On http://www.bbc.co.uk they'll have Homer's Odyssey on Saturday and Sunday.....anyone anywhere can listen if their connection can handle it.....if you check the link there's lots of background etc....I might tune in, because I've never read any Homer.....thanks for that Finsbury - now I'll read it.....:)
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
Originally posted by ISN On http://www.bbc.co.uk they'll have Homer's Odyssey on Saturday and Sunday.....anyone anywhere can listen if their connection can handle it.....if you check the link there's lots of background etc....I might tune in, because I've never read any Homer.....thanks for that Finsbury - now I'll read it.....:)
Yes, I'm looking forward to that too! It's also available on CD and cassette, so I read.
My first "Penny's Dilemma" is a skit on the episode in Book Nineteen of the poem where Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is secretly returned to his court in Ithaca after twenty years away fighting wars and making love to goddesses; he is seated before his unsuspecting wife Penelope and he beholds her beauty while only just, in spite of his emotion, avoiding giving away who he is. Penelope has over a hundred suitors chasing after her. (They turn up in the palace every night and drink Odysseus's wine and eat his best livestock: Odysseus must surprise and outwit them by cunning to regain his wife and kingdom.)
I thought it might be fun to consider if Penelope DID recognise Odysseus in disguise and if she actually WAS having affairs with some of the suitors! Thus, she'd have a dilemma on seeing her husband returned!
In fact, here's something I've written about the passage from Homer:
Odyssey 19.100-122
This suspenseful and dramatically ironic passage exemplifies The Odyssey’s divergences from oral-compositional, folk- narrative conventions, in providing a psychologically “realist”, almost novelistic characterization of the protagonist Odysseus via tensions, ambiguities and silences in his first spoken dialogue to Penelope in twenty years (he struggling all the while to maintain his beggar’s guise). Odysseus’s (standard folk-narrative) beggar trick, and his strategies of visual and verbal dissemblance are imperative for him to intercept by stealth his court of numerically superior interlopers and spies, yet his fabled metis, and plans of ambush, are compromised when he is faced tantalizingly with the objective of all his trials and endeavours, Penelope (who entertains him at her megaron hearthside, in characteristic accordance with the divine mandates of xenia, and in hope of news of “Odysseus”[cf.17.507-540]). Odysseus’s dialogue is fraught with his near-irrepressibility of a sorrowful desire for Penelope (116-8). Through an involuntary self-disclosure, Odysseus perilously risks detection and a similar fate to his symbolic “double”, the murdered Agamemnon (cf.1.32-43). We wonder, in suspense: Will Odysseus regain his self-control?
Penelope’s formulaic interrogation of Odysseus (104-5) diverges from the normal protocols of xenia (cf.14.185-190), and what Milman Parry (see Purkis, 1993: 28-30) considered the formulaic pattering of the Odyssey’s oral composition, given the specific, dramatic irony of her appellation “Stranger”, which is not lost on her addressee. The effect of Penelope’s speech is registered in Odysseus’s inability to respond to her directly and immediately with one of his extemporised lying tales (cf. 14.192ff.). Implicitly, Odysseus’s realisation of the monumentality of the moment overwhelms his fabled and ready powers of erudition and verbal dexterity, thus ironically giving the lie, intentionally or no, to his oral-compositional, formulaic epithet “resourceful” (105). Yet Odysseus’s return address to Penelope, ostensibly characterised by the idiom of the suppliant guest and social inferior, is, nonetheless, characteristically ingenious in that it provides an ironic subtext that we could feasibly interpret as suggesting that he wishes subtly to dissuade Penelope from marrying one of the suitors (cf.18.251-280). For example, note his statement that Penelope’s fame goes up to heaven (108). This is perhaps not just a subtle admission of tender pathos and adoration by the disguised Odysseus but is, rather, an equivocal utterance with more profound socio-gender implications. Since Odysseus has already lauded himself as renowned by the gods (9.20), he infers perhaps that Penelope’s kleos and perceived identity are necessarily contingent on her gender construction as the wife of the god-famed king. His simile- the paradigm of a contiguity between pious rule and corporeal fecundity- may seem at first to be a standard platitude of guest-speak, yet it seems hyperbolical and even implicitly satirical, given his somewhat over-protracted litany of examples of earthly bounty (111-4). This hyperbole implies the ironic statement that the ideal Ithaka is a state of visibly Odyssean rule; the present Ithaka is a fabled waste land, nearly exhausted by the parasitical suitors. Odysseus warns Penelope on the most subliminal level (a level she might determine, being characteristically circumspect, even if she does not recognise her husband?) that she risks an ignominious legacy by marrying into indolence.
