Poet Jeet Thayil to read in NY on July 21
Philip Nikolayev
From: Rattapallax Press
Location: Drink Me Cafe (www.drinkmecafe.com)
620 E 6th St. between avenues B & C, New York, NY View Map
When: Wednesday, July 21, 7:00pm
Phone: 212-420-0002
Jeet Thayil will read from his new collection of poems 'English'
(Penguin/Rattapallax, 2004) followed by signing, wining, and music.
We hope you can join us.
For more information about 'English' visit
www.rattapallax.com/thayil.htm
Arindam Banerjee
> I highly recommend this reading. Thayil is an amazing poet.
Is there anything by him available on the net? Thanks.
pund kamath
> ph...@kandasoft.com (Philip Nikolayev) wrote in message news:<a7370245.04071...@posting.google.com>...
..Unfortunately, this poet can be pretty jealous of success of other
writers of Indian origin. He is also a strong Indian nationalist.
Arindam Banerjee
Really? That should be amusing.
> He is also a strong Indian nationalist.
Any particular political stripe?
pund kamath
> > writers of Indian origin.
>
> Really? That should be amusing.
>
> > He is also a strong Indian nationalist.
>
Keep reading his columns. You will find out yourself.
I don't why he snipes at 'Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner? ( who
is 32, and was born to Bengali Indian parents in London, raised and
studied in USA).
He is a typical person of Indian origin who believes that every other
PIO should carry on with unnessary cultural baggage and should become
overseas member of VHP!
Arindam Banerjee
Just read his poem "Monsoon" on the Internet. Jeet writes a lot like Philip N.
harmony
"pund kamath" <pund_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b9ca4079.04072...@posting.google.com...
well, to a congressi thug like you, hindu culture always is a baggage. he
has pride - WELL JUSTIFIED PRIDE.
Philip Nikolayev
> ..Unfortunately, this poet can be pretty jealous of success of other
> writers of Indian origin. He is also a strong Indian nationalist.
I know Jeet very well, and he is a great poet and in some sense a
model human being. I assure you he is no nationalist of any kind. I
don't believe that he is jealous of anyone's success, but it's
possible not to like other writers or be critical of them without
feeling in the least jealous.
Philip Nikolayev
Philip Nikolayev
> well, to a congressi thug like you, hindu culture always is a baggage. he
> has pride - WELL JUSTIFIED PRIDE.
Jeet is not a Hindu but a Syrian Christian.
Philip
Philip Nikolayev
> Just read his poem "Monsoon" on the Internet. Jeet writes a lot like Philip N.
I do feel a kinship. However, there's no influence. We are fast
friends but have known each other and each other's work for less than
a year. I blurbed his latest book, _English_ (Penguin & Rattapallax),
and can't praise it enough.
Good to see you around, Arindam.
Cheers,
PN
harmony
"Philip Nikolayev" <ph...@kandasoft.com> wrote in message
news:a7370245.0407...@posting.google.com...
if it surprises you, some sc do have a pride in hindu civilization - because
sc were in india over more than 1500 years - unlike congressi and commie
"hindus" who find hindu culture a baggage.
> Philip
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote
>
> > Just read his poem "Monsoon" on the Internet. Jeet writes a lot like Philip N.
>
> I do feel a kinship. However, there's no influence.
Perhaps not. But I did think I was reading you when I read that poem.
But then, it is quite a few years since I read your work in Usenet,
Philip. You probably have matured a lot since then.
We are fast
> friends but have known each other and each other's work for less than
> a year. I blurbed his latest book, _English_ (Penguin & Rattapallax),
> and can't praise it enough.
>
> Good to see you around, Arindam.
Thanks, and nice to hear from you too.
>
> Cheers,
>
> PN
pund kamath
Philip - dear chap:
I find feelings of bitterness and envy are nothing new in the history
of mankind. Poets, writers, scientists, artists etc. are not immune
either. Some express it in a crude fashion and in some sentiments of
sadness or detachment. Take the example of poets of ancient India
who knew neither publishing houses ( of New York or London) nor
publicity nor best sellers, they were not unaware literary battles- or
of irony:
Kalidasa and the other poets?
Well, we’re poets too.
The galaxy and the atom
Both are matter: both exist
-Krishnabhatta
(The above is the translation by Octavio Paz, poet, diplomat,
Indologist, ambassador to India and Mexican Nobel Laureate for
literature.)
Can Jeet Thayil learn a little from others from the past ?
I have nothing against talents of Thayil’s or his poetry. I
wish him success.
I read his poem ‘Monsoon. I found a weak point - that his a love
for useless complications , ornamentation, overwhelming
picturesqueness.
But then every has his own taste. My feelings are different as they
themselves were deeply influenced by a rich experience of rain and
wind from monsoon diven land.
Philip Nikolayev
> > adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote
> Perhaps not. But I did think I was reading you when I read that poem.
> But then, it is quite a few years since I read your work in Usenet,
> Philip. You probably have matured a lot since then.
I assure you Jeet is a master quite in his own right. Don't get
fixated on one poem, read his book. It's major poetry.
As to whether I've matured, who knows, depends on the day you ask! But
my work can be found.
http://www.versepress.org/nikolayev.html
http://jacketmagazine.com/23/mazer-nikol.html
And elsewhere by searching.
Hope all is well!
Philip
pund kamath
> if it surprises you, some sc do have a pride in hindu civilization - because
> sc were in india over more than 1500 years - unlike congressi and commie
Are you a temporary or a permanent goon in the employe of Narendra
Modi? I mean one who goes about beating and murdering helpless Muslim
citizens in Gujarath?
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.0407...@posting.google.com>...
> > > adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote
>
> > Perhaps not. But I did think I was reading you when I read that poem.
> > But then, it is quite a few years since I read your work in Usenet,
> > Philip. You probably have matured a lot since then.
>
> I assure you Jeet is a master quite in his own right. Don't get
> fixated on one poem, read his book. It's major poetry.
What's that, and why?
> As to whether I've matured, who knows, depends on the day you ask! But
> my work can be found.
>
> http://www.versepress.org/nikolayev.html
> http://jacketmagazine.com/23/mazer-nikol.html
Looks like you have published a book of poems, "Monkey Time".
Congratulations! I would like to buy a copy, if I could. But I
haven't bought anything from the net so far.
> And elsewhere by searching.
>
> Hope all is well!
I am doing pretty well, thanks. Hope the same for you.
> Philip
pund kamath
> if it surprises you, some sc do have a pride in hindu civilization - because
> sc were in india over more than 1500 years - unlike congressi and commie
Are you by chance, a biological freak where your anus and mouth are interchanged?
Philip Nikolayev
> ph...@kandasoft.com (Philip Nikolayev) wrote in message news:<a7370245.0407...@posting.google.com>...
> > adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.0407...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote
>
> > > Perhaps not. But I did think I was reading you when I read that poem.
> > > But then, it is quite a few years since I read your work in Usenet,
> > > Philip. You probably have matured a lot since then.
> >
> > I assure you Jeet is a master quite in his own right. Don't get
> > fixated on one poem, read his book. It's major poetry.
>
> What's that, and why?
The link re. Jeet Thayil's book, _English_ (Penguin & Rattapallax,
2004) is
http://www.rattapallax.com/thayil.htm
You can find some blurbs there, including my own, which summarizes
what I have to say about him. And there's a link from there to some
poems too.
Best,
PN
Arindam Banerjee
I saw the "poems". Well, they do show honestly the attitudes Indian
non-Hindus have towards Hinduism in general and Brahmins in
particular; without such negative attitudes how could they be
published in the West? No, they aren't anything other than more
packaged propaganda from a sad ignorant prejudiced heart.
>
> Best,
>
> PN
joe green
poems appeared in the same issue. At last you are at the party! You
are well dressed and you think and feeling quite witty. Then you look
around and see someone absolutely glittering and you realize that you
are wearing a rented suit and sporting a goon tie of the sort that
went out of fashion when your father gave up smoking unfiltered Pall
Malls (June 2nd, 1954) but you are happy because really this is why
you showed up to the party at all. Jeet's poems are the real thing.
Philip's description in the requisite blurb just outlines and hints
at what is there in his poems. Reading them you, right then, prefer
"Enlish" to "English." The example, I guess, some here have read is
"Monsoon."
Look, it's dangerous to attempt something like this: a description, an
attempt to make you see in the good old Joseph Conrad sense and then
an attempt to make it particular, point to various strangenesses that
overcome the usual. It's all one sentence!
It's easy to see the headlong rushings, the holding backs, the moves
that allow language to imitate actions and forces but what takes this
to the limits and breaks through limits is the emotional force each
line, gesture, image has each lending an aura to each and rushing just
where – to a last line that avoids the expected.
Poetry (I think anyway) is what gets said in spite of various sorts of
tyrannies. Overcome them, escape them, free whatever is oppressed. In
this instance in just one of his poems Jeet manages to do this and the
way he does it is particular enough that the poem takes a place with
all those other instances of neverbeforeness that are poems.
This happens in Jeet's poems again and again. They're splendid gifts
just because they are something new which, now that they exist, are
seen to have always been necessary.
pund kamath
> I had some poems published in Fulcrum a year ago. Three of Jeet's
> poems appeared in the same issue. At last you are at the party! You
> are well dressed and you think and feeling quite witty. Then you look
> around and see someone absolutely glittering and you realize that you
> are wearing a rented suit and sporting a goon tie of the sort that
> went out of fashion when your father gave up smoking unfiltered Pall
> Malls (June 2nd, 1954) but you are happy because really this is why
> you showed up to the party at all. Jeet's poems are the real thing.
Can you summarize what you have written in your post? It comes across
as post modern prose!!! Or is it some kind disjointed stuff.-a poet's
licence to express anything!!
Arindam Banerjee
> poems appeared in the same issue. At last you are at the party! You
> are well dressed and you think and feeling quite witty. Then you look
> around and see someone absolutely glittering and you realize that you
> are wearing a rented suit and sporting a goon tie of the sort that
> went out of fashion when your father gave up smoking unfiltered Pall
> Malls (June 2nd, 1954) but you are happy because really this is why
> you showed up to the party at all. Jeet's poems are the real thing.
No, they are not. I would not call them poetry at all. But then, we
have to agree on what is poetry, first. To call that stuff of Jeet's
poetry, would demean the whole idea behind poetry, reducing it all to
rubbish. If that is poetry, then what is the stuff Shakespeare wrote?
It would make the work of Browning and Shakespeare far too good, and
by implication far above human consumption for most people to try out,
and see how they work for them. Which is not what it should be; the
poems of the greatest poets should be part of the daily life and
breath of human beings. This is the traditional Indian idea behind
poetry, if not the modern Western conception as forced upon the public
by those who write and publish modern poetry. Nonsense and mediocrity
should not be allowed to topple or stifle past or potential greatness,
by sheer Goebbelsian repetition and hand-waving of the unknown and
unfelt nonexistent merits. When lousy poets are given the greatest
honours, greater poets turn away naturally, and all the public get, or
can get, are lousy poems passing for great poetry. Which, for them,
kills their whole feeling for poetry, and thus become addicted to
television. Without poetry of any kind, people become mechanical and
both part and fodder of the heartless money-driven systems - and those
few with any humanity left, despise themselves for what they have
become. One can thus make a direct correlation between the public's
attitude in English-speaking countries to their ongoing bastardy in
Iraq, with the near-death of good poetry there.
> Philip's description in the requisite blurb just outlines and hints
> at what is there in his poems. Reading them you, right then, prefer
> "Enlish" to "English." The example, I guess, some here have read is
> "Monsoon."
I read a few others pointed out. "Monsoon" was immature, but the rest
were worse. Why drag in the chattering of Brahmins into an elegy for
Dom Moraes, if not for propaganda? Also, Jeet repeats themes that are
by now tired and simply unworkable - the fatalism and apathy
supposedly in what he thinks is Hinduism.
> Look, it's dangerous to attempt something like this: a description, an
> attempt to make you see in the good old Joseph Conrad sense and then
> an attempt to make it particular, point to various strangenesses that
> overcome the usual. It's all one sentence!
So already, it is necessary to lean upon some other crutch - Conrad -
for support. But good poetry should not need such support - poetry is
the voice of the poet and no one else's. It may reflect the desires
and attributes of his patron (which could be God) but it most
certainly should not depend upon the styles of other writers.
> It's easy to see the headlong rushings, the holding backs, the moves
> that allow language to imitate actions and forces but what takes this
> to the limits and breaks through limits is the emotional force each
> line, gesture, image has each lending an aura to each and rushing just
> where ? to a last line that avoids the expected.
Hand-waving. This could be said of any shopping list, or any recipe.
I find much more poetry and drama in a shopping-list or a recipe, than
any kind of modern poetry that gets published.
One headlong rushes to the chocolate, then holds back the quantity to
be bought, moves one's eyes through the larder, writes down with
difficulty on a scrap of paper what must be bought - and every line of
it brings emotional force when the prices are seen in the supermarket,
or the options sought; and at the end, when the sum is shown, and the
money isn't there - well, that is unexpected, or isn't it?
> Poetry (I think anyway) is what gets said in spite of various sorts of
> tyrannies.
You are wrong. Historically, poetry is what has been patronised by
so-called tyrants. It is to please tyrants (actually benevolent
self-sacrificing rulers, modern "democratic" thugs naturally abuse
their memory by picking on the worst among them) that poets wrote
poetry, to extol the tyrants sometimes, praise their deeds, etc.
Otherwise, they were allowed to write upon mythological subjects.
Which is how we learn so much about the past. So, Kalidas wrote his
immortal works under the patronage of Emperor Vikramaditya; Chand
Bardai wrote "Prithviraj Raso" to celebrate Prithviraj, and in modern
times Rabindranath composed our national anthem originally as a
tribute to the British Emperor George 5. So, the poet was basically a
writer who wrote for money and recognition from the ruling powers.
Unless he was a king himself, like Shri Harsha or even Henry 8. If he
was a Shakespeare, he needed patronage from the lord of Southampton.
Modern tyrants like Don Trump and Bill Gates should patronise poets,
and make them write sonnets or whatever to their personal praise and
their great efforts. That will be so much better for poets - they
will get better served than the $10 they may get by publishing their
work in arty magazines few people touch. I can think of nothing that
will serve the cause of poetry better, than poetry-loving tyrants. As
opposed to money-bestowing politicised committees run by thugs of
various kinds, all united in mediocrity at very best.
> Overcome them, escape them, free whatever is oppressed. In
> this instance in just one of his poems Jeet manages to do this and the
> way he does it is particular enough that the poem takes a place with
> all those other instances of neverbeforeness that are poems.
Evidently you have no idea about the way the monsoon is treated by
genuine Indian poets like Tagore, Vidyapati, and so many others in so
many poems and songs in all Indian languages. Mr Kamath's pertinent
comments may be seen in this light. In the English language, even
Arundhuti Roy does better in the first pages of her book, she has more
grip in her prose.
> This happens in Jeet's poems again and again. They're splendid gifts
> just because they are something new which, now that they exist, are
> seen to have always been necessary.
One selects the "newness" one wants, evidently.
Arindam Banerjee.
G*rd*n
adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee):
> No, they are not. I would not call them poetry at all. But then, we
> have to agree on what is poetry, first. To call that stuff of Jeet's
> poetry, would demean the whole idea behind poetry, reducing it all to
> rubbish. If that is poetry, then what is the stuff Shakespeare wrote?
> ...
Poetry is the only art I know of, where it is customary to
say of work one doesn't like, that it is not an example of
the art at all. A bad painting is still a painting, bad
sculpture is still sculpture. But a bad attempt at a poem
is thrown completely out of the temple. It's "not poetry."
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 5/10/04 <-adv't
Chandra P. Das
>>...
>
>
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee):
>
>>No, they are not. I would not call them poetry at all. But then, we
>>have to agree on what is poetry, first. To call that stuff of Jeet's
>>poetry, would demean the whole idea behind poetry, reducing it all to
>>rubbish. If that is poetry, then what is the stuff Shakespeare wrote?
>>...
>
>
> Poetry is the only art I know of, where it is customary to
> say of work one doesn't like, that it is not an example of
> the art at all. A bad painting is still a painting, bad
> sculpture is still sculpture. But a bad attempt at a poem
> is thrown completely out of the temple. It's "not poetry."
>
Accurate observation. But if you spend enough time with poets then
you'll understand that these kinds of overblown pronouncements are so
common that they're pretty much automatically filtered out of the realm
of collective impact. I don't think most of Thayil's poems are any
better or worse than the better poems that are posted in rec.arts.poems.
That is to say that he's definitely a decent poet capable of writing
readable verse. But I've only read about five or six of his poems so I
shouldn't say much more, except maybe that I couldn't help getting the
impression that he's trying to capitalize on the trans-cultural
movement. I'm not entirely sure that he's not just another typical
third-world immigrant looking to implement some clever derivative of
affirmative action into the realm of poetry, asking to be 'heard out',
exploiting the western intellectual's general sympathy and interest in
Indian culture by various superficial tricks of context bombings and
emotional blackmail. It does get boring and predictable after a while.
I'd definitely recommend reading five or six of Jeet Thayil's poems
which can be easily found free of charge through a google search.
No need to purchase his book, unless you're feeling exceptionally
charitable.
joe green
vaunting of prejudice and opinion and, one hopes, willful
misunderstandings of my appreciation for Jeet's poems without giving
oneself over altogether to a feeling of utter hopelessness (one,
somehow believing that outside the Awfulness of the Awful in one's own
Awful clime it is not a dead certainty that the Awful, in its Usual
form, will not be encountered). Therefore this cannot be a serious
reply. So…just a few points.
My reference to Conrad was to Conrad's world famous assertion that he
wants (when describing this in that in his Conradly fashion) to "make
us see." And I am simply asserting that Jeet does this and then ever
so much more. The ever so much more the bliss that one appreciates.
Your theory that great poets descend into some hopeless sulk when
lesser poets are honored (justifying, I suppose, your refusal even to
grant Jeet's wonderful poetry the name of poetry) is quite wrong.
Great poets find it rather bracing when this happens. After all they
are intelligent men and women with, many times, the comprehensive view
of the human condition that, oddly, helps them create great poetry.
Of course they are not this simpleminded.
You miss the point – of course – of my reference to poetry as what
gets said in spite of this and that tyranny. You create a history
whereby great poets are the toadies of tyrants and therefore conclude
that, of course, all they produce is what is allowed, what their
patrons want and so on. Of course, the entire history of poetry is
full of great poets who do exactly the opposite. The fact that in
fact the opposite of what you say occurs occurs should, if I am any
judge, in no way prevent you from accepting your own theory with
wonder and righteousness.
Really, you are being silly.
adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.04080...@posting.google.com>...
joe green
Of course this:
I'm not entirely sure that he's not just another typical
> third-world immigrant looking to implement some clever derivative of
> affirmative action into the realm of poetry, asking to be 'heard out',
> exploiting the western intellectual's general sympathy and interest in
> Indian culture by various superficial tricks of context bombings and
> emotional blackmail. It does get boring and predictable after a while.
while masqerading as just your opinion -- you not being entirely sure
of such and such -- is intended to cast suspicion and seem definitive.
But this is, in fact, merely an assertion of a prejudice in its exact
sense -- you judging before the fact and letting your suspicions taint
your evaluation -- while at the same time, I suppose, wanting to seem
quite reasonable. The decent thing to do -- having asserted this --
or while asserting it -- would be to demonstrate this in the poems.
A logical reply -- absent any sort of REASONED evaluation would be
that, of course you would think this -- having something to gain from
seeming above it all and in a position to judge.
But, so far, you have given no indication that you possess the
requisite sensibility that would lead someone who is not Jeet's
cultured despiser to believe that you can judge poetry at all. Now,
an explication of some poems showing just where this happens presented
in a way that would convince someone who is a student of poetry in the
old sense would be wonderful. Why don't you attempt that so that we
might attributes some notion of fair play and good sense to you?
Joe Green
Associate Professor
Waindell College
joe green
If you think this is post-modern prose, then please do not apply for
admission to my Joyce seminar. Thanking you in advance I am
joe green
> > I had some poems published in Fulcrum a year ago. Three of Jeet's
> > poems appeared in the same issue. At last you are at the party! You
> > are well dressed and you think and feeling quite witty. Then you look
> > around and see someone absolutely glittering and you realize that you
> > are wearing a rented suit and sporting a goon tie of the sort that
> > went out of fashion when your father gave up smoking unfiltered Pall
> > Malls (June 2nd, 1954) but you are happy because really this is why
> > you showed up to the party at all. Jeet's poems are the real thing.
>
> No, they are not. I would not call them poetry at all. But then, we
> have to agree on what is poetry, first. To call that stuff of Jeet's
> poetry, would demean the whole idea behind poetry, reducing it all to
> rubbish. If that is poetry, then what is the stuff Shakespeare wrote?
> It would make the work of Browning and Shakespeare far too good, and
> by implication far above human consumption for most people to try out,
> and see how they work for them.
I wonder if you may be another embittered Browning scholar like poor
Professor Zamtz of Cremona College, who, wandering too close to the
bonfire during the Cremona College Homecoming was utterly consumed by
flames and is said to haunt the campus, on nights in October,
waylaying poor freshmen and reciting "Pippa Passes."
Anent the discussion of poetry escaping tyranny you write:
If he
> was a Shakespeare, he needed patronage from the lord of Southampton.
confusing what the poor Bard did to survive or flourish in certain
conditions with what the Bard wrote. If you think that the Bard wrote
poetry that supported various forms of tyranny (staying for an instant
in certain simplicities and ignoring the tyranny of the banal which is
more to the point) you are a very defective reader of the plays. Of
what possible interest would they be if all they were were various
forms of propoganda written so that the Bard might survive? Utter
nonsense.
Poetry (as I have asserted) escapes various tyrannies -- and, of
course, the political sort is just one sort. Of course. Let's raise
this discussion to a higher level and leave behind these various
cravings to reduce it all to the mundane and simplistic.
Philip Nikolayev
So here I am perplexed and wondering whether it's possible or
advisable to respond to you at all. I, like you, originated in a
population where just about anyone somewhat literate had plenty of
ardent things to say about poets and poetry and what they should and
should not be like. Life is too short to deeply react to everything
one hears. So let me ask you this: what's it to you anyway?
It's plain to me that you simply don't get Jeet Thayil's poems. In the
poem that you mention, the elegy for Dom Moraes, there is no mention
of "chattering Brahmins." You could have spent a little effort at
figuring out what the poem says and means, and why it needs to say
"Priests and monkeys chatter like static." There is a specific issue
at hand there (let me know if you have trouble with it). Once have you
understood what goes on in the poem, perhaps you'd no longer see any
"propaganda" in it. But the fact that you feel the need to distort
what this and the other poems say and to invent references to
"chattering Brahmins" and "Hindus" (none of the poems refer to any
generalized "Hindus") makes me think that you are not without some
propaganda of your own. The poems I pointed out to you have nothing to
say about "attitudes toward Hindus"--they talk about things altogether
different.
Incidentally, I don't know if this matters but Thayil is married to a
Hindu, who is also--guess what--a Brahmin, and they get along simply
great. Does this make you feel better?
"Money-driven systems"? Another irrelevance in this misdirected stream
of propaganda from you. I assure you that Jeet leads a poor life and,
like many of us, is not making any money at all on poetry.
So what's all this to you, really? Are you a poet? Then by all means
let's see some of your own superior work. Is it worthy of Shakespeare?
Or are you one of those not uncommon types who imagine that the poets
owe you something and that you have something useful to teach them and
that you need to defend a true idea of poetry against their
encroachments? There's nothing more laughable than the passionate
self-importance of mere poetry-lovers.
Best,
Philip Nikolayev
adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.04080...@posting.google.com>...
Chandra P. Das
> Of course this:
>
> I'm not entirely sure that he's not just another typical
>
>>third-world immigrant looking to implement some clever derivative of
>>affirmative action into the realm of poetry, asking to be 'heard out',
>>exploiting the western intellectual's general sympathy and interest in
>>Indian culture by various superficial tricks of context bombings and
>>emotional blackmail. It does get boring and predictable after a while.
>
> while masqerading as just your opinion --
Nah, I'll retract that comment if you don't mind. Upon reading it again
I realize how terribly insulting it was and unjustified as well.
Apologies to Jeet's fans whom I might have offended. The guy is not a
bad poet at all, and I said this in my post. "Beelzebub slumming in
Bombay" (or some such, can't remember) was a pretty good read.
Arindam Banerjee
> Ah, well, it is impossible to sincerely reply to your glorious
> vaunting of prejudice and opinion and, one hopes, willful
> misunderstandings of my appreciation for Jeet's poems without giving
> oneself over altogether to a feeling of utter hopelessness
One gets that naturally, from the reaction of others to anything
outside their comfort zone, and learns to overcome it, and divert
one's energies elsewhere, when one is a self-respecting and
uncompromising person.
The unnecessary anti-Brahmin prejudice shown by the likes of Jeet, as
part of their perhaps inevitably necessary sucking-up process, to get
the favour of the ruling religious fanatics in US/UK, indeed seems
disgusting to me. In the "revolutionary" 60s-70s such was the norm;
today it looks just dated and spineless. Please remember that as an
Indian I am secular and tolerant, and cannot appreciate mindless
sectarian prejudices. I would have been equally unhappy if Muslims
were unnecessarily targeted, which is why I also despise Rushdie.
