ty are obviously horrible in a ton of ways but "what will survive of us is love" is bett
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 02:58 (six years ago) link
er for that. It wasn't sentimentality, it was a reach for goodness in a shitty world that he knew he belonged to
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 03:00 (six years ago) link
"This Be the Verse" doesn't work as lazy misanthropy. We can feel it because the poet isn't trying to step outside of the shit he's joking about
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 03:05 (six years ago) link
this may not be his best, but I'm fond of it:
The trees are coming into leafLike something almost being said;The recent buds relax and spread,Their greenness is a kind of grief.Is it that they are born againAnd we grow old? No, they die too,Their yearly trick of looking newIs written down in rings of grain.Yet still the unresting castles threshIn fullgrown thickness every May.Last year is dead, they seem to say,Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Is it that they are born againAnd we grow old? No, they die too,Their yearly trick of looking newIs written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles threshIn fullgrown thickness every May.Last year is dead, they seem to say,Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 03:53 (six years ago) link
also NV otm I think... this exchange:
the difficulty I have with this poem isn't its poetry, which is sublime, but that it delivers an imbalanced idea so sublimely that it convinces you it is true when it is only half-true.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, November 16, 2017 6:38 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I think lots of great art does that in one way or another
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, November 16, 2017 6:45 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
really tickled me, as I've just been re-reading Michael Hamburger's The Truth of Poetry (1960something) which begins with basically this exact conversation, except Hamburger is defending Rilke's Duino Elegies from the charge of conveying mistaken ideas (or, more precisely, from the kind of criticism that would yoke its aesthetic value qua poetry to the essential rightness or wrongness of its ideas).
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 04:01 (six years ago) link
"fullgrown thickness" is an apt description of the cluster of consonants in the first two verses of the last stanza.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 17 November 2017 04:01 (six years ago) link
xp ... the Hamburger book also touches on "Ode on a Grecian Urn," making (or borrowing? I don't have the book at hand to check) the point that, despite what most people would tell you, Keats never said that beauty is truth -- rather, it's what Keats said the urn said; and the ode derives considerable emotional tension from the poet's struggle to believe it.
to Alfred: yes! those lines in the last stanza don't quite make sense to me on the level of literal signification, but I still love the sound of them, which I have heard compared to wind rustling branches
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 04:09 (six years ago) link
Okay I just looked it up and it makes a bit more sense now that I know "thresh" is an older variant spelling of "thrash," though one that is clearly only there for the rhyme... I think one of the major differences between British poets and American poets is that the latter can't get away with this kind of wordplay.
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 04:14 (six years ago) link
Love Larkin - completely forgot til now we did him in high school. I always think of the line "past smells of different dinners" when I'm having a stroll in the neighbourhood in the evening.
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Friday, 17 November 2017 04:17 (six years ago) link
I was listening to Melvyn Bragg & friends this morning talking g about Germaine de Stael and one of the semi-quotes that was discussed was along the lines of "taste kills genius". Larkin is one of the writers I feel strongly backs up that
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 04:18 (six years ago) link
Great thread so far
― Modern Sounds in Undiscovered Country (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 17 November 2017 06:33 (six years ago) link
Btw anyone here read that Rilke/Rodin book I’ve had my eye on?
― Modern Sounds in Undiscovered Country (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 17 November 2017 06:36 (six years ago) link
in my head all the time is this fragment from Faith Healing:
...In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love.To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweepsAs all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
― Susan Stranglehands (jed_), Friday, 17 November 2017 06:55 (six years ago) link
xp Is that the one from Archipelago Press? I can't say I've read it all through, but I own it, and I don't regret the purchase -- it's a lovely book!
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 11:15 (six years ago) link
Still find Bleaney mortifying
But if he stood and watched the frigid windTousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bedTelling himself that this was home, and grinned,And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,And at his age having no more to showThan one hired box should make him pretty sureHe warranted no better, I don’t know.
