Poem I wrote ten minutes ago
FinsburyParkCarrots
Posts: 12,223
Puzzled rubble stipples out the plain:
mute, brute jaw grey. Moss tassles overgrown:
insignia of Schliemann's lust in vain
for Priam's city. Signature in stone:
The recklessness of wonder. Disinterred
By one man's smash through Hissarlik: the fangs
of broken sherds and bones bite through the sword
of Progress. Never could we prove the songs
of Homer now. West Speculator Bold
has carved his nothingness into a mound,
the riches of which shadowed "Priam's Gold".
No trace of Agamemnon. Dream at end.
Schliemann's folly should serve now to warn:
Troy's lost. Today, we squander Babylon.
mute, brute jaw grey. Moss tassles overgrown:
insignia of Schliemann's lust in vain
for Priam's city. Signature in stone:
The recklessness of wonder. Disinterred
By one man's smash through Hissarlik: the fangs
of broken sherds and bones bite through the sword
of Progress. Never could we prove the songs
of Homer now. West Speculator Bold
has carved his nothingness into a mound,
the riches of which shadowed "Priam's Gold".
No trace of Agamemnon. Dream at end.
Schliemann's folly should serve now to warn:
Troy's lost. Today, we squander Babylon.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
this is lovely, finsbury
the whole writing, excellent, but this line feels especially good on my teeth
and thank you for the link, too
i didn't know what you were writing about before, for some reason I got the impression of the art on money? strange me
As you know, I'm doing a masters' degree now, but when I did my bachelors', I covered a course module on "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." A fair bit of the course was concerned with considering the link between the poems and archaeology: has archaeology proved the historicity of Troy?
The ultimate answer to this question is no. The "father" of modern archaeology was a German entrepeneur called Heinrich Schliemann, who was obsessed with "The Iliad" and wanted to find the site of Troy. He chose the mound at Hissarlik, North West Turkey because it had, prior to geological embayment, apparently been a hilltop fort on the Aegean Sea. However, archaeology was in its infancy; Schliemann thought that in the stratigraphy of settlement-building, upon the foundations of previous settlements, "Priam's" Troy would be the oldest, at the very bottom and centre of the mound. So, for several months between 1871 and 1872 he got his contractors to wedge a huge north-south trench into the mound. Yet at the bottom were the remains of a civilization predating the supposed time of Homer's Troy by about 1500 years. Schliemann found gold which he called "Priam's treasure"; he stole it and gave it to his young wife to wear at dinner parties. Ironically, in finding the oldest "Troy" ("Troy I"), he'd destroyed a lot of evidence from eight other citadels built on each other in pudding basin formation. It's likely that the citadel that Homer was possibly writing/singing about was Troy VI.
The story reminded me of another famous Westerner and bold speculator charging into Babylon without thinking of the consequences of reckless damage......
in one ear and out the bong...
so um...
Homer lived in Troy?
Studies of the dialectal forms used in the poems suggest the possibility that "Homer" came either from Chios, a Greek island, or from a Greek settlement in Old Smyrna, Northwest Turkey, not far from Troy.
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
is that anything like a ten foot pole cat?
When I was a kid, they used to show old episodes of "Top Cat" on TV, but because it was on the BBC where there's no advertising, and because "Top Cat" was a make of cat food back in those days, the BBC insisted on billing the show as "Boss Cat."
Really confusing...you'd be sitting in front of the telly and the voiceover would come on...."And now, children, it's time for "Boss Cat",
and the music would start up...
"Top Cat", with the titles and everything.....
Bizarre......
mind-reader...
These aren't the bongs you're looking for.....
wow. ok call me a junkie for things densely-clustered and Beautiful (intellect-infused, historically unpeeling) yes !
stippled in royal alliterata and assonal smoothy bumpity orbity (yes: you are the king of viscous constants and laval uhs)
Really, truly, I am completely smitten with this ten-minute freshly condensed spin.
I particularly do love the tight imagery, oh wow. I soooooooo have to re-read this Again. Yes. Fun, tight, info rich. And there's mounds and gold and fabulous speculations...
Your following post explications were richly enhancing as Well.
And what is so colorful and delicious about this awesomely woven sonnetta cosmica is wow: i love how one word (or two or three, of absolutely no etymological relevance, maybe not even a cognate, just a look-alike, to LAUNCH
like the thousand ships/a thousand thoughts
and all of a sudden Priam's looks curiously reminiscent of Prism and i'm bathing in a slant of rainbow light
on the highly polished mahogany desk of Sir Isaac Newton.
And yes, it so difficult to prove, trace down, the authenticity of orally tranmuted narratives, and emulations, mis-transcriptions Abounding
and yet, and yet, Somehow
doesn't it lend to the overall enchantment and mysterious of the codified, canonical literary seascape?
How, even the works of Shakespeare oft disputed...
but pretty is pretty i sayz.
and
this is really wonderful stuff.