(one,
> somehow believing that outside the Awfulness of the Awful in one's own
> Awful clime it is not a dead certainty that the Awful, in its Usual
> form, will not be encountered).
Howling rubbish, that seems to be your forte. But, you may seem to
think that could pass for poetry.
Therefore this cannot be a serious
> reply. So?just a few points.
>
> My reference to Conrad was to Conrad's world famous assertion that he
> wants (when describing this in that in his Conradly fashion) to "make
> us see."
Could anyone understand from your reference to Conrad that out of all
the things the man wrote or stood for "make us see" was what you were
actually referring to about him? Must one know or like Conrad to like
Jeet? Do you think there is an automatic psychic process exists which
makes your readers understand what is going on in your own brain? Or
is this some particular malady modern poets are afflicted with?
And I am simply asserting that Jeet does this and then ever
> so much more. The ever so much more the bliss that one appreciates.
Evidently I missed all that. Any competent wannabe-poet can turn out
stuff like that by the yard. Still, if he makes you blissful, what is
there for me to complain? Those who like Jeet can have Jeet.
> Your theory that great poets descend into some hopeless sulk when
> lesser poets are honored (justifying, I suppose, your refusal even to
> grant Jeet's wonderful poetry the name of poetry)
Anything any competent wannabe-poet can turn out by the yard, or
extempore, cannot be called great poetry. Or even poetry. Poetry
requires a lot of time, thought, endeavour, experience, control, moral
sense, love of nature... In India, great poets are naturally honoured,
as this slimy business of putting up some inferior as a great poet by
a few select privileged types does not exist! We have kavi-sammelans,
where many poets recite their works in public. The public decides
after the readings who is best. In the past, there used to be
"kobir-lorai" of "poet-fights". They usually dissolved in abuse, but
for a while could be interesting. In any case, bad poets were weeded
out and only the good ones, approved by popular choice, remained. In
short, it was a purely Darwinian business. The net result is that the
public knows what is good art and what is bad art, they are brought up
that way.
is quite wrong.
> Great poets find it rather bracing when this happens. After all they
> are intelligent men and women with, many times, the comprehensive view
> of the human condition that, oddly, helps them create great poetry.
> Of course they are not this simpleminded.
I would think that a great poet who knows he is a great poet depends
not upon the acclaim of a few privileged people, but judges his impact
and derives satisfaction from the respect and affection given him by
the masses. When the system is such that bad poets are honoured by
the few, he may vent his grievance, not for his own sake, but for the
cause of Art, out of a sense of duty.
> You miss the point ? of course ? of my reference to poetry as what
> gets said in spite of this and that tyranny. You create a history
> whereby great poets are the toadies of tyrants
Actually, I am redefining tyrants and tyranny from their popular
sense. In the past, tyrant was just the name for king or absolute
ruler, who derived his authority from the will of his people.
and therefore conclude
> that, of course, all they produce is what is allowed, what their
> patrons want and so on. Of course, the entire history of poetry is
> full of great poets who do exactly the opposite. The fact that in
> fact the opposite of what you say occurs occurs should, if I am any
> judge, in no way prevent you from accepting your own theory with
> wonder and righteousness.
The tyranny of the ignorant, incompetent and mediocre represeting the
majority, and thrusting their own opinions down their throat, is the
most damning for both great poets and great poetry.
> Really, you are being silly.
If you think anyone not your type to consider Jeet a great poet, you
are being more silly. :) :)
Arindam Banerjee
Professor Zamtz of Cremona College, who, wandering too close to the
bonfire during the Cremona College Homecoming was utterly consumed by
flames and is said to haunt the campus, on nights in October,
waylaying poor freshmen and reciting "Pippa Passes."
AB: I certainly read Browning, whom I consider England's greatest
poet, with joy and respect. A marvellous poet, the best in the age of
poetry! But, I do not consider myself a Browning scholar, just
someone who loves his works. I have tried to do justice to Browning,
by translating his "Muleykeh" to Bengali, and maybe I will recite that
to my friends this weekend. As for fiery end of the late Professor
Zamtz of Cremona College, I do hope that I have the good fortune to
share his fate, but ceremonially, and after my natural death.
Anent the discussion of poetry escaping tyranny you write:
If he
> was a Shakespeare, he needed patronage from the lord of Southampton.
confusing what the poor Bard did to survive or flourish in certain
conditions with what the Bard wrote. If you think that the Bard wrote
poetry that supported various forms of tyranny
AB: He certainly praised tyrants like Henry8 and his daughter to the
skies, and had a great contempt for the demagoguery implicit in the
democratic process.
(staying for an instant
in certain simplicities and ignoring the tyranny of the banal which is
more to the point) you are a very defective reader of the plays.
Of
what possible interest would they be if all they were were various
forms of propoganda written so that the Bard might survive? Utter
nonsense.
AB: Nonsense or not, without the patronage of tyrants we do not have
good poetry. Twentieth century poetry was thus a wasteland, as there
were no good tyrants around, only murderers posing as tyrants. Poets
need poetry-loving tyrants to support them, the more they are in
number the better for them. Painters got paid for painting or
sculpting tyrants, so why should poets not depend upon tyrants as
well? Basically, what is necessary is for the tyrants of our time -
billionaires, CEOs - to recognise their obligation to poetry among
other arts, and directly patronise poets, without depending upon
committees stuffed with academics.
Poetry (as I have asserted) escapes various tyrannies -- and, of
course, the political sort is just one sort. Of course. Let's raise
this discussion to a higher level and leave behind these various
cravings to reduce it all to the mundane and simplistic.
AB: But don't you say, God lies in the details? We cannot dismiss the
mundane and simplistic, we should express them better, if we are good
artists, no? So, under the touchstone of the artist, the supposedly
mundane and simplistic become relevant and simple.
Replying to Philip, now.
Arindam,
So here I am perplexed and wondering whether it's possible or
advisable to respond to you at all.
AB: I won't try to upset you, Philip. You at least I always
recognised had the heart and soul of a poet, as your works made a
lasting impact upon me quite a while ago.
I, like you, originated in a
population where just about anyone somewhat literate had plenty of
ardent things to say about poets and poetry and what they should and
should not be like. Life is too short to deeply react to everything
one hears. So let me ask you this: what's it to you anyway?
AB: One has a basic choice, Philip - to react as much as one can, or
remain indifferent. Since I think poetry is very important, I do
react at times. One must have a sense of proportion. To call someone
great is fine, but one need not expect others to share the same
elation. The response to any art is always a subjective issue. I
only expressed my sentiments.
It's plain to me that you simply don't get Jeet Thayil's poems. In the
poem that you mention, the elegy for Dom Moraes, there is no mention
of "chattering Brahmins." You could have spent a little effort at
figuring out what the poem says and means, and why it needs to say
"Priests and monkeys chatter like static." There is a specific issue
at hand there (let me know if you have trouble with it). Once have you
understood what goes on in the poem, perhaps you'd no longer see any
"propaganda" in it. But the fact that you feel the need to distort
what this and the other poems say and to invent references to
"chattering Brahmins" and "Hindus" (none of the poems refer to any
generalized "Hindus") makes me think that you are not without some
propaganda of your own. The poems I pointed out to you have nothing to
say about "attitudes toward Hindus"--they talk about things altogether
different.
AB: Let me say that while this whole thing may not appear significant
to you, to me it is only a part of an established and all too familiar
pattern. Why should I be accused of propaganda-ising, I am only
reacting to propaganda. I did not start it. Let's say I see Jeet's
works from a different angle, one that you may be uncomfortable with.
And from that, I do not place him with great poets like Shelley or
Browning or Mrs Browning or Shakespeare or Hopkins or Wordsworth or
Tennyson or Milton. Nor with Auden or Eliot or Yeats or Graves or
Frost. Whatever went on in the poem was irrelevant to the typically
tangential sly reference, equating the language of priests (Sanskrit)
with the random and meaningless chatter of monkeys. Evidently, when
you are a spokesman for English, you have to pull down superior
languages.
Incidentally, I don't know if this matters but Thayil is married to a
Hindu, who is also--guess what--a Brahmin, and they get along simply
great. Does this make you feel better?
AB: It makes me feel indifferent. For my daughter's arangettam, which
has religious significance, my chief speaker was a Christian Catholic,
who is also a fine dancer and who even made the wonderful costumes.
These days, these labels have little meaning. One's religion is one's
own business, especially if one is economically self-sufficient; and
just because one is born to a Brahmin or Muslim family does not mean
that one has to pay allegiance to whatever values they are supposed to
hold.
"Money-driven systems"? Another irrelevance in this misdirected stream
of propaganda from you. I assure you that Jeet leads a poor life and,
like many of us, is not making any money at all on poetry.
AB: I can well understand that part. As far as I am concerned, I have
absolutely nothing against Jeet personally, and wish him all the best.
It is just that his works don't work for me. May work for others,
though. That's fine. And why task me for propaganda, when you are
quoting me out of some context that I cannot quite recollect? As far
as I am concerned, I am lamenting the lack of poets of the quality I
mentioned earlier, in our time; hopefully we will return to the age of
great poetry with the help of discerning modern tyrants who will
patronise poets in a direct way, without the help of academics or
committees. That would mean better business for poets, and also
improve the personal quality of the tyrants. Why can't poets make
money like other professionals? Like, they - the tyrants and wannabe
tyrants, maybe if we make it a snob thing it will work superbly - pay
poets certain sums to compose poems for various occasions. Or recite
them in public.
So what's all this to you, really? Are you a poet? Then by all means
let's see some of your own superior work. Is it worthy of Shakespeare?
AB: I think my translations of Shakespeare's sonnets to Bengali
improves the original, as Shakespeare was limited by the English
language - too small to hold his thoughts, which have been naturally
misunderstood by the English. Thus, I was brought up to think that
the sonnets were all in praise of homosexuality, for the sonnets show
that Shakespeare was "obviously" a homosexual!!! Yes, some of my
oldest friends have told me that there are many who find the
translations really very good, and that I should get them published.
Maybe I will, after I complete them. Let's see. You can find them on
Usenet, if you try searching google groups you cannot miss them if you
type "Translations of Shakespeare's Sonnet" as the search key. As for
other works, they are also there on Usenet, freely available both in
prose and verse. But no one has held me to be a great poet or writer,
and my efforts basically are for my own satisfaction; yet I am happy
to say that I now write as well as I want to, and ever wanted to.
Most certainly you can comment upon them as you wish, if you so wish,
but please remember that I hold myself as an *engineer* and not a
poet, for I earn my living through engineering.
Or are you one of those not uncommon types who imagine that the poets
owe you something and that you have something useful to teach them and
that you need to defend a true idea of poetry against their
encroachments?
AB: Poets are those whose works make an impact upon me, and for that,
I respect them. When I don't hold someone to be a poet, they are
really irrelevant to me, as poets. If others hold them to be poets,
that is their business. I only give my personal response. In my
culture, the sum of personal responses to a poet decides his worth or
relevance.
There's nothing more laughable than the passionate
self-importance of mere poetry-lovers.
AB: We are all important to ourselves. Those among us who are truly
blessed, are also important to others, in positive and meaningful
ways.
Best,
Philip Nikolayev
pund kamath
..
> > Can you summarize what you have written in your post? It comes across
> > as post modern prose!!! Or is it some kind disjointed stuff.-a poet's
> > licence to express anything!!
>
>
> If you think this is post-modern prose, then please do not apply for
> admission to my Joyce seminar. Thanking you in advance I am
> Joe Green
> Associate Professor
> Waindell College
haven't read even 0.000000001 percent of what is written so far by
good and bad writers. So why should I be curious and get interested in
somethying new?
To me post- modern prose-whatever that is ! sounds like a new brand of
skin lotion or hair colour on the market which claims better results
with a 'New Improved formula'. Good luck with your new students with
confused ideas!
P Kamath.
joe green
tangential sly reference, equating the language of priests (Sanskrit)
with the random and meaningless chatter of monkeys. Evidently, when
you are a spokesman for English, you have to pull down superior
languages.
Yes, I think Philip has demonstrated to you that what you reprehend in
Jeet's poems is something that isn't really there. It's all in the
nature of a private obsession. For example:
"Priests and monkeys
chatter like static; it
sifts the fine lines that halo
your head."
What is the "it?" The chattering? And what could it mean that the
"it" "sifts the fine lines that halo
your head?" And "sifts" – why just that word? And why would you say
that here the poet equates "priests" and "monkeys?" And "static" --
is it just something that interferes? What is its source.?
Is the poet describing how things seem to him at that instant or how
things are?
That is, is it just because "priests and monkeys" are linked in just
this instant that you have decided that the poet is making some sort
of straightforward statement about their equivalence always? How can
you possibly justify this – especially if you attempt to understand
the rest of the poem – what went before, what comes after?
If you are going to claim that a poem does this or that the least you
can do is try to demonstrate this in a convincing way – by engaging
with the complexity of the poem, by actually looking at what is there.
AB: Could anyone understand from your reference to Conrad that out of
all the things the man wrote or stood for "make us see" was what you
were actually referring to about him? Must one know or like Conrad to
like Jeet? Do you think there is an automatic psychic process exists
which makes your readers understand what is going on in your own
brain? Or is this some particular malady modern poets are afflicted
with?
Why, yes. Anyone could understand this.
I wrote: "Look, it's dangerous to attempt something like this: a
description, an attempt to make you see in the good old Joseph Conrad
sense and then an attempt to make it particular, point to various
strangenesses that overcome the usual. It's all one sentence!"
Very straightforward. All it depends on (if it really even depends on
that) is a knowledge of the most famous statement Conrad ever made
about his fiction.
"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written
word, to make you hear, to make you feel-it is above all, to make
you see." (Conrad 1897)
AB: In India, great poets are naturally honoured,
as this slimy business of putting up some inferior as a great poet by
a few select privileged types does not exist! We have kavi-sammelans,
where many poets recite their works in public. The public decides
after the readings who is best. In the past, there used to be
"kobir-lorai" of "poet-fights". They usually dissolved in abuse, but
for a while could be interesting. In any case, bad poets were weeded
out and only the good ones, approved by popular choice, remained. In
short, it was a purely Darwinian business. The net result is that the
public knows what is good art and what is bad art, they are brought up
that way.
And I thought this only happened in Ireland!
AB: In the past, tyrant was just the name for king or absolute
ruler, who derived his authority from the will of his people.
What past is this?
AB: I think my translations of Shakespeare's sonnets to Bengali
improves the original, as Shakespeare was limited by the English
language - too small to hold his thoughts, which have been naturally
misunderstood by the English. Thus, I was brought up to think that
the sonnets were all in praise of homosexuality, for the sonnets show
that Shakespeare was "obviously" a homosexual!!!
Good God – you could have read some criticism of the sonnets and
instantly disabused yourself of this notion. If you were "brought up"
to believe this (might be true – might not – but, of course, the
sonnets were not "all in praise of homosexuality) and believed it, and
it was and is the opinion of many, how is it that the public (we must
assume that many have the same notions you had) "knows what is good
art and what is bad art," because "they are brought up that way?"
But I have to tell you that I love the assertion that the sonnets have
been "naturally misunderstood by the English." You are probably right
and, as for Bengali versus English, I love that to. It would be
wonderful if it turns out to be true and, damn it, another opportunity
missed by me.
I am happy that you are not an embittered Browning scholar – for
their's is a bitter lot. Most of the Browning papers are in the
Browning Library in Waco, Texas. It doesn't take a lot of imagination
to sense what summers there might do to the poor fellows.
pund kamath
.... You are wrong. Historically, poetry is what has been patronised
by so-called tyrants. It is to please tyrants (actually benevolent
self-sacrificing rulers, modern "democratic" thugs naturally abuse
their memory by picking on the worst among them) that poets wrote
poetry, to extol the tyrants sometimes, praise their deeds, etc.
Otherwise, they were allowed to write upon mythological subjects.
Which is how we learn so much about the past. So, Kalidas wrote his
immortal works under the patronage of Emperor Vikramaditya; Chand
Bardai wrote "Prithviraj Raso" to celebrate Prithviraj, and in modern
times Rabindranath composed our national anthem originally as a
tribute to the British Emperor George 5. So, the poet was basically a
writer who wrote for money and recognition from the ruling powers.
Unless he was a king himself, like Shri Harsha or even Henry 8. If he
was a Shakespeare, he needed patronage from the lord of Southampton.
Arindam Banerjee wrote:.
…. So, the poet was basically a writer who wrote for money and
recognition from the ruling powers….
Pund Kamath wrote:
Um.. Really? You have a reasonable point here-I mean a bonding
between poets and patrons in the Indian landscape. But then, can
poets and dramatists simply write by going hungry and without
providing food for their families?. Continued patronage freed them
from hunger and poverty and also gave them protection. Here and there
obviously patrons demanded their share of praise and vanity. It is not
a big price to pay. Don’t you think? Same thing is true for
musicians, composers, architects and sculptors etc.. What Handel
could have done without patronage of King George III ? Even though we
do not the names of sculptors, do you think that some of the
magnificent sculpture of Hoysala period at Halebidu, Somanathpura etc.
, and those at Konaraka, Mount Abu was possible? Try to visit Badami
in Karnataka where one would find some of the finest sculptures that
draw their inspiration from great epics. It is breath taking. These
things would not have been born without the King’s patronage !
I know few modern Indian writers who wrote without any kind of
patronage because there was always that inner creative impulse
bursting forth to transform imagination to works of art.
Ah. Let us pause for a minute and get diverted. How about another
great Indian poet Khishitisa of the centuries by gone!
.. When will I see again her strong full thighs,
Defensively closed, one against the other,
Then opening, obedient to desire,
And as the silks slipped off, suddenly revealing,
Like a wax seal on a secret treasure,
The marks, still moist, of my
nails…………
This is a translation by the well known American writer Eliot
Weinberger.
joe green
Yes, I am emrolling you in Professor Constantine Chateau's seminar on
Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydrotaphia" where you -- with other longing for
the days of the antients their great works and sundry monuments
students -- will spend hours each day in a beautifully furnished room
in the upper lofts of Sproul Hall in contemplation of these sentences
of the old sort!
"Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their
fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand
Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and
ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome
anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the
earth in ashes unto them."
Arindam Banerjee
> AB: Whatever went on in the poem was irrelevant to the typically
> tangential sly reference, equating the language of priests (Sanskrit)
> with the random and meaningless chatter of monkeys. Evidently, when
> you are a spokesman for English, you have to pull down superior
> languages.
>
> Yes, I think Philip has demonstrated to you that what you reprehend in
> Jeet's poems is something that isn't really there. It's all in the
> nature of a private obsession. For example:
> "Priests and monkeys
> chatter like static; it
> sifts the fine lines that halo
> your head."
>
> What is the "it?"
The integrated effect of negative associations relating to Hindu
priests and non-human monkeys, their common function so far as
anti-Hindus of both secular and bigoted kinds are concerned, and
relating them all to the random and meaningless nature of static, as
found as unwanted signals in any communication system, in a sort-of
magnanimous manner. Goes well with the image of the "bald brahmin" in
another "poem". Which is why I consider Jeet to be another wannabe
Rushdie, not Nikolayev, though in his passable and immature "Monsoon"
he should some promise.
> The chattering?
Not just, evidently, if you see above. Looks like you have not
understood the poem as I have.
> And what could it mean that the
> "it" "sifts the fine lines that halo
> your head?"
I suppose Jeet worships Dom (who appears to have been a secular or
some-kind-of-Christian person with maybe poetic pretensions) and the
regrettable necessity of his presence - shades of white man's burden?
- among the chatter of priests and monkeys caused the sifting of the
fine lines that halo his haloed head, made his show his wrath, or
something, perhaps. Such was the impact of the chatter, which Jeet
thinks the world must know.
> And "sifts" ? why just that word? And why would you say
> that here the poet equates "priests" and "monkeys?"
To please secular and religious bigots, and unify them under their
common ignorance and dislike of what they have been made to understand
is Hinduism. Unity is a good idea, but I for one believe that the
means justify the ends.
And "static" --
> is it just something that interferes? What is its source.?
> Is the poet describing how things seem to him at that instant or how
> things are?
This anti-Brahmin propagandist is trying to be another Rushdie, that's
all. He is perfectly aware that Brahmin/Hindu-bashing is much safer.
Why, nothing could be more common in India among many in the
Anglicised elites, and also among some leaders of the so-called
Dalits. After all these decades (I was brought up in a climate of
Brahmin-bashing, right from the sixties) it is merely tiresome.
> That is, is it just because "priests and monkeys" are linked in just
> this instant that you have decided that the poet is making some sort
> of straightforward statement about their equivalence always?
What else could one think? It goes with the general trend as seen in
the other "works". If you are anti-Hindu, there is thus every reason
for you to extol them to the skies! Others with a fair and secular
bent could see it all as propaganda.
> How can
> you possibly justify this ? especially if you attempt to understand
> the rest of the poem ? what went before, what comes after?
Read what I have written above.
> If you are going to claim that a poem does this or that the least you
> can do is try to demonstrate this in a convincing way ? by engaging
> with the complexity of the poem, by actually looking at what is there.
Look, you have your views about that stuff, and I have mine. That is
because you are a different person with a different world-view.
Enough said. This is not really worth much attention. One man's hero
is another man's terrorist.
> AB: Could anyone understand from your reference to Conrad that out of
> all the things the man wrote or stood for "make us see" was what you
> were actually referring to about him? Must one know or like Conrad to
> like Jeet? Do you think there is an automatic psychic process exists
> which makes your readers understand what is going on in your own
> brain? Or is this some particular malady modern poets are afflicted
> with?
>
> Why, yes. Anyone could understand this.
Now that sheds some light on modern literature, especially modern
poetry. Evidently the modern poet thinks that what he is thinking
when he wrote his stuff the readers should know through some process
quite unrelated to the way he expresses his thoughts in words.
> I wrote: "Look, it's dangerous to attempt something like this: a
> description, an attempt to make you see in the good old Joseph Conrad
> sense and then an attempt to make it particular, point to various
> strangenesses that overcome the usual. It's all one sentence!"
>
> Very straightforward. All it depends on (if it really even depends on
> that) is a knowledge of the most famous statement Conrad ever made
> about his fiction.
Why bother about Conrad and his fiction, when we are talking about
Jeet and his well poetry? Totally irrelevant, as far as I am
concerned. If Jeet is a great poet as you say, he should not need any
crutches.
> "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written
> word, to make you hear, to make you feel-it is above all, to make
> you see." (Conrad 1897)
So which writer does not want to make his readers "see"? What
attitude could be more common for a writer?
> AB: In India, great poets are naturally honoured,
> as this slimy business of putting up some inferior as a great poet by
> a few select privileged types does not exist! We have kavi-sammelans,
> where many poets recite their works in public. The public decides
> after the readings who is best. In the past, there used to be
> "kobir-lorai" of "poet-fights". They usually dissolved in abuse, but
> for a while could be interesting. In any case, bad poets were weeded
> out and only the good ones, approved by popular choice, remained. In
> short, it was a purely Darwinian business. The net result is that the
> public knows what is good art and what is bad art, they are brought up
> that way.
>
> And I thought this only happened in Ireland!
Evidently you don't know much about the rest of the world.
> AB: In the past, tyrant was just the name for king or absolute
> ruler, who derived his authority from the will of his people.
>
> What past is this?
Pre French Revolution, in the Western world. In the East, the idea is
still very much there, though presently obscured by so-called
democratic ideas (actually, media manipulation of the public mind)
from abroad. The king is the father and mother of all his people -
his most solemn vow, taken at the time of his coronation, is that he
will put the interests of the people above all other interests. So
the Govt. even today is called the "mai-baap" (mother-father) as there
is no king around.
> AB: I think my translations of Shakespeare's sonnets to Bengali
> improves the original, as Shakespeare was limited by the English
> language - too small to hold his thoughts, which have been naturally
> misunderstood by the English. Thus, I was brought up to think that
> the sonnets were all in praise of homosexuality, for the sonnets show
> that Shakespeare was "obviously" a homosexual!!!
>
> Good God ? you could have read some criticism of the sonnets and
> instantly disabused yourself of this notion.
Well maybe, but if you do some searching on the Internet, you will
find those paraphrasing the sonnets to conclude in their comments that
such declarations of "love" that Shakespeare showed to Mr WH amounted
to "undeniable" homosexuality. However, when the word "lover" is
translated to the Bengali word "shokha" this is easily cleared up.
> If you were "brought up"
> to believe this (might be true ? might not ? but, of course, the
> sonnets were not "all in praise of homosexuality) and believed it,
The popular media in the English language assured me that Shakespeare,
Socrates etc. were homosexuals just like Oscar Wilde, who certainly
was so and was convicted accordingly. Just because Wilde was a
homosexual, Shakespeare (another creative dramatist) could also be
another, and that was "proved" by certain lines in certain sonnts.
And of course, Socrates was a homosexual as that was evidently the
custom in ancient Greece. Not that we know much about Socrates,
actually, but these days a repeated assumption takes on the guise of
truth, at least so far the the public mind is concerned.
