Tolkien's Hobbling Habit
Chad R. Orzel
This might be akin to throwing a grenade into a room full of
professors of linguistics, but at least it'll be an on-topic brawl:
There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
"The Lord of the Rings has its virtues, of course: a compelling plot,
a vast imaginative scope. But it's also full of poetry that is—and
there's no nice way to say this—simply awful."
Sort of a mixed bag, really.
I like the Entish war chant he quotes (I wish he'd quoted some of the
authentic ancient verse he compares it to), but wholeheartedly agree
with the assessment of the other two bits quoted.
Later,
OilCan
Bill Van
orz...@earthlink.net wrote:
> This might be akin to throwing a grenade into a room full of
> professors of linguistics, but at least it'll be an on-topic brawl:
>
> There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>
> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>
> concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
>
> "The Lord of the Rings has its virtues, of course: a compelling plot,
> a vast imaginative scope. But it's also full of poetry that isóand
> there's no nice way to say thisósimply awful."
>
> Sort of a mixed bag, really.
> I like the Entish war chant he quotes (I wish he'd quoted some of the
> authentic ancient verse he compares it to), but wholeheartedly agree
> with the assessment of the other two bits quoted.
>
> Later,
> OilCan
I would hope that most fans of LotR would have a sense of humor about it.
And it's hardly an original thought Slate has given birth to. The
Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings, 1969, gave us the following,
introduced as an ancient elvish lament:
Dago, Dago, Lassi Limi rintintin
Yanqui unicycle ramar rotoroot
Telstar aloha saarinen cloret
Stassen camaro impala desoto?
And much, much more. I keep my BotR on the shelf next to my LotR, though
I reread it only every 15 years or so, compared with five or six for
LotR.
bill
Sea Wasp
>
> This might be akin to throwing a grenade into a room full of
> professors of linguistics, but at least it'll be an on-topic brawl:
>
> There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>
> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>
> concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
>
> "The Lord of the Rings has its virtues, of course: a compelling plot,
> there's no nice way to say thisósimply awful."
>
> Sort of a mixed bag, really.
> I like the Entish war chant he quotes (I wish he'd quoted some of the
> authentic ancient verse he compares it to), but wholeheartedly agree
> with the assessment of the other two bits quoted.
What a load of pompous drek.
The person makes the cardinal sin of all bad criticism: assumes that
everyone's taste is his. He presents all these snippets (conveniently
out of context -- for instance, the Bath Song is obviously deliberate
doggerel anyway) and says nothing ABOUT them, just basically throws
them out to us implying "See How Awful They Are", and expecting
universal agreement.
Pfui.
I think Tolkien's verse accomplishes PRECISELY what he wants it to.
For instance, Bombadil is a deliberately odd character -- he is
usually a buffoon, an odd and funny being whose nonsensical rhymes
reflect the way he likes to be seen. His actions, however,
occasionally reveal something hidden behind the facade. Nonetheless
his energetic, silly rhyming songs are perfectly apropos and designed
to elicit the precise "what the heck is he going on about" reaction
that they tend to. The Ents, slow and deliberate that they are,
accordingly repeat, reinforce, and redescribe things as they go on,
building each concept like a slow-growing tree.
I find many of Tolkien's poems to be very moving and impressive --
the lay of Gil-Galad, the tale of the Dwarves in the Hobbit, etc.
He knew what he was doing.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Jens Kilian
> There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>
> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>
> concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
Those who can, do.
Those who can't do, teach.
Those who can't teach, administrate.
And apparently those who can't even administrate, criticize.
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Ron Henry
> Those who can, do.
> Those who can't do, teach.
> Those who can't teach, administrate.
>
> And apparently those who can't even administrate, criticize.
And the only response to a foolish essay is to insult broad categories of professionals -- teachers, administrators, and critics -- that include many very talented and sincerely dedicated people. Sigh.
--
Ron Henry ronh...@clarityconnect.com
http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/
Chad R. Orzel
wrote:
>Chad R. Orzel wrote:
>>
>> This might be akin to throwing a grenade into a room full of
>> professors of linguistics, but at least it'll be an on-topic brawl:
>>
>> There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>>
>> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>>
>> concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
> What a load of pompous drek.
I just knew you'd say that...
> The person makes the cardinal sin of all bad criticism: assumes that
>everyone's taste is his.
Or, more charitably, that he's writing for people who share his
tastes. Which is, to be fair, what most critics are doing (and, for
that matter, people who lament publically that they don't understand
how anybody can not like some book), though some are more forthright
about it than others.
He presents all these snippets (conveniently
>out of context -- for instance, the Bath Song is obviously deliberate
>doggerel anyway) and says nothing ABOUT them, just basically throws
>them out to us implying "See How Awful They Are", and expecting
>universal agreement.
<shrug>
I think those pieces are subject to fairly tight length limits, and
anyway, they're running a sort of parallel Usenet over there, with the
people who start new threads getting paid to do so...
Personally, though, I think the first two bits he quotes are pretty
self-evidently awful. I'll concede that he's cheating a bit in taking
the very twee-est of Tom Bombadil's twee doggerel, but context, IMAO,
does nothing to improve that whole sequence. (Mostly because it makes
no sense even in context-- the Bombadil scenes, like the odd Edwardian
anachronisms that pop up throughout, seem to exist primarily to amuse
the author...)
I'm more or less the audience the author of that essay was aiming for,
though. I've never been that impressed by Tolkien's poetic asides--
some of them are decent enough, but anything longer than a page or so,
I tend to skim lightly at best, and with the exception of the "Man in
the Moon" song (which soars to the dizzying heights of "sorta cute"),
anything written by a Hobbit is just awful.
If I feel inspired enough, I may post a more detailed explanation
later, but my books are currently behind a big pile of boxes, and I'm
late for work already.
Later,
OilCan
Jens Kilian
> "Jens Kilian" <Jens_...@agilent.com> wrote=20
>
> > Those who can, do.
> > Those who can't do, teach.
> > Those who can't teach, administrate.
> > And apparently those who can't even administrate, criticize.
>
> of professionals -- teachers, administrators, and critics -- that =
> include many very talented and sincerely dedicated people. Sigh.
Oops. Apologies to all those offended; this was typed immediately after
reading the (obviously, blatantly biased) article, and I wasn't thinking.
jonathan mccall
(snip)
De Gustibus, of course, but I think Sea Wasp raised a salient point
about selective quotation.
Some of the poetry in LoTR is deliberately doggerel - the "Bath Song"
and "Tom Bombadillo". And there's definitely some gimpy scansion in
some of them. But how about the "Troll Song"? does it not have a nice
rollicking rhythm to it, as well as strain of dark humor:
"Now I don't see why the likes o' thee
Without axin leave should go makin free
With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin,
So hand the old bone over!
If that's doggerel, it's doggerel of a superior sort, imho.
I'm not trying to necessarily to advance the claim that Tolkien was a
great poet, but I do think he had his moments. The Anglo-saxon inspired
stuff, such as the snippet of the song of Eorl, or the account of the
battle of Mundburg, stand out in my mind. Tolkien did some first-rate
translations of that old poetry, and I don't think he was entirely
insensible to quality. I think he _did_ sometimes make things hard on
himself - the "Lay of Leithian" as published in _The History of Middle
Earth_ is written in a meter that's really uncongenial for English
poetry.
I think Tolkien's real critical "sin" is that his work is anachronistic,
both in style and in subject matter. Whatever Tolkien had to say, he
found the idiom of Modernity highly unsuitable to say it in. There's a
really interesting theme on this very subject woven into Robertson
Davies' _What's Bred in the Bone_; when I read that novel I immediately
thought of Tolkien.
>
> I'm more or less the audience the author of that essay was aiming for,
> though. I've never been that impressed by Tolkien's poetic asides--
> some of them are decent enough, but anything longer than a page or so,
> I tend to skim lightly at best, and with the exception of the "Man in
> the Moon" song (which soars to the dizzying heights of "sorta cute"),
> anything written by a Hobbit is just awful.
Well, if you don't like it, you don't like it. Lots of people who love
LoTR don't particularly enjoy the poetry and skim over it. There's
definitely some I like more than others. :)
--
Jonathan McCall
Holly E. Ordway
>There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>
>http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>
>concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
>
>"The Lord of the Rings has its virtues, of course: a compelling plot,
>a vast imaginative scope. But it's also full of poetry that is—and
>there's no nice way to say this—simply awful."
When I was writing my dissertation, I came across a similar article (in
a print journal, I don't remember by whom or what journal) with the same
premise. My reaction was mixed.
On the one hand, I do think that the poetry is the weakest part of Lord
of the Rings. Some of it is quite effective and helps to communicate the
mood of the scene, and so on; but on the other hand, I think there's a
bit too much of it, and too many of the poems are draggy and don't add
anything (to *my* enjoyment of the book, anyway).
On the other hand, this particular article had chosen all the *worst*
examples and put them in the *worst* light, and clearly hated Tolkien
and had an axe to grind, and wanted to devalue the whole thing by
arguing that it contained crappy sappy poetry. I felt that this was
biased and unfair, and so I disagreed with the method of criticism and
the conclusions.
