A Poetry Thread

[hedge]

I'm sure a lot of people didn't like him when he was alive, probably with good reason. I still like that poem though, and I couldn't help that the Sandburg poem Batt shared put me in mind of it. I'm really only passingly familiar with Pound's personal history, but if we canceled every artist who was ever found wanting in the moral realm, we'd be much poorer in the aesthetic one.

I'm really not that familiar with Pound's ouvre, so I'm not competent to judge whether or not he was a great poet, but I can accept that a great artist might not be a great person. I'm sure plenty of Catholic saints weren't great people either, or politicians, or scientists, or judges (you get the picture). In short, I'm not sure that my (or anybody else) not "liking" someone (very much or otherwise) is a reason to not mention their name or quote them...

 

[hedge]

Another thought: Should people who know nothing about Pound's personal history (and perhaps have never read a poem by him or even heard of him) be deprived of reading one of his poems b/c we very much would not like him if he were alive today? Are adults not able to navigate these questions and issues themselves? Don't mean to derail the thread, but this could be an interesting conversation (if so we could start a new thread. It's certainly not a new or novel question or discussion)..

 

[superrific]

I'm sure a lot of people didn't like him when he was alive, probably with good reason. I still like that poem though, and I couldn't help that the Sandburg poem Batt shared put me in mind of it. I'm really only passingly familiar with Pound's personal history, but if we canceled every artist who was ever found wanting in the moral realm, we'd be much poorer aesthetic one.

It was more of a throwaway comment than anything serious. But Pound was a propagandist for Mussolini and supported Hitler. I've never seen Pound cited on this board, ever. Not that I can remember. So for him to crop up now, as fascism comes to America, is ironic.

 

[GeeWhy]

The night was dark
The moon was blue
Around the corner

 

[hedge]

I've never seen Pound cited on this board, ever.

I'd bet a lot of money that the reason he's never been cited on this board or probably any other board has nothing to do with his political leanings and propogandizing. I'd also bet money that it wouldn't have anything to do with his poetry either. I doubt many people know much if anything about Ezra Pound nor have many read his poetry. He's a pretty obscure figure. In all of the above, I'd compare him to Céline. Does that name ring a bell for most people? Doubtful...

 

[Batt Boy]

Another thought: Should people who know nothing about Pound's personal history (and perhaps have never read a poem by him or even heard of him) be deprived of reading one of his poems b/c we very much would not like him if he were alive today? Are adults not able to navigate these questions and issues themselves? Don't mean to derail the thread, but this could be an interesting conversation (if so we could start a new thread. It's certainly not a new or novel question or discussion)..

Good question. Same with music. Should I not be able to just enjoy my Smith's records or do I need to acknowledge that Morrissey is a douche?

 

[UNCatTech]

Good question. Same with music. Should I not be able to just enjoy my Smith's records or do I need to acknowledge that Morrissey is a douche?

I often fall victim to this conundrum. I enjoy their art, but am conflicted because of their political actions or them being a relatively bad person.

 

[TarSpiel]

We are the driving ones.
Ah, but the step of time:
think of it as a dream
in what forever remains.

All that is hurrying
soon will be over with;
only what lasts can bring
us to the truth.

Young men, don't put your trust
into the trials of flight,
into the hot and quick.

All things already rest:
darkness and morning light,
flower and book.

~Rilke, "We Are the Driving Ones"

 

[an0maly]

I know that in the course of my life I have not taken the time to appreciate poetry, nor to read that much. But a poem resonated with me many decades ago. It instantly became my favorite in high school (at a time when I read a lot of poetry) and has remained so. On multiple levels, it captures something about the physical nature of cats, the awful tragedy of the way zoos once gave horribly restricted lives to conscious animals, and then deeper, the way all of us can feel trapped in specific lives and specific restrictions of them, and at times glimpse other possibilities--that are out of reach.

Much deeper, over the years I've realized its coda is about how the life realities and those glimpses of something else, both, end in death.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Panther​

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

 

[05C40]

Another thought: Should people who know nothing about Pound's personal history (and perhaps have never read a poem by him or even heard of him) be deprived of reading one of his poems b/c we very much would not like him if he were alive today? Are adults not able to navigate these questions and issues themselves? Don't mean to derail the thread, but this could be an interesting conversation (if so we could start a new thread. It's certainly not a new or novel question or discussion)..