Thus, only a few sonnets were taught to us, that looked safe. Most
others did not seem to have the same effect and meaning - as compared
to the plays, the sonnets had little relative importance.
But Shakespeare was no homosexual - he was a heterosexual as any other
heterosexual. What he was trying in his sonnets was to increase the
level of understanding and appreciation between two males - a very
difficult and challenging task, seeing that throughout history males
have beaten the shit out of each other for whatever reasons.
and
> it was and is the opinion of many, how is it that the public (we must
> assume that many have the same notions you had) "knows what is good
> art and what is bad art," because "they are brought up that way?"
Clever, but I was talking about the Indian public, and their idea
about art from their own language. Not their idea about English art
in the English language and as expressed by English critics - they
took them at their word. I don't think the Bengali public will have
any difficulty at all in appreciating the sonnets as I do. They will
task me for errors of course, but I don't think there will be much
quibble about the overall significance and meaning.
> But I have to tell you that I love the assertion that the sonnets have
> been "naturally misunderstood by the English." You are probably right
> and, as for Bengali versus English, I love that to. It would be
> wonderful if it turns out to be true and, damn it, another opportunity
> missed by me.
I have translated only 55 of them so far, and so there is a lot of
work still left. If you work hard, and have some idea of cryptography
(comparing plain text to the encrypted) it should not be too hard for
you to get the meanings in Bengali (if not the sounds) and maybe you
could learn some Bengali as well as a bonus.
> I am happy that you are not an embittered Browning scholar ? for
> their's is a bitter lot. Most of the Browning papers are in the
> Browning Library in Waco, Texas. It doesn't take a lot of imagination
> to sense what summers there might do to the poor fellows.
Browning can be a bit heavy at times. But it does not pay to forget
the meaning in his great poem "The Pied Piper of Hamlin". Browning
well knew the basically treacherous and ungrateful nature of his
people.
Arindam Banerjee.
pund kamath
Do you offer credit course in Ebonics too?
joe green
idealism but we will never agree ..not justified by the text and so
on, perfectly understandably in light of certain obsessions, sounds
well but doesn't mean a thing (as someone in Wodehouse said about
Shakespeare).
However I did love this:
"Howling rubbish, that seems to be your forte."
And the various jaunts into Shakespeare the Pure and, although I can't
understand your translations of the sonnets I love your attitude. The
whole thing a kind of poem one wouldn't want to be without and "Mohini
Attam - The Dance of the Enchantress is also something I wouldn't want
to be without. So you are wrong about Jeet Thayil's poetry but there
is all that.
Your assertion that a tyrant rules by the consent of his people (and
how did we get into that since I was writing about tyrannies to be
overcome and the political sort just one sort?) may hold up for the
history of India but, in fact, over in Merrie England and other shippy
climes in the West once a king became a tyrant he could be removed –
at least according to one faction – because he no longer expressed
what he is. Two bodies for the King – an earthly body and a heavenly
body – the heavenly body being the essence which, if betrayed by a
wicked earthly king meant that he had become a tyrant and so could be
sone away with. Or so Cromwell seemed to think -- all of this, of
course, just expressions of power and opposition to power. In the
Bard's time everyone was under the impression that they were part of a
Commonwealth – not an absolute monarchy – the idea repulsive to the
English… and the concept of King/Tyrant in other European countries
was similarly complex although there were ideas of kingship that came
close to the idea you consider universal.
In any case, repent your wickedness anent the lovely poems you attack
and, once again, take your rightful place in the bright world.
joe green
Yes, you will be able to minor in Ebonics under the tutelage of The Lonliest Ranger.
Philip Nikolayev
> > AB: In the past, tyrant was just the name for king or absolute
> > ruler, who derived his authority from the will of his people.
Arindam,
Due to my innate masochism and my Indian incarnation a few lives back
(but then I dropped from grace) Calcutta is one of my favorite cities
in the world, and often over the years socializing and bonding with
Bengalis has been a natural and enjoyable thing for me. While I admire
and indeed love much of the spirit of Bengali culture, one of its
chief weaknesses, as I have observed and experienced it, is its
widespread givenness to quick superficial judgment, unnecessarily
passionate and short-tempered opinion-mongering in matters cultural,
sentimental cliché, political brainwashedness, self-congratulation,
mediocre education, naive views of "Western man" and Western
civilization, overreliance on _Desh_ for cultural values, and
wholesale opinionated meddling in poetry. Needless to say, none of
this (except perhaps for Desh) is unique to Bengal and sure enough,
there are many wonderful exceptions to this observation, not to
mention redeeming qualifications.
I don't see that things are exactly as you describe, whether in Bengal
or elsewhere in India. There is no great difference *in substance*
between the way in which poetic careers are advanced in India and say
the US. There is plenty of careerism, politics, favor and power-play
anywhere in the world, including the vibrant poetry scene in Calcutta,
which I have observed closely. But neither in the US nor in Calcutta
is the process reducible to elitism or power-politics. There is plenty
of native talent both here and there, and it does find its path to
recognition in both places (naturally, with the whole soup of
mediocrities right along).
There are plenty of poetry readings in the US, and they are what
Indian ones fundamentally are too: that is, just poetry readings. The
public responds either with coldness or with appreciation and
enthusiasm and knows its favorites. In neither case can this amount to
any sort of poetic quality control. Near both the oceans, I have seen
utter fools attend many readings and express heated opinions about
poetry.
Here is something I posted in 1993:
Once, a few years ago, I visited a small
steel-producing plant outside Calcutta, Called Titagarth Steels
Limited. A friend of mine worked there; he introduced me to a few of
his friends who also worked there, and mentioned that among other
things I was, ahem, a poet. In about half an hour there were about
thirty people around me all of a sudden, putting flower garlands all
over my person. For the next two hours we talked about poetry, and
they made me recite stuff in a language they didn't understand a word
of, and then recited their favourite poems in their own. And they had
their boss's permission to interrupt work for that sort of thing. I
both hated and loved the experience (not the only one of that kind I
had in India). Go try that at US Steel.
Today I would not hope to see this at US Steel either. It is beautiful
and moving to be honored in this way, but you have to remember that
it's simply a cultural ritual. A less ritualized response, one less
focused on outward symbolism, on the supposed "sacredness of poetry"
or on the public's collective admiration, would not necessarily be
less vital or profound. In my modern Western (admittedly crippled)
sensibility, desacralization has been good for poetry -- a good sort
of discipline of the spirit, a school of reality, stubbornness and
self-reliance. Transcendence must come from within the poem, not from
a generalized shining aura of poetry. Sacralization unnecessarily
aggrandizes and necessarily misleads, and the ritualized approval of
outsiders matters much less than what comes but from within. It is of
course fine and even noble of the public to admire poets and to make
poetry a part of their everyday life, but the public does this at its
own expense and venture, and strictly speaking this is not one of the
poet's primary concerns except perhaps for pragmatic reasons.
Your views of Western culture and Western civ seem wildly off-base.
There is a long established, canonical distinction, a cliché of sorts
in Western political thought, between a tyrant and a monarch, going
back I think to 5th-century B.C. Athens and famously formulated in
Aristotle's Politics. A tyrant is one who rules for self-interest and
by whim and force rather than laws, and that's how the term was used
(until about the time of the French Revolution) in English and in
other European languages.
Patronage, on the other hand, survived, but you're oblivious to the
fact that patrons are not required to be tyrants. I happen to know
some individual patrons, and they are simply generous people who don't
expect artists to suck up to them or to alter their work for them.
There are grants and prizes and all that. For the most part patronage
has been taken over by academia and cultural foundations.
Poets should serve tyrants? So twee. You see, since medieval and
Renaissance days the history of Western poetry has been such as to
establish, in many paradigmatic cases, a certain dignity and a certain
philosophy of freedom and a contempt for tyranny. It is ironic that
you give Browning as your favorite English poet -- a fine poet who
hated tyranny, saw falsehood in patronage and, unlike you, did not
enlist Shakespeare in tyranny's cause, but chastised Wordsworth, who
both favored submission to tyranny and accepted the English Poet
Laureateship. Of Wordsworth he says (though not in one of his best
poems):
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
-- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
Your views on the English language and on contemporary English poetry
reminded me of two Indian visitors of last fall, both Tamils, one a
good friend and a poet of distinction and the other some soft of
fiction writer I think. They are both lovers of Carnatic music, which
I admire too, so I played some great L. Subramaniam (South Indian
violin) pieces on my computer and we all three of us listened in
delight, nodding our heads. But then they started talking about how
Western classical music is shallow and not moving at all and indeed
not music at all according to their lights, and I put on Mozart's
requiem and then some Bach and they talked excitedly right through it
all without noticing. And then one said that he had gone to a Schumann
performance, and that one he liked, it even made him cry, but Mozart
and Bach were surely no Schumann. Ah well. I'll remember this forever.
As the feminists used to day, "he just doesn't get it."
You say that 20th-century English language poetry was a disaster.
Would you care to post a list of 20th-century English language poets
whose work you have read carefully and could competently discuss? Then
we'll see whether more can be said. To me the 20th century is on the
whole more interesting and vital poetically than the 19th, partly
perhaps thanks to the desacralization that I have mentioned.
I may talk more specifically about Jeet's poetry later. Right now I am
trying to shed some light on the manifest direction of your thought,
which I believe I recognize well.
"Indian English" poetry has by and by produced some fine work that is
not drowned out by writing in the West, even though this work is
little known elsewhere. But I know that Indian cultural nationalists
look down on "Indian English" writing as inauthentic, some kind of
sellout to the West. I have heard several times "We Bengalis don't
like those chaps," in exactly those words. Well, if Indian cultural
nationalists don't want them, I'll take them. Issue 4 of my poetry
annual, Fulcrum, will include an anthology of work by Indian poets
writing in English today, and I that feature will rightly be edited by
Jeet Thayil, and I'll bet you it'll be great. These poets did not
"sell out" to English: English is simply the only tongue that poetry
occurs to them in.
When I was giving poetry readings in Calcutta, some very well meaning
friends were advising me to project myself as a Russian rather than an
American poet and to conceal the fact that I have long quit writing in
Russian (otherwise the public would assume I aligned myself with the
"Indian English" poets). This mentality strikes me as brainwashed and
tyrannical.
You are right on the money when you say that to you personally Jeet's
poetry doesn't matter. That is completely fine. What is ridiculous and
tiresome of you, though, is to invent spurious analyses and "chatter"
-- (I'll borrow this one from Jeet) -- with great vehemence,
conviction and authority about defending a true idea of poetry against
Jeet. The tone of authority seems to be quite groundless.
And by the way you should watch out because Joe Green here is a mighty
fine poet himself and just possibly the best connoisseur of English
verse you'll ever have occasion to discuss things with. He is no
"wannabe poet" and it would gentlemanly of you to take that back.
Amen for now,
Philip Nikolayev
Arindam Banerjee
> idealism
Art is not science, and there is no question of making mistakes in any
objective sense. One just agrees and accepts, or disagrees and
rejects.
> but we will never agree ..not justified by the text and so
> on, perfectly understandably in light of certain obsessions, sounds
> well but doesn't mean a thing (as someone in Wodehouse said about
> Shakespeare).
Blah.
> However I did love this:
>
> "Howling rubbish, that seems to be your forte."
Good.
> And the various jaunts into Shakespeare the Pure
Not the Pure, but About the Pure.
> and, although I can't
> understand your translations of the sonnets I love your attitude. The
> whole thing a kind of poem one wouldn't want to be without and "Mohini
> Attam - The Dance of the Enchantress is also something I wouldn't want
> to be without. So you are wrong about Jeet Thayil's poetry but there
> is all that.
Anyone who mentions my work and that of Jeet Thayil in the same breath
cannot be expected to be right about anything.
> Your assertion that a tyrant rules by the consent of his people (and
> how did we get into that since I was writing about tyrannies to be
> overcome and the political sort just one sort?) may hold up for the
> history of India but, in fact, over in Merrie England and other shippy
> climes in the West once a king became a tyrant he could be removed ?
> at least according to one faction ? because he no longer expressed
> what he is. Two bodies for the King ? an earthly body and a heavenly
> body ? the heavenly body being the essence which, if betrayed by a
> wicked earthly king meant that he had become a tyrant and so could be
> sone away with. Or so Cromwell seemed to think -- all of this, of
> course, just expressions of power and opposition to power. In the
> Bard's time everyone was under the impression that they were part of a
> Commonwealth ? not an absolute monarchy ? the idea repulsive to the
> English? and the concept of King/Tyrant in other European countries
> was similarly complex although there were ideas of kingship that came
> close to the idea you consider universal.
>
> In any case, repent
oh-oh, bigot alert!
> your wickedness
heh-heh
> anent the lovely poems you attack
what lovely poems?
> and, once again, take your rightful place in the bright world.
of money, power and vulgarity?
Arindam Banerjee
> Arindam says:
>
> > > AB: In the past, tyrant was just the name for king or absolute
> > > ruler, who derived his authority from the will of his people.
>
> Arindam,
>
> Due to my innate masochism and my Indian incarnation a few lives back
> (but then I dropped from grace) Calcutta is one of my favorite cities
> in the world, and often over the years socializing and bonding with
> Bengalis has been a natural and enjoyable thing for me.
How nice.
> While I admire
> and indeed love much of the spirit of Bengali culture, one of its
> chief weaknesses, as I have observed and experienced it, is its
> widespread givenness to quick superficial judgment, unnecessarily
> passionate and short-tempered opinion-mongering in matters cultural,
> sentimental cliché, political brainwashedness, self-congratulation,
> mediocre education, naive views of "Western man" and Western
> civilization, overreliance on _Desh_ for cultural values, and
> wholesale opinionated meddling in poetry.
That's quite a list! However, there are Bengalis and Bengalis. I am
not a Bengali, though. I am a Bihari (or rather, a Jharkhandi) as I
was born and brought up in Bihar (now the new state of Jharkhand).
You are quite right on the whole, Bengalis of Calcutta are gasbags to
various degrees but their one good quality for which I respect them is
their genuine love for Ma Kali, which means, ultimately, the highest
regard for naked truth as they can best understand it. So, my
grandaunt affectionately called me a sattukhor bihari khotta and that
is my real identity. I have the greatest admiration and affection for
all my Bengali friends and relatives including my dear wife, but they
are too nice and polite, really - the iron soil of Bihar runs in my
veins.
> Needless to say, none of
> this (except perhaps for Desh) is unique to Bengal and sure enough,
> there are many wonderful exceptions to this observation, not to
> mention redeeming qualifications.
What are they?
> I don't see that things are exactly as you describe, whether in Bengal
> or elsewhere in India. There is no great difference *in substance*
> between the way in which poetic careers are advanced in India and say
> the US.
What poetic careers? Is there a Indian Poetic Service created
recently?
> There is plenty of careerism, politics, favor and power-play
> anywhere in the world, including the vibrant poetry scene in Calcutta,
> which I have observed closely.
I don't know it. I am an engineer, you see. And also, an amateur
actor. My wife, who is very keen about dramatics, drags me to act in
our Bengali stage productions, and that is how I have acquired a
little of Bengali culture, from memorising the marvellous works of
such playwrights as Tagore, Narayan Gangopadhay, Badal Sarcar, Manoj
Mitra and some others.
> But neither in the US nor in Calcutta
> is the process reducible to elitism or power-politics. There is plenty
> of native talent both here and there, and it does find its path to
> recognition in both places (naturally, with the whole soup of
> mediocrities right along).
Mediocrities do not stand a chance in kavi-sammelans, of the kind I
have seen in Ranchi (Bihar). Poets have to speak to a vast public,
and first of all it needs guts to do that, if you were a mediocrity
you would not dare.
> There are plenty of poetry readings in the US, and they are what
> Indian ones fundamentally are too: that is, just poetry readings. The
> public responds either with coldness or with appreciation and
> enthusiasm and knows its favorites. In neither case can this amount to
> any sort of poetic quality control. Near both the oceans, I have seen
> utter fools attend many readings and express heated opinions about
> poetry.
Well, one man's utter fool is another's genius. In poetry, it is all
a matter of opinion.
> Here is something I posted in 1993:
>
> Once, a few years ago, I visited a small
> steel-producing plant outside Calcutta, Called Titagarth Steels
> Limited. A friend of mine worked there; he introduced me to a few of
> his friends who also worked there, and mentioned that among other
> things I was, ahem, a poet. In about half an hour there were about
> thirty people around me all of a sudden, putting flower garlands all
> over my person. For the next two hours we talked about poetry, and
> they made me recite stuff in a language they didn't understand a word
> of, and then recited their favourite poems in their own. And they had
> their boss's permission to interrupt work for that sort of thing. I
> both hated and loved the experience (not the only one of that kind I
> had in India). Go try that at US Steel.
Has someone ever tried? Who knows, what may happen? About your
experience, may I say that in India the public goes by the sound of
the words, rather than their meaning. When they get the meaning as
well, the experience is enhanced. Your reputation as a poet goes by
the sound, the expression, the acting, the lyrical quality, etc.
before the meaning sinks in, which is of course savoured over time and
refined internally with life's experiences.
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=nikolayev+%22steels+limited%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=NIKOLAY.93Mar17190337%40husc11.harvard.edu&rnum=1
>
> Today I would not hope to see this at US Steel either. It is beautiful
> and moving to be honored in this way, but you have to remember that
> it's simply a cultural ritual.
Not really. They were trying to honour you, and in India we have this
great weakness for white skin. Reverse-racism, of the self-despising
type, is the quality I deplore most among Indians. Accounts for the
ascendancy of Sonia Gandhi, you see.
> A less ritualized response, one less
> focused on outward symbolism, on the supposed "sacredness of poetry"
> or on the public's collective admiration, would not necessarily be
> less vital or profound. In my modern Western (admittedly crippled)
> sensibility, desacralization has been good for poetry -- a good sort
> of discipline of the spirit, a school of reality, stubbornness and
> self-reliance.
What poetry, and what is desacralization in this context?
> Transcendence must come from within the poem, not from
> a generalized shining aura of poetry. Sacralization unnecessarily
> aggrandizes and necessarily misleads, and the ritualized approval of
> outsiders matters much less than what comes but from within. It is of
> course fine and even noble of the public to admire poets and to make
> poetry a part of their everyday life, but the public does this at its
> own expense and venture, and strictly speaking this is not one of the
> poet's primary concerns except perhaps for pragmatic reasons.
The poet does his business and the public does theirs. That's all.
The public admires the poet for the language to express what they
cannot express, and the poet is happy to be of some use to them.
> Your views of Western culture and Western civ seem wildly off-base.
What views of mine are we talking about?
> There is a long established, canonical distinction, a cliché of sorts
> in Western political thought, between a tyrant and a monarch, going
> back I think to 5th-century B.C. Athens and famously formulated in
> Aristotle's Politics. A tyrant is one who rules for self-interest and
> by whim and force rather than laws, and that's how the term was used
> (until about the time of the French Revolution) in English and in
> other European languages.
As I learnt it, a tyrant was simply a ruler, a king. I cannot talk of
the ideals of kingship in the Western world, but I do have some idea
about the Indian world.
> Patronage, on the other hand, survived, but you're oblivious to the
> fact that patrons are not required to be tyrants. I happen to know
> some individual patrons, and they are simply generous people who don't
> expect artists to suck up to them or to alter their work for them.
> There are grants and prizes and all that. For the most part patronage
> has been taken over by academia and cultural foundations.
Yes, yes, accounting for the state of arts as we find it.
> Poets should serve tyrants? So twee. You see, since medieval and
> Renaissance days the history of Western poetry has been such as to
> establish, in many paradigmatic cases, a certain dignity and a certain
> philosophy of freedom and a contempt for tyranny.
Pirates, bandits, they were and are, out entirely for themselves, with
no morals or ideals. How else can we understand the exploiting
robbers, who sucked the blood out of others with poorer technology and
unity? Nothing but genuine tyranny can stop them, and so, China with
a tyrannical leadership has halted their encroachments, just as the
USSR did earlier.
> It is ironic that
> you give Browning as your favorite English poet -- a fine poet who
> hated tyranny, saw falsehood in patronage and, unlike you, did not
> enlist Shakespeare in tyranny's cause, but chastised Wordsworth, who
> both favored submission to tyranny and accepted the English Poet
> Laureateship. Of Wordsworth he says (though not in one of his best
> poems):
>
> Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> -- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
Good example. But when representatives of bandits and robbers, who
loot whole nations such as Iraq wholesale, talk of their poets being
against tyranny, they become amusing.
> Your views on the English language and on contemporary English poetry
> reminded me of two Indian visitors of last fall, both Tamils, one a
> good friend and a poet of distinction and the other some soft of
> fiction writer I think. They are both lovers of Carnatic music, which
> I admire too, so I played some great L. Subramaniam (South Indian
> violin) pieces on my computer and we all three of us listened in
> delight, nodding our heads. But then they started talking about how
> Western classical music is shallow and not moving at all and indeed
> not music at all according to their lights, and I put on Mozart's
> requiem and then some Bach and they talked excitedly right through it
> all without noticing. And then one said that he had gone to a Schumann
> performance, and that one he liked, it even made him cry, but Mozart
> and Bach were surely no Schumann. Ah well. I'll remember this forever.
> As the feminists used to day, "he just doesn't get it."
And I don't as well, but then I don't think you know what you are
talking about, so far as my views on the English language are
concerned.
> You say that 20th-century English language poetry was a disaster.
Relatively. My wife holds Owen in deep respect, and yes, he was very
good. But he was basically a carry-over from the 19th century.
> Would you care to post a list of 20th-century English language poets
> whose work you have read carefully and could competently discuss?
I am an engineer, and not a critic of poetry. My objective is thus to
write as well as I can, for some specific purpose, and for that I need
help from the very best sources. The study of poetry, or the written
word, I use to sharpen my mind, so that it may more easily and
efficiently and correctly grapple with the complex issues I face in my
day-to-day professional career. I do not have the luxury of reading
20th century poets to great detail. With my limited reading, may I
say that Yeats, Auden, Frost, Eliot, Mayakovsky, Ginsberg do not
impress me very much, I can well do without them. Walt Disney beats
all of them, in any issue of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck comics. As
for modern poetry, I have gone through some issues of "Quadrant"
published here in Australia, and the less I say of the stuff published
as poetry there, the better. So when I have the time, I read and
re-read Browning, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Wordsworth etc.
Then
> we'll see whether more can be said. To me the 20th century is on the
> whole more interesting and vital poetically than the 19th, partly
> perhaps thanks to the desacralization that I have mentioned.
Whatever. Each to his own.
> I may talk more specifically about Jeet's poetry later. Right now I am
> trying to shed some light on the manifest direction of your thought,
> which I believe I recognize well.
>
> "Indian English" poetry has by and by produced some fine work that is
> not drowned out by writing in the West, even though this work is
> little known elsewhere. But I know that Indian cultural nationalists
> look down on "Indian English" writing as inauthentic, some kind of
> sellout to the West.
Exactly. Very true.
> I have heard several times "We Bengalis don't
> like those chaps," in exactly those words. Well, if Indian cultural
> nationalists don't want them, I'll take them. Issue 4 of my poetry
> annual, Fulcrum, will include an anthology of work by Indian poets
> writing in English today, and I that feature will rightly be edited by
> Jeet Thayil, and I'll bet you it'll be great. These poets did not
> "sell out" to English: English is simply the only tongue that poetry
> occurs to them in.
Take them all, by all means.
> When I was giving poetry readings in Calcutta, some very well meaning
> friends were advising me to project myself as a Russian rather than an
> American poet and to conceal the fact that I have long quit writing in
> Russian (otherwise the public would assume I aligned myself with the
> "Indian English" poets). This mentality strikes me as brainwashed and
> tyrannical.
They were expressing their opinion, as you express yours. Freedom of
speech works both ways, you see. Surely if you are against tyranny,
you can see that? Actually, from the experience of Michael
Madhusudhan Dutta, they all know what to expect from the English.
They know that sort of mentality very well, you see, and want no part
of it.
> You are right on the money when you say that to you personally Jeet's
> poetry doesn't matter. That is completely fine. What is ridiculous and
> tiresome of you, though, is to invent spurious analyses and "chatter"
I did not invent anything, I only expanded upon what was presented in
the "poem" as per the wish of Mr Green.
> -- (I'll borrow this one from Jeet) -- with great vehemence,
> conviction and authority about defending a true idea of poetry against
> Jeet. The tone of authority seems to be quite groundless.
You can think what you like, but you cannot deny that I have been
speaking from the majority Indian point of view, and only representing
them.
> And by the way you should watch out because Joe Green here is a mighty
> fine poet himself and just possibly the best connoisseur of English
> verse you'll ever have occasion to discuss things with.
Nonsense, my wife is a million times better.
> He is no
> "wannabe poet" and it would gentlemanly of you to take that back.
Did I call him that? I did not even know he is considered a poet.
> Amen for now,
Amen for ever,
Arindam Banerjee.