― Stevie T, Friday, 17 November 2017 11:20 (six years ago) link
Fuck
― fake pato is kind of racist, dude (darraghmac), Friday, 17 November 2017 11:20 (six years ago) link
I'd go back to bed but I mean he's spoiled even that
― fake pato is kind of racist, dude (darraghmac), Friday, 17 November 2017 11:21 (six years ago) link
xp Is that the one from Archipelago Press? I can't say I've read it all through, but I own it, and I don't regret the purchase -- it's a lovely book!― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
It was issued on Archipelago (although I read a version of that essay years previously). Almost all his writing on art and sculpture is worth anyone's time.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 17 November 2017 11:26 (six years ago) link
They tuck you up, your mum and dad - I used to say this to my kids every night at bedtime. One day they'll get it.
― mahb, Friday, 17 November 2017 11:31 (six years ago) link
This parody from Adrian Mitchell was going round the internet last year after being shared by Billy Bragg. I find it massively annoying.
They tuck you up, your mum and dad,They read you Peter Rabbit, too.They give you all the treats they hadAnd add some extra, just for you.
They were tucked up when they were small,(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),By those whose kiss healed any fall,Whose laughter doubled any joke.
Man hands on happiness to man,It deepens like a coastal shelf.So love your parents all you canAnd have some cheerful kids yourself.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 17 November 2017 11:42 (six years ago) link
Eurgh Jesus that's awful.
― piscesx, Friday, 17 November 2017 11:58 (six years ago) link
It is in every sense a tribute to the original.
― Andrew Farrell, Friday, 17 November 2017 12:13 (six years ago) link
Billy Bragg is one of the biggest twats in the UK, I hate him more than Boris tbh. He is that type of grinding bore that would find something as bad as that witty and amusing.
― calzino, Friday, 17 November 2017 12:30 (six years ago) link
ffs that is sick. horrible.
i watched love and death in hull recently - where did they get the tape of larkin and his wife singing their own homemade nazi national anthem - that was incredibly dark and creepy imo, like the meticulous nature of it and the fact they were both singing along. also the general idea of him sliding further into heavily drunken nazism in his last days.
i agree about aubade, that is prob my favourite. but afternoons comes in a close second. "something is pushing them to the side of their own lives" stays in my head.
― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, 17 November 2017 12:40 (six years ago) link
Almost all his [Rilke's] writing on art and sculpture is worth anyone's time.
Have you read the book of letters on Cezanne? That one has been calling to me lately, though I suspect I'm more interested in it as autobiography than as criticism.
― bernard snowy, Friday, 17 November 2017 12:49 (six years ago) link
The photographs in this book are excellent, but as I wanted a factual history of Rodin, the narrative was disappointing for me. I should have realised that this book was written by a poet who once worked for Rodin. As a result the text is too aesthetic for my needs.
― treeship: a year in the life (wins), Friday, 17 November 2017 12:54 (six years ago) link
brb, going to find Adrian Mitchell and beat him to death
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 12:59 (six years ago) link
with a keep calm and carry on mug
― imago, Friday, 17 November 2017 13:12 (six years ago) link
without Larkin I guess I'd never know what it felt like to be a miserable twat who moved to Hull and stuck around for whatever reason, wasting life on equal shares of administrative work, train journeys and booze.
― thomasintrouble, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:05 (six years ago) link
on the other hand, you might have been miserable anyway!
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 17 November 2017 14:07 (six years ago) link
I'd have been all of those things anyway! I live about 5 minutes away from Larkin's flat (the one with the "High Windows")
― thomasintrouble, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:13 (six years ago) link
this sentence from Adrian Mitchell's wiki page is a little ambiguous, but I think they mean it in the good way?
