
> 1898 she attended Mary Institute, and the following year she enrolled
> in Hosmer Hall, from which she graduated in 1903. Her influences
> included the actress Duse, whom she never saw perform, the British
> poet Christina Rossetti, and numerous trips to Europe, beginning in
> 1905.
>
> In 1913, Teasdale was courted by two admirers. The poet Vachel Lindsay
> fell in love with her and at one point was sending her long, fantastic
> love letters on a daily basis expressing his true love. He asked her
> to marry him, but though she had deep feelings for Vachel, she instead
> married Ernst Filsinger, a wealthy businessman in 1914 when she was
> thirty years old. The following year they moved to New York City,
> which became her home for the rest of her life. Teasdale and Lindsay
> remained fond but platonic friends throughout their lives, and Lindsay
> said that she was his life's "most inspiring, most satisfying friend."
> She was the inspiration for what Lindsay believed to be his greatest
> poem, "The Chinese Nightingale".
>
> Teasdale was very much a product of her Victorian upbringing, and she
> was never able to experience in life the passion that she expressed in
> her poetry. She was not happy in her marriage, and she divorced
> Filsinger in 1929, against his wishes. Teasdale's health further
> declined. On the morning of January 29, 1933, in her New York City
> apartment, Teasdale took an overdose of sleeping pills, lay down in a
> warm bath, fell asleep, and never woke up again. Her last, and some
> say her finest, collection of verse, Strange Victory, was published
> posthumously that same year. In 1931, two years before Teasdale's
> suicide, Vachel Lindsay, her friend and former suitor, had also
> committed suicide.
>
> In 1994 Sara Teasdale was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
>
> She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
>
jack austin
aha, there's two in every crowd, isn't there? thanks for the
reference; if true, i have lost all respect for sirblob, which really
doesn't amount to much of a loss at all.
jack
jack austin
> In article <1173728716.109301.57...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
jack
George Dance
> In article <1173811999.055807.84...@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
Well, yes; while I violently reject the 'Disney' and 'baby'
comparisons, I agree that Teasdale is painting the prettiest picture
she can. She's lulling the reader into a nice sense of pleasantness
and relaxation - disarming them - before swatting them with the fact
of their own, and humanity's own, lack of meaning. Entice the reader
with a pretty tapestry, and then pull it away to reveal the Abyss
beneath.
If the poem fails today, it's because the Abyss has become such a
cliche in itself in the time since; but at the time it wasn't. It
only became fully articulated as an idea with the Existentialists,
Alienation psychologists, etc. after WWII. But it was there, through
both the wars and the Depression - gnawing away at human psyches,
destroying what was left of 19th centuy optimism, little by little.
Some philosophers sensed it: Neitzche and Kierkegaard, for two. And
the poets sensed it as well; the Abyss drove Pound insane, and pushed
Eliot into hiding in the bowels of the Church.
And here Teasdale gives the gentle reader a wee glimpse.
Though I admit that today even the Abyss has become a cliche (I can't
turn on the TV, for instance, without hearing those two brats singing,
"Dust, in the WIND!"). And perhaps that's why Dennis and OB, and
perhaps others, interpret the entire poem as nothing but cliche.
George Dance
>
> oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
> evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
> love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
> spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>
Exercise for the reader: compose a poem beginning:
"Had we but world enough and time
This Usenet lurking were no crime..."
OB
> In article <1173728716.109301.57...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>, OB says...
Tut, "Teasdale says nothing about nature - the word isn't mentioned
once."
Sarcasm aside,
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
but
there will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire...
Does this help? The birds and trees may not care about our killing
ourselves, but they do care about shimmering, singing, whistling,
being tremulous and wearing feathery fire - all things which they
would in reality be quite unable to do if we weren't around, because
these things are not properly actions but (human) perceptions and
interpretations put upon those actions.
Teasdale doesn't seriously even try to imagine a post-holocaust
scenario. For a more intelligent (if somewhat savage) poem that at
least deals with the difficulty of doing so ("on the bank of whatever
river / it used to be" I like especially), try
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/poetry_nuclear2.html
> >By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
> >to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
> >Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
> >along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
> >makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
> >instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
> >"Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
> >and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
> >that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
> >any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
> >certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
> >fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
> >visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
>
> This is rather mixed up. Would it change what Teasdale is saying if she included
> cockroaches and venus fly traps? I don't think so.
It would make her stated point a lot more forcefully, IMO.
> In choosing to personify
> nature given her theme might not be the wisest time to use such a device, but it
> hadn't become anathema to do so yet.
>
> I don't see her saying that nature would get along fine without humans, only
> that nature wouldn't notice that we'd gone.
"Spring" would "wake at dawn" and "scarcely know that we were gone".
For her to "scarcely" know this, as opposed to just not knowing it at
all, the personified Spring must at least be able to note some vague
sign of our absence: the implication is that the annihilation of
humans is no big deal as far as she's concerned, on any level. Notice
that "Spring" as opposed to whatever "nature" might be imagined to
consist of, is something that might be expected to get along fine
without us - seasons don't need people to keep them turning - but
Teasdale populates her Spring cunningly with cuddly creatures before
she gets around to making this point.
>
> >The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
> >presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
> >real world, i.e. babies. QED?
>
> So you want to change her point to your point?
I want her to make her own point honestly and clearly, using the best
and most powerful tools available to her. I don't think she does this.
But then again, I'm not a Lit Crit, just a tremulous tyro shimmering
his whims through a low-sense wire.
>
> Karla
>
> >Once I was visited by some JWs who left me a Watchtower depicting,
> >full-page, an Edenic scene in which a lioness disported herself with a
> >lamb, and three humans dressed in smocks had a picnic nearby. On their
> >next visit, I asked them how God intended to modify the digestive
> >system of carnivores so that they could become vegetarians, and
> >whether such a gung-ho orgy of genetic modification didn't seem a bit
> >rich coming from a Higher Being who has forbidden even compatible
> >blood transfusions among members of a single species. I never saw them
> >again.