>
> Philip Nikolayev
Arindam Banerjee
> Renaissance days the history of Western poetry has been such as to
> establish, in many paradigmatic cases, a certain dignity and a certain
> philosophy of freedom and a contempt for tyranny. It is ironic that
> you give Browning as your favorite English poet -- a fine poet who
> hated tyranny, saw falsehood in patronage and, unlike you, did not
> enlist Shakespeare in tyranny's cause, but chastised Wordsworth, who
> both favored submission to tyranny and accepted the English Poet
> Laureateship. Of Wordsworth he says (though not in one of his best
> poems):
>
> Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> -- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
By the way, may I mention, before I forget, that in that poem Browning
was essentially complaining that Wordsworth had sold himself cheaply.
Those who could have given him gold, gave him silver. Had they gave
Wordsworth the gold he deserved, Browning would not have been so
unhappy. So, Browning was complaining more about the mean nature of
the tyrant Wordsworth was serving, saying how they had given him the
little copper they had, rather than attacking Wordsworth for selling
out. If the sellout had involved gold and diamonds on a lavish scale
- as generous oriental tyrants bestow, as opposed to the kind
Wordsworth was serving, it was quite the done thing for the tyrant to
give his personal heavy gold necklace to the happy poet - which would
also have helped other poets in the longer run, there was no cause for
getting upset. Meanness and treachery and ingratitude of the ruling
authority is a constant theme in Browning; it comes out most clearly
in his wonderful poem "The Pied Piper of Hamlin", a truly marvellous
work.
pund kamath
I didn't reallize your English Dept at Waindell College specializes in Ebonics!
joe green
> > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> > -- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
>
AB: By the way, may I mention, before I forget, that in that poem
Browning
> was essentially complaining that Wordsworth had sold himself cheaply.
> Those who could have given him gold, gave him silver. Had they gave
> Wordsworth the gold he deserved, Browning would not have been so
> unhappy. So, Browning was complaining more about the mean nature of
> the tyrant Wordsworth was serving, saying how they had given him the
> little copper they had, rather than attacking Wordsworth for selling
> out. If the sellout had involved gold and diamonds on a lavish scale
> - as generous oriental tyrants bestow, as opposed to the kind
> Wordsworth was serving, it was quite the done thing for the tyrant to
> give his personal heavy gold necklace to the happy poet - which would
> also have helped other poets in the longer run, there was no cause for
> getting upset. Meanness and treachery and ingratitude of the ruling
> authority is a constant theme in Browning; it comes out most clearly
> in his wonderful poem "The Pied Piper of Hamlin", a truly marvellous
> work.
Here's the verse:
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
You, of course, miss the significance of the "handful of silver" which
is that Judas betrayed Jesus for a handful of silver. A double charge
-- not only was W treated contempuously but he betrayed what he
betrayed in the same manner Judas betrayed Christ. Browning is not
complaining -- for God's sake -- that Wordsworth wasn't paid enough
for betraying freedom -- the double charge is that he betrayed it for
"a handful of silver" and this is all that was offered him -- the
tyrant purchasing compliance with contempt. The same implication in
the gospel story of course.
"Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!"
Wordsworth was only offered the equivalent of rags yet he is so far
gone that, even if these rags so disdainfully given were purple, (of
course that royal color) he would have been proud.
Really, Browning isn't complaining that he sold out cheaply for God's
sake (and would have been delighted if he had held out for more) he is
pointing to how little Wordsworth was offered, how little he would be
satisfied with -- therby pointing to a meanness in his soul and in the
souls of those who purchased his soul.
You see here you are understanding this and that from the point of
view of your culture and not seeing what is there-- something that
requires another kind of attention!
francis muir
5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com, "joe green"
<yeoldw...@yahoo.com> wrote:
RABbers may be interested in a recently published article which I found at:
Browning's Apology: Robert Browning, Wordsworth, and William Knight
Review of English Studies May 2003, vol. 54, no. 214, pp.
220-237(18)
Baker J.H.[1]
[1] University of Westminster
Abstract:
Between 1880 and 1888 Robert Browning corresponded with William Knight,
founder and president of the Wordsworth Society. This correspondence has not
been studied. As a young man, Browning had attacked Wordsworth for being a
political reactionary and, most unfairly, as a poet whose egotism blinded
him to the realities of human suffering; after he achieved fame, though, he
joined the Wordsworth Society and referred to the older poet in flattering
terms, knight seems to have found this puzzling, and his correspondence was
an attempt to prise a more detailed response to Wordsworth out of Browning.
After some years of delay, Browning supplied Knight with a list of favourite
Wordsworth poems, which has until now been ignored by critics. The list is
composed of little-known pieces; it is the contention of this article that
it is in fact Browning's coded Œconfession¹ of the tangled and often
traumatic nature of his struggle with his Romantic predecessor, and of his
change of attitude towards him. By choosing certain poems, Browning could
point the astute reader (among whose ranks he evidently did not include
Knight) to previously published poems, both his own and Wordsworth's, that
expressed or related to this covert struggle.
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
francis muir
"francis muir" <francis....@balliol.org> wrote:
I was able to download the full article in PDF format presumably becausde
Stanford has signed up for this periodical. If anyone not on my shit list
wants the full article I'll be happy to email them it.
fearless fido
Postscript. It's 100 KB and I'll send it as a mac- and windows-friendly
attachment.
joe green
Really...this is over the top:
"Anyone who mentions my work and that of Jeet Thayil in the same
breath
cannot be expected to be right about anything."
As I said, I read your poem/translation and really wouldn't want to be
without it. But I find it depressing that you indulge in this sort of
thing. It's really very meaningless and lacks the sprightliness that
I like about so much of what you write. At times I think you are
completely mad -- but in a merry way -- as when, for example you
construe Browning's vilification of Wordsworth as his railing against
the miserliness of the authorities. If only they gave Wordsworth
more...perhaps his own phaeton or ever railway car and a position in
the church...then Browning would have been satisfied! Ridiculous, of
course but damned fine. But, you know, when you persist in
denigrating Jeet's poetry and for so little cause and so obviously
using the poems just as an occasion to rail against this and that,
then you are just doing the expected.
You seem to think that, perhaps, liking the poems will thrust you into
a bright world (my words) of money and power and vulgarity (your
words) but blithely ignore the fact that the poet whose poems you
reprehend and the two poets who are chatting about him with you have
almost no cash, very little power and, I know for a fact, that I am
the only one of the trio who is vulgar -- given as I am to walking
about with my mouth open and wearing slacks that are too short, a
sports jacket that was fashionable when J.D. Salinger was fashionable
and shirts with ruffles. Moreover I dye my hair and beard and my once
white locks and beard are now a peculiar red never until now seen on
land or sea.
But still I am fastidious in these sorts of matters. Others may abide
your questions. Jeet is free,
Arindam Banerjee
> > > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> > > -- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
> >
>
>
> AB: By the way, may I mention, before I forget, that in that poem
> Browning
> > was essentially complaining that Wordsworth had sold himself cheaply.
> > Those who could have given him gold, gave him silver. Had they gave
> > Wordsworth the gold he deserved, Browning would not have been so
> > unhappy. So, Browning was complaining more about the mean nature of
> > the tyrant Wordsworth was serving, saying how they had given him the
> > little copper they had, rather than attacking Wordsworth for selling
> > out. If the sellout had involved gold and diamonds on a lavish scale
> > - as generous oriental tyrants bestow, as opposed to the kind
> > Wordsworth was serving, it was quite the done thing for the tyrant to
> > give his personal heavy gold necklace to the happy poet - which would
> > also have helped other poets in the longer run, there was no cause for
> > getting upset. Meanness and treachery and ingratitude of the ruling
> > authority is a constant theme in Browning; it comes out most clearly
> > in his wonderful poem "The Pied Piper of Hamlin", a truly marvellous
> > work.
>
> Here's the verse:
>
>
> Just for a handful of silver he left us,
> Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
> Lost all the others she lets us devote;
> They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> How all our copper had gone for his service!
> We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
> Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
> Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
> Made him our pattern to live and to die!
> Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
>
>
> You, of course, miss the significance of the "handful of silver" which
> is that Judas betrayed Jesus for a handful of silver. A double charge
> -- not only was W treated contempuously but he betrayed what he
> betrayed in the same manner Judas betrayed Christ. Browning is not
> complaining -- for God's sake -- that Wordsworth wasn't paid enough
> for betraying freedom -- the double charge is that he betrayed it for
> "a handful of silver" and this is all that was offered him -- the
> tyrant purchasing compliance with contempt. The same implication in
> the gospel story of course.
The gospel story has very little significance - in fact, practically
no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How could any poet show the meanness of the giving authority more
clearly? What further meaning could be drawn from this expressive
line: "So much was theirs who so little allowed"? Trade unions should
love it.
The possible association of Judas with Wordsworth with "the handful of
silver" expression is further diminished by the following line: "just
for a riband to stick in his coat". It is very clear that Browning is
complaining not so much about the sellout itself (*Just* for a handful
of silver he left us means just that) but for the comparatively little
rewards given for the sellout. He was annoyed with Wordsworth no
doubt, but his main grievance was that Wordsworth had accepted little
money and prestige for the sellout. Very natural. After all, the
English are a nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon said, and it is the
first duty of the shopkeeper to ensure that customers pay the right
amount for the goods they buy. Browning was a genuine Englishman, and
so, quite conscious about the impropriety involved in cut-price
selling. Later on in the poem, Browning is more forgiving - he does
not condemn Wordsworth if he should have if he associated him with
Judas, merely says that he no longer considers him his leader, thus
Wordsworth is not a traitor, merely a deposed leader.
> "Rags?were they purple, his heart had been proud!"
>
> Wordsworth was only offered the equivalent of rags yet he is so far
> gone that, even if these rags so disdainfully given were purple, (of
> course that royal color) he would have been proud.
Yes, once again my point is proved. Wordsworth had sold out cheaply,
and Browning was naturally grousing about it.
> Really, Browning isn't complaining that he sold out cheaply for God's
> sake (and would have been delighted if he had held out for more) he is
> pointing to how little Wordsworth was offered, how little he would be
> satisfied with -- therby pointing to a meanness in his soul and in the
> souls of those who purchased his soul.
Now here you are making my point, good. Of course Browning was
complaing about the meanness of those who purchased Wordsworth's soul,
or whatever. He was also complaining that the Wordsworth had sold his
"soul" cheaply. It is therefore obvious that if the "soul" had been
sold at good price (taking other poets like Browning into prior
consultation) then there would have been no cause for making grouse.
> You see here you are understanding this and that from the point of
> view of your culture and not seeing what is there-- something that
> requires another kind of attention!
Quite, quite.
Philip Nikolayev
I assumed you were Bengali because of your name. Doesn't Banerjee come
from Bandopadhyay?
> > I don't see that things are exactly as you describe, whether in Bengal
> > or elsewhere in India. There is no great difference *in substance*
> > between the way in which poetic careers are advanced in India and say
> > the US.
>
> What poetic careers? Is there a Indian Poetic Service created
> recently?
No, there been one for a while. Poetic careers means where your work
gets published and in how many copies, what you are paid for it, where
you teach, whether you appear on television, who reviews your work,
what titles you receive and what awards you win.
> But neither in the US nor in Calcutta
> is the process reducible to elitism or power-politics. There is plenty
> of native talent both here and there, and it does find its path to
> recognition in both places (naturally, with the whole soup of
> mediocrities right along).
>Mediocrities do not stand a chance in kavi-sammelans, of the kind I
>have seen in Ranchi (Bihar). Poets have to speak to a vast public,
>and first of all it needs guts to do that, if you were a mediocrity
>you would not dare.
I don't buy this for a moment. If the mediocrities get voted into
government, why not into the literary elite? Do you think government
is harder for people to understand than poetry?
> Well, one man's utter fool is another's genius. In poetry, it is all
> a matter of opinion.
This is only ture from the point of view of the general public. To
poets it's also a matter of knowledge, experience and personal
accomplishment.
> The poet does his business and the public does theirs. That's all.
> The public admires the poet for the language to express what they
> cannot express, and the poet is happy to be of some use to them.
Yea, I know. But I think there are deeper and models of what poetry
can be. All I care about is the language to express what I cannot
express. Can the public help me there? And what's the public's lack of
language to me? One of the mysteries of life is that poets don't learn
much that is useful from non-poets about poetry.
> For the most part patronage
> > has been taken over by academia and cultural foundations.
>
> Yes, yes, accounting for the state of arts as we find it.
We have not yet seen that you are aware of the state of the arts as we
find it.
> Good example. But when representatives of bandits and robbers, who
> loot whole nations such as Iraq wholesale, talk of their poets being
> against tyranny, they become amusing.
There is a gigantic anti-war movement among American poets (British
and Australian as well). But I think you are missing the point of
Joe's remark about poetry and tyranny. This is not necessarily a
question of writing "political" poetry. By and large the poet's
politics are private, introverted, a settlement of scores with
oneself. Overtly, abstractedly political poetry is very often boring
because expressions of political self-righteousness are not poetically
interesting. Poetry is about tyranny given in personal experience,
about s soul's survival -- more about what goes on in your apartment
than about the Whitehouse. And poetry does not have a deep connection
to pleasing a crowd of well-dressed people or finding a language for
what they would wish to express.
> I don't think you know what you are
> talking about, so far as my views on the English language are
> concerned.
You have recently referred to it as an inferior language. In modern
linguistics they don't believe that languages can be superior or
inferior, but who cares about that crap anyway.
>My wife holds Owen in deep respect, and yes, he was very
>good. But he was basically a carry-over from the 19th century.
Owen has one great poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, which is nothing like
anything written in the 19th century.
> I am an engineer, and not a critic of poetry. My objective is thus to
> write as well as I can, for some specific purpose, and for that I need
> help from the very best sources. The study of poetry, or the written
> word, I use to sharpen my mind, so that it may more easily and
> efficiently and correctly grapple with the complex issues I face in my
> day-to-day professional career. I do not have the luxury of reading
> 20th century poets to great detail. With my limited reading, may I
> say that Yeats, Auden, Frost, Eliot, Mayakovsky, Ginsberg do not
> impress me very much, I can well do without them. Walt Disney beats
> all of them, in any issue of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck comics. As
> for modern poetry, I have gone through some issues of "Quadrant"
> published here in Australia, and the less I say of the stuff published
> as poetry there, the better. So when I have the time, I read and
> re-read Browning, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Wordsworth etc.
Thank you for clarifying. The more you elaborate, the better can I
contextulaize your objections to Jeet within the familiar. You are an
amateur who likes poetry, and God bless you for that. You have already
found everything you've wanted to find, and that's great too, for the
labor is over. I find a lack of proportion though between the
moderateness of your interest in 20th-century English-language poetry
and the ardor of your opinions about it.
Does it sometimes (ever?) occur to you that perhaps it may be hard for
you to come to adequate terms with our poetry because it is, well, so
culturally foreign to you and that any attempt to overcome this
foreignness even partially would involve patience, charity and a lot
work?
> They were expressing their opinion, as you express yours. Freedom of
> speech works both ways, you see. Surely if you are against tyranny,
> you can see that? Actually, from the experience of Michael
> Madhusudhan Dutta, they all know what to expect from the English.
> They know that sort of mentality very well, you see, and want no part
> of it.
Again this "against." Poetry is not about voting. I never said I was
"against" tyranny since I am not taking a vote here. I am "for"
freedom of language though. Indian cultural nationalists are welcome
to all their opinions (imagine me preventing that!), but their level
of thinking about what matters in poetry is so crude as to make a
genuine appreciation of poetry impossible. The brain is awash in false
issues. It knows all answers before asking any questions, before even
confronting the material. The mind is altogether elsewhere.
> > -- (I'll borrow this one from Jeet) -- with great vehemence,
> > conviction and authority about defending a true idea of poetry against
> > Jeet. The tone of authority seems to be quite groundless.
>
> You can think what you like, but you cannot deny that I have been
> speaking from the majority Indian point of view, and only representing
> them.
Which, if true, seems to find the majority Indian point of view sorely
wanting. So sue me. "50 million Frenchmen can be wrong." I have met
very many Indians and I have not concluded that the majority of them
know the first thing about poetry.
> > He is no
> > "wannabe poet" and it would gentlemanly of you to take that back.
>
> Did I call him that? I did not even know he is considered a poet.
OK, I misread. My bad.
PN
herothatdied
"Arindam Banerjee" <adda...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:890e65ea.0408...@posting.google.com...
> no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
>
full verse was published, and without context it took me a while (the
mention of Shakespeare was something of a turning point) to realize that it
_wasn't_ solely Christ/Judas being referred to in it. I didn't think Joe
went far enough with it, actually - the robes of purple, given the rest of
the Christ mythos present, could easily refer to the dressing of Jesus as
King of the Jews just prior to the crucifixion. With all the language of
discipleship Browning is, it looks like to me, mixing the comparison:
Wordsworth wasn't just Judas, he was Christ selling out for a handful of
silver, something infinitely worse.
And rejecting as unlikely the presence of Christ mythology working its way
through any Victorian piece is, well it's just mindboggling is all. One's
attitude is not only formed by one's beliefs: it may be formed by an
understanding - in this case even a casual understanding ought to be
enough - of the mythos ready to the author's hand. - htd
joe green
We try to accomodate every student. Will you require a dashiki or
will you bring your own?
joe green
> yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> > > > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > > > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
>
> no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
>
> They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> So much was theirs who so little allowed:
>
> How could any poet show the meanness of the giving authority more
> clearly? What further meaning could be drawn from this expressive
> line: "So much was theirs who so little allowed"? Trade unions should
> love it.
>
writing for the significance of the handful of silver is trasnsparent
and obvious and carries great emotional weight. You could understand
this in a scholarly way if you took the trouble to do so, To
understand this emotionally you need to be part of the culture.
Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
obvious to everyone. Your interpretation of
"They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued... but your
insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
at a much higher price is ridiculous. The point is that he sold out
and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
absurd. Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
(wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
way to strike back for you) would see things that way. At the same
time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
postmodern. You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
justification is that all truth is ideological and relative. So much
for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
Arindam Banerjee
>
> I assumed you were Bengali because of your name. Doesn't Banerjee come
> from Bandopadhyay?
Yes. But I was born and largely brought up in Bihar. So, I think of
myself as a Bihari.
> > > I don't see that things are exactly as you describe, whether in Bengal
> > > or elsewhere in India. There is no great difference *in substance*
> > > between the way in which poetic careers are advanced in India and say
> > > the US.
> >
> > What poetic careers? Is there a Indian Poetic Service created
> > recently?
>
> No, there been one for a while. Poetic careers means where your work
> gets published and in how many copies, what you are paid for it, where
> you teach, whether you appear on television, who reviews your work,
> what titles you receive and what awards you win.
That is your definition, of course. To me poetic career means how
much the impact of your work has made upon the masses. It could be,
that the greatest poet is one who influences the popular poets, but is
not popular himself withthe masses. In that case, his impact would be
the sum of the fans of all the fans of the popular poets he has
influenced. A professional poet is one who makes money out of his
work, and an amateur poet is one who writes for the fun of it.
> > But neither in the US nor in Calcutta
> > is the process reducible to elitism or power-politics. There is plenty
> > of native talent both here and there, and it does find its path to
> > recognition in both places (naturally, with the whole soup of
> > mediocrities right along).
>
> >Mediocrities do not stand a chance in kavi-sammelans, of the kind I
> >have seen in Ranchi (Bihar). Poets have to speak to a vast public,
> >and first of all it needs guts to do that, if you were a mediocrity
> >you would not dare.
>
> I don't buy this for a moment.
You don't get it for a moment. Evidently the concept of public
acclaim - genuine democracy, as opposed to manipulation via select and
closed committee - is foreign to you.
> If the mediocrities get voted into
> government, why not into the literary elite?
Indians don't particularly care for politics, and so my father - like
most middle-class Indian fathers - said all that nonsense was off
limits for me, only rank failures good for nothing else took part in
politics. I cannot think of a single relative, friend or even
acquaintance who ever even wanted to take part in modern Indian
politics. Politics is thus not for mere mediocrities, it is for
crooks really - the more shameless and corrupt they are, the more
success they can attain. However, people are truly interested in
poetry; poetry is serious business, so they don't want to celebrate
bad poets. While they have no choice about the politicians who get
elected (rigging, media manipulation, etc.) they can and do have a
choice about the poems they can like. So, bad poets simply cannot
keep the public interested in their work, for the public has to know
their works, not totally depend upon critics as they may do in the
West. When there are no really good poets around (as is the case in
Bengal now) they simply worship the good old dead poets, like Tagore
and Nazrul and Das and others, waiting for some good poet to turn up.
> Do you think government
> is harder for people to understand than poetry?
The government is by and large irrelevant to the people, as it does
nothing for the people. Well, that is too harsh - they do help in
natural disasters by providing relief, and they do fund the defence
and some other things like primary education and health care (less
said about the better). But the politicians are not involved there,
only the hardworking bureaucrats and the military supported by
taxation. Politicians are of course parasites. Indians are very
self-reliant, they do not depend upon handouts. There is no welfare
system, people look after themselves without state intervention. So
there is practically no interaction of the public with the government,
save in a usually negative sort of way. But the poet can keep the
people happy, without cost to the public. So, poetry is important,
and the poet gets some status.
> > Well, one man's utter fool is another's genius. In poetry, it is all
> > a matter of opinion.
>
> This is only ture from the point of view of the general public. To
> poets it's also a matter of knowledge, experience and personal
> accomplishment.
Ultimately expressed as opinion.
> > The poet does his business and the public does theirs. That's all.
> > The public admires the poet for the language to express what they
> > cannot express, and the poet is happy to be of some use to them.
>
> Yea, I know. But I think there are deeper and models of what poetry
> can be. All I care about is the language to express what I cannot
> express. Can the public help me there? And what's the public's lack of
> language to me? One of the mysteries of life is that poets don't learn
> much that is useful from non-poets about poetry.
Then they are lousy poets, not poets at all, in my opinion.
> > For the most part patronage
> > > has been taken over by academia and cultural foundations.
> >
> > Yes, yes, accounting for the state of arts as we find it.
>
> We have not yet seen that you are aware of the state of the arts as we
> find it.
If Jeet Thayil is held up as a great poet, I don't want to know more,
thank you.
> > Good example. But when representatives of bandits and robbers, who
> > loot whole nations such as Iraq wholesale, talk of their poets being
> > against tyranny, they become amusing.
>
> There is a gigantic anti-war movement among American poets (British
> and Australian as well).
But they will all benefit from the spoils, won't they? If they were
any good, this bastardy would not have happened, for the people and
their government would have been more moral. They are thus merely a
mask to hide the naked greed of the people they write for and who pay
them.
> But I think you are missing the point of
> Joe's remark about poetry and tyranny. This is not necessarily a
> question of writing "political" poetry. By and large the poet's
> politics are private, introverted, a settlement of scores with
> oneself. Overtly, abstractedly political poetry is very often boring
> because expressions of political self-righteousness are not poetically
> interesting. Poetry is about tyranny given in personal experience,
> about s soul's survival -- more about what goes on in your apartment
> than about the Whitehouse. And poetry does not have a deep connection
> to pleasing a crowd of well-dressed people or finding a language for
> what they would wish to express.
So they may remain stuffed with such introverted "poetry", it has no
relevance to me, and I really do not see why anyone should be
interested, unless one is similarly introverted and seeking solace in
shared misery.
> > I don't think you know what you are
> > talking about, so far as my views on the English language are
> > concerned.
>
> You have recently referred to it as an inferior language. In modern
> linguistics they don't believe that languages can be superior or
> inferior, but who cares about that crap anyway.
Of course, who cares for what linguists believe. They have absolutely
no relevance to poetry. Or anything else for that matter, except for
speech recognition techniques maybe for computer systems; and that
too, thanks to the incredible peculiarity of the unscientific English
language.
> >My wife holds Owen in deep respect, and yes, he was very
> >good. But he was basically a carry-over from the 19th century.
>
> Owen has one great poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, which is nothing like
> anything written in the 19th century.
The idea is that he was seeing world war with the more romantic 19th
century perspectives that were shattered.
> > I am an engineer, and not a critic of poetry. My objective is thus to
> > write as well as I can, for some specific purpose, and for that I need
> > help from the very best sources. The study of poetry, or the written
> > word, I use to sharpen my mind, so that it may more easily and
> > efficiently and correctly grapple with the complex issues I face in my
> > day-to-day professional career. I do not have the luxury of reading
> > 20th century poets to great detail. With my limited reading, may I
> > say that Yeats, Auden, Frost, Eliot, Mayakovsky, Ginsberg do not
> > impress me very much, I can well do without them. Walt Disney beats
> > all of them, in any issue of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck comics. As
> > for modern poetry, I have gone through some issues of "Quadrant"
> > published here in Australia, and the less I say of the stuff published
> > as poetry there, the better. So when I have the time, I read and
> > re-read Browning, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Wordsworth etc.
>
> Thank you for clarifying. The more you elaborate, the better can I
> contextulaize your objections to Jeet within the familiar. You are an
> amateur who likes poetry, and God bless you for that. You have already
> found everything you've wanted to find, and that's great too, for the
> labor is over.
Oh no, it has only started. Well, it started several years ago,
actually. One has to find one's track, and having found that, moves
on. I write in English as well as I want to, and now I am focussing
on Bengali, by translating the best from the best English poets to
that language. That should be good training, before I dare to do
original work. And then, who knows, I may even try my hand in Hindi
and dare I say Sanskrit, after many many years of hard work.