At line 115, Odysseus’s linguistic train hits an emotional volta: Odysseus seems perilously close to an involuntarily admission of his identity: he seems unable and unwilling to lie to an intimate. Yet Odysseus, true to his cunning form, is careful not to betray himself when he remembers to refer to his palace as “the house of somebody else” (118), a line that nonetheless communicates Odysseus’s dismay at seeming a “Stranger” in his own household. Also, although Odysseus’s “grief” might seem part of his beggar’s speech, the term truly voices its speaker’s painful yearning for Penelope. However, in the lines 121-2, Odysseus regains his self-characterization, by attributing his passion to a vagrant’s proverbial drunkenness (cf. 14.462-7). Note Odysseus’s re-assertion of linguistic self- confidence, via his metaphor of the beggar, habitually swimming in tears, his brain “drowned in liquor”(122).
before I read the above, Finsbury, I'd like to point you to a book you might find interesting (a series).....we all know that Iain M Banks likes to write about tragic heroes on the fringes of society in his Culture series....your essay brought to mind a particular book: Consider Phlebas.....in this book, we have a renegade also....someone who won't conform to the prevailing mores....he separates himself from the mainstream society as an heroic figure of tragic proportions, and becomes a hired gun so to speak.....but the interesting side-shoot of this is when he is stranded on a planet (man-made) where someone who is almost a parody of himself lords it over his subjects in his tiny dominion.....and literally gorges himself on them.....I think Banks must have introduced this sub-plot to emphasize the protagonist's otherness.....a larger than life version of where his modern-day barbaric abstentions from the mores of society can lead.....to demi-deity and the inversion of civilization.....something to think about
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
Originally posted by ISN before I read the above, Finsbury, I'd like to point you to a book you might find interesting (a series).....we all know that Iain M Banks likes to write about tragic heroes on the fringes of society in his Culture series....your essay brought to mind a particular book: Consider Phlebas.....in this book, we have a renegade also....someone who won't conform to the prevailing mores....he separates himself from the mainstream society as an heroic figure of tragic proportions, and becomes a hired gun so to speak.....but the interesting side-shoot of this is when he is stranded on a planet (man-made) where someone who is almost a parody of himself lords it over his subjects in his tiny dominion.....and literally gorges himself on them.....I think Banks must have introduced this sub-plot to emphasize the protagonists' otherness.....a larger than life version of where his modern-day barbaric abstentions from the mores of society can lead.....to demi-deity and the inversion of civilization.....something to think about
I'll go and check this out, sharpish. Thanks, ISN.
Where my Dad comes from,
the otters are ten feet long,
The whales spout jets
out of their blowholes
to say they're at the bay,
Grainuaile's ghost
does the nightly rounds
by the castle walls,
Your Guinness glass
sticks to the counter,
if a bit splashes out (it's that strong),
orchids and rhodedendrons
grow on the roadside,
and mountain hedge berries
swell in red, until they're bigger
than the view of distant mountains
in quartzy blue:
and you'd hear all this in his voice,
feel all this when you shake his hand,
know all this when you lift the shovel he's used
to clear the stream to let the moorhens swim freely.
Where my Dad takes you,
golden horses come in and win at a longshot,
People make handwriting in letters
that weave a text of home and love,
Tea tastes like tea,
Columbo will always be on the TV
saying "And just one more thing...",
The van might need hoovering out,
and 25 watt bulbs will go
around an outdoor Christmas tree.
