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11-08-2017, 11:53 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,247
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Excuse me for gawking; this thread is like an endless evening fire. I consider it to be the Sphere's gift to me. Not only for the poetry shared but also for the exchanges and comments of those posting. So much of my life has been spent lazily, being attracted to only the shiniest objects and being sated by cliché... Blah.
But this thread is the key to the door I didn't know I was searching for.
These pages, all of them, are beautiful as meadows.
These posts, all of them, (though I haven't yet read them all) are the beauty within the beauty of those meadows.
And this contraption I'm typing on is a window wide open to that meadow that I, as much as I can find time to, climb through and bask in the preciousness of the offerings here.
Though some of my thoughts here are expressed in cliché (there's nothing inherently wrong with cliché mind you) this thread is strong medicine to combat that.
Had I found this place long ago, I would be a different person.
Disclaimer: I am prone to effusiveness and hyperbole, but I don’t think this time.
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11-08-2017, 01:08 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,626
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Ferris
Pound did wind up having a great ear, but dear Lord, his diction is fusty in that piece! But he is comprehensible and I don’t argue with the sentiments. Sack-stains half thy screed discloses, / Th' other half doth hold the morn is quite marvelous, despite being fusty.
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Completely agree that he's fusty there, as he is pretty unrelentingly in the early stuff. I just think that's the one piece where he harnessed it well. Would the poem be better if he had done the same thing without the fustiness? Probably. But it's still a solid poem.
(Not that you're necessarily disagreeing)
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11-08-2017, 04:18 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: a foothill of the Catskills
Posts: 968
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Oh, that's a good point, Aaron. Would I like the poem better if the diction were less fusty? Hmmm. I'd have to see the new poem. As it is, I do think conceptually it's a sharp, concise assessment of WS, and I really like the last two lines (and particularly the last).
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11-09-2017, 12:22 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Taipei
Posts: 2,624
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Not exactly hidden, but the first paragraph (especially the first paragraph) of Araby is gorgeous. In particular, "conscious of decent lives within them."
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12-02-2017, 07:20 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,626
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Whatever criticism might be made of Ezra Pound the man, he has to his eternal credit the fact that he did NOT care for G. K. Chesterton:
The New Cake of Soap
Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun
Like the cheek of a Chesterton
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12-02-2017, 08:02 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
Posts: 6,630
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I am the Lord Nathaniel Curzon;
I am a most superior person.
My face is pink; my hair is sleek;
I dine at Blenheim twice a week.
The undergraduates of Balliol.
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12-03-2017, 09:04 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Venice, Italy
Posts: 2,399
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Novick
Whatever criticism might be made of Ezra Pound the man, he has to his eternal credit the fact that he did NOT care for G. K. Chesterton.
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Interestingly, one of the best books ever written about Chesterton, Paradox in Chesterton, was written by the great Pound scholar, Hugh Kenner, author of The Pound Era.
I have just discovered from a biography of Chesterton that in 1935, when Chesterton and his wife went to visit Max Beerbohm in Rapallo, they also had lunch with Ezra Pound, and apparently they discussed Pound's "Social Credit" ideas at length.
I have to confess I am far more drawn to Chesterton, both as a man and as a writer.
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12-03-2017, 12:06 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: a foothill of the Catskills
Posts: 968
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A bit of a detour, but Chesterton, and distributism in particular, influenced both Dorothy Day’s and EF Schumacher’s thinking on politics and economics. I haven’t read Chesterton, but I have read Day and Schumacher, and I respect them hugely. Anyone thinking seriously about our current difficulties could do a lot worse than to read them.
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12-11-2017, 01:57 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
Posts: 6,630
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I've been reading Roethke, who's pretty uneven to my mind, but here's his nice homage to Hopkins:
LONG LIVE THE WEEDS
Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm! -
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marked by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, look, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.
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12-11-2017, 07:23 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Breaux Bridge, LA, USA
Posts: 3,489
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This is a most wonderful thread, and ought to be an anthology. Going back to the beginning, here's a bit of Christmas cheer - or not - by Thomas
Hardy.
THE REMINDER – Thomas Hardy
While I watch the Christmas blaze
Paint the room with ruddy rays,
Something makes my vision glide
To the frosty scene outside.
There, to reach a rotting berry,
Toils a thrush – constrained to very
Dregs of food by sharp distress,
Taking such with thankfulness.
Why, O starving bird, when I
One day’s joy would justify,
And put misery out of view,
Do you make me notice you?
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