> I find a lack of proportion though between the
> moderateness of your interest in 20th-century English-language poetry
> and the ardor of your opinions about it.
It is so bad, it is irrelevant. What more can be said? Poetry is not
taught in schools any more in Australia. My children never had to
memorise a single poem in their lives. Such was not the case in my
education.
> Does it sometimes (ever?) occur to you that perhaps it may be hard for
> you to come to adequate terms with our poetry because it is, well, so
> culturally foreign to you and that any attempt to overcome this
> foreignness even partially would involve patience, charity and a lot
> work?
19th centry poetry and above should be equally culturally foreign to
me, maybe more, as they are more out of our time. Why should I like
19th century English poetry more than 20th century poetry? Or 20th
century plumbing better than 19th century plumbing? Where does
patience and charity and work come into it? There is only
discrimination! I use a lot of that, plus patience and charity and
work, to translate Shakespeare and Shelley, let alone all the other
scientific work that I do. Making personal attacks won't make your
case - whatever that is - better.
> > They were expressing their opinion, as you express yours. Freedom of
> > speech works both ways, you see. Surely if you are against tyranny,
> > you can see that? Actually, from the experience of Michael
> > Madhusudhan Dutta, they all know what to expect from the English.
> > They know that sort of mentality very well, you see, and want no part
> > of it.
>
> Again this "against." Poetry is not about voting. I never said I was
> "against" tyranny since I am not taking a vote here. I am "for"
> freedom of language though. Indian cultural nationalists are welcome
> to all their opinions (imagine me preventing that!), but their level
> of thinking about what matters in poetry is so crude as to make a
> genuine appreciation of poetry impossible. The brain is awash in false
> issues. It knows all answers before asking any questions, before even
> confronting the material. The mind is altogether elsewhere.
Let us agree that we have conflicting ideas about what is poetry. What
is poetry to you, is pretentious and useless nonsense to me. And what
is poetry to me, is crude and banal to you. We just do not relate,
that is all.
> > > -- (I'll borrow this one from Jeet) -- with great vehemence,
> > > conviction and authority about defending a true idea of poetry against
> > > Jeet. The tone of authority seems to be quite groundless.
> >
> > You can think what you like, but you cannot deny that I have been
> > speaking from the majority Indian point of view, and only representing
> > them.
>
> Which, if true, seems to find the majority Indian point of view sorely
> wanting. So sue me. "50 million Frenchmen can be wrong." I have met
> very many Indians and I have not concluded that the majority of them
> know the first thing about poetry.
I was only going by what you said, in your earlier posting. Looks
like my attitude matched what you had written about the attitudes of
the Indians you had met.
Arindam Banerjee
>
> Really...this is over the top:
>
> "Anyone who mentions my work and that of Jeet Thayil in the same
> breath
> cannot be expected to be right about anything."
>
> As I said, I read your poem/translation and really wouldn't want to be
> without it. But I find it depressing that you indulge in this sort of
> thing. It's really very meaningless and lacks the sprightliness that
> I like about so much of what you write.
Certainly not. I am doing it for the sake of Art, for which I have a
sacred duty. Not my own ego. I cannot let my inspired work be
diminished with such association. What would an Australian think if
he were told by some USAn that some obscure high school swimming
champion is as good as Ian Thorpe?
At times I think you are
> completely mad -- but in a merry way -- as when, for example you
> construe Browning's vilification of Wordsworth as his railing against
> the miserliness of the authorities. If only they gave Wordsworth
> more...perhaps his own phaeton or ever railway car and a position in
> the church...then Browning would have been satisfied!
No, I meant the tyrant giving enough so that Browning would have been
satisfied that enough had been paid.
Ridiculous, of
> course but damned fine. But, you know, when you persist in
> denigrating Jeet's poetry and for so little cause and so obviously
> using the poems just as an occasion to rail against this and that,
> then you are just doing the expected.
Doing the expected is the way the world runs, if it has to run safely
and efficiently. Like, the sun rises and sinks as per expectation.
> You seem to think that, perhaps, liking the poems will thrust you into
> a bright world (my words) of money and power and vulgarity (your
> words) but blithely ignore the fact that the poet whose poems you
> reprehend and the two poets who are chatting about him with you have
> almost no cash, very little power and, I know for a fact, that I am
> the only one of the trio who is vulgar
Just the point I have been making. Why should poets be poor? They
should not be poor, nor should they be powerless. They should be
rich, and hobnob with the powerful. But for that to happen, they have
to get out of their rut, and behave like all other professionals.
Prostitute or enslave themselves, one way or the other, by keeping
secrets, but also by improving their own skills, and being relevant to
the masses. If they do not, they will be doomed to remain poor and
powerless. When they have enough money, they can be as bold and
independent as they like.
-- given as I am to walking
> about with my mouth open and wearing slacks that are too short, a
> sports jacket that was fashionable when J.D. Salinger was fashionable
> and shirts with ruffles. Moreover I dye my hair and beard and my once
> white locks and beard are now a peculiar red never until now seen on
> land or sea.
>
> But still I am fastidious in these sorts of matters. Others may abide
> your questions. Jeet is free,
Okay, as I just said to Philip, we seem to have entirely different
ideas about what is poetry, and its function, so really there is no
need for further discussion. What you think is poetry, I think not,
simply because we see things differently, and I don't like what you
see, and also happen to be more comfortable with what I see.
herothatdied
> > without it. But I find it depressing that you indulge in this sort of
> > thing. It's really very meaningless and lacks the sprightliness that
> > I like about so much of what you write.
>
> Certainly not. I am doing it for the sake of Art, for which I have a
> sacred duty. Not my own ego. I cannot let my inspired work be
> diminished with such association.
Whoop! There's one that gets copied down in Moleskine!
Chandra P. Das
Go listen to MTV -- you'll find plenty of your kind of 'poets' there
engaging the masses all the while hobnobbing with the rich and powerful.
You've got to be trolling out your ass to even suggest that the
judgement of poetry ought to be left to the masses. One of the main
purposes of poetry -- art in general -- is not to indulge, satisfy or
succumb to popular tastes of the time but rather to LIFT and refine the
people's senses to higher grounds. What the masses want is absolutely
irrelevant. If the masses are ever interested in exercising their minds
then they're welcome to look into the arts for various challenges. Now,
I wouldn't mind your stupid trolling antics but you keep presenting
yourself as some representative of Indian intellectualism. That I find
offensive. Try to keep cultural issues out of your personal crackpot
theories. Thank you.
pund kamath
> > > > Do you offer credit course in Ebonics too?
> > >
> > > Yes, you will be able to minor in Ebonics under the tutelage of The Lonliest Ranger.
> >
> > I didn't reallize your English Dept at Waindell College specializes in Ebonics!
>
> We try to accomodate every student. Will you require a dashiki or
> will you bring your own?
with such an environment of hospitality of your department, did any
one come OUT better than went IN!
Arindam Banerjee
> "Arindam Banerjee" <adda...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> news:890e65ea.0408...@posting.google.com...
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message
> news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> >
> > The gospel story has very little significance - in fact, practically
> > no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> > not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> > only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> > poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> > beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> > asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> > understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> > significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
> >
> Are you kidding? I popped onto & started reading this thread just as the
> full verse was published, and without context it took me a while (the
> mention of Shakespeare was something of a turning point) to realize that it
> _wasn't_ solely Christ/Judas being referred to in it.
I don't see how Christ or Judas come into question. If you are not a
Christian, as I am, and just go by what is written, you need not
obsess about some exclusive obsessions that colour your reason
purposelessly. But if you are, you will as I say ignore whatever you
don't consider relevant, and so be a blind bigot, naturally. As an
outsider, I cannot but take a full, balanced outlook and make up my
judgment accordingly.
I didn't think Joe
> went far enough with it, actually - the robes of purple, given the rest of
> the Christ mythos present, could easily refer to the dressing of Jesus as
> King of the Jews just prior to the crucifixion. With all the language of
> discipleship Browning is, it looks like to me, mixing the comparison:
> Wordsworth wasn't just Judas, he was Christ selling out for a handful of
> silver, something infinitely worse.
I don't see it that way. Wordsworth was just selling himself too
short, showing his lack of good judgment (and so, losing the
leadership status) while the main target was the ruling authority, so
immensely mean (then as now!).
> And rejecting as unlikely the presence of Christ mythology working its way
> through any Victorian piece is, well it's just mindboggling is all.
Well, if it not mentioned why should one bother about it? Evidently
they were far more open-minded in the nineteenth century than the
cruel, ignorant, arrogant and evil fanatics of our fundamentalist
times, who can see nothing but in terms of their bigotry. Like the
Southerners could not understand the black Othello, and Green may not
understand how some Christian like Browning could write so profoundly
Islamic a poem as Muleykeh.
One's
> attitude is not only formed by one's beliefs: it may be formed by an
> understanding - in this case even a casual understanding ought to be
> enough - of the mythos ready to the author's hand. - htd
Fanatics do not take the balanced view - they see only what they want
to see. It is pointless to reason with them, one should just avoid
them, if one can.
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.0408...@posting.google.com>...
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> > > > > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > > > > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> >
> > The gospel story has very little significance - in fact, practically
> > no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> > not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> > only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> > poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> > beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> > asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> > understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> > significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
> >
> > They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> >
> > How could any poet show the meanness of the giving authority more
> > clearly? What further meaning could be drawn from this expressive
> > line: "So much was theirs who so little allowed"? Trade unions should
> > love it.
> >
> Well, again you lack the context. For the readers Browning was
> writing for the significance of the handful of silver is trasnsparent
> and obvious and carries great emotional weight.
Of course, it meant a few shillings, not much money.
> You could understand
> this in a scholarly way if you took the trouble to do so,
> One could relate it to Judas but that would be only a metaphor, not necessarily justified, as there is no explicit assertion later in the poem. It is thus only a figure of speech.
To
> understand this emotionally you need to be part of the culture.
So I have been a part of the culture. I was educated by the Jesuits
for 12 years. Certainly I know about the story. And I live in a
Christian country, where every now and then I am invited to join some
sect or other by door-knockers.
> Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> obvious to everyone.
All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
am saying.
Your interpretation of
>
> "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> So much was theirs who so little allowed:
>
> similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
but your
> insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> at a much higher price is ridiculous.
Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
and powerful patron, and what's bad about that? Buying and selling is
a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
Quite correctly, too.
The point is that he sold out
> and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> absurd.
You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
all.
Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
> At the same
> time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
history, but also mythology.
> Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
> you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
> insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
Don't impose your limitations upon me. I only read the poem, and
judge by a balanced outlook of what is there in it, and not by what
exists in your mind.
> You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
> postmodern.
I don't much care about labels. when I write, I only try to make
myself clear.
You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
> justification is that all truth is ideological and relative.
That is not my approach. I do *not* say that all truth is ideological
and relative. That is pure nonsense. All the relativising was done
by you, not me. I only went by what was there in the text - that, and
only that, was the truth - not your extrapolations to suit your own
prejudices and limitations.
So much
> for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
poetry of Browning.
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.0408...@posting.google.com>...
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> > > > > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > > > > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> >
> > The gospel story has very little significance - in fact, practically
> > no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> > not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> > only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> > poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> > beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> > asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> > understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> > significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
> >
> > They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> >
> > How could any poet show the meanness of the giving authority more
> > clearly? What further meaning could be drawn from this expressive
> > line: "So much was theirs who so little allowed"? Trade unions should
> > love it.
> >
> Well, again you lack the context. For the readers Browning was
> writing for the significance of the handful of silver is trasnsparent
> and obvious and carries great emotional weight.
Of course, it meant a few shillings, not much money.
> You could understand
> this in a scholarly way if you took the trouble to do so,
> One could relate it to Judas but that would be only a metaphor, not necessarily justified, as there is no explicit assertion later in the poem. It is thus only a figure of speech.
To
> understand this emotionally you need to be part of the culture.
So I have been a part of the culture. I was educated by the Jesuits
for 12 years. Certainly I know about the story. And I live in a
Christian country, where every now and then I am invited to join some
sect or other by door-knockers.
> Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> obvious to everyone.
All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
am saying.
Your interpretation of
>
> "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> So much was theirs who so little allowed:
>
> similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
but your
> insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> at a much higher price is ridiculous.
Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
and powerful patron, and what's bad about that? Buying and selling is
a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
Quite correctly, too.
The point is that he sold out
> and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> absurd.
You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
all.
Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
> At the same
> time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
history, but also mythology.
> Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
> you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
> insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
Don't impose your limitations upon me. I only read the poem, and
judge by a balanced outlook of what is there in it, and not by what
exists in your mind.
> You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
> postmodern.
I don't much care about labels. when I write, I only try to make
myself clear.
You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
> justification is that all truth is ideological and relative.
That is not my approach. I do *not* say that all truth is ideological
and relative. That is pure nonsense. All the relativising was done
by you, not me. I only went by what was there in the text - that, and
only that, was the truth - not your extrapolations to suit your own
prejudices and limitations.
So much
> for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
poetry of Browning.
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.0408...@posting.google.com>...
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
> > > > > Burns, Shelley, were with us, -- they watch from their graves.
> > > > > He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
> >
> > The gospel story has very little significance - in fact, practically
> > no significance - in this poem, merely as a metaphor at most, and I do
> > not take it seriously at all. Giving it the high significance you do,
> > only leads to unnecessary confusion, by twisting away from what the
> > poet actually meant. Of course, one's attitude is defined by one's
> > beliefs, and you I take it are some kind of pavement evangelist,
> > asking passers-by to repent, in loud voice. So, thus you can be
> > understood; but it so happens that you are missing out entirely on the
> > significance of the following lines, by simply ignoring them:
> >
> > They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> >
> > How could any poet show the meanness of the giving authority more
> > clearly? What further meaning could be drawn from this expressive
> > line: "So much was theirs who so little allowed"? Trade unions should
> > love it.
> >
> Well, again you lack the context. For the readers Browning was
> writing for the significance of the handful of silver is trasnsparent
> and obvious and carries great emotional weight.
Of course, it meant a few shillings, not much money.
> You could understand
> this in a scholarly way if you took the trouble to do so,
> One could relate it to Judas but that would be only a metaphor, not necessarily justified, as there is no explicit assertion later in the poem. It is thus only a figure of speech.
To
> understand this emotionally you need to be part of the culture.
So I have been a part of the culture. I was educated by the Jesuits
for 12 years. Certainly I know about the story. And I live in a
Christian country, where every now and then I am invited to join some
sect or other by door-knockers.
> Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> obvious to everyone.
All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
am saying.
Your interpretation of
>
> "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> So much was theirs who so little allowed:
>
> similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
but your
> insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> at a much higher price is ridiculous.
Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
and powerful patron, and what's bad about that? Buying and selling is
a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
Quite correctly, too.
The point is that he sold out
> and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> absurd.
You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
all.
Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
> At the same
> time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
history, but also mythology.
> Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
> you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
> insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
Don't impose your limitations upon me. I only read the poem, and
judge by a balanced outlook of what is there in it, and not by what
exists in your mind.
> You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
> postmodern.
I don't much care about labels. when I write, I only try to make
myself clear.
You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
> justification is that all truth is ideological and relative.
That is not my approach. I do *not* say that all truth is ideological
and relative. That is pure nonsense. All the relativising was done
by you, not me. I only went by what was there in the text - that, and
only that, was the truth - not your extrapolations to suit your own
prejudices and limitations.
So much
> for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
poetry of Browning.
joe green
Green may not
understand how some Christian like Browning could write so profoundly
Islamic a poem as Muleykeh.
This is odd -- since we never discussed this poem and I never said
anything of the sort and, in any case, would be fine with the notion
that Browning could do this. Again, you're seeing things that are not
there.
joe green
You too? Nio wonder we are both rather odd!
>
> > Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> > research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> > obvious to everyone.
>
> All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
> am saying.
We should also mention that, of course, Browning wasn't just angry
that Wordsworth accepted honors. Do you know the historical
context...what Wordsworth said in his essay on the Convention of
Cintra? Let's indulge in a bit of scholarship!
>
> Your interpretation of
> >
> > "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> >
> > similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> > the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> > out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
>
> Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
> cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
> poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
>
> but your
> > insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> > at a much higher price is ridiculous.
>
> Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
> Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
> write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
> being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
> and powerful patron, and what's bad about that? Buying and selling is
> a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
> all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
> being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
> Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
> Quite correctly, too.
He betrayed principles...you could find out what those are.
>
> The point is that he sold out
> > and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> > the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> > Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> > absurd.
>
> You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
> all.
We'll I know I'm not making any impression on you. But I have to
try...and besides I enjoy chatting with you.
>
> Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> > imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> > (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> > way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
>
> But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
> shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
> of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
> Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
> and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
> bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
> not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
Nah, what's telling is that you insist that, of course, this is how an
Englishman would think, Demand the right price and all that. So, you
say, of course, this is how Browning would think.
>
> > At the same
> > time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> > paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
>
> Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> history, but also mythology.
Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
>
> > Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
> > you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
> > insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
>
> Don't impose your limitations upon me. I only read the poem, and
> judge by a balanced outlook of what is there in it, and not by what
> exists in your mind.
I'm not imposing anything. It would be impossible anyway. You are
your own man and I am no tyrant.
>
> > You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
> > postmodern.
>
> I don't much care about labels. when I write, I only try to make
> myself clear.
Good. Way to go.
>
> You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
> > justification is that all truth is ideological and relative.
>
> That is not my approach. I do *not* say that all truth is ideological
> and relative. That is pure nonsense. All the relativising was done
> by you, not me. I only went by what was there in the text - that, and
> only that, was the truth - not your extrapolations to suit your own
> prejudices and limitations.
Well, of course everyone who interprets a text ideologically claims
that they are seeing what is actually there. Except for the
postmodern fellows. You're obviously not one of them. You're doing
it the old fashioned way!
>
> So much
> > for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
>
> You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
> poetry of Browning.
Well, I have some clue to Browning and none at all to the Indian mind
-- if that isn't just a generalization. I will say though that what I
know of what could be said to be the Indian Mind (from reading...never
been to India tho I have some Indian friends...closest I got was
Bangladesh for several months -- where I might have encountered the
Bengali mind..)is that if I had another several lifetimes and did what
I could I could begin to get it. Believe me, when confronted with
let's say all there is in a culture (Chinese, Indian, Russian, English
whatever) I would never claim that I comprehend it completely or even
adequately. I only know the little I know. And I know a lot more
about English Lit -- that one aspect of a certain kind of "mind" --
than I do about the Indian mind and I am grateful for any instruction.
Your interpretation of Browning seems very skewed to me. So, I'm just
trying to show why.
joe green
Yes, almost everyone. Some refuse to leave, of course, and they are
given appointments in the various departments. Ah, how they glitter!
Refusing the world as it is! We have, for example, one department
entirely devoted to reading the works of Nabokov and uttering glad
cries when (as it often is) beauty is encountered!
I overheard this this morning.
Professor Chateau: "Look, for example, at this perfect sentence from
Nabokov's "Pnin."
"The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled
those displays of grouped elbow chairs, on show, and beds, and lamps,
and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle
in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the
dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody."
Chateau: "So… just a sentence -- but really impossible to pass over.
It's absolutely wild. No-one has ever written like that. It's so
particular and so wild and strange and so much coming from Nabokov's
alone-ness and peculiar ear and merry disregard of risks. Lesser
writers -- if they got as far as "the dusk deepens" would hesitate at
"and nobody really loves anybody" even if it occurred to them. The
sort of pleasure it gives is so particular to what it is -- no name
really for this particular joy because it comes of itself -- like
opening a Christmas present and finding you have a Tramfalmadorian
crystal of the old sort.
Good poetry is like that and good poetry of the old sort is too of
course if you can see it in spite of what everyone (almost) says it
is."
It's quite jolly!
Please submit an application so that you may be awarded a scholarship.
We are located 200 miles from NYC and may, most conveniently, be
reached by rail.
herothatdied
news:5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com...
> It's absolutely wild. No-one has ever written like that. It's so
> particular and so wild and strange and so much coming from Nabokov's
> alone-ness and peculiar ear and merry disregard of risks. Lesser
> writers -- if they got as far as "the dusk deepens" would hesitate at
> "and nobody really loves anybody" even if it occurred to them. The
> sort of pleasure it gives is so particular to what it is -- no name
> really for this particular joy because it comes of itself -- like
> opening a Christmas present and finding you have a Tramfalmadorian
> crystal of the old sort.
>
> Good poetry is like that and good poetry of the old sort is too of
> course if you can see it in spite of what everyone (almost) says it
> is."
>
> It's quite jolly!
>
> Please submit an application so that you may be awarded a scholarship.
> We are located 200 miles from NYC and may, most conveniently, be
> reached by rail.
What is it about your post that makes me crave a cream tea, but only if it's
sunny? - htd
joe green
We should find out. I would pick you up at the station and
congratulate you for being quite sound on Browning.
I would sigh. "You take it further than I dared but you are quite
right."
I would say "Do you remember that little tea shop on the Neva? Here,
at Waindell, we have one just like it! Shall we go?"
Damn.
herothatdied
it's
> > sunny? - htd
>
> We should find out. I would pick you up at the station and
> congratulate you for being quite sound on Browning.
>
> I would sigh. "You take it further than I dared but you are quite
> right."
>
> I would say "Do you remember that little tea shop on the Neva? Here,
> at Waindell, we have one just like it! Shall we go?"
>
> Damn.
I've been reading your stuff on ezboard - am I right in guessing you're
Monsieur Literary Lifter? The one in right-angled staves involving
Sylvester the Cat and a Wilde plot to stop Andrew Lloyd Weber was
particularly fascinating. However did you get the idea to write in such
circular departures? And where is the sonnet about the man dressing in the
subway? - htd
joe green
Yes, but, perhaps knowingly (is that you Polyanthous?) you may have
unleashed the portals of hell. Yes, I am Joe Green but I do channel
the poetry of that fellow along with the poetry of Rin Tin Tin, the
Lonliest Ranger, Hitler's Cat and Davy Crockett ...and some others. I
summon Francis Muir to testify to, at least, the earthly existence of
Joe Green (oh, Philp can do this too!) ... that was a nice sonnet
but, sadly, I have aliennated its author along with her spouse and all
their boon companions. Still I can offer this as a sort of follow up
to the weight questions here considered.
Who's at bat? Why it looks like Old Bill Yeats.
Pope's on the Mound. The pitch is wide and low.
Yeat's spits. The pitch. A hit. Get it Johnny Keats!
A long legged fly. Keats is too damn slow.
He coughs. He falls! Look it's Wallace Stevens!
Way back! He'll have to catch it off the wall.
Shelley scores! By God the score is even!
Yeats stops at third. A fact which doth appall
Bobby Frost. Who strides quickly to the mound.
Pope's out. Pound's in. No it's Christy Marlowe!
(The Bard's retired.) But then there is a sound
As the crowd cries out in rage and sorrow,
Heads for their cars. The Greeks would call it Fate.
What can be done when Homer's at the plate?
Philip Nikolayev
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote:
> > Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> > history, but also mythology.
>
> Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
I think Tagore may have tried.
Folks, it will be impossible for me to post for a few days, but I
don't intend to quit the discussion just as yet.
Arindam -- no personal attack, I've taken you a lot more seriously
than you give credit for (my continued interest in talking is the
evidence, God knows I don't post much of anything any more). I would
like to rise to the challenge and to try and explain why I have called
Jeet's poetry major -- but we far from ready to go there yet. Many
other things need to be cleared up first. By the way, I have been
reading Browning again thanks to you. I'm half way through his
collected poems. He's a hell of a poet, better than I realized
previously. But there's also Blake who I notice is missing from your
list. Tennysson seems to me the weakest of the ones you mention -- in
my youth I used to like "Ulyssus" but can't remember why. Perhaps I
should reread "In Memoriam." I have some recommendations for you re.
20th-century poetry, but they will have to wait.
Cheers,
Philip
Arindam Banerjee
> > for 12 years. Certainly I know about the story. And I live in a
> > Christian country, where every now and then I am invited to join some
> > sect or other by door-knockers.
>
> You too? Nio wonder we are both rather odd!
Speak for yourself, Mr Green.
> > > Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> > > research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> > > obvious to everyone.
> >
> > All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
> > am saying.
>
> We should also mention that, of course, Browning wasn't just angry
> that Wordsworth accepted honors. Do you know the historical
> context...what Wordsworth said in his essay on the Convention of
> Cintra? Let's indulge in a bit of scholarship!
I have already told you that I am not a scholar of the English
language, and I have no hope about matching any professional scholar
in his knowledge if not proper understanding of the details. I am a
professional engineer with an interest for the word, as an expression
of sight and sound and smell and feel and meaning. If there is
something you want to tell me, do so by all means. When I see a poem
or any other literary work, I judge it just by what is written there,
just like any judge with evidence before him or her. If this attitude
does not work for you, then of course further dialogue between us is
pointless. All that is ultimately evident to me in the poem is that
Browning was shirty because Wordsworth had sold out to a low offer.