A pipe will be be smoking
Condor Long Cut, the brown packet,
Glasses will have a wing stuck to the lens
with sellotape,
A false tooth will be left to relax in an ashtray,
Big toes will be sticking out of green socks,
and a big happy smile will be infectious.
Infectious like good infection...
like trees getting the blossom
up and down your street.
And really, he's pushing eighty
But he's one mighty,
mighty,
mighty,
mighty
fella.
Mr Fins-bubble.....that is extraordinarily well-written.....what can I say....it's brilliant.....I'm looking forward to the bbc production.....I hope my modem can handle it.....I fondly remember 'to the lighthouse', which was a motif in the film 'in the cut'.....and also have fond memories of 'my brilliant career' by miles franklin.....I was hooked on radio four when I lived in London, and would religiously listen to Gardener's Questions and John Peel's show every weekend.....I'm going to try to listen to something to see if I can get 'reception'....after I've listened to the Odyssey, then I'll re-read your Penelope essay......(have you read Herodotus?)
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
Originally posted by ISN have you read Herodotus?)
I've read chunks of Rawlinson's translation of the Histories but not the whole thing from start to finish. That's on my list of Things To Do Before I Snuff It.
I love the smell of Condor.....and my (adoptive) Dad was the biggest Colombo fan in the wrold.....we're from a Monaghan (dairy) farm.....they all lived into their nineties.....my Dad died jus short of eighty....the farm is still there in Carrickmacross....I love your poem......it brings me back to me ole man.....and me Uncle Jack
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
I cannot believe what I am reading here.. this has got to be the most remarkable and intelligent forum on any band's forum.. it is especially interesting to me (once a young boy who managed a degree in English) for the writings in this thread make me realise how much I did not capture.. sure, I read it all, but I did not soak it up. I did not have the passion, only the interest.. that is my experience.. however, i was exposed to great literature through those studies and I have always desired to dive back in.. and i will.. thanks to fins and all pj poets for bringing back my passion for poetry and literature.. you guys are truly exceptional!
I did what I had to do
and if there was a reason
the reason was you..
nonetheless, i promise to write my peter's walk excersise/short story and i promise to remove the block and write another somethin or other sonnet about the sweetness i have recently experienced..
people get ready!!!
Down the street you can hear her scream youre a disgrace
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
Originally posted by olderman I cannot believe what I am reading here.. this has got to be the most remarkable and intelligent forum on any band's forum.. it is especially interesting to me (once a young boy who managed a degree in English) for the writings in this thread make me realise how much I did not capture.. sure, I read it all, but I did not soak it up. I did not have the passion, only the interest.. that is my experience.. however, i was exposed to great literature through those studies and I have always desired to dive back in.. and i will.. thanks to fins and all pj poets for bringing back my passion for poetry and literature.. you guys are truly exceptional!
I did what I had to do
and if there was a reason
the reason was you..
nonetheless, i promise to write my peter's walk excersise/short story and i promise to remove the block and write another somethin or other sonnet about the sweetness i have recently experienced..
Originally posted by olderman I cannot believe what I am reading here.. this has got to be the most remarkable and intelligent forum on any band's forum.. it is especially interesting to me (once a young boy who managed a degree in English) for the writings in this thread make me realise how much I did not capture.. sure, I read it all, but I did not soak it up. I did not have the passion, only the interest.. that is my experience.. however, i was exposed to great literature through those studies and I have always desired to dive back in.. and i will.. thanks to fins and all pj poets for bringing back my passion for poetry and literature.. you guys are truly exceptional!