>
> --
> --- Hide quoted text -
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Arnold's protagonist just wants a piece of ass before he goes off to
> fight; and tries to get it by arousing his girl's sympathy (by
> pointing out the ocean's 'sadness' et al).
>
There are cheaper ways than war or, especially, poetry to get a piece
of ass.
Playing with your balls at public expense, e.g.
Done in a special playpen inside the regular playpen, it keeps you
/safe/ from those nasty geeks who study the cross (sword), the garlic
(lab), and the sharp stick (poetry).
Dennis M. Hammes
> On Mar 13, 8:29 am, "George Dance" <georgedanc...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>>
>>OB's article is a paradigm example of what I've previously called (on
>>alt.philosophy) "Kantian literary criticism", though it usually goes
>>by the name 'Postmodern': the critic begins with an /a prior/
>>judgement as to what the text must be saying, and only then reads and
>>discovers precisely what he finds, whether it's actually in the text
>>or not.
>
...
>
>>In this case, OB's /a priori/ judgement, or bias, was: As a female
>>writing 100 years ago, Teasdale must have been incapable of writing
>>anything but 'fluff.' So, lo and behold, 'fluff' is what he
>>discovers.
>
>
> Except, of course, that I didn't even mention the fact that the poet
> was female, nor did I make any reference whatsoever to the period in
> which the poem was written. Your words above are a paradigm example of
> jumping to spurious conclusions based on some obscure bias of your
> own.
>
In his own words, he decided a priori what he was going to read, and
then asserted to have read it.
But since he seD that of reading PO-wetry, you have just written a
PO-wem.
(Kantian logic is even more compelling than Kantian criticism.)
>
> Neither the poet's sex nor the poem's age would count as factors
> in my interpretation of a poem. If they did, presumably I might be
> expected to find "fluff" in the poems of Emily Dickinson, whereas I am
> on record on Usenet as having her in my list of all-time favourite
> poets.
>
Whatever her faults, Dickinson names real /things/ (sometimes fluffy
feelings, yes, more often rather good symbols), and then describes
them as they do their own things.
It is for that -- not the fluff and all the dashes -- that she is
hailed as one of the first of the Moderns.
Unfortunately, most of the Moderns copied the fluff.
(Not to mention the dashes -- )
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Although, I'd agree there's a bit of the 'poem-lite' happening, I'm not sure
> that every image is a cliche. Of course, it's highly likely I haven't read as
> many pastoral poems, Christmas cards or seen as many Disney movies as you.
> Enlighten me on where I'd find robins described as such or the sound that a
> swallow makes, or even the blossoming plums.
>
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Mommy's library was older'n you; the Victorian and Mauve eras were
rife with this shit, called, a.s., Pathetic Fallacy by those who
tried to do something about it, called PO-wetry by them as did it.
So what's different today?
Or "on UseNet"?
The poet decides, a priori, what he's gonna write, and then,
regardless of what Nature and Nature's God tell him, writes it anyway.
It was going on long before Kant, and is going on long after his
death.
Among people who never even heard /of/ him, even.
Teasdale and Sappho (and Petrarcca and Surrey and Kilmer, let's
not leave out the men) have in common that they can get as frilly and
swilly as the worst of us while routinely writing better poultry than
most of us.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Well, yes; while I violently reject the 'Disney' and 'baby'
> comparisons, I agree that Teasdale is painting the prettiest picture
> she can. She's lulling the reader into a nice sense of pleasantness
> and relaxation - disarming them - before swatting them with the fact
> of their own, and humanity's own, lack of meaning. Entice the reader
> with a pretty tapestry, and then pull it away to reveal the Abyss
> beneath.
The technique itself a cliche long before her day, and in her piece
no more /than/ the cliche.
And thus meaningless.
>
> If the poem fails today, it's because the Abyss has become such a
> cliche in itself in the time since; but at the time it wasn't. It
> only became fully articulated as an idea with the Existentialists,
> Alienation psychologists, etc. after WWII. But it was there, through
> both the wars and the Depression - gnawing away at human psyches,
> destroying what was left of 19th centuy optimism, little by little.
> Some philosophers sensed it: Neitzche and Kierkegaard, for two. And
> the poets sensed it as well; the Abyss drove Pound insane, and pushed
> Eliot into hiding in the bowels of the Church.
> And here Teasdale gives the gentle reader a wee glimpse.
>
> Though I admit that today even the Abyss has become a cliche (I can't
> turn on the TV, for instance, without hearing those two brats singing,
> "Dust, in the WIND!"). And perhaps that's why Dennis and OB, and
> perhaps others, interpret the entire poem as nothing but cliche.
>
My, and, I believe, OB's, interpretation of cliche have not a dam'
thing to do with Kierkegaard, TV, or any other version of the Today Show.
The accusation is that the images, phrases, and concepts,
including esp. the Abyss of War, were cliche /in Teasdale's own day/,
and that she put them, and their "relations," as no more than cliche
in the piece.
Tennyson stared into the Abyss of War (even if at a comfortably
lit'ry distance) when guns were loaded from the muzzle with black
powder, and the smooth bores allowed you one eighty-yard shot before
the fella with the bayonet was in your face.
Whitman whined at length about the resulting body count -- without
once approaching the abyss, let alone staring it down.
"Gentlemen -- this is -- /we/ are -- the end of the line. If they
get through us, they roll up our whole flank.
"Fix. Bayonets."
"Stranger, go tell the Spartans that the Laodaecians have here done
their duty."
/That/, is staring into the Abyss.
Moore was there. Hayes was there. Owen was there. Chard was
there. Chamberlain was there. Jones was there. Raleigh was there.
Leonidas was there.
Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
On the Green
I've played the fields at Eton
With sweet Spring up to my knees,
Without my Queen to sweeten
But by thought, such stout and cheese,
And here she matches pitch for
Pitch, and slice for slice, with me,
So what have you to bitch for,
Pilot, where the Spanish be?