Your point is that Browning was angry with the selling out itself, and
that the payment amount was irrelevant. I must confess that when I
*first* read the poem, a few decades ago, that was the impression I
got. But then I was very young, and far more idealistic. The
practical nature of things did not make much impression upon me; - I
could not even think that any poet would stress upon the fundamental
commercial principle (right price) in any of his work - poetry is
supposed to be lofty! But the whole world ultimately works upon
delivering the right goods for the right price - when that is not
done, a lot of gas delivered instead by powerful windbags, people get
hurt. And why they are getting hurt, is not so easily apparent. In
this poem, Browning no doubt has all the passion of the idealist, but
that is very well balanced by the pragmatism of the shopkeeper, though
I'll allow that this latter aspect may be more apparent to an engineer
than a professor of literature. It is for this marvellous balance,
expressed in flawless style, and showing the keenest of intellect and
insight beyond even the scope of Shakespeare, that I rate Browning
higher than all English poets.
> > Your interpretation of
> > >
> > > "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> > >
> > > similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> > > the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> > > out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
> >
> > Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
> > cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
> > poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
> >
> > but your
> > > insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> > > at a much higher price is ridiculous.
> >
> > Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
> > Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
> > write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
> > being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
> > and powerful patron, and what's bad about that? Buying and selling is
> > a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
> > all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
> > being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
> > Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
> > Quite correctly, too.
>
> He betrayed principles...you could find out what those are.
Or he found more purposeful principles, and followed them, with a
certain sense of humility (there is humility in voluntarily giving up
your fiery and proud independence and wearing a collar instead, even
for money and security) for more directed social concern on an
official basis. One has to progress from seemingly purposeless
immaturity to some more solid foundation, with the passage of time.
We all go through phases, and have to rise above our own past selves,
that must die. Or, we look as pathetic as mutton dressed as lamb.
However, there must always be the celebration for our brilliant and
idealistic and passionate youths, dead though they are... Browning's
work may be seen as such a celebration, as is my "Death in Ghaziabad".
Look, Wordsworth was right in his own way, and so was Browning in his
own way. Their struggle is essentially a clash between youth and
maturity, between proud independence and subservience for substance.
No one loses out of it, looking the worse. Such is the nature of
conflict between two truly great people! The Poet Laureate, or
Chained Dog of the Establishment, is just one poet - the rest can
remain as free as they want to, and bark or howl as they wish. But
the Chained Dog too has to serve his purpose, if only as a target for
free dogs. But he cannot remain the leader of the pack of free
dogs/wolves, and so, he becomes the lost leader.
> > The point is that he sold out
> > > and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> > > the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> > > Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> > > absurd.
> >
> > You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
> > all.
>
> We'll I know I'm not making any impression on you. But I have to
> try...and besides I enjoy chatting with you.
That's good, but you could try harder.
> > Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> > > imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> > > (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> > > way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
> >
> > But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
> > shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
> > of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
> > Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
> > and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
> > bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
> > not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
>
> Nah, what's telling is that you insist that, of course, this is how an
> Englishman would think, Demand the right price and all that. So, you
> say, of course, this is how Browning would think.
And why not? Jolly well he should, and so he was reflecting their
national characteristic. If people got the right price for their work
things would be heaps better. The whole effort of law, business,
govt., etc. is ultimately to ensure fairness. There will always be
questions like what is fair and if fair fair to whom, but no decent
person will seriously say that fairness is not the issue. It is by
insisting upon fairness - if only just for themselves - that the
English have done so well for themselves. If other peoples want to do
equally well, they should copy this trait.
> > > At the same
> > > time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> > > paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
> >
> > Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> > history, but also mythology.
>
> Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
Stalin wasn't Indian, and I was referring to Indian tyrants. I have
said earlier that in the 20th century we did not have proper tyrants,
we had fools and murderers posing as tyrants. For proper tyrants, we
have to see who patronised Voltaire (Frederick the Great) or da Vinci
(Francis of France) or Shakespeare (Southampton) or Kalidas
(Vikramaditya).
> > > Again, you have made up your mind -- guided by wants to assert what
> > > you will that advance your wants and underline your abhorrences -- and
> > > insist on imposing these elements on the poem.
> >
> > Don't impose your limitations upon me. I only read the poem, and
> > judge by a balanced outlook of what is there in it, and not by what
> > exists in your mind.
>
> I'm not imposing anything. It would be impossible anyway. You are
> your own man and I am no tyrant.
> >
> > > You might not be thrilled to discover that what you are doing is very
> > > postmodern.
> >
> > I don't much care about labels. when I write, I only try to make
> > myself clear.
>
> Good. Way to go.
> >
> > You use the text for what you want -- the postmodern
> > > justification is that all truth is ideological and relative.
> >
> > That is not my approach. I do *not* say that all truth is ideological
> > and relative. That is pure nonsense. All the relativising was done
> > by you, not me. I only went by what was there in the text - that, and
> > only that, was the truth - not your extrapolations to suit your own
> > prejudices and limitations.
>
> Well, of course everyone who interprets a text ideologically claims
> that they are seeing what is actually there. Except for the
> postmodern fellows. You're obviously not one of them. You're doing
> it the old fashioned way!
As I said I am an engineer who reads any work like a judge in a court
reads evidence. What is not there, I do not see. Because, there is
no limit to what I do not see in a work - so the evaluation of any
artistic work, from what is not there in it, reduces to a political
process. What is there, I try to make sense of, and see the best
possible and most logical pattern. I find from experience that the
better the writer, the most strikingly clear and unambiguous the
pattern, and so, the easier to translate. So, Shakespeare tell us in
his sonnets exactly what he wants to say - he does that because he is
such a great writer.
> > So much
> > > for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
> >
> > You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
> > poetry of Browning.
>
> Well, I have some clue to Browning and none at all to the Indian mind
Then let me hear about your views of "The Last Duchess".
> -- if that isn't just a generalization. I will say though that what I
> know of what could be said to be the Indian Mind (from reading...never
> been to India tho I have some Indian friends...closest I got was
> Bangladesh for several months -- where I might have encountered the
> Bengali mind..)
And what was the nature of the Bengali mind you encountered in
Bangladesh?
is that if I had another several lifetimes and did what
> I could I could begin to get it. Believe me, when confronted with
> let's say all there is in a culture (Chinese, Indian, Russian, English
> whatever) I would never claim that I comprehend it completely or even
> adequately.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you approach them with too many
preconceptions. Trying using a blank mind instead, and read exactly
what is there before you, before knowing the pedigree and habits of
those who have written the stuff. Maybe, you will get better results,
and not remain in such a hopeless state.
> I only know the little I know. And I know a lot more
> about English Lit -- that one aspect of a certain kind of "mind" --
> than I do about the Indian mind and I am grateful for any instruction.
Then explain Browning's "The Last Duchess".
> Your interpretation of Browning seems very skewed to me. So, I'm just
> trying to show why.
I believe my interpretation of Browning's work is mature and balanced
and insightful and also hopeful, and that over time people will agree
with me.
Arindam Banerjee.
herothatdied
> "herothatdied" <heroth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<k5zTc.821$Kf4...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>...
> > "joe green" <yeoldw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com...
> > > >
>
I have no anthers - I'm a whole 'nuther kind of pest
> you may have
> unleashed the portals of hell.
Oh crud. They promised me, absolutely promised, that the records on that
were sealed.
> Yes, I am Joe Green but I do channel
> the poetry of that fellow along with the poetry of Rin Tin Tin, the
> Lonliest Ranger, Hitler's Cat and Davy Crockett ...and some others. I
> summon Francis Muir to testify to, at least, the earthly existence of
> Joe Green
Aha! Fraggers, I told you you'd be called upon to make introductions...
score one point for Harriet!
> (oh, Philp can do this too!) ... that was a nice sonnet
> but, sadly, I have aliennated its author along with her spouse and all
> their boon companions.
Icky. Sorry to hear it.
> Still I can offer this as a sort of follow up
> to the weight questions here considered.
>
> Who's at bat? Why it looks like Old Bill Yeats.
> Pope's on the Mound. The pitch is wide and low.
> Yeat's spits. The pitch. A hit. Get it Johnny Keats!
> A long legged fly. Keats is too damn slow.
> He coughs. He falls! Look it's Wallace Stevens!
> Way back! He'll have to catch it off the wall.
> Shelley scores! By God the score is even!
> Yeats stops at third. A fact which doth appall
> Bobby Frost. Who strides quickly to the mound.
> Pope's out. Pound's in. No it's Christy Marlowe!
> (The Bard's retired.) But then there is a sound
> As the crowd cries out in rage and sorrow,
> Heads for their cars. The Greeks would call it Fate.
>
> What can be done when Homer's at the plate?
I saw that on Forbidden whatsis, I love it, I sent it to my dad I liked it
so much. It's brilliant. Why the apostrophe in Yeat's? - htd
Arindam Banerjee
From your support for Jeet's anti-Brahmin stuff, and your gratuitous
call to me for repentance, I see you as a modern pavement evangelist
type - an americanised christian, that is - I hope, wrongly. Or you
could have pretensions to secularism, but that I doubt. Of course we
never discussed the poem. If you think you understand it, then feel
free to say what you do understand about it.
Arindam Banerjee
"Chandra P. Das" <vze1...@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<Os8Tc.886$ZY3.159@trndny08>...
joe green
>
>
> "Chandra P. Das" <vze1...@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<Os8Tc.886$ZY3.159@trndny08>...
This seems rather blunt!
joe green
May I offer my take on this -- in deathless verse?
W.H. Auden
Perhaps the plummest
Said "Of all major poets
Tennyson's dumbest."
It was so cold outside
But cozy within.
A nice place to abide
With bitters and gin.
It was the season of hope
Hence reassuring them
That it was a dope
Who wrote "In Memorium."
But Auden wasn't a dummy.
And it was Christmas eve.
Right then he felt plummy.
Very soon he would leave.
michael
ah, but it only seems so...
michael
joe green
> > > for 12 years. Certainly I know about the story. And I live in a
> > > Christian country, where every now and then I am invited to join some
> > > sect or other by door-knockers.
> >
> > You too? Nio wonder we are both rather odd!
>
> Speak for yourself, Mr Green.
No, no. We are rather odd. We should embrace this.
>
> > > > Dismissing it just shows that you lack the context and a bit of
> > > > research will show you this is so. This is the immediate context
> > > > obvious to everyone.
> > >
> > > All that is obvious to me is that you don't seem to understand what I
> > > am saying.
> >
> > We should also mention that, of course, Browning wasn't just angry
> > that Wordsworth accepted honors. Do you know the historical
> > context...what Wordsworth said in his essay on the Convention of
> > Cintra? Let's indulge in a bit of scholarship!
>
> I have already told you that I am not a scholar of the English
> language, and I have no hope about matching any professional scholar
> in his knowledge if not proper understanding of the details. I am a
> professional engineer with an interest for the word, as an expression
> of sight and sound and smell and feel and meaning. If there is
> something you want to tell me, do so by all means. When I see a poem
> or any other literary work, I judge it just by what is written there,
> just like any judge with evidence before him or her. If this attitude
> does not work for you, then of course further dialogue between us is
> pointless.
You'll have to allow other witnesses to speak and admit more evidence!
This is not a show trial. For instance, if would nice, perhaps, to
get some idea of how likely your interpretation is by struggling to
appreciate context or doing a bit of scholarly investigation -- see my
remarks above about Wordsworth's essay on the Convention of Cintra.
Also you do understand that "what is written there" is a matter of
interpretation? And, due to this and that having to do with the
difficulties of interpreting poetry a certain kind of attention is
required.
The only claim I am disputing is your claim that, from the evidence of
this poem, Browning would have been pleased if Wordsworth sold out at
a higher price. You make the leap from the poem to Browning. Hmmm.
But I have not vexed you (conceding very much) with questions about
that.
We have also chatted about how the poem would have been understood --
in an attempt to establish a cultural context. And, so far, I have
not made any of the many moves I could have made if we take into
account the literary nature of the "evidence" we are discussing. The
question we have before us is just this: how likely is it that, from
the poem and by admitting other evidence having to do with context and
how such things were thought of by the culture and so on, that the
conclusion that Browning would be pleased if Wordsworth had sold out
at a higher price is correct?
Not bloody likely is my take. I provide evidence from the poem and
cite the cultural understanding and Browning's own views. It seems to
me that for you to be completly satisfied that your take on all this
is correct you would want to do some investigation of background.
All that is ultimately evident to me in the poem is that
> Browning was shirty because Wordsworth had sold out to a low offer.
Right, but you are completly wrong.
> Your point is that Browning was angry with the selling out itself, and
> that the payment amount was irrelevant. I must confess that when I
> *first* read the poem, a few decades ago, that was the impression I
> got. But then I was very young, and far more idealistic. The
> practical nature of things did not make much impression upon me; - I
> could not even think that any poet would stress upon the fundamental
> commercial principle (right price) in any of his work - poetry is
> supposed to be lofty! But the whole world ultimately works upon
> delivering the right goods for the right price - when that is not
> done, a lot of gas delivered instead by powerful windbags, people get
> hurt. And why they are getting hurt, is not so easily apparent. In
> this poem, Browning no doubt has all the passion of the idealist, but
> that is very well balanced by the pragmatism of the shopkeeper, though
> I'll allow that this latter aspect may be more apparent to an engineer
> than a professor of literature. It is for this marvellous balance,
> expressed in flawless style, and showing the keenest of intellect and
> insight beyond even the scope of Shakespeare, that I rate Browning
> higher than all English poets.
Here you are idealizing the English faculty and I might confide in you
that the pragmatism of the shopkeeper describes a great many. What
were the principles Browning felt that Wordsworth betrayed? Was he
simply angry with him for selling out by accepting honors from the
government? Once you identify these principles, then you might be a
better judge of whether Browning might have felt it was ok for
Wordsworth to betray them if he had held out for more money.
>
> > > Your interpretation of
> > > >
> > > > "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > > > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> > > >
> > > > similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> > > > the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> > > > out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
> > >
> > > Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
> > > cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
> > > poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
> > >
> > > but your
> > > > insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> > > > at a much higher price is ridiculous.
> > >
> > > Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
> > > Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
> > > write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
> > > being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
> > > and powerful patron, and what's bad about that?
See -- here you suppose that Browning was simply angry at Wordsworth
for accepting the laureateship (we have a new one over here by the way
-- a guy from Nebraska so that we have to endure the usual guys
writing about "the Great Plains" and the poetic aspects of little
towns and so on) and not tres pissed at him for his politics and his
public declarations of political sympathy. Accepting the laurateship
was the immediate occasion of his anger -- not the only cause.
Buying and selling is
> > > a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
> > > all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
> > > being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
> > > Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
> > > Quite correctly, too.
> >
> > He betrayed principles...you could find out what those are.
>
> Or he found more purposeful principles, and followed them, with a
> certain sense of humility (there is humility in voluntarily giving up
> your fiery and proud independence and wearing a collar instead, even
> for money and security) for more directed social concern on an
> official basis. One has to progress from seemingly purposeless
> immaturity to some more solid foundation, with the passage of time.
Yes, this is very nice but you are apologizing for Wordsworth. You
need evidence that this is what Browning thought to prove your point.
Browning -- in the poem for example -- never suggests any of this. He
liked W's immaturity!
> We all go through phases, and have to rise above our own past selves,
> that must die. Or, we look as pathetic as mutton dressed as lamb.
> However, there must always be the celebration for our brilliant and
> idealistic and passionate youths, dead though they are... Browning's
> work may be seen as such a celebration, as is my "Death in Ghaziabad".
>
> Look, Wordsworth was right in his own way, and so was Browning in his
> own way.
No, this is very wrong. You are staging a simple sort of play but it
is all more complicated. I should tell you that I prefer Wordsworth
to Browning and I suspect that Browning did too. In a sense
Wordsworth created Browning. Are you familiar with W' "The Pelude?"
A poem he kept revising throughout his life: W's justification of
himself as a poet. A lot is lost in the various revisions. W grew
tired, became the sort of fellow who pounded on the banister and
insisited that they'll always be a Church of England, in his later
poems didn't confront all he had confronted before...could no longer
admit a certain sense of terror (even if "he" probably wouldn't see
that terror even when he was younger). I don't know of any poet who
pushed harder against what are usually considered 20th century
preoccupations. W was far ahead of Browning -- in fact Wordsworth is
the essential 20th century English language poet.
Browning -- even when young (and as shown in the poem we are chatting
about) would never consider the clash between his idealism and W's
later preoccupations in such straightforward terms. I, in fact,
consider the Browning poem unfortunate. The poem has its nuances but
it remains mostly rhetoric. Interesting and the occasion for the
usual remarks but that's about it.
Their struggle is essentially a clash between youth and
> maturity, between proud independence and subservience for substance.
> No one loses out of it, looking the worse. Such is the nature of
> conflict between two truly great people! The Poet Laureate, or
> Chained Dog of the Establishment, is just one poet - the rest can
> remain as free as they want to, and bark or howl as they wish. But
> the Chained Dog too has to serve his purpose, if only as a target for
> free dogs. But he cannot remain the leader of the pack of free
> dogs/wolves, and so, he becomes the lost leader.
Yes, these are your thoughts but are not thoughts expressed by
Browning.
>
> > > The point is that he sold out
> > > > and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> > > > the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> > > > Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> > > > absurd.
> > >
> > > You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
> > > all.
> >
> > We'll I know I'm not making any impression on you. But I have to
> > try...and besides I enjoy chatting with you.
>
> That's good, but you could try harder.
I am -- in my little way.
>
> > > Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> > > > imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> > > > (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> > > > way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
> > >
> > > But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
> > > shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
> > > of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
> > > Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
> > > and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
> > > bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
> > > not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
> >
> > Nah, what's telling is that you insist that, of course, this is how an
> > Englishman would think, Demand the right price and all that. So, you
> > say, of course, this is how Browning would think.
>
> And why not? Jolly well he should, and so he was reflecting their
> national characteristic.
Here you again indulge in the dreariness of a "National Chacteristic."
Let's forget about whether this is true or even useful. You have to
show that Browning shared this and was expressing it in the poem.
If people got the right price for their work
> things would be heaps better. The whole effort of law, business,
> govt., etc. is ultimately to ensure fairness. There will always be
> questions like what is fair and if fair fair to whom, but no decent
> person will seriously say that fairness is not the issue. It is by
> insisting upon fairness - if only just for themselves - that the
> English have done so well for themselves. If other peoples want to do
> equally well, they should copy this trait.
>
> > > > At the same
> > > > time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> > > > paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
> > >
> > > Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> > > history, but also mythology.
> >
> > Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
>
> Stalin wasn't Indian, and I was referring to Indian tyrants. I have
> said earlier that in the 20th century we did not have proper tyrants,
> we had fools and murderers posing as tyrants. For proper tyrants, we
> have to see who patronised Voltaire (Frederick the Great) or da Vinci
> (Francis of France) or Shakespeare (Southampton) or Kalidas
> (Vikramaditya).
You are making too much of Southhamptons patronage of Shakespeare.
But that's not the question right now. As I pointed out before this
whole discussion of tyrants occasioned by my remark that Jeet's poems
overcome certain tyrannies is beside the point. I was talking (as
Philip pointed out) of other sorts of tyrannies that have to do with
writing a poem. You know, artistic considerations. Philp will
probably point these out as he writes why he likes Jeet's stuff --
accomplished at the same time as sending the proofs of my poems to me
so that I can look at the damn things.
Again, you have to admit more evidence.
Because, there is
> no limit to what I do not see in a work - so the evaluation of any
> artistic work, from what is not there in it, reduces to a political
> process.
"In" is an interesting word. The question is how do you tell what is
in a poem. You have to use your whole intelligence and understanding
and your understanding should include the context that will enable you
to judge what is there and to see what you might have missed.
What is there, I try to make sense of, and see the best
> possible and most logical pattern. I find from experience that the
> better the writer, the most strikingly clear and unambiguous the
> pattern, and so, the easier to translate. So, Shakespeare tell us in
> his sonnets exactly what he wants to say - he does that because he is
> such a great writer.
No, this really reduces what is said to that which is easy to
understand and transparant. Poetry would be perfectly useless if this
is all there is. For example, what does Shakespeare say in "King
Lear?" Be kind to your daughter? Poetry is about another type of
saying altogether and is not reducible to a message.
>
> > > So much
> > > > for access to tthe "timeless" Indian mind if this is how it is done.
> > >
> > > You have as much clue about the Indian mind as you have about the
> > > poetry of Browning.
> >
> > Well, I have some clue to Browning and none at all to the Indian mind
>
> Then let me hear about your views of "The Last Duchess".
>
> > -- if that isn't just a generalization. I will say though that what I
> > know of what could be said to be the Indian Mind (from reading...never
> > been to India tho I have some Indian friends...closest I got was
> > Bangladesh for several months -- where I might have encountered the
> > Bengali mind..)
>
> And what was the nature of the Bengali mind you encountered in
> Bangladesh?
Let's see... I was there for four months altogether. Two two month
trips. I was there to (I was told) do an assessment of certain
aspects of the micro-credit program of an organization called
"Swanivar." The Bengali mind signaled to me that I was there to say
what a splendid program they had so that they could get more funding
from the World Bank. Went all over the country to this and that
village and wrote that report and they got the money. At the same
time I got to meet a lot of people -- officials, clerics, workers and
so on. I didn't know I was meeting "the Bengali Mind" but I was
overwhelmed by their kindness and enjoyed chatting with them. I
noticed that Jimmy Carter had already been to many places I visited.
When I got off the plane I found out that I was in the news that day.
The airport runway had just been lengthened and my plane was the first
707 to land. The guys at Swanivar told me that I was filmed
de-planing. The narrator of the news clip explained that I was
probably a CIA agent. I do remember looking dangerous and cunning as
I adjusted my sunglasses as I stepped out and almost fell on my ass as
I missed a step.
Things got better after that. The micro-credit idea was original with
a few guys at the Grameen bank. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I
met a lot of officials and they all endeavored to enlighten me as to
why I was there. Not the first time for me but I appreciated how
polite they were and I loved the tea. The ex-ambassador to Iran
explained to me how very important the Ayatollah Khomeni was but
interrupted his explanation because there was a cricket game on
television.
>
> is that if I had another several lifetimes and did what
> > I could I could begin to get it. Believe me, when confronted with
> > let's say all there is in a culture (Chinese, Indian, Russian, English
> > whatever) I would never claim that I comprehend it completely or even
> > adequately.
>
> Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you approach them with too many
> preconceptions. Trying using a blank mind instead, and read exactly
> what is there before you, before knowing the pedigree and habits of
> those who have written the stuff. Maybe, you will get better results,
> and not remain in such a hopeless state.
I could also try a few martinis. This has worked for me before.
>
> > I only know the little I know. And I know a lot more
> > about English Lit -- that one aspect of a certain kind of "mind" --
> > than I do about the Indian mind and I am grateful for any instruction.
>
> Then explain Browning's "The Last Duchess".
Why? Am I responsible for her too?
>
> > Your interpretation of Browning seems very skewed to me. So, I'm just
> > trying to show why.
>
> I believe my interpretation of Browning's work is mature and balanced
> and insightful and also hopeful, and that over time people will agree
> with me.
Maybe -- however in this one little instance you are wrong.
>
> Arindam Banerjee.
joe green
This is even odder. My call for you to repent was meant in a merry
way. Of course, I refuse to believe that you seriously think that
this means that I am a pavement evangelist! Quite absurd. If not --
well again you are missing nuance and context. Still, insisting I
would be the type of fellow who couldn't understand how Browning could
do what you claim based on this comical remark is excellent comedy.
As a fellow who has also undergone 12 years of Jesuit education you
might show some sympathy for a brother and understand that I could,
possibly, be a secular kind of guy. We had to live didn't we?
joe green
Because I continually humiliate myself this way. Dammit.
You should stop by. Don't have to be registered there. Just respond,
pick any name, and go for it. God knows we could use you.
Writing in a circular manner? I just did a word count of the story
(you saw one stave I guess) and not all of it posted there and it's
200,000 words. I mean it goes from Dallas where I am met by the dual
cowl Duisenberg with the metafiction engine ( and I was there first
forget about that FForde) to Huckleberry Finn, to the Cahulawassee
river, the biggest river in the Fake Georgia of the movie
"Deliverance," to "The Dead" to hydrogen-rich region, IC 2944,
filled with gas and dust illuminated and heated by a loose cluster of
stars that are much hotter and more massive than our Sun, to:
****
"Were on the level of symbolic action of this story, guys," I told
them. "Everything's ok."
I stuck my head out of the window to see a bit further in the fog.
"Ok, Dan, go straight and take a right at the stop sign."
Dan slowly pressed the accelerator as we eased up the road.
The others began to look about.
"Somebody check out that poor Space Patrol Lieutenant"
The Lonliest Ranger leaned forward and gently picked up the body from
the dash.
"The poor little fuk's daid," he sighed. "I didn't mean it."
"Hand him back to me,"I directed. Dan had made the turn and we were
now gliding up a rain slick street illuminated by streetlamps and neon
signs of various juke joints and pawn shops.