I did what I had to do
and if there was a reason
the reason was you..
nonetheless, i promise to write my peter's walk excersise/short story and i promise to remove the block and write another somethin or other sonnet about the sweetness i have recently experienced..
people get ready!!!
olderman, I can understand your excitement. It's like re-discovering spring. Isn't it? I'm so frustrated cos I can't explain it without sounding like a pompous twat.
and for those with scrollup-itis (:D), this is the current exercise:
An Exercise in Narrative time
We might all agree that in a narrative text, the component of 'story' (comprising the narrative's events, actions and happenings) follows a chronological order, but we also know that it is a common practice in narrative 'discourse' - the ways in which the story is told - that the narrative sequence of events can be manipulated using devices such as flashback (the theoretical jargon-term for which is 'analepsis') and flashforward ('prolepsis'). A popular text that plays with narrative time is Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"; Tarrantino's "Pulp Fiction" is a perfect example of how this technique of temporal reordering is used on the screen.
I would like you all now to try the following exercise. Tell a short story of a character called Peter who goes for a walk in the city of your choice. But don't start at the beginning of the story. You could, instead, start in the middle of whatever action has occurred, then flash back to the circumstances that led to this point, returning to the middle and following chronologically to the end. Also, you could start at the end and work your way back.
There are some extra techniques you can include, such as 'external-analepsis' (which means flashing back - perhaps in the related memories of a focalized character - to events that precede the events of the story).
Let me offer some tips for "Peter's Walk".
One might find temporal displacement, say, in a story that works like this.
(A) Peter miserably peering from inside police cell bars;
(B)Peter conversing with an aggressive officer; Peter reflecting on the events that had led up to his arrest.
(C)The day's events, beginning innocuously enough with an account of him waking, dressing and breakfasting, then his eventful walk around his city, through to his arrest.
(D)Then you're back in the cell again and you trace perhaps how he is released with a warning.
So, the order goes: (A)=2, (B)=3, (C)=1, (D)=4.
Or one might even work like this:
(A)Peter walks home from the police cells after being released with a warning.
(B) He remembers a few moments ago peering miserably from his cell bars and conversing with an aggressive officer.
(C) He remembers his own reflection there and then of the day's events from waking onwards.
(D)The day's events, his day's eventful walk in the city and the arrest.
(E)Following (A), Peter stops in his walk home and pauses in reflection, noticing the scene around him.
(F)He remembers his release and ponders on the implications of his day.
So, the order here goes (A)= 5; (B)=3; (C)=1; (D)=2; (E)=6; (F)=4.
Mr Finsbury, I tried but am stumped. I keep getting stuck on the 'city of your choice' bit. I know that sounds stupid (is). I'm just no good with cities.
Originally posted by ruby Mr Finsbury, I tried but am stumped. I keep getting stuck on the 'city of your choice' bit. I know that sounds stupid (is). I'm just no good with cities.
echoes of Wilfred Owen.....down the line....very nice
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
As It Was in the Beginning, Is Now and Ever Shall Be,
World Without End (On The Whitehill Road Allotment Site)
Light planes toot and parp up in the top-
heavy Cambridge sky, above fen drills
of cabbages and carrots (tops aflop,
protruding from allotment soil in spills
of leaf curls, wind-a-bob); on this site
of little sheds, ten early morning men
dig new potato furrows. Slow, a kite
flies up from Coldham's Common now and then.
But in the next-door Abbey Stadium
a ball is being booted, echoes ranging
into halls of blue sky. Here's the drum
of Saturday momentum-building, banging.
All these men will down their forks, and soon
they'll line to catch the match this afternoon.
hot grilled brats laid upon buns with mustard
spread over the tops as ice cold beers' flow,
sun baked grilling chefs, jolly, laughing hard,
young women show their beauty, don't you know?
the lot at arrowhead will jump tonite,
from grills delicious smoke will form a cloud,
colorful reds and golds, all is just right,
the din will rise, those voices will be loud-
just before kickoff, time for "start me up",
roars of approval from the well fed throng,
one more sausage, one more lager to swill,
the teams crash the scene with helmets, hold your cup
lest it spill on the pretty lady's sarong,
nice nite for football, embers glow the grill
(for those not familiar with the National Football League, the Kansas City Chiefs are playing a pre-season game tonite at Arrowhead Stadium in KC and the team's colors are red and gold)
Down the street you can hear her scream youre a disgrace
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
In your roar of laughter, plumes upon
your golden battle helmet shake like death
beneath an airswung sword. And in your breath
of boasted fearlessness, your infant son
wails in his mother's arms in unison
with soldiers' bloodgasps, teeming underneath
your city battlements. You will bequeath
him feasting dogs, once Argive fleets have won.