The wind is lee, the yards are set
The stays are at their strain,
And it is forty minutes yet
The Thames begins to drain.
So quit your idle clatter,
Pilot; pour you some Pinot,
And all the pins will scatter
From the way you've held your throw.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> OB, I really don't see what you mean. Where is the "but" in the poem? Certainly,
> Teasdale paints a pretty nature, but the larger points seems to be that we kill
> each other off and nature keeps on rolling. Until Fat Boy and Little Boy, it
> wasn't readily evident that something else might be true.
>
"This is all my fault."
-- R.E. Lee, GEN, Army of Northern Virginia
In Flanders' fields the poppies grow...
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
> evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
> love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
> spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>
> jack
>
By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
the reading, writing, researching.
Tanstaafl...
Dennis M. Hammes
I should on this tide of shit
Compose e'en more barbed baric wit
Whose shots leave every asshole throbbin'
Even less than Teasdale's robin.
An hour I'd take to find the words
To tell just one of Dock'ry's turds;
A day for Arnold, and a week
To strike Joyce on the other cheek.
But always underfoot I see
That the Abyss waits just for me
And that the lilac's purple flood
Only waits to suck my blood.
Well, there's eight spoiled minutes to scant my mortal lot.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Does this help? The birds and trees may not care about our killing
> ourselves, but they do care about shimmering, singing, whistling,
> being tremulous and wearing feathery fire - all things which they
> would in reality be quite unable to do if we weren't around, because
> these things are not properly actions but (human) perceptions and
> interpretations put upon those actions.
>
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
What kind of "poet" can forget -- or refuse to learn, in an entire
lifetime -- that "Nature" /includes/ "Man"?
That the fission of U ^235 into Ba and Kr is a /perfectly natural/
phemonenon that's been going on for five billion years on this planet
alone?
A poet that wants to sit underneath the bough, waiting to be hit on
the head by a fig newton?
The pseudonitration of charcoal and sulfur with oxidised bird-shit
required /infinitely/ more observation.
And imagination.
George Dance
> George Dance wrote:
> > On Mar 13, 7:46 pm, "jack austin" <j_p_aa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
> >>evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
> >>love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
> >>spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>
> > Exercise for the reader: compose a poem beginning:
>
> > "Had we but world enough and time
> > This Usenet lurking were no crime..."
>
> I should on this tide of shit
> Compose e'en more barbed baric wit
> Whose shots leave every asshole throbbin'
> Even less than Teasdale's robin.
> An hour I'd take to find the words
> To tell just one of Dock'ry's turds;
> A day for Arnold, and a week
> To strike Joyce on the other cheek.
> But always underfoot I see
> That the Abyss waits just for me
> And that the lilac's purple flood
> Only waits to suck my blood.
>
Or better yet, let's talk of war
And fill our poems with blood and gore:
Some reeking flesh, a severed head
And maggots feasting on the dead.
As for the robin, what the heck -
Let's wring the little birdie's neck.,
And if perchance that doesn't shock
Let's add a line of fuck, ass, cock,
Motherfucker, piss, and shit -
Who knows, that just might pass for wit.
What else to do, what else to say
When everything is mere cliche,
How else to make a reader feel
And think that what we say is real,
At least it wastes an hour or to
And we have nothing else to do.
Will Dockery
> On Mar 10, 4:40 pm, "Will Dockery" wrote:
>
> > Wow... the guy goes through the trouble of copy-and-pasting the poem /
> > and/ giving it a new title but somehow "forgets" to copy-and-paste the
> > author's name.
>
> holy shit! deja-fucking-vue. i thought you were the only one allowed
> to do that, will?
Since I've never done that you're full of shit as usual, Jack.
--
The Tuesday Afternoon Show Episode 39:
The Dangling Clock
Scotto and Uncle John comment on the Academy Awards, explain the
Tuesday Afternoon Drinking Game and take one more shot at The History
of Death as Sam tries Schrodinger's Ale, Uncle John unveils his latest
B-Movie Pick, we get an update on The Bear Suit Guy and Scotto brings
back Story Time.Featuring musical guests, Shadowville All-Stars.
http://www.johnhmaloney.com/tuesdayshow/index.htm
"Dream Tears" by Dockery-Mallard:
http://www.myspace.com/shadowvilleallstars
George Dance
[second attempt]
There is no 'Abyss of War' mentioned, in either Teasdale's poem or in
my own comments; that's simply more /a priori/ 'interpretation. War
is horrible; but at least when one feels horror, one feels and cares
about something. Confronting the Abyss involves realizing that
there's nothing to feel and care about, and living in it (as we do) is
to cease to feel or care about anything.
> Tennyson stared into the Abyss of War (even if at a comfortably
> lit'ry distance) when guns were loaded from the muzzle with black
> powder, and the smooth bores allowed you one eighty-yard shot before
> the fella with the bayonet was in your face.
> Whitman whined at length about the resulting body count -- without
> once approaching the abyss, let alone staring it down.
>
> "Gentlemen -- this is -- /we/ are -- the end of the line. If they
> get through us, they roll up our whole flank.
> "Fix. Bayonets."
>
> "Stranger, go tell the Spartans that the Laodaecians have here done
> their duty."
>
> /That/, is staring into the Abyss.
Like hell. That is doing one's 'duty' - fixing bayonets, keeping a
stiff upper lip, holding the thin red line; for the sake of Queen and
Country. Compare that to Owen (whom you mention), who caught a
glimpse of the Abyss at the same time as Teasdale; a realization that
his comrades were dying for nothing at all. .
> Moore was there. Hayes was there. Owen was there. Chard was
> there. Chamberlain was there. Jones was there. Raleigh was there.
> Leonidas was there.
It doesn't matter where anyone was. Owen glimpsed the Abyss in war;
Teasdale while contemplating nature; Eliot in his daily routine.