There were figures on the sidewalks but their features could barely be
seen. Black coluds scudded across the face of the moon. I knew that
the boardwalk and ocean were just a few blocks away and now I could
smell the salt air. Music spilled out of bars but was drowned out by
our radio as Perry Como sang:
Find a wheel and it goes round, round, round
As it skims along with a happy sound
As it goes along the ground, ground, ground
Till it leads you to the one you love
Then your love will hold you round, round, round
In your heart's a song with a brand new song
And your head goes spinning round, round, round
'cause you've found what you've been dreamin' of
In the night you see the oval moon
Going round and round in tune
And the ball of sun in the day
Makes a girl and boy wanna say
Find a ring and put it round, round, round
And with ties so strong that two hearts are bound
Put it on the one you've found, found, found
For you know that this is really love
Find a wheel and it goes round, round, round
As it skims along with a happy sound
As it goes along the ground, ground, ground
Till it leads you to the one you love
Then your love, you'll hold her round, round, round
In your heart's a song with a brand new song
And your head goes spinning round, round, round
'cause you've found what you've been dreamin' of
In the night you see the oval moon
Going round and round in tune
And the ball of sun in the day
Makes a girl and boy wanna say
Find a ring and put it round, round, round
And with ties so strong your two hearts are bound
Put it on the one you've found, found, found
For you know that this is really love
Find a ring, put it on
For you know that this is really love, really love,
really love
I put the dead lieutenant's 3/4 inch corpse in my pocket.
I was excited. "Ok, guys, you probably have never been inside the
mind of a first class literary consciousness before. Note well what
you see: metaphors, allusions cryptic and sweet, archtypes, beloved
characters, semi-colons as wild and free as…
We passed a small figure lounging against a streetlamp.
Sylvester sang out "Hey, I know that guy. What's his name…?
I sighed.
"Slowpoke Rodriguez," I muttered. "I always liked him.
The song stopped and the radio clicked off. There was only the noise
of the tires on the wet streets, and I could sense the fear everyone
felt as Dan slowed and stopped to let a sinister looking chicken cross
the road.
I tried to cheer everyone up.
"We are not without resources here." I gestured to my shirt and its
32 pockets.
Here's what we got going for us -=- besides, of course, your own pluck
and courage!"
***
to New Jersey, then to Hell, then to the North Pole to Skull Island
where we meet King Kong, to Oz, to Indiana and then to Wrigley Stadium
where "It was the fifth inning of the 1932 World Series. Number 3,
Babe Ruth, was at bat. Charlie Root was pitching. The Babe pointed
to center field."
where we meet God as he watches the Called Shot over and over gain as
the Nazi evil spreads, to a cocktail party at Elsinore, to (very
briefly) "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" then to the still point of the
turning world and then back to Elsinore where I am confronted by
Shakespeare!
***
"I put my hand on my sword. Perhaps I'd take a poke at him and get him
out of there... and then the arras was twitched aside and a figure
with a sword glittering in his hand stepped out. He wore a plum
colored doublet and hose, fine Spanish boots of Spanish leather, his
eyes were mad but full of a supernal intelligence, his hat was of the
latest French style with a white feather and made of the same
midnightly satin as his cape and festooned with scenes from the Kama
Sutra done in scarlet and silver thread.
The bastard was dressed just like me.
I tore my own sword from my scabbard.
I knew who it was.
"Shakespeare, you bastard!" I screamed, "En garde!"
He leaped laughing his deadly blade flickering with an impossible
speed in the torchlight!
I hobbled forward the fucking ruby slippers still on...
It's the eyes, of course. Any duelist knows this and it was the first
advice my old teacher, Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, had imparted to me
many years ago and with many blows in the upper room of the adjunct to
the Inns of Court. Follow the eyes… and I attempted to do so…but the
eyes of the vile bard were so bright and mad, withal sad and merry –
my eyes, damn him -- that I was distracted. The ruby slippers didn't
help.
"Duck stealer," I hissed attempting to shake off my right slipper.
My opponent, blade flashing, slowed his advance. He smiled
sardonically.
Stopped and bowed.
"Slippered pantaloon!" And he his back his head and laughed. I did the
same.
"Ha haha hahahah" Shakespeare
"Ha hahah hahahah hahahah hahaah!" I cried!
There was something desperate in his laughter. I heard it. In fact
there was something desperate in mine.
And at once I knew what it was.
We were both scanning the vaulty upwards for a chandelier to swing
from and I could tell from just this that both of us had in many an
adventure found one and leaping vaulted over the heads of the King's
men uttering defiant slogans to appear behind then bringing down the
dreaded portcullis on the heads of those sons of bitches.
My slippers were off. I leapt backwards bringing my blade down to
quickly sketch the first lines of a merry yet sad poem in the air.
He did the same. The second line. How the fuck did Shakespeare know
Yeats?
I remembered the advice of Polonius: "Beware of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in Bears't that the opposed may beware of thee."
I looked steadily at him. How could I help but notice as he stood
there that he bore his weapon with the grace of a Douglas Fairbanks
and a match for my Errol Flynn or that we both shared the slim yet
agile and muscular physique so desired until it all went bad…?
My blade snickered and the fiery letters formed. His certain defeat.
"Wie in der Hand ein Schwefelzundholz, weisz!"
The first line of Rilke's" Spanish Dancer!"
(And again I wondered how anyone could write poetry when the word for
" match" is "Schwefelzundholz")
He seemed stunned and appalled and I sneered laughing.
And he laughingly sneered. And it was my turn to be s and a'd as he
cut the English translation of the last line of the poem into the
gloomy gloom of the questionable corridor of Elsinore.
"She tramples it to death with small firm feet."
I fainted. I deserved defeat.
And awoke – alive – Shakespeare stood over me. I slowly struggled up…
averting my gaze from the poet who defeated me – yet again. He brought
out a pack of Luckies and offered me one. I took it reluctantly. I
would smoke it and then he would kill me.
I was out of matches. Somehow he knew and produced a lighter in the
shape of a golf club, He was close. I smelt – the unmistakable scent
of duck a la orange, a fine cognac and of hemp.
Fuck you, Samson," I said,. "I knew it was you all along."
"Rilke is overrated, MLL. It's so sad to see this…decay…" He giggled."
****
Shakespeare turns out to be the cheerful American adventurer Samson
Shillitoe …and then we are off to the Manhattan Of Dreams where Lord
Valentine Ravenscar collects sad universes (one of them ours) in
snowglobes:
***
"Here was something strange about the universe in the snow globe. I
sipped my Martini and tried to think
of just what it was. We all did while the Chevalier waited
impatiently. It was much as you would expect. It seemed mostly empty
but here and there one could detect tiny bits of phosphorescence which
were of course unimaginably huge clusters of galaxies containing
billions and billions (as poor Carl Sagan used to say) of intelligent
entities. The glow is the thing I learned later. Red is bad. A
brilliant blue is best. This universe overall gave the impression of
a rather pale red. Ten being the highest -- it was, perhaps, a three.
Samson said it first.
'That universe lacks…pep."
There was -- is -- a plan. I felt consoled as I sipped my Martini
and Spaulding must have felt smug as he smugly sipped the larger one
that appeared in his hand.
He gestured to the universe without much pep.
"As you see I collect sad universes. God missing or never there in
most but that's not the real problem."
We waited as he sipped and fished for an olive.
"The real problem of a pepless universe is that evil isn't fun
anymore. There is no place for us there.
That's why the troop of Shakesperean villainy just passed right
through you. Shit, evil is becoming so…"
He waited.
Samson had it covered.
"Banal?"
"Yes! Exactly -- instead of the Insidious Fu Manchu (who was here
just last night) the multiverses have Hitlers and Stalins and…fuck all
of them."
He stood up and swept his cape a few times. I mean swept it about in
the manner of a good villain.
We all did the same -- except for Polyanthous peering out the window
which was high and triple arched.
"This doesn't look much like Manhattan. All I see is snow and
darkness and … I thought this was the Manhattan of Dreams. Where the
fuck is Gene Kelly?"
Spaulding swept his cape a few more times and then addressed the
impertinent fellow.
"Just a moment, sirrah. Stand away there. That is a window to
Eternity."
***
And then to the German Owned luxury Zeppelin the "Schopenhauer."
***
"But by 11:30 we were all seated and all somewhat drunk at the First
Class bar on the German Owned luxury Zeppelin the "Schopenhauer." It
was cigars and schnapps then and a 22 piece orchestra playing
selections from Mozart. We hardly noticed when we cast away. I
repaired to my cabin shortly after midnight. A three day journey. I
opened the shutters on the window and could see the disk of the great
galaxy Wolfe 356 as it wheeled overhead. Samson said that the Shadow
as on board with us. A convention in Paris.
It was Christmas Day in 1927 in the Manhattan of Dreams in the 115th
Weft of the Realm Agenath Hetaim -- about 40 billion billion mega
parsecs from Altair if you take a sharp left."
***
And it is there in that great ship that we encounter Sauron and Death
and Stalin and so off to Transylvania where we discover Dracula has
leased his castle to a rather sinister Kris Kringle:
"I don't know whether it is my allegiance to the minimalist aesthetic,
an understandable reluctance to introduce the tedium of the everyday
into this great adventure or simply the fact that I felt rather
betrayed by the companions in this quest but I now admit that I have
left out information that is needed to understand why -- as the door
to Castle Dracula slowly opened -- my companions rudely brushed past
the Vampire at the Door with absolutely no regard for the niceties --
leaving me alone outside the dreaded portcullis to bring in our
luggage and the head of Randy."
***
And then to the Titanic where we give an excellent performance of a
Midsummer Night's Dream where we are rescued by H.G Wells and
transported to my bedroom where I am confronted with the horror of
looking at myself at 19 and then to the Mystery Train as I fight with
my 19 year old self to board:
***
"The train began braking! Perfect! The engine roared by and the coal
car and then the passenger cars -- red curtains just as I remembered
and steam everywhere!
"Get aboard now," I roared. "Go, go, go!"
A black man in a conductor's uniform descended to the bottom step of
Car Number 9..
"Boooooooard All booooooooooooooard."
The Twelve (however many there were) clattered aboard. I was
last…just before…me.
"Move out of the way you fuckface!" I screamed but I was blocking my
way and turned my drug crazed face towards me.
"No fucking way you old shithead," I screamed and pushed me till I
sprawled on the basement floor.
The conductor jumped to the platform.
"Leave dat old gennumen alone.." he began but I pushed rudely past him
and tried to board as I sprawled on the floor.
The conductor struck. I took a savage blow to the head and collapsed
as the conductor bent down and assisted me to my feet dusting off my
cloak with a little whisk broom. He spat next to me as I lay trembling
and I tipped him as I shakily boarded the train.
But I had underestimated myself as I grasped my ankle and wrenched
myself down as the train faster and faster now pulled away from the
station. The conductor leaned out gesturing to me as I spun crazily
and kicked myself in my fucking mouth knocking myself out as I ran for
the caboose..the two lights on the caboose, the red and the blue
winking as the train made its way into the tunnel.
I jumped and made it!
The red light was my baby.
The blue light was my mind.
Or maybe it was the blue light was my blues and the red light was my
mind."
***
And then to the Crossroads where we save the blues but are confronted
by Hitler's legions and the cast of Wagner's operas as tler maneuvers
his flying Porsche to great effect but is brought low by on of the
Thousand Eternals!
"I shouted but he couldn't hear me. Somehow he had made it onto the
hood of Hitler's Porsche. He was… Kevin stood beside him his ax
cutting down SS men attempting to kill the Old Mule! Damn it -- they
were in my way. What the…Old Mule had his arms wrapped around
Hitler's hood ornament and the swastika burned with a hellish flame
that consumed him even as he attempted to rip it off the armored car.
I could see Hitler screaming in frustration. He rolled down the
window and shot at the Mule with his Luger. Missed. Missed again. He
hit Kevin!
I tried to maneuver -- but the Mule was again in my way and then with
a great scream from the Mule the Swastika was broken in half. The
Mule laughed as he died as Hitler and the Porsche spiraled out of
control. I pulled frantically on the reins to put Slver into a dive
to try for the Old Mule but. could see I was too late. Old Mule was
impaled on the broken swastika -- and fell laughing to the earth as
the great dictator helplessly tried to open the door.
A great explosion and I put my arm over my eyes. Somehow Silver made
it to the ground and I watched as Hitler and his Porsche burned and
Old Mule died.
Thus was the Funeral of Old Mule, Tamer of Porsches.
I am certain that it didn't actually happen like this -- that's all
one can be certain of in battle…but it seemed to me that the war in
the heavens ceased: Fafnir no longer breathed holocaust to the moths
of the P&B, Wagner no longer yodeled selections from The Ring cycle as
they fell, the screeches of the dying were stilled, the curses of
second tier rock groups from the sixties to the eighties were, at
once, muffled as all watched the armored car of the evil dictator
burst into flames -- and even the dying cheered as the SS howled in
unbelief.
I was irritated, of course. Why the hell should that little fellow
get the glory? Was he Lohengrin? Irritated and bitter as I sat
astride Silver but withal satisfied. No matter, My work was done
here. The Wasteland would, perhaps, bloom. We would have to see.
The Spear of Lohengrin would be forgotten for ages of eld and I was
free, once again, to sally forth on my Swan Boat to the eternal home.
And there was, of course, Wagner. Perhaps work for the spear there
but…really…it all seemed quite unfair.
I glanced upward.
As the SS roared its glee as the burning figure of a man staggered
from the wreck of the car. Flames flickered over his…armor..the
fucker was wearing the armor of Ortud.
There was a Luger in his hand and he shot it blindly and then with the
other hand opened the visor of his helm. He staggered, fell, pulled a
sword from a scabbard at his side and waved it about.
"A Porsche!" he howled! "A Porsche! My Kingdom for a Porsche!"
"He's still alive," I screamed. Someone get the Nazi bastard!
Where's my Swan boat?" I glanced quickly upwards to see if, as
promised, the Swan Boat was gliding down from the spaces between the
stars. Nope."
So damn if I know…I just do it. When will I make an
end!!!!!!!???????????
joe green
additional context and is damn fine also.
To Wordsworth
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
joe green
> > > Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
> > > write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
> > > being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
> > > and powerful patron, and what's bad about that?
Oh, yeah... a lot of readers think that Browning is not referring to W
becoming Poet Laureate in the poem...many of those poets (the radical
fellows) date W's turn from what they thought were revolutionary
principles to his acceptance of a job as tax collector many years
before.
"1813..A month earlier Wordsworth had been given the post of
Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, providing his household with
some much needed financial stability.
When later writers would come to mock Wordsworth's turncoat politics,
the taking of a government job by the former radical would be seen as
especially important, and would lead to Robert Browning's charge that
the poet had abandoned the good fight "just for a handful of silver."
1813, incidentally, is also the year Robert Southey became the
ultimate "establishment" poet by accepting the office of Poet
Laureate."
joe green
Some think that Wordsworth fell away from his radical principles
earlier and spend 1000 pages trying to prove it!
Arindam Banerjee
> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote in message news:<890e65ea.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote in message news:<5513471a.04081...@posting.google.com>...
> > > AB: Like the Southerners could not understand the black Othello, and
> > > Green may not
> > > understand how some Christian like Browning could write so profoundly
> > > Islamic a poem as Muleykeh.
> > >
> > >
> > > This is odd -- since we never discussed this poem and I never said
> > > anything of the sort and, in any case, would be fine with the notion
> > > that Browning could do this. Again, you're seeing things that are not
> > > there.
> >
> >
> > From your support for Jeet's anti-Brahmin stuff, and your gratuitous
> > call to me for repentance, I see you as a modern pavement evangelist
> > type - an americanised christian, that is - I hope, wrongly. Or you
> > could have pretensions to secularism, but that I doubt. Of course we
> > never discussed the poem. If you think you understand it, then feel
> > free to say what you do understand about it.
>
> This is even odder. My call for you to repent was meant in a merry
> way.
Hmm, maybe it was. However, when combined with your support for
Jeet's work, it looked rather like what I said above. I don't know
much about you, but I do know Jeet's type. All too familiar.
Brahmin-bashing in various forms has been a pastime for anti-Hindus
for decades, in their bid to convert Hindus to their particular sect,
in India. If I seem to protest, that is only for a good cause.
Carried away by the success of Brahmin bashing, one clever-clever
Salman Rushdie tried the same trick on fellow Muslims. To what
effect, I am sure you know.
> Of course, I refuse to believe that you seriously think that
> this means that I am a pavement evangelist! Quite absurd.
Why, are you really against them? If so, why? Do they not represent
your Christian conscience? If they do not, who does?
> If not --
> well again you are missing nuance and context. Still, insisting I
> would be the type of fellow who couldn't understand how Browning could
> do what you claim based on this comical remark is excellent comedy.
I am afraid you have made no impression on me about your ability to
understand Browning.
> As a fellow who has also undergone 12 years of Jesuit education you
> might show some sympathy for a brother and understand that I could,
Thanks to my Jesuit education, and my Communist upbringing, I became
the greatest idealist I know, happy to sacrifice my whole career
simply to find out why Indians were so poor. Maybe, that act required
"sympathy for a brother". More than, shall we say, outpourings of hot
air.
> possibly, be a secular kind of guy. We had to live didn't we?
"Yeh jeena bhi koi jeena hai, lallu?"
Chandra P. Das
> Fuck off, living turd.
>
Zoo creatures have nothing on your wit, you fish-mad little bengali.
pund kamath
All that went earlier snipped...
Has any body read Jeet Thayil's major works and can comment how he
comes across to a western reader? Can anyone appreciate it without a
deeper sense of accultural snsitization? Personal bisasses and
religious condtioning seem to play a havoc here !
The beauty of arrival of dark clouds, ferocity of wind and rain etc.
are different in the west coast of India ( from Kerala to Goa) is
pretty different from what you see in Madhya Pradesh or in Bengal. A
Kerala born writer's description of monsoon is different. Jeet Thayil
is a Syrian Christian and his imagery is different. To me monsoon
takes me back in my imagination to the days of great Indian
philosophers like Shankara and Madhvacharya who used to stay put in
the monsoon season before travelling elsewhere and dwell on
philosophical discourses 1200 years ago. So I did not find the
historic depth in his 'well praised' poem Monsoon! Earlier writers
have written poems about it differently. So poor Thayil- leave him
alone!
francis muir
> Hey, let's not leave Shelley out of all this...
> provides some additional context and is damn fine also.
And if Shelley then Peacock and a certain wither'd Lesser
Celandine that was sent by post...
Arindam Banerjee
Usually, I do not allow extra evidence. When I judge a poem, I go
entirely by what is there in it. If I start admitting external
evidence, there is no end to the trial, for there can be no end of
witnesses. The result of the trial will always be inconclusive. I
don't want to spend my whole life analysing a single poem! I am not a
professor of literature, and I cannot afford that luxury. So, to
judge a poem, or for that matter, any work of art, I go just by the
work, savouring the details in the light of the uncontested facts
relating to the time that are directly relevant to the work of art,
and supplementing them with deductive logic, and all the time trying
to be as balanced as possible. Call this an engineering approach to
poetry, if you like. It works for me, as I am an engineer. You may
abhor it, if you are not an engineer.
However, in this case, let us see.
> This is not a show trial.
What rubbish, every piece of Art put up to the public is *always* on
trial. Thus good art lasts, and bad art dies.
For instance, if would nice, perhaps, to
> get some idea of how likely your interpretation is by struggling to
> appreciate context or doing a bit of scholarly investigation -- see my
> remarks above about Wordsworth's essay on the Convention of Cintra.
So you have only made a remark. You have not given any analysis of it.
So evidently you yourself do not take that seriously, are too lazy,
or are incompetent to give any analysis to bear on this case. All
this reference stuff thus amounts to mere hand-waving.
> Also you do understand that "what is written there" is a matter of
> interpretation?
The worse the writer, the more the scope for conflicting
interpretations for his work, as opposed to different offshoots of
expression acknowledging the same basic interpretation. (Like,
electric motors and antennas are very different objects, but they are
both based upon the same Maxwell's laws, about which there are no
conflicting interpretations among electrical engineers.) This is my
experience after translating writers such as Browning, Shakespeare,
Shelley and Mrs Browning. They are all marvellous writers, who wrote
exactly wanted to express. With some effort at focussing on what they
actually wrote, as opposed to irrelevant details relating to their
lives, the meaning of what they wrote becomes unambiguous. For any
genuine artist, his art is always far more important than his own
life, but this is what critics tend to forget. Probably, this is
because there are no genuine artists around these days; to be well
known you must be commericialised and packaged by
institutionalisation, and evidently that process drives out
creativity.
The problem with translating Tagore and other Indian lyricists to
English is different. It has to do with the language. But, there is
never any scope there for conflicting interpretations, unless one
really forces oneself to do so.
And, due to this and that having to do with the
> difficulties of interpreting poetry a certain kind of attention is
> required.
>
> The only claim I am disputing is your claim that, from the evidence of
> this poem, Browning would have been pleased if Wordsworth sold out at
> a higher price.
Definitely Browning was unhappy because the price paid was very low.
That is starkly evident from the text in the poem. It is only
deductive logic that he would not have been more displeased if the
price paid was higher. Also, it is not illogical to assume that if
Browning had been consulted about the selling-out, he could have seen
Wordsworth's point of view, and not been so displeased. Browning does
not says that the Leader must never have sold out, or that he was a
traitor. The Leader had taken his decision arbitrarily, and upset
commonly held principles, without informing his followers about his
new principles. He had proceeded to the rear and was with the slaves,
but that statement is equally true for all us poor wage-slaves today
who toil 9-5, and it is not nice for those with steady incomes derived
from inheritances to look down upon us collared and chained masses of
wage-slaves.
You make the leap from the poem to Browning. Hmmm.
> But I have not vexed you (conceding very much) with questions about
> that.
>
> We have also chatted about how the poem would have been understood --
> in an attempt to establish a cultural context. And, so far, I have
> not made any of the many moves I could have made if we take into
> account the literary nature of the "evidence" we are discussing. The
> question we have before us is just this: how likely is it that, from
> the poem and by admitting other evidence having to do with context and
> how such things were thought of by the culture and so on, that the
> conclusion that Browning would be pleased if Wordsworth had sold out
> at a higher price is correct?
He couldn't possibly have been more displeased, at any rate. If
Wordsworth was given due honour and money as a poet, and proper
freedom to write on most subjects, and asked to devote his time only
partly to state needs, then really what was there for Browning to
grouse about? It is perfectly obvious that Browning is more unhappy
about the meanness of the authority than anything else; the cause of
poetry had *not* been well served. Wordsworth had sold low, to a low
price.
> Not bloody likely is my take. I provide evidence from the poem and
> cite the cultural understanding and Browning's own views.
Where? There is far more evidence for my view in this poem than
yours, though I have admitted that a primary and immature reading of
it could lead to such a view as yours.
> It seems to
> me that for you to be completly satisfied that your take on all this
> is correct you would want to do some investigation of background.
No, that is unnecessary. I go by just what is there in the poem, and
you have *not* done anything except hand-waving and repetition.
>
> All that is ultimately evident to me in the poem is that
> > Browning was shirty because Wordsworth had sold out to a low offer.
>
> Right, but you are completly wrong.
More hand-waving. Really, you are incredibly tiresome.
> > Your point is that Browning was angry with the selling out itself, and
> > that the payment amount was irrelevant. I must confess that when I
> > *first* read the poem, a few decades ago, that was the impression I
> > got. But then I was very young, and far more idealistic. The
> > practical nature of things did not make much impression upon me; - I
> > could not even think that any poet would stress upon the fundamental
> > commercial principle (right price) in any of his work - poetry is
> > supposed to be lofty! But the whole world ultimately works upon
> > delivering the right goods for the right price - when that is not
> > done, a lot of gas delivered instead by powerful windbags, people get
> > hurt. And why they are getting hurt, is not so easily apparent. In
> > this poem, Browning no doubt has all the passion of the idealist, but
> > that is very well balanced by the pragmatism of the shopkeeper, though
> > I'll allow that this latter aspect may be more apparent to an engineer
> > than a professor of literature. It is for this marvellous balance,
> > expressed in flawless style, and showing the keenest of intellect and
> > insight beyond even the scope of Shakespeare, that I rate Browning
> > higher than all English poets.
>
> Here you are idealizing the English faculty and I might confide in you
> that the pragmatism of the shopkeeper describes a great many.
Maybe, but they got praised by their great enemy Napoleon for their
terrific shopkeeping skills. So, they are the masters of that game.
What
> were the principles Browning felt that Wordsworth betrayed? Was he
> simply angry with him for selling out by accepting honors from the
> government? Once you identify these principles, then you might be a
> better judge of whether Browning might have felt it was ok for
> Wordsworth to betray them if he had held out for more money.
The principle of unfettered freedom of expression - that is perfectly
obvious from the poem. Any slavery reduces that! Don't we
wage-slaves know it! We have to sign confidentiality agreements. I
always had to. So I am *not* free to publish my professional work
without management approval. I work for my company, not for humanity
as a whole, so far as engineering is concerned.
- snip -
Arindam Banerjee
> > yeoldw...@yahoo.com (joe green) wrote:
> > > adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) wrote:
>
> > > > Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> > > > history, but also mythology.
> > >
> > > Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
> >
> > I think Tagore may have tried.
> >
> > Folks, it will be impossible for me to post for a few days, but I
> > don't intend to quit the discussion just as yet.