The creative process is so mysterious and ephemeral to such a plain and unimaginative person as me, that I am loath to second guess whom Calliope has chosen to touch.

 

[superrific]

I'd bet a lot of money that the reason he's never been cited on this board or probably any other board has nothing to do with his political leanings and propogandizing. . . . I doubt many people know much if anything about Ezra Pound nor have many read his poetry.

Of course. That's why it's ironic that he pops up now. I really didn't mean anything by the comment other than a bit of flat-falling wryness.

 

[superrific]

Another thought: Should people who know nothing about Pound's personal history (and perhaps have never read a poem by him or even heard of him) be deprived of reading one of his poems b/c we very much would not like him if he were alive today? Are adults not able to navigate these questions and issues themselves? Don't mean to derail the thread, but this could be an interesting conversation (if so we could start a new thread. It's certainly not a new or novel question or discussion)..

To be clear, I was not taking any position on any of these questions. For Pound it probably doesn't matter because he buried his fascism underneath his impenetrable poetry. Or that's what I understand at least, having skipping most of the impenetrable. If I'm going to spend time on very difficult poetry, I'm going straight to Eliot, a much better poet even if Pound was supposedly the better craftsman.

 

[hedge]

I don't know much about Pound either, but this disgression prompted me to pull up a couple of articles that I'll get around to eventually. My sketchy understanding is that he became enamored with Mussolini in the late 20's, went full fascist in the 30's and was arrested for treason for anti-American radio broadcasts he made from Italy throughout WWII.

This throws a twist into the question I posed (or rather the age old question I referred to) of "can a bad person create good art," b/c the poem I cited was written in 1912. So even if someone said "No, if a person is that bad, his art should be considered suspect," does that apply to art that the bad artist created before he turned bad?

I see now that you really weren't even going in this direction with your original post, but it is a mildly interesting line of inquiry...

 

[superrific]

I don't know much about Pound either, but this disgression prompted me to pull up a couple of articles that I'll get around to eventually. My sketchy understanding is that he became enamored with Mussolini in the late 20's, went full fascist in the 30's and was arrested for treason for anti-American radio broadcasts he made from Italy throughout WWII.

This throws a twist into the question I posed (or rather the age old question I referred to) of "can a bad person create good art," b/c the poem I cited was written in 1912. So even if someone said "No, if a person is that bad, his art should be considered suspect," does that apply to art that the bad artist created before he turned bad?

I see now that you really weren't even going in this direction with your original post, but it is a mildly interesting line of inquiry...

Generally, I don't care if authors or artists are "bad" people. I don't want to be rummaging through their trash, so to speak. I might be less inclined to read something by a jerk or a fascist as a personal preference, but the art stands on its own.

On the other hand, often bad people of the sort we're discussing here embed that evil in their art -- and that can be disqualifying for that work of art. Leni Riefenstahl was a Nazi; oh, and her filmmaking was Nazi propaganda and thus why would you watch Triumph Of The Will other than for historical study? White racists often produce racist art. I'd skip the racist art, but if the art is fine then I don't care about the author. It's fair to more heavily scrutinize art if it's produced by a known baddie. For instance, nobody would think of Rosemary's Baby as a rape fantasy except . . . well, the director was sort of a rapist, you know. Puts it in a different light.

I like TS Eliot, and he became a royalist. Not remotely as bad as fascist, but not exactly my preferred ideology either. But Eliot makes it work; the royalism fits into his aesthetic perfectly and in fact, he makes a reasonable point: it IS harder for democracy to produce great art. That's not a strong point against democracy in my view, but if I had lived through WWI, if I had kept my sanity by plowing myself into my art, I might think differently. Democracy brought Eliot trench warfare and millions of dead Englishmen. Royalism produced so much poetry that Eliot would never be able to exhaust the references (though he also liked to refer to Baudelaire, who lived in a democracy).

 

[donbosco]

“To My Friends
Dear friends, I say friends here
In the larger sense of the word:
Wife, sister, associates, relatives,
Schoolmates, men and women,
Persons seen only once
Or frequented all my life:
Provided that between us, for at least a moment,
Was drawn a segment,
A well-defined chord.
I speak for you, companions on a journey
Dense, not devoid of effort,
And also for you who have lost
The soul, the spirit, the wish to live;
Or nobody or somebody, or perhaps only one, or you
Who are reading me: remember the time
Before the wax hardened,
When each of us was like a seal.
Each of us carries the imprint
Of a friend met along the way;
In each the trace of each.
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Everyone stamped by each.
Now that the time presses urgently,
And the tasks are finished,
To all of you the modest wish
That autumn will be long and mild.”