Today we don't notice it at all, as we live squarely inside it.
> Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
> She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
Teasdale says nothing about the war being *nasty*; once again, you've
wandered off on your own musings and left the poem behind.
George Dance
> jack austin wrote:
>
> > oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
> > evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
> > love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
> > spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>
> > jack
>
> By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
> the reading, writing, researching.
Of course we know that that is dumb
When we're as comfortably numb
But if we do all the right motions
We just might feel some real emotions
At least, someone might think we do
And that's enough for me - And you?
OB
> OB wrote:
> > On Mar 12, 2:45 pm, "OB" <nevilemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >>By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
> >>to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man
>
> > likewise personified nature, in a similar but not identical context
> > (Teasdale says Nature doesn't care, I say she cares in pretty much the
> > same way I care about pigs: for the lard and the crackling). At least
> > my Nature is (I think) a little less Disney than Teasdale's (and yes,
> > I know it's equally "not a very good poem", for other reasons).
>
> Nature cares so much about the next meal she's got a Law about it:
> Second Thermogoddamics.
> And no, she doesn't care who knows it or not.
> Law doesn't /need/ worship or "enforcment."
> Law /can't/ be broken.
>
> Teasdale's poem thinks she inherited Civilisation and it Would Be
> Beautiful If -- i.e., if nobody (but esp. "the war") else contested
> her claim. /Her/ "nature" /won't/, because it doesn't care.
> Arnold's knows we inherit the /ruins/ of civilisation, beginning
> with ourselves ("ignorant armies" of ourselves, even) -- and can't
> afford the heating bill of either one. And his "nature" will collect
> the bill over your cooling corpse if you let it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Dengue
>
> > In with the rains, a vulture smears the hinter
> > branches red. Her infantry are here -
> > Aedes aegypti, abseiling from her cere
> > like a hairline crack run through the winter -
> > like an obscenity-covered birthday card
> > whose exclamation marks prefigure various
> > droll tearings limb from limb, on this precarious
> > pallet, rolling me in my very lard
> > and crackling. The sun's a spider in the beams
> > out spinning shards of broken sky in spiral;
> > I scream at an approaching dog, its viral
> > grin, for once, belying all that seems:
> > Nature doesn't like us very much -
> > She pictures us dead. I shrink, now, from her touch.
>
> > OB
>
> The piece chews its own hate-disgust harder than it chews its language.
> Study how Housman made Tea-Time Verses of really ugly subjects,
> how the sound and definitions restrained the connotations and
> relations from tearing the reader's head off all at once. (It's /so/
> much more entertaining when they do it slowly.)
I'll let you into a secret: there's an unwritten line at the end of
every poem I write which goes:
<sigh> I wish I'd learned to paint.
Most of what I'm trying to do seems to beg for a canvas rather than a
blank page. Do you know anyone who learned to paint at 46 and made a
go of it?
>
> --
> -------(m+
> ~/:o)_|
> I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.http://scrawlmark.org- Hide quoted text -
George Dance
> Karla wrote:
>
>
> The poet decides, a priori, what he's gonna write, and then,
> regardless of what Nature and Nature's God tell him, writes it anyway.
Although tthere's nothing left to say
I'm gonna say it anyway
And if you say that it's all shit
I won't believe a word of it
And if I a poet points it out
I'll just ignore it, and I'll shout
About her frogs, and trees, and birds
So I won't think about her words.
Sugir Jinn
"George Dance" <george...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:1173887081.9...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 14, 3:27 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@arvig.net> wrote:
>> jack austin wrote:
>>
>> > oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
>> > evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
>> > love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
>> > spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>>
>> > jack
>>
>> By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
>> the reading, writing, researching.
>
>
> Of course we know that that is dumb
> When we're as comfortably numb
> But if we do all the right motions
> We just might feel some real emotions
> At least, someone might think we do
> And that's enough for me - And you?
When a mushroom clound shadows the roses
And the fallout lands on the hill
The poets have died in the marketplace
Captain Kirk cannot deal with the trills
George Dance
Yes, I misquoted, there's no doubt:
How rude of you to point it out.
> Sarcasm aside,
>
> Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
> If mankind perished utterly;
>
> but
>
> there will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
> And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
>
> And frogs in the pools singing at night,
> And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
>
> Robins will wear their feathery fire,
> Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire...
>
> Does this help? The birds and trees may not care about our killing
> ourselves, but they do care about shimmering, singing, whistling,
> being tremulous and wearing feathery fire
Yes, one can see that everywhere,
Why would birds fly unless they care?
- all things which they
> would in reality be quite unable to do if we weren't around, because
> these things are not properly actions but (human) perceptions and
> interpretations put upon those actions.
I'm so important - me! me! me! -
The birds won't fly if I don't see.
> Teasdale doesn't seriously even try to imagine a post-holocaust
> scenario. For a more intelligent (if somewhat savage) poem that at
> least deals with the difficulty of doing so ("on the bank of whatever
> river / it used to be" I like especially), try
>
> http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/poetry_nuclear2.html
>
Although that wasn't very pretty
It was not a half-bad ditty.
> > >By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
> > >to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
> > >Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
> > >along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
> > >makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
> > >instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
> > >"Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
> > >and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
> > >that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
> > >any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
> > >certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
> > >fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
> > >visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
>
> > This is rather mixed up. Would it change what Teasdale is saying if she included
> > cockroaches and venus fly traps? I don't think so.
>
> It would make her stated point a lot more forcefully, IMO.
>
Some death and rot would do the trick;
At least, then, I'd feel something: sick.
> > In choosing to personify
> > nature given her theme might not be the wisest time to use such a device, but it
> > hadn't become anathema to do so yet.
>
> > I don't see her saying that nature would get along fine without humans, only
> > that nature wouldn't notice that we'd gone.
>
> "Spring" would "wake at dawn" and "scarcely know that we were gone".