> >
> > Arindam -- no personal attack, I've taken you a lot more seriously
> > than you give credit for (my continued interest in talking is the
> > evidence, God knows I don't post much of anything any more). I would
> > like to rise to the challenge and to try and explain why I have called
> > Jeet's poetry major -- but we far from ready to go there yet. Many
> > other things need to be cleared up first. By the way, I have been
> > reading Browning again thanks to you. I'm half way through his
> > collected poems. He's a hell of a poet, better than I realized
> > previously. But there's also Blake who I notice is missing from your
> > list. Tennysson seems to me the weakest of the ones you mention -- in
> > my youth I used to like "Ulyssus" but can't remember why.
The poems I like are "Tithonus", "The Lady of Shallott" and "May
Queen". Tennyson does not have the depth of Browning, but he is very
good with wordplay and imagery, and he does do well with relatively
superficial emotional effects.
Perhaps I
> > should reread "In Memoriam." I have some recommendations for you re.
> > 20th-century poetry, but they will have to wait.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Philip
>
> May I offer my take on this -- in deathless verse?
>
> W.H. Auden
> Perhaps the plummest
> Said "Of all major poets
> Tennyson's dumbest."
Even if dumbest
Tennyson's verses
Rank over Auden
As Ferrari over Holden.
> It was so cold outside
> But cozy within.
> A nice place to abide
> With bitters and gin.
> It was the season of hope
> Hence reassuring them
> That it was a dope
> Who wrote "In Memorium."
>
> But Auden wasn't a dummy.
> And it was Christmas eve.
> Right then he felt plummy.
> Very soon he would leave.
And good riddance.
herothatdied
"Arindam Banerjee" <adda...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
news:890e65ea.04081...@posting.google.com...
> Usually, I do not allow extra evidence. When I judge a poem, I go
> entirely by what is there in it. If I start admitting external
> evidence, there is no end to the trial, for there can be no end of
> witnesses. The result of the trial will always be inconclusive. I
> don't want to spend my whole life analysing a single poem! I am not a
> professor of literature, and I cannot afford that luxury. So, to
> judge a poem, or for that matter, any work of art, I go just by the
> work, savouring the details in the light of the uncontested facts
> relating to the time that are directly relevant to the work of art,
> and supplementing them with deductive logic, and all the time trying
> to be as balanced as possible. Call this an engineering approach to
> poetry, if you like. It works for me, as I am an engineer. You may
> abhor it, if you are not an engineer.
>
include the entire pre-existing canon as an element of the "uncontested
facts" (and some would argue that the qualifier is unneccessary and the true
nature of great art is that it shines in relation to the post-existing blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah), and the Bible was uncontestably part of
Browning's canon. You can't separate the Church of England from Victorian
England and still get a picture of a victorian poem any more than you can
eliminate Idylls of the King and still have a hope of hearing the lyric in a
J. W. Waterhouse painting.
>
> What rubbish, every piece of Art put up to the public is *always* on
> trial. Thus good art lasts, and bad art dies.
>
Let's leave this one to Hopkins' full many flowers to refute.
>
> > Also you do understand that "what is written there" is a matter of
> > interpretation?
>
> The worse the writer, the more the scope for conflicting
> interpretations for his work,
That's odd - I'd thought it could just as easily go the other way around.
Anyone can write a technical manual, even one for philosophy, or on how to
appreciate language. I'd thought that poets open paths for discovery of how
to understand... if I knew what I'd write a poem about it.
> as opposed to different offshoots of
> expression acknowledging the same basic interpretation. (Like,
> electric motors and antennas are very different objects, but they are
> both based upon the same Maxwell's laws, about which there are no
> conflicting interpretations among electrical engineers.) This is my
> experience after translating writers such as Browning, Shakespeare,
> Shelley and Mrs Browning. They are all marvellous writers, who wrote
> exactly wanted to express.
They wrote exactly what you think they expressed. You aren't they any more
than I, and you by your own admission haven't done the research to find out
what the authors said that they wanted to say but weren't sure if anyone
else would see, where they thought they might have been too blunt and where
too subtle for their audiences' edification and amusement.
> With some effort at focussing on what they
> actually wrote, as opposed to irrelevant details relating to their
> lives, the meaning of what they wrote becomes unambiguous. For any
> genuine artist, his art is always far more important than his own
> life, but this is what critics tend to forget. Probably, this is
> because there are no genuine artists around these days; to be well
> known you must be commericialised and packaged by
> institutionalisation, and evidently that process drives out
> creativity.
OMFG what a snotty load of crap.
If you ever doubt that there are still true artists hanging around doing
what they do and singing what they can, go find Mary Prankster
(http://www.maryprankster.com/av.html) who works her own souvenier table at
concerts and is the wittiest, merriest, most outrageous musical presence
I've come across in years.
>
> > The only claim I am disputing is your claim that, from the evidence of
> > this poem, Browning would have been pleased if Wordsworth sold out at
> > a higher price.
>
> Definitely Browning was unhappy because the price paid was very low.
> That is starkly evident from the text in the poem.
I'm reminded of a passage from Bolt's _A Man For All Seasons_ When Thomas
More discovers that a young man in whom he once took a professional and
friendly interest has been suborned to perjury that will cost More his life
and was given the post of Attorney-General for Wales as a reward, Sir
Thomas' response to this news is "For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man
nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for Wales!"
> It is only
> deductive logic that he would not have been more displeased if the
> price paid was higher. Also, it is not illogical to assume that if
> Browning had been consulted about the selling-out, he could have seen
> Wordsworth's point of view, and not been so displeased. Browning does
> not says that the Leader must never have sold out, or that he was a
> traitor. The Leader had taken his decision arbitrarily, and upset
> commonly held principles, without informing his followers about his
> new principles. He had proceeded to the rear and was with the slaves,
> but that statement is equally true for all us poor wage-slaves today
> who toil 9-5, and it is not nice for those with steady incomes derived
> from inheritances to look down upon us collared and chained masses of
> wage-slaves.
>
Yes, I see that you do not bring anything to a poem but your ability to read
the language, and that you never imagine circumstances to support your
interpretation. A true tabula rasa.
> > The question we have before us is just this: how likely is it that, from
> > the poem and by admitting other evidence having to do with context and
> > how such things were thought of by the culture and so on, that the
> > conclusion that Browning would be pleased if Wordsworth had sold out
> > at a higher price is correct?
>
> He couldn't possibly have been more displeased, at any rate. If
> Wordsworth was given due honour and money as a poet, and proper
> freedom to write on most subjects, and asked to devote his time only
> partly to state needs, then really what was there for Browning to
> grouse about?
principle? It is possible for even 19th century Brits to have had
principles beyond the mercantile.
> It is perfectly obvious that Browning is more unhappy
> about the meanness of the authority than anything else; the cause of
> poetry had *not* been well served. Wordsworth had sold low, to a low
> price.
>
I feel a little Dickens coming on: "Mammon's your god now." You're making
Browning out to have evaluated the worth of poetry monetarily, quite an
assumption regarding someone who admired Wordsworth in the first place!
Chandra P. Das
> This is my
> experience after translating writers such as Browning, Shakespeare,
> Shelley and Mrs Browning.
You've been translating Browning and Shakespeare, you consummately
illiterate mongoloid? Into what language? What fucking balls this troll
has! Try to write a poem of your own that is not a complete disgrace to
language. Will Dockery writes a hundred times better than you. Christ!
------
Sing me Your Songs
Over the waves and across the seas
If you do please
Sing me o sing me your songs -
Your songs that light the night in my heart
In full not in part -
Sing me o sing me your songs.
O I shall laugh and cry and do as I please
When you do tease
Me to madness with your songs -
Your songs that lift the load from my heart
In full not in part -
Sing me o sing me your songs.
Arindam Banerjee
Melbourne, June 2000.
-------
To Aphrodite
O'er the flecks of foam I have seen you roam
When the moon did light a path between you and me
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite.
When I say your name they all proclaim your fame
Remaining birds and bees and forests full of leaves sing
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite.
When you hear their call goddess don't be small
Make the voices of the fools pouring from business schools chant
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite
Aphrodite Aphrodite Aphrodite.
Arindam Banerjee
28 February 2000, Melbourne.
-------
Chandra P. Das
>
Tell us why you think there are no real poets left in the world today,
Banerjee. Or better yet, explain again how there was no readable poetry
in the whole of the 20th century.
------
On the spray of cascading music...
Riding on
The spray of cascading music
I have come to claim you for my own.
O my swe-eet love
Link your lot with me!
O my little dove
Drink your drink with me!
The spray of cascading music...
Music
Will create a rainbow in our hearts
Forever and ever...
O my truest love
Come and live with me!
O my dearest love
Be a wife to me!
Arindam Banerjee
Melbourne, May 2000
Arindam Banerjee
> > > > Your interpretation of
> > > > >
> > > > > "They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
> > > > > So much was theirs who so little allowed:
> > > > >
> > > > > similarly shows an inabilty to follow just what is implied. Of course
> > > > > the intent is to show the meanness of the givers -- Wordsworth sold
> > > > > out for just a handful of silver, how little he was valued...
> > > >
> > > > Of course, of course, and that is just what I am saying. He sold out
> > > > cheaply, and thus devalued the value of poetry, thus helping to make
> > > > poets so poor today as you tell us in other contexts.
> > > >
> > > > but your
> > > > > insistence that Browning would have been happy if Wordsworth sold out
> > > > > at a much higher price is ridiculous.
> > > >
> > > > Not at all. That is only logical, and I have no doubt that if
> > > > Wordsworth had been given due honour and due money and due freedom to
> > > > write as he wanted to Browning would have been satisfied. After all,
> > > > being a Poet Laureate is nothing criminal. He was only getting a rich
> > > > and powerful patron, and what's bad about that?
>
> See -- here you suppose that Browning was simply angry at Wordsworth
> for accepting the laureateship (we have a new one over here by the way
> -- a guy from Nebraska so that we have to endure the usual guys
> writing about "the Great Plains" and the poetic aspects of little
> towns and so on) and not tres pissed at him for his politics and his
> public declarations of political sympathy. Accepting the laurateship
> was the immediate occasion of his anger -- not the only cause.
The poem shows us he was angry, but Wordsworth was not the only focus.
He ultimately comes out better than the mean authorities who paid him
so less. That is what I find. I don't know how many times I must
repeat this, to you. Basically, it is like saying that winning the
Wimbledon is most important, and is no way enhanced by the cheque for
a million dollars that goes with it. Or being a supermodel is
wonderful even if you got $20 an hour instead of $200,000.
> Buying and selling is
> > > > a normal part of any activity - the price has to be right, that is
> > > > all. So long as no immorality is involved, of course. Was Wordsworth
> > > > being asked to do anything immoral by those who were buying him?
> > > > Browning does not say so. He only complains about their meanness.
> > > > Quite correctly, too.
> > >
> > > He betrayed principles...you could find out what those are.
>
> >
> > Or he found more purposeful principles, and followed them, with a
> > certain sense of humility (there is humility in voluntarily giving up
> > your fiery and proud independence and wearing a collar instead, even
> > for money and security) for more directed social concern on an
> > official basis. One has to progress from seemingly purposeless
> > immaturity to some more solid foundation, with the passage of time.
>
>
> Yes, this is very nice but you are apologizing for Wordsworth.
I am explaining Wordsworth, not apologizing for him. There is nothing
to apologize for, when your actions are dictated by the need for
survival with some dignity.
> You
> need evidence that this is what Browning thought to prove your point.
> Browning -- in the poem for example -- never suggests any of this. He
> liked W's immaturity!
He does not, and I never said he did. I gave my take on the poem,
reflecting upon this issue in relation to the world's workings.
> > We all go through phases, and have to rise above our own past selves,
> > that must die. Or, we look as pathetic as mutton dressed as lamb.
> > However, there must always be the celebration for our brilliant and
> > idealistic and passionate youths, dead though they are... Browning's
> > work may be seen as such a celebration, as is my "Death in Ghaziabad".
>
> >
> > Look, Wordsworth was right in his own way, and so was Browning in his
> > own way.
>
> No, this is very wrong. You are staging a simple sort of play but it
> is all more complicated.
Of course it is. And I am not staging a simple sort of play. It is a
very deep play. But I doubt if a cloistered academic can get it.
> I should tell you that I prefer Wordsworth
> to Browning and I suspect that Browning did too.
Now this is deep, deep! A mere opinion matters so much to you, when
it is yours.
> In a sense
> Wordsworth created Browning. Are you familiar with W' "The Pelude?"
Wordsworth is very good in patches and short bursts, I find. I admire
his "Lucy Poems". He is never so deep as Browning, never so fluent as
Tennyson.
> A poem he kept revising throughout his life:
The true sign of basic mediocrity.
W's justification of
> himself as a poet. A lot is lost in the various revisions. W grew
> tired, became the sort of fellow who pounded on the banister and
> insisited that they'll always be a Church of England, in his later
> poems didn't confront all he had confronted before...could no longer
> admit a certain sense of terror (even if "he" probably wouldn't see
> that terror even when he was younger). I don't know of any poet who
> pushed harder against what are usually considered 20th century
> preoccupations. W was far ahead of Browning -- in fact Wordsworth is
> the essential 20th century English language poet.
Irrelevant, to the context.
> Browning -- even when young (and as shown in the poem we are chatting
> about) would never consider the clash between his idealism and W's
> later preoccupations in such straightforward terms.
That is his greatness which comes out perhaps subconsciously in this
poem, and which is evidently lost upon you. It is this clash which
makes this poem so great, compelling, and relevant to the larger
world.
> I, in fact,
> consider the Browning poem unfortunate. The poem has its nuances but
> it remains mostly rhetoric. Interesting and the occasion for the
> usual remarks but that's about it.
As I said, your opinions mean so much to you. But, pardon me for
reminding you, I am not one of your students.
> Their struggle is essentially a clash between youth and
> > maturity, between proud independence and subservience for substance.
> > No one loses out of it, looking the worse. Such is the nature of
> > conflict between two truly great people! The Poet Laureate, or
> > Chained Dog of the Establishment, is just one poet - the rest can
> > remain as free as they want to, and bark or howl as they wish. But
> > the Chained Dog too has to serve his purpose, if only as a target for
> > free dogs. But he cannot remain the leader of the pack of free
> > dogs/wolves, and so, he becomes the lost leader.
>
> Yes, these are your thoughts but are not thoughts expressed by
> Browning.
Of course not. These thoughts are mine and they derive from the
contemplation of the poem; over time, and with increased knowledge of
life. They show the value of the poem, to me at least.
> > > > The point is that he sold out
> > > > > and, really, in the context of the times, of what Browning thought, of
> > > > > the ways these sorts of things were thought of the imputation that
> > > > > Browning was angry because Wordsworth didn't get a higher price is
> > > > > absurd.
> > > >
> > > > You are merely repeating yourself, and making no impression upon me at
> > > > all.
> > >
> > > We'll I know I'm not making any impression on you. But I have to
> > > try...and besides I enjoy chatting with you.
> >
> > That's good, but you could try harder.
>
> I am -- in my little way.
So you are, in your little way.
> > > > Your nation of shopkeepers remark is telling -- you want to
> > > > > imply that, of course, the little soul of the mercantile Englishman
> > > > > (wildly stereotyping a group of people something you abhor -- but a
> > > > > way to strike back for you) would see things that way.
> > > >
> > > > But what is wrong about shopkeepers? Nothing. I admire good
> > > > shopkeeping. Why should I not? And let us not forget that in times
> > > > of perceived stress, one screechy groceress, Baroness Thatcher aka
> > > > Snatcher that is, jumped into the breach like one latter-day Henry5
> > > > and saved Old Blighty. I truly admire English shopkeeping and
> > > > bookkeeping. So how is it a wonder that their greatest poet should
> > > > not perceive the worth of the soundest commercial principle?
> > >
> > > Nah, what's telling is that you insist that, of course, this is how an
> > > Englishman would think, Demand the right price and all that. So, you
> > > say, of course, this is how Browning would think.
> >
> > And why not? Jolly well he should, and so he was reflecting their
> > national characteristic.
>
> Here you again indulge in the dreariness of a "National Chacteristic."
> Let's forget about whether this is true or even useful. You have to
> show that Browning shared this and was expressing it in the poem.
Jolly well he was. He was talking about gold, silver, and copper.
How the copper was discarded for silver, though only gold should have
been accepted or at least offered. Mean bastards! If all this is not
a poem about haggling, a stockmarket type thing, what is it? The CEO
of beggars sells out cheaply to a foreign company, which offers him a
clerical job, and that is taken. Not any directorship, which
presumably could employ other beggars. So, he won't be the CEO of
beggars any more, the beggars are unhappy.
> If people got the right price for their work
> > things would be heaps better. The whole effort of law, business,
> > govt., etc. is ultimately to ensure fairness. There will always be
> > questions like what is fair and if fair fair to whom, but no decent
> > person will seriously say that fairness is not the issue. It is by
> > insisting upon fairness - if only just for themselves - that the
> > English have done so well for themselves. If other peoples want to do
> > equally well, they should copy this trait.
> >
> > > > > At the same
> > > > > time you hold up for our esteem the tyrants of India who, at least,
> > > > > paid a higher price for the poets they purchased.
> > > >
> > > > Our tyrants were far better than your tyrants. This is not only
> > > > history, but also mythology.
> > >
> > > Well, there is hope for tyrants then. Did anyone inform Stalin?
> >
> > Stalin wasn't Indian, and I was referring to Indian tyrants. I have
> > said earlier that in the 20th century we did not have proper tyrants,
> > we had fools and murderers posing as tyrants. For proper tyrants, we
> > have to see who patronised Voltaire (Frederick the Great) or da Vinci
> > (Francis of France) or Shakespeare (Southampton) or Kalidas
> > (Vikramaditya).
>
> You are making too much of Southhamptons patronage of Shakespeare.
But that is what I get from reading Shakespeare. He was a very good
suck-up. And he wrote very nicely about Henry 8 and Queen E.
> But that's not the question right now. As I pointed out before this
> whole discussion of tyrants occasioned by my remark that Jeet's poems
> overcome certain tyrannies is beside the point. I was talking (as
> Philip pointed out) of other sorts of tyrannies that have to do with
> writing a poem. You know, artistic considerations. Philp will
> probably point these out as he writes why he likes Jeet's stuff --
> accomplished at the same time as sending the proofs of my poems to me
> so that I can look at the damn things.
There is nothing more tyrannical than the rule of the apathetic and
mediocre. Let us hope such tyrannies are exposed.
As I said, the trial is thus unending. No verdict can be reached. An
artist that has to depend upon external evidence as crutches for his
work cannot be anything but a very poor artist. More of a
propagandist, and why not, in our debased times, propaganda pays.
>
> Because, there is
> > no limit to what I do not see in a work - so the evaluation of any
> > artistic work, from what is not there in it, reduces to a political
> > process.
>
> "In" is an interesting word. The question is how do you tell what is
> in a poem.
Translation to a different language works, for me, to know what is
there *in* it.
> You have to use your whole intelligence and understanding
> and your understanding should include the context that will enable you
> to judge what is there and to see what you might have missed.
Exactly. I go by the text, primarily. A good artist does not need
any crutches, for all is there in the work. That is why he or she is
a good artist, and thus, worthy of interest. You do not miss anything
much when you do a line by line, word by word, nuance by nuance
translation. This engineering approach, I find, beats your handwaving
and opinionating and referring to external issues.
> What is there, I try to make sense of, and see the best
> > possible and most logical pattern. I find from experience that the
> > better the writer, the most strikingly clear and unambiguous the
> > pattern, and so, the easier to translate. So, Shakespeare tell us in
> > his sonnets exactly what he wants to say - he does that because he is
> > such a great writer.
>
> No, this really reduces what is said to that which is easy to
> understand and transparant.
No, no, translation is far different from paraphrasing. Paraphrasing
diminishes art abominably, but proper translation enhances.
Poetry would be perfectly useless if this
> is all there is.
You don't understand. Poetry is useful only to the poet and whoever
can understand the poet's works. The rest are pretenders.
For example, what does Shakespeare say in "King
> Lear?" Be kind to your daughter? Poetry is about another type of
> saying altogether and is not reducible to a message.
Silly man, you are confusing drama with poetry.
So the Bengali mind wants loans, is polite and offers good tea. It is
also kind and likes to talk, but is a bit paranoid. Looks like you do
have some idea after all. But, this is not enough to understand
Bengali poetry.
> > is that if I had another several lifetimes and did what
> > > I could I could begin to get it. Believe me, when confronted with
> > > let's say all there is in a culture (Chinese, Indian, Russian, English
> > > whatever) I would never claim that I comprehend it completely or even
> > > adequately.
> >
> > Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you approach them with too many
> > preconceptions. Trying using a blank mind instead, and read exactly
> > what is there before you, before knowing the pedigree and habits of
> > those who have written the stuff. Maybe, you will get better results,
> > and not remain in such a hopeless state.
>
> I could also try a few martinis. This has worked for me before.
>
>
> >
> > > I only know the little I know. And I know a lot more
> > > about English Lit -- that one aspect of a certain kind of "mind" --
> > > than I do about the Indian mind and I am grateful for any instruction.
> >
> > Then explain Browning's "The Last Duchess".
>
> Why? Am I responsible for her too?
It is probably the most terrible poem in the English language, and
only recently I believe I have understood its significance. Only the
greatest poet in the English language could even think of dealing with
such a subject. I wanted to see if you could explain that poem, and
then analyse how our viewpoints differ. No, no, you are not
responsible for her.
> > > Your interpretation of Browning seems very skewed to me. So, I'm just
> > > trying to show why.
> >
> > I believe my interpretation of Browning's work is mature and balanced
> > and insightful and also hopeful, and that over time people will agree
> > with me.
>
> Maybe -- however in this one little instance you are wrong.
Unproved. Heh-heh.
Arindam Banerjee.
Chandra P. Das
> - continuing
"I write in English as well as I want to, and now I am focussing
on Bengali, by translating the best from the best English poets to
that language."
--- Arindumb Banerjoker [from earlier in the thread]
----
A Troubadour
I am a troubadour
From hilly Jamshedpur.
My message of joy I scatter far and wide.
Far and wide
Hark the beating of my drum!
Dance your feet off to its thrum!
Feel its thud in all your veins!
Drown your woes and all your pains!
Come come come come
Feel feel feel feel
I am a troubadour
From iron Jamshedpur.
My message of love I scatter far and wide.
Far and wide
I turn barrels into knots!
I do foil wicked plots!
Banish all ugly thoughts!
Build upon vacant lots!
Come come come come
Feel feel feel feel
Arindam Banerjee
Melbourne, October 1999
surreal_ravi
How many people in the English speaking world
would spend hours and hours on discussing
the poetry of Subhadra Kumari Chohan
and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar?
On any given day one can find scores of
Indians on DTC buses showing off their
knowledge with proud eagerness by talking
about the latest remarks of some junior official
of American administration on foreign policy
issues. How many Americans on buses and planes
bother to discuss what Indian officials
have to say on any issue?
Arindam Banerjee
> > May I offer my take on this -- in deathless verse?
> >
> > W.H. Auden
> > Perhaps the plummest
> > Said "Of all major poets
> > Tennyson's dumbest."
>
> Even if dumbest
> Tennyson's verses
> Rank over Auden
> As Ferrari over Holden.
To convert the above to stand-alone mode, as opposed to
context-dependent, minor changes are required:
Even the dumbest
Tennyson verses
Rank above Auden
As Ferrari over Holden.
proving that context-free poetry is more thumping poetry.
Arindam Banerjee
> are different in the west coast of India ( from Kerala to Goa) is
> pretty different from what you see in Madhya Pradesh or in Bengal. A
> Kerala born writer's description of monsoon is different. Jeet Thayil
> is a Syrian Christian and his imagery is different. To me monsoon
> takes me back in my imagination to the days of great Indian
> philosophers like Shankara and Madhvacharya who used to stay put in
> the monsoon season before travelling elsewhere and dwell on
> philosophical discourses 1200 years ago. So I did not find the
> historic depth in his 'well praised' poem Monsoon! Earlier writers
> have written poems about it differently. So poor Thayil- leave him
> alone!
Shyamala gaganay ghora ghana ghata
Kunjapathay sakhi kaisay jawaba
Abala kamini ray...
And Tagore writes in a more secular vein:
Chopolota aaji jodi ghotay tobay koriyo khoma
Hay Nirupoma, hay Nirupoma
Tomaro du khani kalo aankhee poray borosharo ghono cchayakhani porhay...
Arindam Banerjee
> are different in the west coast of India ( from Kerala to Goa) is
> pretty different from what you see in Madhya Pradesh or in Bengal. A
> Kerala born writer's description of monsoon is different. Jeet Thayil
> is a Syrian Christian and his imagery is different. To me monsoon
> takes me back in my imagination to the days of great Indian
> philosophers like Shankara and Madhvacharya who used to stay put in
> the monsoon season before travelling elsewhere and dwell on
> philosophical discourses 1200 years ago. So I did not find the
> historic depth in his 'well praised' poem Monsoon! Earlier writers
> have written poems about it differently. So poor Thayil- leave him
> alone!
Shyamala gaganay ghora ghana ghata
herothatdied
"surreal_ravi" <surrea...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:8b6beb99.04081...@posting.google.com...
How many Americans can name a dozen officials of the American
administration, let alone throw off a comment about something one of them
said lately?