Oh, Hector! See the flashing diadem
Andromache, your wife is wearing? How
it captures your reflection, multiplied
in rainbow spectres, you, within each gem;
Your glory? Death wan dust. How she will throw
Hope's ghosts to ground, when you, her light, have died.
Old shelves prop up concordances (outmoded,
so you hear, by new editions); fading
foolscap on your desk declares your jading
penmark. Lifelong care to have decoded
ancient stones, before new studies flooded
lecture halls and bookshops, weaves your ebbing,
cataracting sight in deskgloom webbing:
You embrace the waste your critics boded.
Now a bright young man (not college stock)
Deciphers all the symbols on the stones,
Showing up your work as poppycock:
Dust thrown wide in digging up old bones.
Blind white beckonings to aged dread
consume a broken vision none will read.
I just remembered Mrs Cronin, a huge and kindly, moonfaced Kerry woman in a blue cotton suit and bandages around her varicose legs. She lived up the street, and I suppose I must have been about four when she would come to visit my mother of a Monday morning for coffee. She'd an enormous leather bag that came up to my knees, and she'd place it on the living room carpet and extract from it, for me, a bar of Curly Wurly and a packet of ready salted Walkers crisps. And then she'd reach to her purse and give me ten new pence. I used to like the shininess of the coin and the way it had a lion on one face and a lady's head on the reverse. I could already read but I didn't know what money was for, so I presumed it was food and I swallowed it. Mum never knew this: She assumed I lost the money with monotonous regularity. But inside me must be at least a couple of pounds. If I ever pass it all eventually, I wonder if I've acquired interest?
Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots I just remembered Mrs Cronin, a huge and kindly, moonfaced Kerry woman in a blue cotton suit and bandages around her varicose legs. She lived up the street, and I suppose I must have been about four when she would come to visit my mother of a Monday morning for coffee. She'd an enormous leather bag that came up to my knees, and she'd place it on the living room carpet and extract from it, for me, a bar of Curly Wurly and a packet of ready salted Walkers crisps. And then she'd reach to her purse and give me ten new pence. I used to like the shininess of the coin and the way it had a lion on one face and a lady's head on the reverse. I could already read but I didn't know what money was for, so I presumed it was food and I swallowed it. Mum never knew this: She assumed I lost the money with monotonous regularity. But inside me must be at least a couple of pounds. If I ever pass it all eventually, I wonder if I've acquired interest?
I hope you'll not be offended, Mr Finsbury, I always appreciate reading the things you write, but this would have to be my most favourite piece ever.
Three-second rushair gasps in stifling grey,
between the flitting flickerings of tall
telegraphing cable poles, hold all
the breath of England and the key
to how it was before the land was torn
by JCB red bucket teeth for roads
like this: low misted wetland broads;
miles of crowing sunnyrisen corn.
Drive on, roar on, where sky-garrotting wire
throttles mythbreath, thugging what had been
a space known only to the village spire,
Hand to Heaven, grown of people's green
and common local toil. The Centre's spread;
The City grey proclaims a country dead.
Comments
Yes, I'm looking forward to that too! It's also available on CD and cassette, so I read.
My first "Penny's Dilemma" is a skit on the episode in Book Nineteen of the poem where Odysseus, disguised as a beggar is secretly returned to his court in Ithaca after twenty years away fighting wars and making love to goddesses; he is seated before his unsuspecting wife Penelope and he beholds her beauty while only just, in spite of his emotion, avoiding giving away who he is. Penelope has over a hundred suitors chasing after her. (They turn up in the palace every night and drink Odysseus's wine and eat his best livestock: Odysseus must surprise and outwit them by cunning to regain his wife and kingdom.)