> For her to "scarcely" know this, as opposed to just not knowing it at
> all, the personified Spring must at least be able to note some vague
> sign of our absence: the implication is that the annihilation of
> humans is no big deal as far as she's concerned, on any level.
It doen't matter what we do;
Not you, nor I, nor Teasdale, too.
> Notice
> that "Spring" as opposed to whatever "nature" might be imagined to
> consist of, is something that might be expected to get along fine
> without us - seasons don't need people to keep them turning - but
> Teasdale populates her Spring cunningly with cuddly creatures before
> she gets around to making this point.
>
I really didn't like her theme
And so of frogs and birds I'll scream.
> > >The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
> > >presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
> > >real world, i.e. babies. QED?
>
> > So you want to change her point to your point?
>
> I want her to make her own point honestly and clearly, using the best
> and most powerful tools available to her. I don't think she does this.
> But then again, I'm not a Lit Crit, just a tremulous tyro shimmering
> his whims through a low-sense wire.
Yes, she should add a killing spree
For that would show some honesty.
George Dance
> "George Dance" <georgedanc...@yahoo.ca> wrote in messagenews:1173887081.9...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> > On Mar 14, 3:27 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@arvig.net> wrote:
> >> jack austin wrote:
>
> >> > oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
> >> > evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
> >> > love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
> >> > spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>
> >> > jack
>
> >> By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
> >> the reading, writing, researching.
>
> > Of course we know that that is dumb
> > When we're as comfortably numb
> > But if we do all the right motions
> > We just might feel some real emotions
> > At least, someone might think we do
> > And that's enough for me - And you?
>
> When a mushroom clound shadows the roses
> And the fallout lands on the hill
> The poets have died in the marketplace
> Captain Kirk cannot deal with the trills
>
That's not that bad, but what's its point?
Mayhap your nose is out of joint?
OB
"We" needs clarification. If "living in the Abyss" means, as you say,
"ceasing to feel or care about anything", then it excludes me, and
presumably would exclude the poets you mention, since to write poetry
you have to care about /something/, even if only about writing poetry
(OK, they only "glimpsed" the Abyss, they didn't "live in it". But
Owen, e.g., strikes me as someone who "cared" more than most about a
whole lot of things that "we" are excused from having to care or not
care about). How about we take a poll on the poetry groups - how many
people here have ceased to feel or care about anything? Might be
instructive.
If, however, as you say elsewhere, this Abyss of yours has to do with
having abandoned "nineteenth century optimism", then, well, you're
closer to rehashing what Alvarez said in his intro to The New Poetry
in '62 - which I always thought was overstated and naive, insofar as
"nineteenth century optimism" (along with the Perfectibility of Man,
the Happy Savage, the Ultimate Decency of Common Folk, Posterity, etc)
has always been and continues to be the preserve of the unthinking
portion of the population, and there have /always/ been poets who saw
past all or most of that. Today, it's fashionable to "see past that",
but this only means that there are more people who can parrot the
words that lay claim to having done so. Today, even a computer can
generate nihilistic free-verse unaided. It doesn't mean much. People
don't change as much as you or Alvarez think, IMO. In fact, to posit
Sea-Changes in Cultural Zeitgeists seems, well, a bit nineteenth-
century in itself, when you think about it.
>
> > Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
> > She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
>
> Teasdale says nothing about the war being *nasty*; once again, you've
> wandered off on your own musings and left the poem behind.
She also don't say nothing about no Abyss. Where do you get these
certificates that qualify you to Interpret where others are not
allowed? Or do they come with the surplice?
>
>
>
> > On the Green
>
> > I've played the fields at Eton
> > With sweet Spring up to my knees,
> > Without my Queen to sweeten
> > But by thought, such stout and cheese,
>
> > And here she matches pitch for
> > Pitch, and slice for slice, with me,
> > So what have you to bitch for,
> > Pilot, where the Spanish be?
>
> > The wind is lee, the yards are set
> > The stays are at their strain,
> > And it is forty minutes yet
> > The Thames begins to drain.
>
> > So quit your idle clatter,
> > Pilot; pour you some Pinot,
> > And all the pins will scatter
> > From the way you've held your throw.- Hide quoted text -
George Dance
No one wants to see the Void
It's so much easier to avoid
> But
> Owen, e.g., strikes me as someone who "cared" more than most about a
> whole lot of things that "we" are excused from having to care or not
> care about). How about we take a poll on the poetry groups - how many
> people here have ceased to feel or care about anything? Might be
> instructive.
Who cares about the poet's intent?
We'll take a poll on what she meant.
> If, however, as you say elsewhere, this Abyss of yours has to do with
> having abandoned "nineteenth century optimism", then, well, you're
> closer to rehashing what Alvarez said in his intro to The New Poetry
> in '62
Who needed Alvarez to tell?
/The Waste Land/ said it very well.
> - which I always thought was overstated and naive, insofar as
> "nineteenth century optimism" (along with the Perfectibility of Man,
> the Happy Savage, the Ultimate Decency of Common Folk, Posterity, etc)
> has always been and continues to be the preserve of the unthinking
> portion of the population, and there have /always/ been poets who saw
> past all or most of that.
Not Wordsworth, when he wrote of beauty
Or Tennyson, who wrote of duty -
Religion died, then progress failed;
It's only then the poets railed.
> Today, it's fashionable to "see past that",
> but this only means that there are more people who can parrot the
> words that lay claim to having done so. Today, even a computer can
> generate nihilistic free-verse unaided. It doesn't mean much.
Yes, we're all now post-modern folk
And meaning has become a joke.
The cynic is esteemed the sage
And metapop is all the rage.
> People
> don't change as much as you or Alvarez think, IMO. In fact, to posit
> Sea-Changes in Cultural Zeitgeists seems, well, a bit nineteenth-
> century in itself, when you think about it.
Yet people flock to any nut
Who promises them meaning - but
They soon tire, and look elsewhere;
What's worth the effort just to care?
> > > Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
> > > She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
>
> > Teasdale says nothing about the war being *nasty*; once again, you've
> > wandered off on your own musings and left the poem behind.
>
> She also don't say nothing about no Abyss. Where do you get these
> certificates that qualify you to Interpret where others are not
> allowed? Or do they come with the surplice?
Interpreting others' words is fine -
Dennis, though, misinterpreted mine.
George Dance
> Karla wrote:
>
> > OB, I really don't see what you mean. Where is the "but" in the poem? Certainly,
> > Teasdale paints a pretty nature, but the larger points seems to be that we kill
> > each other off and nature keeps on rolling. Until Fat Boy and Little Boy, it
> > wasn't readily evident that something else might be true.
>
> "This is all my fault."
> -- R.E. Lee, GEN, Army of Northern Virginia
>
> In Flanders' fields the poppies grow...
>
... And we're all dead; Keep fighting, though.
'Cause it's important, can't you see,
To kick the ass of Germany. "
That's not at all what Teasdale said.
Who thinks it was, may be brain-dead.
Sugir Jinn
"OB" <nevil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> <sigh> I wish I'd learned to paint.
>
> Most of what I'm trying to do seems to beg for a canvas rather than a
> blank page. Do you know anyone who learned to paint at 46 and made a
> go of it?
Depends on your idea of a /go/...
--
-------------------------------------------
AJ - http://ClitIns.Com e In.
(800 folders. -- kiddie-filtered -- FREE,
Usenet Porn.)
George Dance
> George Dance wrote:
>
> > Arnold's protagonist just wants a piece of ass before he goes off to
> > fight; and tries to get it by arousing his girl's sympathy (by
> > pointing out the ocean's 'sadness' et al).
>
> There are cheaper ways than war or, especially, poetry to get a piece
> of ass.
> Playing with your balls at public expense, e.g.
> Done in a special playpen inside the regular playpen, it keeps you
> /safe/ from those nasty geeks who study the cross (sword), the garlic
> (lab), and the sharp stick (poetry).
Not everyone can be a Bush;
Some have to fight to get their tush.
Sugir Jinn
"George Dance" <george...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:1173890247.9...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
--e.e.cummings
George Dance
> OB wrote:
> > On Mar 13, 8:29 am, "George Dance" <georgedanc...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> >>OB's article is a paradigm example of what I've previously called (on
> >>alt.philosophy) "Kantian literary criticism", though it usually goes
> >>by the name 'Postmodern': the critic begins with an /a prior/
> >>judgement as to what the text must be saying, and only then reads and
> >>discovers precisely what he finds, whether it's actually in the text
> >>or not.
> ...
>
> >>In this case, OB's /a priori/ judgement, or bias, was: As a female
> >>writing 100 years ago, Teasdale must have been incapable of writing
> >>anything but 'fluff.' So, lo and behold, 'fluff' is what he
> >>discovers.
>
> > Except, of course, that I didn't even mention the fact that the poet
> > was female, nor did I make any reference whatsoever to the period in
> > which the poem was written. Your words above are a paradigm example of
> > jumping to spurious conclusions based on some obscure bias of your
> > own.
>
> In his own words, he decided a priori what he was going to read, and
> then asserted to have read it.
> But since he seD that of reading PO-wetry, you have just written a
> PO-wem.
> (Kantian logic is even more compelling than Kantian criticism.)
>
Though I don't like philosophy
I still can write a /tu quoque/.
>
> > Neither the poet's sex nor the poem's age would count as factors
> > in my interpretation of a poem. If they did, presumably I might be
> > expected to find "fluff" in the poems of Emily Dickinson, whereas I am
> > on record on Usenet as having her in my list of all-time favourite
> > poets.
>
> Whatever her faults, Dickinson names real /things/ (sometimes fluffy
> feelings, yes, more often rather good symbols), and then describes
> them as they do their own things.
> It is for that -- not the fluff and all the dashes -- that she is
> hailed as one of the first of the Moderns.
> Unfortunately, most of the Moderns copied the fluff.
> (Not to mention the dashes -- )
Emily knew that she would die
And makes us look death in the eye;
For that we can forgive her fluff
And cannot praise her quite enough.
Sherrie Lee
To stop at stare
not go downst...
Wait a minut!
nut?
Was that a mixed SALT!?
Beau Blue
What's "made a go of it" look like to you? Fame, fortune, wild, amoral
young women kneeling at the alter of your creativity? How 'bout an
endless supply of really good coffee? Smiles on old folks' faces?
Property in Texas? Humbolt County, California? What?
-blue
>
>
>>
>> --
>> -------(m+
>> ~/:o)_|
>> I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.http://scrawlmark.org- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
~ Beau Blue Presents ~ <> http://members.cruzio.com/~jjwebb
Bill Minor * Robert Sward <> Internet Broadsides
Morton Marcus * Renay <> Contemporary American Poetry
~ Blue's Cruzio Cafe ~ <> http://members.cruzio.com/~cafe
OB
Voiding, I do once a day -
and, like most folks, flush /that/ away.
But - true, there's some folks like to sit
cross-legged, surrounded by their Abyss.
> > > But
> > > Owen, e.g., strikes me as someone who "cared" more than most about a
> > > whole lot of things that "we" are excused from having to care or not
> > > care about). How about we take a poll on the poetry groups - how many
> > > people here have ceased to feel or care about anything? Might be
> > > instructive.
>
> > Who cares about the poet's intent?
> > We'll take a poll on what she meant.
Who uses "we" has more to fear
from polls, than "I" - as you see here.
> > > If, however, as you say elsewhere, this Abyss of yours has to do with
> > > having abandoned "nineteenth century optimism", then, well, you're
> > > closer to rehashing what Alvarez said in his intro to The New Poetry
> > > in '62
>
> > Who needed Alvarez to tell?
> > /The Waste Land/ said it very well.