In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space.[4]
― soref, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:30 (six years ago) link
Heh
― fake pato is kind of racist, dude (darraghmac), Friday, 17 November 2017 14:40 (six years ago) link
HUMAN BEINGS look at your hands your beautiful useful hands you’re not an ape you’re not a parrot you’re not a slow loris or a smart missile you’re human not british not american not israeli not palestinian you’re human not catholic not protestant not muslim not hindu you’re human we all start human we end up human human first human last we’re human or we’re nothing nothing but bombs and poison gas nothing but guns and torturers nothing but slaves of Greed and War if we’re not human look at your body with its amazing systems of nerve-wires and blood canals think about your mind which can think about itself and the whole universe look at your face which can freeze into horror or melt into love look at all that life all that beauty you’re human they are human we are human let’s try to be human dance!
not british not american not israeli not palestinian you’re human
not catholic not protestant not muslim not hindu you’re human
we all start human we end up human human first human last we’re human or we’re nothing
nothing but bombs and poison gas nothing but guns and torturers nothing but slaves of Greed and War if we’re not human
look at your body with its amazing systems of nerve-wires and blood canals think about your mind which can think about itself and the whole universe look at your face which can freeze into horror or melt into love look at all that life all that beauty you’re human they are human we are human let’s try to be human
dance!
― imago, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:42 (six years ago) link
grooped i implore thee, my footling turlingdromes
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:43 (six years ago) link
the last line and by extension entire poem spoken by cowboy movie heel as he fires his pistol into the dirt at some poor young lad's feet
― imago, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:43 (six years ago) link
lost me at "not an ape"
― thomasintrouble, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:52 (six years ago) link
and the idea that such a speciesist poem would be used for a first contact
― thomasintrouble, Friday, 17 November 2017 14:54 (six years ago) link
I cannot settle which is worse,The Anti-Novel or Adrian Fucking Mitchell
― the intentional phallusy (Noodle Vague), Friday, 17 November 2017 14:56 (six years ago) link
Pshaw! Millions of people like posters of cats with modestly amusing captions, such as "Hang In There!", too. Someone must supply them with ever new and transparently cheesy gewgaws and Adrian Mitchell is just the person to do it, proudly, sincerely and without shame. Let us leave them to themselves, fondly holding hands, their mouths stained pink by cotton candy.
― A is for (Aimless), Friday, 17 November 2017 19:20 (six years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Thursday, 14 December 2017 00:01 (six years ago) link
Great thread everyone
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 14 December 2017 00:57 (six years ago) link
In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space.
Out of a cannon into the sun?
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Thursday, 14 December 2017 01:01 (six years ago) link
Hoos what’d you vote for
― .oO (silby), Thursday, 14 December 2017 01:04 (six years ago) link
Uhh I think the second line because it leaves space for people to mean well despite forces at play that can ultimately be more powerful than they are
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 14 December 2017 01:23 (six years ago) link
^vmic
― Bingo Little’s Breakout (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 14 December 2017 01:25 (six years ago) link
Which is a good thing
Haha truly
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 14 December 2017 01:58 (six years ago) link
feeling “Man hands on misery to man” at the moment. otherwise “coastal shelf” - that way it conveys a dread sense, which surrounds the heart, of an accumulation of irretrievable cold and darkness over time - rather than progress or even not-progress, the perpetuation of the human race being an act that ploughs is further into sadness as a collective being of isolated individuals, that retains and adds to our fucked upness (our solitude, our anger, our failures of tolerance and kindness etc). this is the picture of someone awake with fear at night, assessing their own mortality and childlessness, rather than a truth, i think. or rather it sums up that feeling truly than necessarily expressing a “true” sentiment (otherwise no “Sidney Bechet” - “oh play that thing!” - or “First Sight” - “Earth’s immeasurable surprise” - that “immeasurable” a counterweight to the endless “deepening” here)
― Fizzles, Thursday, 14 December 2017 08:42 (six years ago) link
I
Look it's a very good thread and poetry and interpretation etc
But coastal shelf as a line stands out for me as the one put in
Because it rhymed with what he wanted the last line to be
― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Thursday, 14 December 2017 10:26 (six years ago) link