The online article is completely off-base as well. Has this guy actually
read the whole thing? He quotes Frodo's bath song as an example of
"serious" verse... does this guy not understand that it's supposed to be
FUNNY? He also makes it sound like all of the poetry is of the bouncy-
rhythm, silly style stuff, like the hobbit songs and Bombadil's songs.
Did he miss the elvish poetry completely? Someone might or might not
think it's good, but it's definitely different from the other types.
(I also could smack the guy for saying that Tolkien uses "generic"
imagery. Tolkien uses a fairly straightforward style for much of the
novel... that's not the same thing as "generic". I'll stop now before I
get into too much of a rant..)
It would be perfectly possible to critique Tolkien's poetry in LOTR in
an objective and fair manner, but I'm not sure it's been done yet. My
nutshell evaluation would be that Tolkien is a superb stylist in prose,
and in poetry he was uneven, ranging from so-so to pure genius (in the
"one ring to rule them all" poem).
--Holly
Maureen O'Brien
are singable (and are often sung), and his poetry taught me to like
adult poetry. He opened the door to Old and Middle English, and to
the poetry of a host of other languages as well. Then I returned to
Tolkien, and found new things in him again.
I can't think of any other novelist except Lady Murasaki whose poetry
is both so good and so integral to the story and its setting.
I will stop now before I burble further, except to say that Tolkien's
poetry will far outlive the author of that article in Slate.
Maureen
jonathan mccall
>
> Tolkien _is_ a great poet, or at very least a memorable one. His songs
> are singable (and are often sung), and his poetry taught me to like
> adult poetry. He opened the door to Old and Middle English, and to
> the poetry of a host of other languages as well. Then I returned to
> Tolkien, and found new things in him again.
My first-ever attempt to write poetry (or at any rate, poetry that
didn't incorporate the line "...and smell like one, too!") was an
attempt at imitating the Dwarve's song in _The Hobbit_.
I think Tolkien was probably the author who first awakened me to the use
of language itself as something distinctive.
--
Jonathan McCall
Joe Slater
>Tolkien _is_ a great poet, or at very least a memorable one. His songs
>are singable (and are often sung), and his poetry taught me to like
>adult poetry. He opened the door to Old and Middle English, and to
>the poetry of a host of other languages as well. Then I returned to
>Tolkien, and found new things in him again.
There are people who disagree, and I'm one of them. I believe a"the
good bits" version of LOTR would have no verse at all, except the bit
about the rings.
jds
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
Chad R. Orzel
<radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>"Chad R. Orzel" wrote:
>> Personally, though, I think the first two bits he quotes are pretty
>> self-evidently awful. I'll concede that he's cheating a bit in taking
>> the very twee-est of Tom Bombadil's twee doggerel, but context, IMAO,
>> does nothing to improve that whole sequence. (Mostly because it makes
>> no sense even in context-- the Bombadil scenes, like the odd Edwardian
>> anachronisms that pop up throughout, seem to exist primarily to amuse
>> the author...)
>De Gustibus, of course, but I think Sea Wasp raised a salient point
>about selective quotation.
Sure.
That misses the equally salient point that that's what people _do_
when they write that sort of essay. The guy wasn't attempting to write
a balanced and nuanced treatment of Tolkien's poetry for the Royal
Society of Doggerel Verse, he was writing a deliberately provocative
piece for a web magazine.
Sure, he could've quoted bits which were less staggeringly awful than
the first two things he quoted, but it really wouldn't've served his
purposes. Or mine, for that matter, in posting the URL here...
>Some of the poetry in LoTR is deliberately doggerel - the "Bath Song"
>and "Tom Bombadillo". And there's definitely some gimpy scansion in
>some of them. But how about the "Troll Song"? does it not have a nice
>rollicking rhythm to it, as well as strain of dark humor:
>
> "Now I don't see why the likes o' thee
> Without axin leave should go makin free
> With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin,
> So hand the old bone over!
>
>If that's doggerel, it's doggerel of a superior sort, imho.
Which, as I said of the "Man in the Moon" song, scales the Olympian
heights of "sorta cute." Or it would, if it didn't play right into the
other problems I have with Sam's dialogue.
>I'm not trying to necessarily to advance the claim that Tolkien was a
>great poet, but I do think he had his moments. The Anglo-saxon inspired
>stuff, such as the snippet of the song of Eorl, or the account of the
>battle of Mundburg, stand out in my mind.
Some of that stuff is, as I said earlier, pretty good. Some of it's
even used well (i.e., not in a way that brings the whole story to a
screeching halt for three or four pages).
>I think Tolkien's real critical "sin" is that his work is anachronistic,
>both in style and in subject matter. Whatever Tolkien had to say, he
>found the idiom of Modernity highly unsuitable to say it in.
I think the larger problem is that he wasn't really a novelist, he was
a medievalist/ linguist who wound up writing a novel on the side.
There are too many things in there that appear to have been worked in
solely because he thought they were cute, or because he'd spent years
putting this beautiful back-story together, and by God, he was going
to work it in if it killed him. Much of the poetry falls into this
category.
Of course, the larger problem with this _thread_ (and, indeed, the
original Slate article) is that the claim that Tolkien's poetry is
_bad_ really ought to be backed up with examples of somebody else's
poetry that's _good_... This isn't an easy thing for me to come up
with, as I'm not a huge poetry fan, and don't own much of it. I'll see
if I can find anything that would serve...
Later,
OilCan
Sea Wasp
>
> Of course, the larger problem with this _thread_ (and, indeed, the
> original Slate article) is that the claim that Tolkien's poetry is
> _bad_ really ought to be backed up with examples of somebody else's
> poetry that's _good_...
And with reasons as to why one should be considered better than the
other, I'd say.
After all, I've read quite a bit of poetry off and on, and I've
noticed that much of the later stuff I've seen doesn't appeal to me
nearly as much as the older material. Then again, I also am not much
of a poetry fan.
Jordan S. Bassior
trying to show the best poems that he could write in his own style. As has been
pointed out, Tolkien's _own style was technically much better than the Bathing
Song.
He was trying to add to the verisimilitude of the book, by showing that his
imaginary culture had folk-rhymes. You'll note that, in his various works on
Middle Earth, he includes poems written in _several_ styles.
There's every reason, given the evidence that he labored long and hard to
support the verisimilitude by creating as much as possible an
internally-consistent, believable world, that this was his intention. Plus,
doesn't he pretty much _state_ in some of his letters that this is what he was
doing with the poems?
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
"To urge the preparation of defence is not to assert the imminence of war. On
the contrary, if war were imminent, preparations for defense would be too
late." (Churchill, 1934)
--
erilar
wrote:
There's also the matter of "whose poetry" one looks at. If the style
is appropriate to the character singing/reciting, there's going to be
quite a variety of style---and probably quality---for this reason alone.
>
> I think Tolkien's real critical "sin" is that his work is anachronistic,
> both in style and in subject matter. Whatever Tolkien had to say, he
> found the idiom of Modernity highly unsuitable to say it in.
I happen to agree with this policy 8-)
Tastes differ. So?
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
> After all, I've read quite a bit of poetry off and on, and I've
> noticed that much of the later stuff I've seen doesn't appeal to me
> nearly as much as the older material. Then again, I also am not much
> of a poetry fan.
I am, but not of most of the modern dreck I've encountered. None of my
short(or long) list of favorite poets was born since WW2. Some belong to
other centuries entirely, such as John Donne and Walther von der
Vogelweide 8-)
Jerry Friedman
> Chad R. Orzel wrote:
>
> >
> > Of course, the larger problem with this _thread_ (and, indeed, the
> > original Slate article) is that the claim that Tolkien's poetry is
> > _bad_ really ought to be backed up with examples of somebody else's
> > poetry that's _good_...
>
> And with reasons as to why one should be considered better than the
> other, I'd say.
The jellyfish tempted me, but when I looked for a _good_ poem I might
have used, I found this short essay:
<http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/soundings/hardy.htm>.
There's more to say about that poem than Levine does. And read it out
loud, or listen to one of the recordings.
Like several people in this thread, I like the "rings" poem, and I
also like some of the other gnomic verses: "All that is gold does not
glitter" and "Seek for the sword that is broken". The little bits of
verse that show up--"Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui" and
"To the Sea! To the Sea!" and like that--have their points. I skip
all the long poems except maybe "In the willow-meads of Tasarinan",
and all the comic poems by hobbits. As for Bombadil's blank verse
printed as prose, I've said it before and I'll say it again: that was
one of Tolkien's two biggest mistakes. (The other was not letting the
reader know before the appendices that Aragorn needed to become king
of Gondor and Arnor to marry Arwen.)
--
Jerry Friedman wrote a Tolkien fanfic poem, but the magazine that
accepted it never got around to publishing it.
jonathan mccall
>
> Chad R. Orzel wrote:
>
> >
> > Of course, the larger problem with this _thread_ (and, indeed, the
> > original Slate article) is that the claim that Tolkien's poetry is
> > _bad_ really ought to be backed up with examples of somebody else's
> > poetry that's _good_...
>
> And with reasons as to why one should be considered better than the
> other, I'd say.
>
> After all, I've read quite a bit of poetry off and on, and I've
> noticed that much of the later stuff I've seen doesn't appeal to me
> nearly as much as the older material. Then again, I also am not much
> of a poetry fan.