But Eliot never claimed to patent
views which in all times are latent.
> > > - which I always thought was overstated and naive, insofar as
> > > "nineteenth century optimism" (along with the Perfectibility of Man,
> > > the Happy Savage, the Ultimate Decency of Common Folk, Posterity, etc)
> > > has always been and continues to be the preserve of the unthinking
> > > portion of the population, and there have /always/ been poets who saw
> > > past all or most of that.
>
> > Not Wordsworth, when he wrote of beauty
> > Or Tennyson, who wrote of duty -
Theirs was not to reason why
a royalty check makes glib words fly.
> > Religion died, then progress failed;
> > It's only then the poets railed.
But none so far outdid in spleen
that guy in Eccles. 1: 14.
>
> > > Today, it's fashionable to "see past that",
> > > but this only means that there are more people who can parrot the
> > > words that lay claim to having done so. Today, even a computer can
> > > generate nihilistic free-verse unaided. It doesn't mean much.
>
> > Yes, we're all now post-modern folk
> > And meaning has become a joke.
> > The cynic is esteemed the sage
> > And metapop is all the rage.
'Twas ever thus: when empires fall
"Who cares?" becomes the rallying call.
One might say "I do", else insist
that one is comfortably Abyssed.
>
> > > People
> > > don't change as much as you or Alvarez think, IMO. In fact, to posit
> > > Sea-Changes in Cultural Zeitgeists seems, well, a bit nineteenth-
> > > century in itself, when you think about it.
>
> > Yet people flock to any nut
> > Who promises them meaning - but
> > They soon tire, and look elsewhere;
> > What's worth the effort just to care?
One's nuts should be one's own - and then
one need not feed off other men.
>
> To stop at stare
> not go downst...
>
> Wait a minut!
> nut?
>
> Was that a mixed SALT!?
A salt on the ears...
>
>
>
> > > > > Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
> > > > > She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
>
> > > > Teasdale says nothing about the war being *nasty*; once again, you've
> > > > wandered off on your own musings and left the poem behind.
>
> > > She also don't say nothing about no Abyss. Where do you get these
> > > certificates that qualify you to Interpret where others are not
> > > allowed? Or do they come with the surplice?
>
> > Interpreting others' words is fine -
> > Dennis, though, misinterpreted mine.- Hide quoted text -
OB
Um... I'd settle for some kid going up to one of my paintings and
saying: "Hey! I know what that's meant to be! It's a cow! Look,
there's the eyes..."
>
> -blue
>
>
>
> >> --
> >> -------(m+
> >> ~/:o)_|
> >> I do not "negotiate" for half my baby back, Solomon.http://scrawlmark.org-Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> ~ Beau Blue Presents ~ <>http://members.cruzio.com/~jjwebb
> Bill Minor * Robert Sward <> Internet Broadsides
> Morton Marcus * Renay <> Contemporary American Poetry
> ~ Blue's Cruzio Cafe ~ <>http://members.cruzio.com/~cafe- Hide quoted text -
Sherrie Lee
that's not all arms do
not all arms go boo
mmm... buttery corn?
rubbery porn?
if I could I certainly would
eat my words
if they be birds
not birds' turds
especially if they're turkeys
which I prefer to a flock of fleece
sheep shit, bull shit
might as well be bird shit!
So sorry for the direct hit!
Well, not!
Because he started it!
I think.
Who needs to think
when the thread's right here
all you need is one good ear
Actually if you look at the replies
you need only a pair of eyes
That's not true
One good eye will do
to see a kernel of truth in all the shit
in my confessional I must admit
some shit is full of nuts
see how he or she rebuts?
but I should say "we"
and sound hoity toity
as I am sometimes I think
as if mine don't stink!
Dennis M. Hammes
Couple Victorians, couple Impressionists, IIRC.
And Hardy didn't start writing poetry until he was over 50, but I
remind you he wrote his novels for their income /first/, because he
knew he wouldn't get a living from the pomes.
And though I'd been in commercial art since high school, I didn't
start figure drawing until I was, um, 40.
But I think you'd have a /much/ easier time fixing a poem of that
than painting it. It's already rather a series of haiku, and the
worst thing about it is the obvious reaching for rhyme here and there.
(Rhymes come from lists of words that rhyme, chosen for their
having /something/ to do with the subject. It tends to make, at
least allow, the periods of exposition/argument coincide with the
periods of sound. It doesn't alter the fact or the technique that
somebody, say, should do this from litses in his head almost as fast
as he can scribble, because I guarantee he didn't /start/ that way.
He spent hours, days, even months, fixing it /here/ only to watch the
pressures shove something out of place over there.)
Dennis M. Hammes
> "OB" <nevil...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>I'll let you into a secret: there's an unwritten line at the end of
>>every poem I write which goes:
>>
>><sigh> I wish I'd learned to paint.
>>
>>Most of what I'm trying to do seems to beg for a canvas rather than a
>>blank page. Do you know anyone who learned to paint at 46 and made a
>>go of it?
>
>
> What's "made a go of it" look like to you? Fame, fortune, wild, amoral
> young women kneeling at the alter of your creativity? How 'bout an
> endless supply of really good coffee? Smiles on old folks' faces?
> Property in Texas? Humbolt County, California? What?
>
> -blue
>
Heh.
"So much depends..."
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Um... I'd settle for some kid going up to one of my paintings and
> saying: "Hey! I know what that's meant to be! It's a cow! Look,
> there's the eyes..."
>
This is a test. We repeat, this is only a test.
When you pick up a pencil, do you doodle rhymes and phrases, or
cow eyes?
When you think of something, do you rummage phrases by which to
say it, or do you make cow eyes at it?
The phrase /to pneumatos `agion/, that King James renders as "The
Holy Ghost," is properly rendered "respect/reverence for the process
of language." Auden, describing in English the process in English,
put "passionate love of language."
I can't say the love of language in your piece is "passionate,"
but it's damwell there.