I thought it might be fun to consider if Penelope DID recognise Odysseus in disguise and if she actually WAS having affairs with some of the suitors! Thus, she'd have a dilemma on seeing her husband returned!
Odyssey 19.100-122
This suspenseful and dramatically ironic passage exemplifies The Odyssey’s divergences from oral-compositional, folk- narrative conventions, in providing a psychologically “realist”, almost novelistic characterization of the protagonist Odysseus via tensions, ambiguities and silences in his first spoken dialogue to Penelope in twenty years (he struggling all the while to maintain his beggar’s guise). Odysseus’s (standard folk-narrative) beggar trick, and his strategies of visual and verbal dissemblance are imperative for him to intercept by stealth his court of numerically superior interlopers and spies, yet his fabled metis, and plans of ambush, are compromised when he is faced tantalizingly with the objective of all his trials and endeavours, Penelope (who entertains him at her megaron hearthside, in characteristic accordance with the divine mandates of xenia, and in hope of news of “Odysseus”[cf.17.507-540]). Odysseus’s dialogue is fraught with his near-irrepressibility of a sorrowful desire for Penelope (116-8). Through an involuntary self-disclosure, Odysseus perilously risks detection and a similar fate to his symbolic “double”, the murdered Agamemnon (cf.1.32-43). We wonder, in suspense: Will Odysseus regain his self-control?
Penelope’s formulaic interrogation of Odysseus (104-5) diverges from the normal protocols of xenia (cf.14.185-190), and what Milman Parry (see Purkis, 1993: 28-30) considered the formulaic pattering of the Odyssey’s oral composition, given the specific, dramatic irony of her appellation “Stranger”, which is not lost on her addressee. The effect of Penelope’s speech is registered in Odysseus’s inability to respond to her directly and immediately with one of his extemporised lying tales (cf. 14.192ff.). Implicitly, Odysseus’s realisation of the monumentality of the moment overwhelms his fabled and ready powers of erudition and verbal dexterity, thus ironically giving the lie, intentionally or no, to his oral-compositional, formulaic epithet “resourceful” (105). Yet Odysseus’s return address to Penelope, ostensibly characterised by the idiom of the suppliant guest and social inferior, is, nonetheless, characteristically ingenious in that it provides an ironic subtext that we could feasibly interpret as suggesting that he wishes subtly to dissuade Penelope from marrying one of the suitors (cf.18.251-280). For example, note his statement that Penelope’s fame goes up to heaven (108). This is perhaps not just a subtle admission of tender pathos and adoration by the disguised Odysseus but is, rather, an equivocal utterance with more profound socio-gender implications. Since Odysseus has already lauded himself as renowned by the gods (9.20), he infers perhaps that Penelope’s kleos and perceived identity are necessarily contingent on her gender construction as the wife of the god-famed king. His simile- the paradigm of a contiguity between pious rule and corporeal fecundity- may seem at first to be a standard platitude of guest-speak, yet it seems hyperbolical and even implicitly satirical, given his somewhat over-protracted litany of examples of earthly bounty (111-4). This hyperbole implies the ironic statement that the ideal Ithaka is a state of visibly Odyssean rule; the present Ithaka is a fabled waste land, nearly exhausted by the parasitical suitors. Odysseus warns Penelope on the most subliminal level (a level she might determine, being characteristically circumspect, even if she does not recognise her husband?) that she risks an ignominious legacy by marrying into indolence.
At line 115, Odysseus’s linguistic train hits an emotional volta: Odysseus seems perilously close to an involuntarily admission of his identity: he seems unable and unwilling to lie to an intimate. Yet Odysseus, true to his cunning form, is careful not to betray himself when he remembers to refer to his palace as “the house of somebody else” (118), a line that nonetheless communicates Odysseus’s dismay at seeming a “Stranger” in his own household. Also, although Odysseus’s “grief” might seem part of his beggar’s speech, the term truly voices its speaker’s painful yearning for Penelope. However, in the lines 121-2, Odysseus regains his self-characterization, by attributing his passion to a vagrant’s proverbial drunkenness (cf. 14.462-7). Note Odysseus’s re-assertion of linguistic self- confidence, via his metaphor of the beggar, habitually swimming in tears, his brain “drowned in liquor”(122).