FWIW, I consider myself a poetry fan - enough of one to own about a
dozen different anthologies, plus about that many "collected works" of
individual poets. My tastes range from Romantic and Victorian stuff
right on through to present day. I probably like the Victorians and the
poets of the first half of the 20th C the best, but by no means am I
hostile to contemporary poetry, either.
I don't think that doing a "head-to-head" of Tolkien's stuff vs. Random
Modern Poet is going to be a very fruitful (or fair) comparison. If we
put something of JRRT up against, say, something from Anne Sexton's _54
Mercy Street_, will we fault Tolkien for not dealing in confessional
poetry? For being a fuddy-duddy about rhyme and meter? For writing
narrative verse, or light verse, in dactyllic hexameter rather than
blank-verse confessional poetry?
If we want to do a worthwhile comparison and contrast, we'd first have
to identify poets who wrote in the same styles and genres as Tolkien -
and I think you'd have to go back to 19th C - or the 7th C - to find
something like that.
ObAside: What would be the critical reaction to a contemporary poet who
wrote in a style similar to, say, Browning, even if the poetry was
well-done on its own terms?
None of this is to say that a person can't dislike the verse in LoTR, or
find the Hobbit-written stuff excessively jocose or twee. But saying
"it's not as good as Arbitrary Poet X" has about as much innate
usefulness as criticizing an Inspector Morse novel because it doesn't
deal adequately with sociological implications of AI.
My particular beef with the Slate article (and yes, I realize it was
meant to be taken lightly, but still) is that there's no attempt to
place the poetry in context, either in terms of its function within the
larger narrative (I think it's an unqualified success in that regard),
or in terms of the genres the poems belong to (I think here JRRT has
some hits, some misses).
IOW, it's a bit of a cheap shot. The criticisms levied against JRRT
would be equally applicable against quite a few other poets who occupy a
prominent place in the English Lit. canon.
--
Jonathan McCall
Konrad Gaertner
>
[snip]
> I don't think that doing a "head-to-head" of Tolkien's stuff vs. Random
> Modern Poet is going to be a very fruitful (or fair) comparison. If we
> put something of JRRT up against, say, something from Anne Sexton's _54
> Mercy Street_, will we fault Tolkien for not dealing in confessional
> poetry? For being a fuddy-duddy about rhyme and meter? For writing
> narrative verse, or light verse, in dactyllic hexameter rather than
> blank-verse confessional poetry?
I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
To me, great art provides deep meening and often enjoyment _despite_
the strict restrictions placed upon it. This is why I admire
Shakespeare, and Tolkien, and Steven Brust, and the members of the
Oulipo. Where's the skill in winning a game with no rules?
[from a website for the Oulipo]
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the
chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint
only serves to obtain precision of execution."
--Igor Stravinsky
> My particular beef with the Slate article (and yes, I realize it was
> meant to be taken lightly, but still) is that there's no attempt to
> place the poetry in context, either in terms of its function within the
> larger narrative (I think it's an unqualified success in that regard),
> or in terms of the genres the poems belong to (I think here JRRT has
> some hits, some misses).
I fully agree with the former, but don't have enough knowledge of the
genres to comment on the latter.
> IOW, it's a bit of a cheap shot. The criticisms levied against JRRT
> would be equally applicable against quite a few other poets who occupy a
> prominent place in the English Lit. canon.
I bet you can't name a famous poet (living or dead) who hasn't
published anything that can be dismissed as dreck.
--KG
Joe Slater
>Like several people in this thread, I like the "rings" poem, and I
>also like some of the other gnomic verses: "All that is gold does not
>glitter" and "Seek for the sword that is broken". The little bits of
>verse that show up--"Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui" and
>"To the Sea! To the Sea!" and like that--have their points.
The trouble with the gnomic verses is that they are so easy to parody.
Occasionally an odd scrap of words falls into the beat and I find
myself unconsciously extemporising. In terms of mythic quality I think
the Ring verse beats the others, hands down. As for the ditties, they
make me squirm.
jonathan mccall
>
> jonathan mccall wrote:
>
> I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
> just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
> words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
I personally tend to prefer formalism in literature myself, and abstract
art has very little appeal at all for me. I don't have anything against
less formal genres, though, and do sometimes surprise myself by liking
something outside of my usual comfort zone.
>
> To me, great art provides deep meening and often enjoyment _despite_
> the strict restrictions placed upon it. This is why I admire
> Shakespeare, and Tolkien, and Steven Brust, and the members of the
> Oulipo. Where's the skill in winning a game with no rules?
I think you could argue, though, that it's not that there are no rules,
just different ones. I understand and agree with what you're saying to
an extent, but there's also a dark side to formalism. Try reading a
sonnett by a second or third-string Jacobean who had mastered the
technical form but didn't have anything much to say with it. At the
extreme end of formalism, art degenerates into a mere etude or exercise
of proficiency. At the far end of abstract art, it gets hard to tell
the real deal from the blarney (at least for me).
What it boils down to is having a vision or something to say, and then
finding the best tools to hand to shape it, whatever that turns out to be.
>
> [from a website for the Oulipo]
> "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the
> chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint
> only serves to obtain precision of execution."
> --Igor Stravinsky
Provided one has the goods to begin with. :)
>
> > My particular beef with the Slate article (and yes, I realize it was
> > meant to be taken lightly, but still) is that there's no attempt to
> > place the poetry in context, either in terms of its function within the
> > larger narrative (I think it's an unqualified success in that regard),
> > or in terms of the genres the poems belong to (I think here JRRT has
> > some hits, some misses).
>
> I fully agree with the former, but don't have enough knowledge of the
> genres to comment on the latter.
Well, even if you're not familiar with the genres, you can at least say
whether they work for you on a personal level. I find a number of
JRRT's poems quite moving - even though I'm aware that they may contain
flaws of execution.
>
> > IOW, it's a bit of a cheap shot. The criticisms levied against JRRT
> > would be equally applicable against quite a few other poets who occupy a
> > prominent place in the English Lit. canon.
>
> I bet you can't name a famous poet (living or dead) who hasn't
> published anything that can be dismissed as dreck.
That's very true. One man's dreck is another man's...er, not-dreck. :)
--
Jonathan McCall
Coyu
>Konrad Gaertner wrote:
>>
>> jonathan mccall wrote:
>
>>
>> I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
>> just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
>> words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
>
>I personally tend to prefer formalism in literature myself, and abstract
>art has very little appeal at all for me. I don't have anything against
>less formal genres, though, and do sometimes surprise myself by liking
>something outside of my usual comfort zone.
I think there might be some confusion here between blank verse, which
in English is generally unrhymed iambic pentameter, and free verse,
which is, um, free of obvious metrical constraints.
Also, what does abstract mean in this context? "My gosh, ninety
percent of the word stresses fall on the even-numbered syllables?!
No one _really_ talks that way. How contrived!"
Richard Horton
<kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
>just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
>words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
Good free verse has a distinct poetical rhythm that enhances the
meaning and sound of a well-done free verse poem.
"Blank verse" is even more restricted -- it is written to a strict
meter (with artistic deviations allowed of course -- Shakespeare was
brilliant at relaxing his meter just the right way) -- it just doesn't
have rhyme. It is not in any sense of the word "abstract".
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Chad R. Orzel
<radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>> Chad R. Orzel wrote:
>> > Of course, the larger problem with this _thread_ (and, indeed, the
>> > original Slate article) is that the claim that Tolkien's poetry is
>> > _bad_ really ought to be backed up with examples of somebody else's
>> > poetry that's _good_...
>> And with reasons as to why one should be considered better than the
>> other, I'd say.
Well, _obviously_...
>FWIW, I consider myself a poetry fan - enough of one to own about a
>dozen different anthologies, plus about that many "collected works" of
>individual poets. My tastes range from Romantic and Victorian stuff
>right on through to present day. I probably like the Victorians and the
>poets of the first half of the 20th C the best, but by no means am I
>hostile to contemporary poetry, either.
>
>I don't think that doing a "head-to-head" of Tolkien's stuff vs. Random
>Modern Poet is going to be a very fruitful (or fair) comparison.
Neither do I, and that's not what I was suggesting.
I was suggesting something more in the line of picking a few verses
that demonstrate the sort of things that poetry does well, and showing
how that works. Obviously, given the near-total lack of poems about
the epic doings of mythic elves in an entirely different world, it's
going to be a bit tough to do a head-to-head comparison. The point is
more to back up an argument that it's not very good _as_ _poetry,_
that is, at doing the things poetry is supposed to do well.
(Which I still can't do, owing to a near-total lack of poetry in my
book collection. Unless you'd like a comparison of the twee doggerel
of Bombadil and the Hobbits to the playful doggerel of John M.
Ford...)
>My particular beef with the Slate article (and yes, I realize it was
>meant to be taken lightly, but still) is that there's no attempt to
>place the poetry in context, either in terms of its function within the
>larger narrative (I think it's an unqualified success in that regard),
Really?
Wow. I think there's even more of it that fails on that count than
fails as poetry. Particularly the long narrative poems-- they stop the
story _dead_ for pages at a time, for precious little gain in
atmosphere.
Later,
OilCan
Sea Wasp
I'd think that by itself would be evidence that, aside from real
extremes in writing, you can't FIND proof of good or bad in poems or
literature. If the same specific wording, in the same book, read by
two people, works for one and not for the other, this seems to
indicate that "good" poetry -- in terms of either aesthetics or in
terms of working well in context -- is really too subjective to be
judged effectively.
