Gail,
“give Whitman a chance” -- I say “Give Poetry a Chance!”
Between Whitman, Ginsberg, Williams, and Diane Wakoski you couldn’t get a sonnet published for 40 forty years, and a great poet like Longfellow was maligned. No wonder poetry is almost dead.
From the sonnet sequence “Slaughter of the Muses”
THE DEATH OF CLIO THE MUSE OF HISTORY
Henry Brooke [1706-1783] was perhaps the most “scientific” poet of the generation. Who now
reads Universal Beauty? --Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse
The past, the past, cut off the past. How great
Our Freedom grows. Walt Whitman sang the song
Of himself. Echoes still reverberate,
And shatter crystalline form, from that gong.
The song of yourself he said you should sing,
And cut the shackles English bards begat,
And Freedom sounds so sweet. Let Freedom ring
Across the land and steamroll structures flat.
The war was fought and won. The rebels cleared
The field of form. Free verse became the norm.
More Freedom, cut the past they loudly cheered
So Freedom killed our Clio and her form.
How long O Rose of Poetry can you
Survive, who on the bush of Culture grew?
We have come a long way from:
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
To:
Love Sonnet
In Love’s rubber armor I come to you;
b
oo
b.
c,
d
c
d:
e
f--
e
f.
g
g.
--John Updike, (1932--)
And:
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000)
A long way down that is.
The national poetry of the nation that landed a man on the moon in 1969 has come to this.
Thomas Newton
TJLMT Club
[This message has been edited by Thomas Newton2 (edited July 18, 2005).]
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