I'll go and check this out, sharpish. Thanks, ISN.
the otters are ten feet long,
The whales spout jets
out of their blowholes
to say they're at the bay,
Grainuaile's ghost
does the nightly rounds
by the castle walls,
Your Guinness glass
sticks to the counter,
if a bit splashes out (it's that strong),
orchids and rhodedendrons
grow on the roadside,
and mountain hedge berries
swell in red, until they're bigger
than the view of distant mountains
in quartzy blue:
and you'd hear all this in his voice,
feel all this when you shake his hand,
know all this when you lift the shovel he's used
to clear the stream to let the moorhens swim freely.
Where my Dad takes you,
golden horses come in and win at a longshot,
People make handwriting in letters
that weave a text of home and love,
Tea tastes like tea,
Columbo will always be on the TV
saying "And just one more thing...",
The van might need hoovering out,
and 25 watt bulbs will go
around an outdoor Christmas tree.
A pipe will be be smoking
Condor Long Cut, the brown packet,
Glasses will have a wing stuck to the lens
with sellotape,
A false tooth will be left to relax in an ashtray,
Big toes will be sticking out of green socks,
and a big happy smile will be infectious.
Infectious like good infection...
like trees getting the blossom
up and down your street.
And really, he's pushing eighty
But he's one mighty,
mighty,
mighty,
mighty
fella.
And alluvvvim.
I've read chunks of Rawlinson's translation of the Histories but not the whole thing from start to finish. That's on my list of Things To Do Before I Snuff It.
Night.
I did what I had to do
and if there was a reason
the reason was you..
nonetheless, i promise to write my peter's walk excersise/short story and i promise to remove the block and write another somethin or other sonnet about the sweetness i have recently experienced..
people get ready!!!
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
alrighty.
olderman, I can understand your excitement. It's like re-discovering spring. Isn't it? I'm so frustrated cos I can't explain it without sounding like a pompous twat.
An Exercise in Narrative time
We might all agree that in a narrative text, the component of 'story' (comprising the narrative's events, actions and happenings) follows a chronological order, but we also know that it is a common practice in narrative 'discourse' - the ways in which the story is told - that the narrative sequence of events can be manipulated using devices such as flashback (the theoretical jargon-term for which is 'analepsis') and flashforward ('prolepsis'). A popular text that plays with narrative time is Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"; Tarrantino's "Pulp Fiction" is a perfect example of how this technique of temporal reordering is used on the screen.
I would like you all now to try the following exercise. Tell a short story of a character called Peter who goes for a walk in the city of your choice. But don't start at the beginning of the story. You could, instead, start in the middle of whatever action has occurred, then flash back to the circumstances that led to this point, returning to the middle and following chronologically to the end. Also, you could start at the end and work your way back.
There are some extra techniques you can include, such as 'external-analepsis' (which means flashing back - perhaps in the related memories of a focalized character - to events that precede the events of the story).
Let me offer some tips for "Peter's Walk".
One might find temporal displacement, say, in a story that works like this.
(A) Peter miserably peering from inside police cell bars;
(B)Peter conversing with an aggressive officer; Peter reflecting on the events that had led up to his arrest.
(C)The day's events, beginning innocuously enough with an account of him waking, dressing and breakfasting, then his eventful walk around his city, through to his arrest.
(D)Then you're back in the cell again and you trace perhaps how he is released with a warning.
So, the order goes: (A)=2, (B)=3, (C)=1, (D)=4.
Or one might even work like this:
(A)Peter walks home from the police cells after being released with a warning.
(B) He remembers a few moments ago peering miserably from his cell bars and conversing with an aggressive officer.