Kevin Riggle
It's not quite LotR, but "Roads Go Ever Ever On" in The Hobbit is really a
pretty good piece of poetry; not Shakespeare, but way better than average.
- Kevin
"Chad R. Orzel" <orz...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:pditlto38to7e3bbd...@4ax.com...
jonathan mccall
>
(snip)
>
> I think there might be some confusion here between blank verse, which
> in English is generally unrhymed iambic pentameter, and free verse,
> which is, um, free of obvious metrical constraints.
Can't speak for Konrad, but I'm pretty sure I said "blank" when I mean
"free". I've been doing it for a good ten years now, and can't ever
seem to keep them straight...
>
> Also, what does abstract mean in this context? "My gosh, ninety
> percent of the word stresses fall on the even-numbered syllables?!
> No one _really_ talks that way. How contrived!"
"Abstract" is a (unsatisfactory) bin-word for the general aesthetics of
some contemporary art, music, and literature that have tended away from
traditional forms. It's a sloppy, uncommunicative term, but I'm not
sure what sort of word will do as an abbreviation for
"Non-representational visual art, music that eschews melody and harmony,
literature that rejects various aspects of formalism - what people mean
generally when they talk about something being avant-garde." And even
_that_ doesn't cover it at all well.
--
Jonathan McCall
jonathan mccall
>
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:02 -0700, jonathan mccall
> <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> >I don't think that doing a "head-to-head" of Tolkien's stuff vs. Random
> >Modern Poet is going to be a very fruitful (or fair) comparison.
>
> Neither do I, and that's not what I was suggesting.
> I was suggesting something more in the line of picking a few verses
> that demonstrate the sort of things that poetry does well, and showing
> how that works. Obviously, given the near-total lack of poems about
> the epic doings of mythic elves in an entirely different world, it's
> going to be a bit tough to do a head-to-head comparison.
There might be a a reasonable amount, actually. Yeats wrote a fair
number of poems about Faerie, and he was more or less a contemporary of
Tolkien. There's Kipling (that might actually be a great comparison -
I'll have to dig some of his stuff out). There's Keats, too, and a
number of the other Romantics. There's Spenser, of course. Hell, we
could even drag in Lovecraft's "Fungi From Yuggoth" poem-cycle. Or we
could look at the many contemporary authors who publish sfnal poetry
(some of it quite fine, imho).
The point is
> more to back up an argument that it's not very good _as_ _poetry,_
> that is, at doing the things poetry is supposed to do well.
Welllll, I dunno about that. Clearly, it doesn't do that for _you_, and
that's fine, of course. It _does_ do what "poetry's supposed to do" for
me. In terms of effects, poetry either works for you or it doesn't, and
you're left shrugging and saying "tastes differ." Objectively, of
course, you can critique his formal command of poetic idiom (and JRRT's
is a little creaky in places, I grant you - there's some very
awkward-sounding scansion even in some of the "serious" poems, for instance.
If the Slate author had done a better job of providing examples and
comparisons, though, it would not have proved him "right", but it would
have given the rest of us a better idea of why he feels the way he does,
and given us some insight into what he values in literary aesthetics.
As it is, though, it merely conveys a sort of low-grade snottiness. <shrug>
>
> >My particular beef with the Slate article (and yes, I realize it was
> >meant to be taken lightly, but still) is that there's no attempt to
> >place the poetry in context, either in terms of its function within the
> >larger narrative (I think it's an unqualified success in that regard),
>
> Really?
> Wow. I think there's even more of it that fails on that count than
> fails as poetry. Particularly the long narrative poems-- they stop the
> story _dead_ for pages at a time, for precious little gain in
> atmosphere.
Well, there you go. It didn't work for you. It worked for me. I found
it deeply evocative and richly atmospheric, and is one of the things
that makes the work unique for me. And here we are, right back at
"tastes differ." :)
--
Jonathan McCall
Jerry Friedman
> I think that what the essay ignores is that Tolkien was not, in the doggerel,
> trying to show the best poems that he could write in his own style. As has been
> pointed out, Tolkien's _own style was technically much better than the Bathing
> Song.
>
> He was trying to add to the verisimilitude of the book, by showing that his
> imaginary culture had folk-rhymes. You'll note that, in his various works on
> Middle Earth, he includes poems written in _several_ styles.
>
> There's every reason, given the evidence that he labored long and hard to
> support the verisimilitude by creating as much as possible an
> internally-consistent, believable world, that this was his intention. Plus,
> doesn't he pretty much _state_ in some of his letters that this is what he was
> doing with the poems?
But he could have done this just as well, at least in my opinion, by
giving only the first few lines, like Richard Adams (who I seem to be
mentioning a lot lately). I don't need the *whole* piece of doggerel.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
...
> I think Tolkien's real critical "sin" is that his work is anachronistic,
> both in style and in subject matter. Whatever Tolkien had to say, he
> found the idiom of Modernity highly unsuitable to say it in. There's a
> really interesting theme on this very subject woven into Robertson
> Davies' _What's Bred in the Bone_; when I read that novel I immediately
> thought of Tolkien.
...
With the difference that (minor spoiler for that wonderful and
possibly sf book _What's Bred in the Bone_) Frances Cornish, Davies's
hero, can't attain the kind of success he wants, whereas Tolkien
became world-famous. That may be why I didn't make the connection; at
least I can't think of any other excuse.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
...
> ObAside: What would be the critical reaction to a contemporary poet who
> wrote in a style similar to, say, Browning, even if the poetry was
> well-done on its own terms?
I'm not really in touch with contemporary poetry, but I have some
impressions. In the prestigious poetry magazines you'll find very
little exact rhyme or 19th-early-20th-century-style meter; in the
general-audience magazines (such as the _New Yorker_ and the
_Atlantic_, or even IASFM) you'll find a bit more; a few "little
magazines" welcome or prefer it. The two rhyme-and-meter poets that
AFAIK got the best academic welcome in the '80s and '90s were George
Starbuck, writing left-wing political satire in quite impressive
light-verse style, and Marilyn Hacker (Samuel Delany's former wife and
fellow editor of _Quark_), writing mostly lesbian poetry. I remember
a line like "I'll bet you blush over when you come"--the refrain of a
ballade or villanelle or some such. So it might help to have trendy
content that *clears throat* dialogues ironically with the forms of an
earlier tradition.
When I was taking poetry classes with quite well-known poets, in the
early '80s, no one discouraged me from writing in rhyme and
meter--even Stephen Berg, who had co-edited well-known anthologies of
"poetry in open forms" (free verse). On the other hand, when I was
trying to publish poetry in minuscule magazines in the early '90s, I
had more success with free verse, even when I didn't consider it my
best, than with my best metered verse.
But all this may have changed--particularly because of rap and slams.
--
Jerry Friedman
Konrad Gaertner
>
> Coyu wrote:
> >
> (snip)
> >
> > I think there might be some confusion here between blank verse, which
> > in English is generally unrhymed iambic pentameter, and free verse,
> > which is, um, free of obvious metrical constraints.
>
> Can't speak for Konrad, but I'm pretty sure I said "blank" when I mean
> "free". I've been doing it for a good ten years now, and can't ever
> seem to keep them straight...
Well, I can speak for him (since I am him), and you're right. In case
it wasn't clear already, I have very little knowledge of poety forms,
preferring to remain in the "I know what I like" stage.
> >
> > Also, what does abstract mean in this context? "My gosh, ninety
> > percent of the word stresses fall on the even-numbered syllables?!
> > No one _really_ talks that way. How contrived!"
>
> "Abstract" is a (unsatisfactory) bin-word for the general aesthetics of
> some contemporary art, music, and literature that have tended away from
> traditional forms. It's a sloppy, uncommunicative term, but I'm not
> sure what sort of word will do as an abbreviation for
> "Non-representational visual art, music that eschews melody and harmony,
> literature that rejects various aspects of formalism - what people mean
> generally when they talk about something being avant-garde." And even
> _that_ doesn't cover it at all well.
Nice, that does a good job of explaining what I mean when I say
'abstract'. Next question: what's the definition of /avante-garde/?
--KG
Coyu
>"Abstract" is a (unsatisfactory) bin-word for the general aesthetics of
>some contemporary art, music, and literature that have tended away from
>traditional forms. It's a sloppy, uncommunicative term, but I'm not
>sure what sort of word will do as an abbreviation for
>"Non-representational visual art, music that eschews melody and harmony,
>literature that rejects various aspects of formalism - what people mean
>generally when they talk about something being avant-garde." And even
>_that_ doesn't cover it at all well.
Picasso, Parker, and Pound, eh? Though I think the popular musical
vocabulary has expanded enough to include Charlie Parker
firmly in the old guard. And cubism has seeped its way into
cartooning and animation, though it's taken a hundred years to do it.
A lot of popular taste changes by osmosis; sometimes from the
bottom, sometimes from the top. Everyone who has listened to
a movie score understands what a leitmotiv is at this point, and
generally feels OK with it. A hundred years ago, this was not the case.
Same way with syncopation, for another musical trend from a
different social direction.
Probably a related phenomenon is the apparent ability of the
younger generation to interpret complex visual scenes more acutely
than previous ones. (I forget the name -- the Miller effect?)