I can also say that if you'd really wanted to paint all this time,
you'd have been painting at least some of it and be on one of the
arts.binaries about it.
You seem to've been writing in some sense; that was no tyro's
first attempt.
But whether you admire Yeats, Casadesus, Halsman, Pauling, Renoir,
etc., the substance and craft of an art require some period of utter
dedication to kicking your fingers and ears and guts into doing it
/themselves/, leaving you free to "design."
Dennis M. Hammes
God, you make me sick.
>
>
>> Moore was there. Hayes was there. Owen was there. Chard was
>>there. Chamberlain was there. Jones was there. Raleigh was there.
>> Leonidas was there.
>
>
>
> It doesn't matter where anyone was. Owen glimpsed the Abyss in war;
> Teasdale while contemplating nature; Eliot in his daily routine.
> Today we don't notice it at all, as we live squarely inside it.
>
Speak for yourself.
Or, if that's the way you're gonna speak, just shut up.
I didn't stare down the fuken Abyss for three years or English for
35 so /you/ could sit there sucking your thumb, whining that
Everything Is For Nothing.
>
>
>> Teasdale wasn't, and wouldn't even attempt it by translation.
>> She heard Somebody Say it was "nasty" -- and she *agreed*.
>
>
>
> Teasdale says nothing about the war being *nasty*; once again, you've
> wandered off on your own musings and left the poem behind.
>
>
>
>> On the Green
>>
>>I've played the fields at Eton
>> With sweet Spring up to my knees,
>>Without my Queen to sweeten
>> But by thought, such stout and cheese,
>>
>>And here she matches pitch for
>> Pitch, and slice for slice, with me,
>>So what have you to bitch for,
>> Pilot, where the Spanish be?
>>
>>The wind is lee, the yards are set
>> The stays are at their strain,
>>And it is forty minutes yet
>> The Thames begins to drain.
>>
>>So quit your idle clatter,
>> Pilot; pour you some Pinot,
>>And all the pins will scatter
>> From the way you've held your throw.
>>
>
>
>
>
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> Yes, we're all now post-modern folk
> And meaning has become a joke.
> The cynic is esteemed the sage
> And metapop is all the rage.
>
The reason I had included the following piece, which you snipped to
write that little ditty without rebuttal, is that it answered not
only you, but Karla, Teasdale, and Arnold -- not only about the Abyss
but evidently about the purpose of staring into it.
And while it sounds a bit Cavalier (the speaker is put as Raleigh,
and it references his insisting on finishing a game of bowls before
setting out to settle the Armada), it's by one of your "post-modern
folk."
On the Green
I've played the fields at Eton
With sweet Spring up to my knees,
Without my Queen to sweeten
But by thought, such stout and cheese,
And here she matches pitch for
Pitch, and slice for slice, with me,
So what have you to bitch for,
Pilot, where the Spanish be?
The wind is lee, the yards are set
The stays are at their strain,
And it is forty minutes yet
The Thames begins to drain.
So quit your idle clatter,
Pilot; pour you some Pinot,
And all the pins will scatter
Dennis M. Hammes
>
> But none so far outdid in spleen
> that guy in Eccles. 1: 14.
>
I do not "negotiate"
For half my baby, Preacher; Fate;
The scary part of the Abyss?
It can't be filled with baby piss.
Dennis M. Hammes
> On Mar 14, 2:34 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@arvig.net> wrote:
>
>>Karla wrote:
>>
>>
>>The poet decides, a priori, what he's gonna write, and then,
>>regardless of what Nature and Nature's God tell him, writes it anyway.
>
>
>
> Although tthere's nothing left to say
> I'm gonna say it anyway
> And if you say that it's all shit
> I won't believe a word of it
> And if I a poet points it out
> I'll just ignore it, and I'll shout
> About her frogs, and trees, and birds
> So I won't think about her words.
>
Around the lilac and her birds
The dogs parade, and leave their turds;
To wear the lilac takes such whim
As does not seek to step in them.
Dennis M. Hammes
Because I could not stop for -- Death --
I stopped -- to take a pee --
Because it felt -- so goddam' good --
The Tortoise got -- by me --
Dennis M. Hammes
> On Mar 14, 3:27 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@arvig.net> wrote:
>
>>jack austin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
>>>evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
>>>love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
>>>spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>>
>>>jack
>>
>>By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
>>the reading, writing, researching.
>
>
>
> Of course we know that that is dumb
> When we're as comfortably numb
> But if we do all the right motions
> We just might feel some real emotions
> At least, someone might think we do
> And that's enough for me - And you?
>
The world has got no greater stink
Than them as care what people think;
You may as well admit you kissed
A fuken sociologist.
Dennis M. Hammes
> "George Dance" <george...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:1173887081.9...@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>
>>On Mar 14, 3:27 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@arvig.net> wrote:
>>
>>>jack austin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>oh, had i but time enough, i'd love to spend my afternoons and
>>>>evenings bandying on about such matters; i'm envious. as much as i
>>>>love my job, it takes up so much of my time that could much better
>>>>spent reading, writing, researching. how do you guys do it?
>>>
>>>>jack
>>>
>>>By abandoning the Upper Middle Class to our cliches in order to do
>>>the reading, writing, researching.
>>
>>
>>Of course we know that that is dumb
>>When we're as comfortably numb
>>But if we do all the right motions
>>We just might feel some real emotions
>>At least, someone might think we do
>>And that's enough for me - And you?
>
>
> When a mushroom clound shadows the roses
> And the fallout lands on the hill
> The poets have died in the marketplace
> Captain Kirk cannot deal with the trills
>
The trouble with tribbles is tribbles will breed
Much faster than one Federation can feed
The result on fat bucks well-augmented with thin does --
It's more than a little like RAM versus Windows.
But UseNet lets poets write one set of quibbles
That feed /any/ number of squabbling tribbles,
So squabble and dribble, refusing to kiss --
One tribble will even fill up The Abyss.