(C) He remembers his own reflection there and then of the day's events from waking onwards.
(D)The day's events, his day's eventful walk in the city and the arrest.
(E)Following (A), Peter stops in his walk home and pauses in reflection, noticing the scene around him.
(F)He remembers his release and ponders on the implications of his day.
So, the order here goes (A)= 5; (B)=3; (C)=1; (D)=2; (E)=6; (F)=4.
Okay. A local town then.
Then market men say "Fine,
We'll patent their new danger
and sell it down the line.
There's something rather handsome
in their urgency and rush;
Their freedom call's our ransom:
We'll sell it to George Bush."
World Without End (On The Whitehill Road Allotment Site)
Light planes toot and parp up in the top-
heavy Cambridge sky, above fen drills
of cabbages and carrots (tops aflop,
protruding from allotment soil in spills
of leaf curls, wind-a-bob); on this site
of little sheds, ten early morning men
dig new potato furrows. Slow, a kite
flies up from Coldham's Common now and then.
But in the next-door Abbey Stadium
a ball is being booted, echoes ranging
into halls of blue sky. Here's the drum
of Saturday momentum-building, banging.
All these men will down their forks, and soon
they'll line to catch the match this afternoon.
spread over the tops as ice cold beers' flow,
sun baked grilling chefs, jolly, laughing hard,
young women show their beauty, don't you know?
the lot at arrowhead will jump tonite,
from grills delicious smoke will form a cloud,
colorful reds and golds, all is just right,
the din will rise, those voices will be loud-
just before kickoff, time for "start me up",
roars of approval from the well fed throng,
one more sausage, one more lager to swill,
the teams crash the scene with helmets, hold your cup
lest it spill on the pretty lady's sarong,
nice nite for football, embers glow the grill
(for those not familiar with the National Football League, the Kansas City Chiefs are playing a pre-season game tonite at Arrowhead Stadium in KC and the team's colors are red and gold)
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
your golden battle helmet shake like death
beneath an airswung sword. And in your breath
of boasted fearlessness, your infant son
wails in his mother's arms in unison
with soldiers' bloodgasps, teeming underneath
your city battlements. You will bequeath
him feasting dogs, once Argive fleets have won.
Oh, Hector! See the flashing diadem
Andromache, your wife is wearing? How
it captures your reflection, multiplied
in rainbow spectres, you, within each gem;
Your glory? Death wan dust. How she will throw
Hope's ghosts to ground, when you, her light, have died.
so you hear, by new editions); fading
foolscap on your desk declares your jading
penmark. Lifelong care to have decoded
ancient stones, before new studies flooded
lecture halls and bookshops, weaves your ebbing,
cataracting sight in deskgloom webbing:
You embrace the waste your critics boded.
Now a bright young man (not college stock)
Deciphers all the symbols on the stones,
Showing up your work as poppycock:
Dust thrown wide in digging up old bones.
Blind white beckonings to aged dread
consume a broken vision none will read.
As It Was in the Beginning, Is Now and Ever Shall Be,
World Without End (On The Whitehill Road Allotment Site)
&
tail gate bar b q (go chiefs)
Loved 'em!
WOOHOOOO, the NFL season is upon us!
GO PATS!
Jsut
wnrdfeoul
wehe
lvoe
csas"
forbidden;
divine.
The steal is the bliss.
The wine tastes like piss.
No-one writing today can afford not to have listened to these lectures, he said somewhat dogmatically.
I hope you'll not be offended, Mr Finsbury, I always appreciate reading the things you write, but this would have to be my most favourite piece ever.
between the flitting flickerings of tall
telegraphing cable poles, hold all
the breath of England and the key
to how it was before the land was torn
by JCB red bucket teeth for roads
like this: low misted wetland broads;
miles of crowing sunnyrisen corn.
Drive on, roar on, where sky-garrotting wire
throttles mythbreath, thugging what had been
a space known only to the village spire,
Hand to Heaven, grown of people's green
and common local toil. The Centre's spread;
The City grey proclaims a country dead.