Dunno about literature, but I have noticed that many SF fans are self-
conscious archaizers, which I find odd for a grouping so dedicated to
visions of the future. Where are the novels from a t'ca's point of view?
ObSF: Mayor Giuliani^W Amalfi's curse, "Belsen and be-bop!"
Man, James Blish was weird sometimes.
jonathan mccall
>
>
> When I was taking poetry classes with quite well-known poets, in the
> early '80s, no one discouraged me from writing in rhyme and
> meter--even Stephen Berg, who had co-edited well-known anthologies of
> "poetry in open forms" (free verse). On the other hand, when I was
> trying to publish poetry in minuscule magazines in the early '90s, I
> had more success with free verse, even when I didn't consider it my
> best, than with my best metered verse.
This seems to jibe well with my own impressions gathered from my own
search through _Poetry Marketplace_ (or whatever it's called) while I
was looking for likely places to submit stuff, as well as the stuff I've
read in college and regional publications.
>
> But all this may have changed--particularly because of rap and slams.
ObSF: The "New Formalism" in Michael Flynn's _Firestar_ series may be
upon us. :)
--
Jonathan McCall
jonathan mccall
>
> Picasso, Parker, and Pound, eh? Though I think the popular musical
> vocabulary has expanded enough to include Charlie Parker
> firmly in the old guard. And cubism has seeped its way into
> cartooning and animation, though it's taken a hundred years to do it.
Huh. I'd always thought that Pound was a reactionary, anyway - a lot of
the Pound I've read either riffed on very old forms or outright
appropriated them (eg, "Sestina: Altaforte")
>
> A lot of popular taste changes by osmosis; sometimes from the
> bottom, sometimes from the top. Everyone who has listened to
> a movie score understands what a leitmotiv is at this point, and
> generally feels OK with it. A hundred years ago, this was not the case.
> Same way with syncopation, for another musical trend from a
> different social direction.
>
> Probably a related phenomenon is the apparent ability of the
> younger generation to interpret complex visual scenes more acutely
> than previous ones. (I forget the name -- the Miller effect?)
>
> Dunno about literature, but I have noticed that many SF fans are self-
> conscious archaizers, which I find odd for a grouping so dedicated to
> visions of the future. Where are the novels from a t'ca's point of view?
How durable has formal experimentation proven with the reading public
generally, though? I've been reading a lot of mainstream stuff lately,
some of it with a reasonble critical hip quotient, and even though I've
been liking a lot of what I've been reading, it doesn't strike me as
particularly innovative or daring. I agree with you about sf and its
formal conservatism, but I think it mirrors the general reading public's
tastes, to be honest. I think it stands out more because some sf tends
to bill itself as the literature of ideas, futurity, etc.
--
Jonathan McCall
Richard Horton
Friedman) wrote:
> The two rhyme-and-meter poets that
>AFAIK got the best academic welcome in the '80s and '90s were George
>Starbuck, writing left-wing political satire in quite impressive
>light-verse style, and Marilyn Hacker (Samuel Delany's former wife and
>fellow editor of _Quark_), writing mostly lesbian poetry. I remember
>a line like "I'll bet you blush over when you come"--the refrain of a
>ballade or villanelle or some such. So it might help to have trendy
>content that *clears throat* dialogues ironically with the forms of an
>earlier tradition.
Hacker has done a lot of stuff in traditional forms -- and by no means
is all of it lesbian-oriented. I like her stuff quite a bit.
IIRC Fred Chappell (a sometime SF writer, if I'm not mistaken) is
known for using traditional poetic forms, as well. Though I'm less
familiar with his work.
Coyu
>> Picasso, Parker, and Pound, eh? Though I think the popular musical
>> vocabulary has expanded enough to include Charlie Parker
>> firmly in the old guard. And cubism has seeped its way into
>> cartooning and animation, though it's taken a hundred years to do it.
>
>Huh. I'd always thought that Pound was a reactionary, anyway - a lot of
>the Pound I've read either riffed on very old forms or outright
>appropriated them (eg, "Sestina: Altaforte")
Pound's schtick was to 'make it new', i.e. trying to put older styles
into contemporary relevance. He viewed his poetry as a wedge with
the hammerblow of four thousand years of global culture behind it.
I don't think he was particularly successful in that.
In terms of technique, though, Pound could and did switch from various
formalisms, taken from all eras of history, to a very shattered style
of free verse. In the Cantos, a lot of use of 'found' materials as well,
usually quirky works of history, which Pound used to illustrate
his peculiar, Fascist, political message, which he considered to
be inextricable from his art.
In terms of poetic innovation, Pound is probably not as important
as William Carlos Williams or Gertrude Stein, and of course the
900-lb. gorilla of T.S. Eliot -- though Pound did seriously edit
"The Waste-Land" into the form we all know today.
ObSF: Dan Simmons alludes to an Ezra Pound whatsis that was
built before the current model in those Hyperion cantos, and
mentions that it was stark raving bonkers.
>How durable has formal experimentation proven with the reading public
>generally, though? I've been reading a lot of mainstream stuff lately,
>some of it with a reasonble critical hip quotient, and even though I've
>been liking a lot of what I've been reading, it doesn't strike me as
>particularly innovative or daring. I agree with you about sf and its
>formal conservatism, but I think it mirrors the general reading public's
>tastes, to be honest. I think it stands out more because some sf tends
>to bill itself as the literature of ideas, futurity, etc.
I think that, among a group of readers that most SF readers would classify
as mainstream, there's a real willingness to read experimental literature;
and I think they get a frisson related to the SF fans' 'sense of wonder'.
But I don't think it's a very large part of the 'contemporary literature'
crowd, though I'd estimate it easily outnumbers the core SF readership.
A little overlap, like PNH and Delany and so forth.
Personally, I'd love to read a more SFnal version of _The Age of Wire
and String_, or some fusion of Oulipo and Asimov's robot stories. But
I put those as low-probability events, like a mid-future Solar System
novel that gets the celestial mechanics and the econ right (let
alone things like characterization, plot, and that sort of stuff).
Reverend Sean O'Hara
>
> This might be akin to throwing a grenade into a room full of
> professors of linguistics, but at least it'll be an on-topic brawl:
>
> There's a piece recently posted to the online magazine Slate:
>
> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-07-24_112347.asp
>
> concerning the deficiencies of the poetry in _The Lord of the Rings._
>
> a vast imaginative scope. But it's also full of poetry that isóand
> there's no nice way to say thisósimply awful."
>
> Sort of a mixed bag, really.
> I like the Entish war chant he quotes (I wish he'd quoted some of the
> authentic ancient verse he compares it to),
Ask and receive. Here's the opening to "Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight" (spelling modernized slightly):
"Sithen the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy,
The borough brittened and brent to brands and ashes,
The tulk that the trammes of treason there wrought,
Was tried for his treachery, the truest on Earth;
It was Aeneas the athel and his high kind,
That sithen depreced provinces and patrons became
Wel-nigh of all the weal in the west isle,
For rich Romulus to Rome ricchis him swithe,
With great bobbaunce that burrough he begets upon first,
and names it his own name as it now has..."
> but wholeheartedly agree
> with the assessment of the other two bits quoted.
>
And I think it's done purposefully. Almost all the poetry/songs
quoted by the Hobbits stink. The two exceptions in my mind ("Earendil
was a mariner..." and "The road goes ever on...") were written by
Bilbo, which suggests to me that Tolkien was trying to show something
about Hobbit poetry. Everything by Tom Bombadil was silly. I agree
that the Entish song was good. And of course, the "One Ring to rule
the all" poem is excellent.
--
Reverend Sean O'Hara
You too can be an ordained minister: http://www.ulc.org/ulc
Staff Writer for EXPULSION: http://www.expulsion.org
"Just last week, Rummy sent me an e-mail over the Internet -
something that didn't exist just five years ago." - Sen. Armey
Reverend Sean O'Hara
> As for Bombadil's blank verse
> printed as prose, I've said it before and I'll say it again: that was
> one of Tolkien's two biggest mistakes. (The other was not letting the
> reader know before the appendices that Aragorn needed to become king
> of Gondor and Arnor to marry Arwen.)
>
in LotR -- which is odd, since there were several good ones in
"The Silmarillion" -- Beren and Luthien, Earendil and Elwing, Turin
and his sister. But the only romance in LotR that really worked for
me was Faramir and Eowyn, just because we got to see them meet and
interact -- although even then, their scenes together seemed to stop
the story after Pelennor Fields. Arwen barely appeared before her
wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
that Aragorn loved her. Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
he returns to the Shire and there's this girl Rose that he's in love
with.
(Okay, I admit I like Gimli's infatuation with Galadriel, but that's
special.)
Brenda W. Clough
Reverend Sean O'Hara wrote:
> >
> Arwen barely appeared before her
> wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> that Aragorn loved her.
I happen to be reading FELLOWSHIP aloud to my son this month, and in fact
there are a couple of good clues. They're subtle, but they're there, subtly
British and stiff-upper-lip. Heaven forbid we should be demonstrative, you
know.
> Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
> the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
> life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
> he returns to the Shire and there's this girl Rose that he's in love
> with.
This is indeed a flaw. No clues appear in FELLOWSHIP.
> (Okay, I admit I like Gimli's infatuation with Galadriel, but that's
> special.