~Primo Levi, 1985

 

[hedge]

(though he also liked to refer to Baudelaire, who lived in a democracy).

A Carrion

Do you remember the thing we saw, my soul,
That summer morning, so beautiful, so soft:
At a turning in the path, a filthy carrion,
On a bed sown with stones,

Legs in the air, like a lascivious woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
Opened carelessly, cynically,
Its great fetid belly.

The sun shone on this fester,
As though to cook it to a turn,
And to return a hundredfold to great Nature
What she had joined in one;

And the sky saw the superb carcass
Open like a flower.
The stench was so strong, that you might think
To swoon away upon the grass.

The flies swarmed on that rotten belly,
Whence came out black battalions
Of spawn, flowing like a thick liquid
Along its living tatters.

All this rose and fell like a wave,
Or rustled in jerks;
One would have said that the body, fun of a loose breath,
Lived in this its procreation.

And this world gave out a strange music,
Like flowing water and wind,
Or a winnower's grain that he shakes and turns
With rhythmical grace in his basket.

The forms fade and are no more than a dream,
A sketch slow to come
On the forgotten canvas, and that the artist completes
Only by memory.

Behind the boulders an anxious bitch
Watched us with angry eyes,
Spying the moment to regain in the skeleton
The morsel she had dropped.

— And yet you will be like this excrement,
This horrible stench,
O star of my eyes, sun of my being,
You, my angel, my passion.

Yes, such you will be, queen of gracefulness,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grasses and fat flowers,
Moldering amongst the bones.

Then, my beauty, say to the vermin
Which will eat you with kisses,
That I have kept the shape and the divine substance
Of my decomposed loves!

 

[donbosco]

Wrong season but this is a good 'un just the same.

“Day in Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord, it is time. Let the great summer go,
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
And over harvest piles let the winds blow.
Command the last fruits to be ripe;
Grant them some other southern hour,
Urge them to completion, and with power
Drive final sweetness to the heavy grape.
Who's homeless now, will for long stay alone.
No home will build his weary hands,
He'll wake, read, write letters long to friends
And will the alleys up and down
Walk restlessly, when falling leaves dance.

 

[GeeWhy]

Accidental post
Purposeful boast
Random thoughts
Battle well fought
Lost the war
Closed the door
That's it for now
Over and ow

 

[hedge]

Wrong season but this is a good 'un just the same.

“Day in Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord, it is time. Let the great summer go,
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
And over harvest piles let the winds blow.
Command the last fruits to be ripe;
Grant them some other southern hour,
Urge them to completion, and with power
Drive final sweetness to the heavy grape.
Who's homeless now, will for long stay alone.
No home will build his weary hands,
He'll wake, read, write letters long to friends
And will the alleys up and down
Walk restlessly, when falling leaves dance.

This is interesting. This poem is quoted in one of my favorite movies, Synecdoche, New York, but the translation in the movie reads

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

I'm not sure if that's a dramatic difference or not. Translation in interesting. The idea of having no house, I think, is different from the idea of being homeless. Certainly if you think of "house" as the name and identity of a family or a dynasty. Something to think about...

 

[donbosco]

This is interesting. This poem is quoted in one of my favorite movies, Synecdoche, New York, but the translation in the movie reads

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

I'm not sure if that's a dramatic difference or not. Translation in interesting. The idea of having no house, I think, is different from the idea of being homeless. Certainly if you think of "house" as the name and identity of a family or a dynasty. Something to think about...

I don't know if this clears things or further muddies them...but here goes:

Primo Levi answers in “After R.M. Rilke”

Lord, it’s time; the wine is already fermenting.
The time has come to have a home,
Or to remain for a long time without one.
The time has come not to be alone,
Or else we will stay alone for a long time.
We will consume the hours over books,
Or in writing letters to distant places,
Long letters from our solitude.
And we will go back and forth through the streets,
Restless, while the leaves fall.

And this poem by Levi is a HUGE favorite of mine and I read it first, then went in search of the Rilke one.