Reminds me of the line in the old DC comic, "But man! She isn't your
-species-!"
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Reverend Sean O'Hara
>
> Reverend Sean O'Hara wrote:
>
> > >
> > Arwen barely appeared before her
> > wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> > that Aragorn loved her.
>
> I happen to be reading FELLOWSHIP aloud to my son this month, and in fact
> there are a couple of good clues. They're subtle, but they're there, subtly
> British and stiff-upper-lip. Heaven forbid we should be demonstrative, you
> know.
>
and you're so looking forward to the southern journey starting, that
you aren't really looking for information about Arwen.
I'm meaning to give the books a reread before the first movie comes
out, so I'll keep an eye out.
> > Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
> > the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
> > life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
> > he returns to the Shire and there's this girl Rose that he's in love
> > with.
>
> This is indeed a flaw. No clues appear in FELLOWSHIP.
>
I've tried to work out a theory that this is some social commentary,
with Frodo not caring about the details of Sam's life before the
journey begins, but it doesn't work. We know details about the Gaffer;
Sam doesn't offer any protests about leaving his beloved; he never
asks to see her in Galadriel's pool.
I read a rumor that Jackson's put some scenes with Rose in "The
Fellowship of the Ring," which is a change that I'd love to see.
Ron Henry
> I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
> just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
> words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
Perhaps you mean "free verse" rather than "blank verse" (the latter is usually in meter, even if it doesn't have end-rhyme words)? I'd also politely suggest that if you think free verse is random words on a page, you haven't read enough of it! :)
The advantages of writing free verse, which is to say, poetry free of more traditional methods of rhyming and contraining meter, is that you might be able to take advantage of new innovations in condensing language and metaphor and creating internal rhythms and rhymes and word-associations to enhance the poem's language. Free verse, when written well, is anything but completely free. The best of it has subtle, innovative, meaning-enriching rhetoric and structure.
> [from a website for the Oulipo]
> "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the
> chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint
> only serves to obtain precision of execution."
> --Igor Stravinsky
This works for some people, but sometimes approaches gimmickry for others. The Oulipo writers have done some cool stuff, and also written some completely unreadable oddities. No method or school works infallibly.
> I bet you can't name a famous poet (living or dead) who hasn't
> published anything that can be dismissed as dreck.
"Dreck"? I dunno. Every writer's written, and many have managed to publish, mediocre works. But I reserve the term "dreck" for unreadable writing, and many writers I admire have whole bodies of work I am able to read with enjoyment.
--
Ron Henry ronh...@clarityconnect.com
http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/
Robert Sneddon
<clo...@erols.com> writes
>
>
>Reverend Sean O'Hara wrote:
>
>
>> (Okay, I admit I like Gimli's infatuation with Galadriel, but that's
>> special.
>
>Reminds me of the line in the old DC comic, "But man! She isn't your
>-species-!"
>
Reminds me of the dwarf Casanunda, the World's Second Greatest Lover
("We try harder"). He always had a stepladder handy.
--
Robert Sneddon
Brenda W. Clough
Robert Sneddon wrote:
Miles Vorkosigan also comes to mind.
Jerry Friedman
> Reverend Sean O'Hara wrote:
>
> > >
> > Arwen barely appeared before her
> > wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> > that Aragorn loved her.
>
> I happen to be reading FELLOWSHIP aloud to my son this month, and in fact
> there are a couple of good clues. They're subtle, but they're there, subtly
> British and stiff-upper-lip. Heaven forbid we should be demonstrative, you
> know.
Definitely subtle. But what there's no clue to at all is how his and
Arwen's being in love which each other is relevant to his decisions of
whether to join the fellowship, what to do at the end of _Fellowship_,
and others. (Well, at one point he says his heart would lead him to
Minas Tirith. As a clue, it's gossamer-thin.)
> > (Okay, I admit I like Gimli's infatuation with Galadriel, but that's
> > special.
>
> Reminds me of the line in the old DC comic, "But man! She isn't your
> -species-!"
Wish I could remember Vlad's line in _Yendi_ (Steven Brust) on why he
doesn't patronize Dragaeran prostitutes.
--
Jerry Friedman
Konrad Gaertner
>
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in message news:<3B64B483...@erols.com>...
> > Reverend Sean O'Hara wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > Arwen barely appeared before her
> > > wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> > > that Aragorn loved her.
> >
> > I happen to be reading FELLOWSHIP aloud to my son this month, and in fact
> > there are a couple of good clues. They're subtle, but they're there, subtly
> > British and stiff-upper-lip. Heaven forbid we should be demonstrative, you
> > know.
> ...
>
> Definitely subtle. But what there's no clue to at all is how his and
> Arwen's being in love which each other is relevant to his decisions of
> whether to join the fellowship, what to do at the end of _Fellowship_,
> and others. (Well, at one point he says his heart would lead him to
> Minas Tirith. As a clue, it's gossamer-thin.)
This is the first time I've made that connection; I'd always assumed he
meant that his heart wanted the glory and power that awaited him.
> > > (Okay, I admit I like Gimli's infatuation with Galadriel, but that's
> > > special.
> >
> > Reminds me of the line in the old DC comic, "But man! She isn't your
> > -species-!"
>
> Wish I could remember Vlad's line in _Yendi_ (Steven Brust) on why he
> doesn't patronize Dragaeran prostitutes.
And you're too lazy to look it up? It's on the second page of the
text: "sex with Dragaerans feels more than half like bestiality".
--KG
Konrad Gaertner
>
[line lengths adjusted]
> "Konrad Gaertner" <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message > news:3B60A7F4...@worldnet.att.net...
>
> > I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
> > just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
> > words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
>
> Perhaps you mean "free verse" rather than "blank verse" (the latter is
> usually in meter, even if it doesn't have end-rhyme words)? I'd also
> politely suggest that if you think free verse is random words on a
> page, you haven't read enough of it! :)
As was pointed out earlier, I meant "free verse" and hopefully I'll
remember that term so I don't look like a fool next time.
> The advantages of writing free verse, which is to say, poetry free
> of more traditional methods of rhyming and contraining meter, is that
> you might be able to take advantage of new innovations in condensing
> language and metaphor and creating internal rhythms and rhymes and
> word-associations to enhance the poem's language. Free verse, when
> written well, is anything but completely free. The best of it has
> subtle, innovative, meaning-enriching rhetoric and structure.
What I don't like is "formless"; that is, poetry where the form is
either absent or hidden so well that the first reading fails to
reveal it. Non-standard rhythm and rhyme schemes are fine; one of my
favorite poems is Frost's "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening",
mainly because of how the rhymes link the stanzas.
> > [from a website for the Oulipo]
> > "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the
> > chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint
> > only serves to obtain precision of execution."
> > --Igor Stravinsky
>
> This works for some people, but sometimes approaches gimmickry for
> others. The Oulipo writers have done some cool stuff, and also
> written some completely unreadable oddities. No method or school
> works infallibly.
True. BTW, I haven't actually read anything (significant) by them; can
someone point me to a list of their works originally written in
English (I don't want to think about trying to translate this stuff)?
> > I bet you can't name a famous poet (living or dead) who hasn't
> > published anything that can be dismissed as dreck.
>
> "Dreck"? I dunno. Every writer's written, and many have managed to
> publish, mediocre works. But I reserve the term "dreck" for
> unreadable writing, and many writers I admire have whole bodies of
> work I am able to read with enjoyment.
Okay, but I was referring to people with different tastes. If you
name some of those writers, we can probably find people here who find
some of their works unreadable, or at least trivial.
--KG
Jerry Friedman
> "Konrad Gaertner" <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:3B60A7F4...@worldnet.att.net...
>
> > I've never understood blank verse (or any abstract art or music). I
> > just can't bring myself to admire something that looks like random
> > words (or colors or notes) just thrown on a page.
>
> Perhaps you mean "free verse" rather than "blank verse" (the latter is
> usually in meter, even if it doesn't have end-rhyme words)? I'd also
> politely suggest that if you think free verse is random words on a page,
> you haven't read enough of it! :)
You might try, for instance, "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking",
by Walt Whitman, or "The Snow Man", by Wallace Stevens, or "The
Shampoo", by Elizabeth Bishop, or "To a Blossoming Pear Tree", by
James Wright (it's not what you think at first), or a lot of the poems
in _The House on Marshland_, by Louise Gluck (umlaut on the u).
Listen to the sound and rhythm even if the pattern isn't regular, see
how the images and words match up with each other (especially in that
Bishop poem, which takes some figuring out). You might even think of
them as stories or essays that use so many resources available to
language, possibly including some that take more attention than most
of us devote to prose, that they need only a few hundred words.
And of course, your mileage might vary.
> The advantages of writing free verse, which is to say, poetry free of
> more traditional methods of rhyming and contraining meter, is that you
> might be able to take advantage of new innovations in condensing
> language and metaphor and creating internal rhythms and rhymes and
> word-associations to enhance the poem's language. Free verse, when
> written well, is anything but completely free. The best of it has
> subtle, innovative, meaning-enriching rhetoric and structure.
...
Jerry Friedman
Chris Byler
Friedman) wrote:
Quoting half a poem? Ack!
Even if it's a bad poem, even if it's a _deliberately_ bad poem, at
least give the reader the option whether or not to read it.
Assuming, of course, that you regard that particular poetic style as
"bad" - which there's no reason to expect readers to agree on.
--
Chris Byler cby...@vt.edu
Kubera: "It occurred to me that Sam would be the number one suspect,
except for the fact that he was dead."
Sam: "I had assumed that to be sufficient defense against detection."
-- Roger Zelazny, _Lord of Light_
Richard Horton
Friedman) wrote:
>or "To a Blossoming Pear Tree", by
>James Wright (it's not what you think at first)
Darn!
David Tate
on The One Ring's messageboard.
The biggest problem with the 'criticism' of Tolkien's poetry is that
he doesn't quote any of Tolkien's poetry. He quotes:
1. a bath song
2. some nonsense verse
3. a marching song
I'll be the first to admit that some of Tolkien's efforts at poetry in
TLotR are imperfect. But nonsense verse is not intended to be poetry;
bath songs are not intended to be poetry; marching-to-war songs are
not intended to be poetry. A critic who cannot distinguish between
"Over There" and "In Flanders Fields" is a feeble critic indeed. He
must be an American; an Englishman would at least be aware of the
tradition of light popular song, or folksong not about labor disputes.
Not everyone cares for nonsense verse; I'm one of the people who
rarely finds it amusing. But I at least recognize that the point of
nonsense verse is to be nonsense, and that applying the sort of
criteria to nonsense that I might apply to Dylan Thomas or Wallace
Stevens or Edna St. Vincent Millay is just as absurd as criticizing
Pink Floyd for not being like Brahms. Or, as I said elsewhere: it is
no valid complaint against Marshmallow Fluff that it doesn't taste
like filet mignon. It isn't *trying* to taste like filet mignon.
David Tate
Damien Raphael Sullivan
>the story after Pelennor Fields. Arwen barely appeared before her
>wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
>that Aragorn loved her. Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
What do you expect? Pining and serenades? The man had been in love with her
for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the movie
will completely fail to convey. (And Frodo's 51, although that's a different
species.)
>the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
>life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
Hmm. I'd never thought of that.
OTOH, he's an English Servant. They don't get to marry until they can
establish a household, so maybe there was no question but that he'd follow
Frodo around.
-xx- Damien X-)
Jordan S. Bassior
>What do you expect? Pining and serenades? The man had been in love with her
>for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the movie
>will completely fail to convey. (And Frodo's 51, although that's a different
>species.)
American culture is obsessed with youth, or pretend-youth, so I bet the movie
will gloss over the fact that many fo the main characters are from long-lived
races.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
"To urge the preparation of defence is not to assert the imminence of war. On
the contrary, if war were imminent, preparations for defense would be too
late." (Churchill, 1934)
--
Ron Henry
> What I don't like is "formless"; that is, poetry where the form is
> either absent or hidden so well that the first reading fails to
> reveal it.
Hm. Tastes do vary widely and wildly, of course. I don't really have any interest in a poem that I "get" on a first reading. Too facile. To my taste, poetry ought to take repeated close readings to fully appreciate. (Again, before anyone jumps all over me, this is my taste in poetry.)
>Non-standard rhythm and rhyme schemes are fine; one of my
> favorite poems is Frost's "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening",
> mainly because of how the rhymes link the stanzas.
To others I'd just note that the rhyme schemes and easy rhythms of Frost standards like this one give a predictable and even pedantic feel. But again, YMMV.
> > > [from a website for the Oulipo]
> > > "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the
> > > chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint
> > > only serves to obtain precision of execution."
> > > --Igor Stravinsky
> >
> > This works for some people, but sometimes approaches gimmickry for
> > others. The Oulipo writers have done some cool stuff, and also
> > written some completely unreadable oddities. No method or school
> > works infallibly.
>
> True. BTW, I haven't actually read anything (significant) by them; can
> someone point me to a list of their works originally written in
> English (I don't want to think about trying to translate this stuff)?
I imagine a lot of it would be virtually impossible to translate. Some might make the same claim about poetry in general, of course -- you might get the literal meaning, and lose the formal structure. Or you'd get the metaphors, but lose a lot of the connotation of the words used in the original language. It's supremely difficult to translate poetry at all.
http://www2.ec-lille.fr/~book/oulipo/ seems to be the best page on Oulipo, though it's in French, which might make it less useful to non-francophones.
> > > I bet you can't name a famous poet (living or dead) who hasn't
> > > published anything that can be dismissed as dreck.
> >
> > "Dreck"? I dunno. Every writer's written, and many have managed to
> > publish, mediocre works. But I reserve the term "dreck" for
> > unreadable writing, and many writers I admire have whole bodies of
> > work I am able to read with enjoyment.
>
> Okay, but I was referring to people with different tastes. If you
> name some of those writers, we can probably find people here who find
> some of their works unreadable, or at least trivial.
I've been reading rasfw long enough to know that as soon as I say that I think a certain author is "dreck-free", several people will latch on to the opportunity to declare certain of that author's works indisputably and overwhelmingly drecky. ;-)
Brenda W. Clough
"Jordan S. Bassior" wrote:
> Damien Raphael Sullivan said:
>
> >What do you expect? Pining and serenades? The man had been in love with her
> >for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the movie
> >will completely fail to convey. (And Frodo's 51, although that's a different
> >species.)
>
> American culture is obsessed with youth, or pretend-youth, so I bet the movie
> will gloss over the fact that many fo the main characters are from long-lived
> races.
More interestingly, everyone on Middle Earth seems entirely free from that modern
obsession with mating before youth should depart. Waiting three or four decades
seems to not bother Aragorn and Arwen at all, and Sam is also notably free of
sexual drives. No biological clocks tick at all. Such an alien mindset would
seem to guarantee that the movie will tank.
James Burbidge
>At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll summarize here what I said
>on The One Ring's messageboard.
>
>The biggest problem with the 'criticism' of Tolkien's poetry is that
>he doesn't quote any of Tolkien's poetry. He quotes:
>1. a bath song
>2. some nonsense verse
>3. a marching song
>
>I'll be the first to admit that some of Tolkien's efforts at poetry in
>TLotR are imperfect. But nonsense verse is not intended to be poetry;
>bath songs are not intended to be poetry; marching-to-war songs are
>not intended to be poetry. A critic who cannot distinguish between
>"Over There" and "In Flanders Fields" is a feeble critic indeed. He
>must be an American; an Englishman would at least be aware of the
>tradition of light popular song, or folksong not about labor disputes.
>
And some of the hobbitish songs -- "I sit beside the fire", or "Upon
the hearth" work reasonably well _as songs_, at least IMHO, based on
experience with Donald Swann's settings of them in _The Road Goes Ever
On_.
James Burbidge jamesandma...@sympatico.ca
Matthew Austern
> And some of the hobbitish songs -- "I sit beside the fire", or "Upon
> the hearth" work reasonably well _as songs_, at least IMHO, based on
> experience with Donald Swann's settings of them in _The Road Goes Ever
> On_.
It could be argued, however, that it's a mistake to include songs
(unless they happen to work well as things other than songs) in a
text-only novel.
There are some editions of _Always Coming Home_ that include songs,
but those editions come with cassettes.
Jason Mulligan
jamesandma...@sympatico.ca says...
I thought they worked pretty well (well those that do appear) in the BBC
radio-play. Thats one of the things I'm real curious about in the films.
Will any of the verse survive the chop.
Jens Kilian
> In article <3b675bb5...@news1.sympatico.ca>,
> jamesandma...@sympatico.ca says...
> > the hearth" work reasonably well _as songs_, at least IMHO, based on
> > experience with Donald Swann's settings of them in _The Road Goes Ever
> > On_.
>
> I thought they worked pretty well (well those that do appear) in the BBC
> radio-play. Thats one of the things I'm real curious about in the films.
They did *not* work in the German centennial radio play (1992). That was
because *none* of the speakers could sing. (Augh!)
OTOH, Gollum was excellently done.
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Kate Nepveu
> jamesandma...@sympatico.ca (James Burbidge) writes:
> > And some of the hobbitish songs -- "I sit beside the fire", or "Upon
> > the hearth" work reasonably well _as songs_, at least IMHO, based on
> > experience with Donald Swann's settings of them in _The Road Goes Ever
> > On_.
> It could be argued, however, that it's a mistake to include songs
> (unless they happen to work well as things other than songs) in a
> text-only novel.
Or unless the novel's about music.
The most recent novel I read with songs in it was, I think, John M.
Ford's _The Last Hot Time_, and I really had to force myself to
read the lyrics and not skip right over them.
It's hard to get song lyrics to work without, well, music.
Kate
--
http://www.steelypips.org/elsewhere.html -- Paired Reading Page; Reviews
"On a shelf over the experiment table was the inevitable skull, which the
wizard put there to remind him of death, though it usually reminded him
that he needed to go to the dentist." --Bellairs, _The Face in the Frost_
Reverend Sean O'Hara
>
> Reverend Sean O'Hara <oha...@rcn.com> wrote:
>
> >the story after Pelennor Fields. Arwen barely appeared before her
> >wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> >that Aragorn loved her. Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
>
> What do you expect? Pining and serenades?
No, but maybe a little explanation from Bilbo about how Strider's in
love with Elrond's daughter, but can't marry her. Apparently Tolkien
even considered including more depth to the relationship, but realized
he couldn't do it without removing the focus from the Hobbits (that's
either mentioned in his letters or the History of Middle Earth series).
> The man had been in love with her
> for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the movie
> will completely fail to convey. (And Frodo's 51, although that's a different
> species.)
>
Frodo's being played by an 18 or 19 year old actor. But Frodo stopped
(or at least slowed his) aging when he took up the ring on his 33rd
birthday (which Tolkien indicated is the equivalent of a human coming
of age at 18 or 21), so it's no big deal.
> >the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
> >life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
>
> Hmm. I'd never thought of that.
>
> OTOH, he's an English Servant. They don't get to marry until they can
> establish a household, so maybe there was no question but that he'd follow
> Frodo around.
>
Even if there was no question, you think he'd tell Rose goodbye, maybe
give her a parting gift. At least Sam could've mentioned he had a
love he was leaving behind. As is, Rose appears about two chapters from
the end and the reader's never even heard of her before.
Jerry Friedman
> Damien Raphael Sullivan wrote:
> >
> > Reverend Sean O'Hara <oha...@rcn.com> wrote:
> >
> > >the story after Pelennor Fields. Arwen barely appeared before her
> > >wedding, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss the fact
> > >that Aragorn loved her. Then there's Sam and Rose, which I think is
> >
> > What do you expect? Pining and serenades?
>
> No, but maybe a little explanation from Bilbo about how Strider's in
> love with Elrond's daughter, but can't marry her. Apparently Tolkien
> even considered including more depth to the relationship, but realized
> he couldn't do it without removing the focus from the Hobbits (that's
> either mentioned in his letters or the History of Middle Earth series).
I think the book could have stood it, just as it can stand the
Aragorn-Eowyn and Faramir-Eowyn things.
> > The man had been in love with her
> > for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the movie
> > will completely fail to convey.
He's older than he looks. I picture him as looking about 35 or 40.
The movie will have to convey his greater age by acting, if possible,
but then Aragorn isn't like any real human being, as far as I know.
...
> > >the worst. In "Fellowship" there's no indication that Sam has a love
> > >life, not even when he looks into Galadriel's mirror at Hobbiton. Then
> >
> > Hmm. I'd never thought of that.
Me neither--thanks!
--
Jerry Friedman
Coyu
>> > The man had been in love with her
>> > for longer than most of us have been alive -- he's 88, which I bet the
>> > movie will completely fail to convey.
>
>He's older than he looks. I picture him as looking about 35 or 40.
>The movie will have to convey his greater age by acting, if possible,
>but then Aragorn isn't like any real human being, as far as I know.
Dick Clark.
Hm, that makes:
Frodo: Gary Coleman
Sam: Emmanuel Lewis
Aragorn: Dick Clark
Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
Can we get Celine Dion in there?
--
"Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Gandalf?"
Brenda W. Clough
Coyu wrote:
Strom Thurmond for Gandalf.
jonathan mccall
> Dick Clark.
Chief of the Nazgul, obviously.
>
> Hm, that makes:
>
> Frodo: Gary Coleman
> Sam: Emmanuel Lewis
> Aragorn: Dick Clark
> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
>
> Can we get Celine Dion in there?
What, to sing all the hobbit songs?
I can just see it now - the LOTR soundtrack, featuring Celine Dion
singing the smash hit, "My Bath Will Go On (Water Hot)".
--
Jonathan McCall
David Tate
> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
Actually, from what I just read last night in _Unfinished Tales_,
Galadriel was the tallest female in Middle-Earth, at about 6 foot 4.
I think that disqualifies Ms Flockhart.
Nancy Lebovitz
jonathan mccall <radi...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> the epic doings of mythic elves in an entirely different world, it's
>> going to be a bit tough to do a head-to-head comparison.
>
>There might be a a reasonable amount, actually. Yeats wrote a fair
>number of poems about Faerie, and he was more or less a contemporary of
>Tolkien. There's Kipling (that might actually be a great comparison -
>I'll have to dig some of his stuff out). There's Keats, too, and a
>number of the other Romantics. There's Spenser, of course. Hell, we
>could even drag in Lovecraft's "Fungi From Yuggoth" poem-cycle. Or we
>could look at the many contemporary authors who publish sfnal poetry
>(some of it quite fine, imho).
And if you don't insist on a "different world", then there are
ballads about elves and selkies.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Coyu
>> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
>
>Actually, from what I just read last night in _Unfinished Tales_,
>Galadriel was the tallest female in Middle-Earth, at about 6 foot 4.
>I think that disqualifies Ms Flockhart.
Not for the purposes of this cast list. If anything, it enhances
her qualifications.
Is Benny Hill dead? I am thinking he'd make a wonderful Bombadil.
Luke Webber
news:20010803103010...@ng-fj1.aol.com...
> David Tate wrote:
>
> >> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
> >
> >Actually, from what I just read last night in _Unfinished Tales_,
> >Galadriel was the tallest female in Middle-Earth, at about 6 foot 4.
> >I think that disqualifies Ms Flockhart.
>
> Not for the purposes of this cast list. If anything, it enhances
> her qualifications.
Agreed. Stature doesn't seem to be a limiting factor here.
> Is Benny Hill dead? I am thinking he'd make a wonderful Bombadil.
Yup, Benny is long gone. Better to cut Tom completely than to give him the
Robin Williams treatment. Or the Benny Hill treatment, for that matter.
Suddenly I'm thinking of Benny Hill in a more restrained and subtle role
than his usual. I''ll be buggered if he wouldn't make a perfect Bilbo. Even
the name "Hill" fits.
Luke
Coyu
>> >> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
>> >
>> >Actually, from what I just read last night in _Unfinished Tales_,
>> >Galadriel was the tallest female in Middle-Earth, at about 6 foot 4.
>> >I think that disqualifies Ms Flockhart.
>>
>> Not for the purposes of this cast list. If anything, it enhances
>> her qualifications.
>
>Agreed. Stature doesn't seem to be a limiting factor here.
>
>> Is Benny Hill dead? I am thinking he'd make a wonderful Bombadil.
>
>Yup, Benny is long gone. Better to cut Tom completely than to give him the
>Robin Williams treatment. Or the Benny Hill treatment, for that matter.
>
>Suddenly I'm thinking of Benny Hill in a more restrained and subtle role
>than his usual. I''ll be buggered if he wouldn't make a perfect Bilbo. Even
>the name "Hill" fits.
Sounds good. Since he's dead, it will have to be a CGI Benny Hill,
shrunk and rendered in blackface, with that new AT&T technology
to mimic Hill's inimitable enunciation.
His theme -- is there a name to that glorious piece of music? --
should become the leitmotif used in the inevitable Williams/Elfman
score. "Da-da-da-DAH-DAH-ditty-da-da-DAH-DAH-ditty-da-da-da!"
David T. Bilek
wrote:
>"Coyu" <co...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20010803103010...@ng-fj1.aol.com...
>> David Tate wrote:
>>
>> >> Galadriel: Callista Flockhart
>> >
>> >Actually, from what I just read last night in _Unfinished Tales_,
>> >Galadriel was the tallest female in Middle-Earth, at about 6 foot 4.
>> >I think that disqualifies Ms Flockhart.
>>
>> Not for the purposes of this cast list. If anything, it enhances
>> her qualifications.
>
>Agreed. Stature doesn't seem to be a limiting factor here.
>
>> Is Benny Hill dead? I am thinking he'd make a wonderful Bombadil.
>
>Yup, Benny is long gone. Better to cut Tom completely than to give him the
>Robin Williams treatment. Or the Benny Hill treatment, for that matter.
>
I think Gilbert Gottfried would make a wonderful Tom Bombadil. Simply
stunning.
-David
David Tate
[of Benny Hill:]
> His theme -- is there a name to that glorious piece of music? --
I believe it is called "Yakkety Sax", and is by Homer Louis ("Boots") Randolph.
David Tate
Coyu
>[of Benny Hill:]
>> His theme -- is there a name to that glorious piece of music? --
>
>I believe it is called "Yakkety Sax", and is by Homer Louis ("Boots")
>Randolph.
Great! Between this and the Schneewind book you recommended,
I'm set for the weekend!
Legolas: Jm. J. Bullock.
Justin Bacon
>I like the Entish war chant he quotes (I wish he'd quoted some of the
>authentic ancient verse he compares it to), but wholeheartedly agree
>with the assessment of the other two bits quoted.
But he seems to have missed the point in both cases.
The first bit he quotes is, as he notes, a song Pippin is singing in the
*bath*. That's like looking at "rub-a-dub-dub" and declaring it to be bad
poetry. It's not meant to be brilliant. And if the bath songs in Middle Earth
*were* brilliant works of poetry I'd be raising my eyebrows in askance.
And then he comments that Tom Bombadil's songs are comedic in their lack of
restraint. Am I supposed to take this as a *negative* comment? Tom Bombadil is
a comedic character.
And his comments on the prose is factually incorrect, which makes his opinion
irrelevant.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Jordan S. Bassior
>And then he comments that Tom Bombadil's songs are comedic in their lack of
>restraint. Am I supposed to take this as a *negative* comment? Tom Bombadil
>is a comedic character.
Indeed, Bombadil and Goldberry are supposed to be jolly nature spirits -- more
powerful than they seem, but essentially full of joy and mirth, and thus it
would make very little sense for Tom's songs to be restrained and formal.