Even Metapoetic, methinks, in that you do start of with puzzling...and the whole rubic cubism of it all, and gorgeously mottled and i don't ever care if i understand the complex ramification of poetic origin and intent...
IT is beautiful and fun (and worth the extra time)....
pieces like this show forth the congealy brood of swirly ideas and solid sound. AGAIN! encore.....
finis
I missed ya!
(ever Know that feeling)
but the loveenergy's high and the wit's aflowing in your circle here, so i'll cozy up and read a bit...
Reply,
reply, alas, replying is such sweet sorrow
and we
reply till it be marsh-
mallow.....
sillyme. {{fins}}
transcendental magus, you,
Sorry about that, cassia dear...uh'v been talkin' about Japanese Elvis impersonators on another thread- uh....
Yep. I'm off to Cambridge University Library tomorrow to consult some recondite tomes and remove myself from the temptations of dis ol' keyboard,,,,,
I always liked to go into the Archives at University of California (both San Diego and Berkeley)...the perfect air-controlled environment so sensitive for paper decay...all bags and pens checked at the front desk, just being in the quiet deep world...
come back duly bookwormed
ps ever talk to dy about the red elvises (from russia--she says awesome partytimeband)--
I shall ask dyaogorgeousness about the Red Elvises!
and isn't the word bibliographical grand?
and it makes me remember grade school espanol...
Voy a la biblioteca...
which in my 12yr old mind, meant there was a mystic connection between books and the Aztecs.
cuz of the Teca....
or later, in middle school, how french bibliotheque looked an awfully lot like discotheque .....:)
so, let there be dancing in yr biblios
haha, squigglez
quite the renaissance man/rocknroll professor/hotballoonist
oh, one more smile to keep us airborne into tuesday eve
ciao for now~
"Whaddooo yooo know?"
I answered, "Montaigne used to wear a medallion around his neck, inscribed 'What do I know?' That's a good point."
The fella said, "What the fakk did HE know??"
I said, "Nothing."
He smiled, and said, "You KNOW, don'tcha, mate!!"
to have surpressed my own cheesy ether elvis impersonation today...
you people
Cheesy Ether Elvis......
Cheesberry Carp Ferrets again, Officer Dibble!
You okay, Yellow?
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SECRET!!!!
damnit!
(damnit... what a dorky word... dammm NNNNit! silent consonants be darned)
but anyway, yeah...
i'm alright... you're sweet to ask
peace, yo...
re: no language is stable....
have you ever
heard
of Mr. Ed?
(haha, girl attempts lame argument of The Talking Horse...
stable...giggles, established merlotitiy highly signified and partially realized by selfobservant third party, although no meaning exactly shared and maybe
a poet
sees more Diagonally, or, archedly curvingly swirlingly than simply vertically...and yeatsian gyre-y spiralishy which is spinning
and can see to go up and down yes and from big to small to everwidening circles of falconry
and it's pretty lapis blue of byzantium, too
or circular as a circus picadilly, hmmm, peculiar
"In fact Bourquin's tendency to describe the Labrador dialect by quoting at length from Kleinschmidt's description of Greenlandic is unavoidably a major methodological impediment for present-day researchers."
above re: the variance between words for snow in Eskimo (sub tribal dialectical differences)....
I like the work up there, though I may sorely wax eloquent about it.
If i may tie this one in to that other thread which was so entertaining and that I never got to get into... that one about pros and cons... I'll be on that shortly.
this is a poem wherein the reader, having no education in archaeological or greek history, would never have a clue as to what you are writing about.
This poem, while well intentioned, seeks, in a way, to distance itself from those not in the know.
I believe this is also something that CranMal discussed briefly in that other thread.
Is poetry poetry if it does not communicate it's meaning to the simpler mind? Does poetry have to have 10 syllables per line and refer to no less than 4 major texts and one archaeological dig? Why must it remain structured to prove its art?
I will comment on something else further in the other thread but, as you know, my poetry is the antithesis of structured word in many, many cases. I am the first and worst offender of allegorical metaphor and I live for the ties I draw between the ethereal and the base realities. They mean great things to me.
So I admit to defensiveness when someone leans out with brick wall structure so dense that only those who have had the proper training can ascertain its purpose (for without knowledge of the reference there is no point of destination).
I am actually fortunate in this case as, for a very short while, I was an archaeology major (tho to be honest it was paleolithic that was my forte at the time) so I knew of whom you spoke. I was the lucky one. But what about everyone else? Poetry was used as a mass form of communication, in rebellion of the written word used by the ruling class to separate and to control. Why should anyone care to read something so over the top? Hell, why would they read my drivel when I lay the paint so thick myself? Why on earth would they bother to attempt a connection?
Are we really that much better? Because we've read Yeats and Burroughs? Can quote Shakespeare and Byron, hell MARLOWE? Baloney, balogna. It means nothing.
While the poem above is incredible in its technical merits it seems devoid, to me, of much emotion beyond a surgical strike, a scientists feel, a professor's analysis. It is a tool with which to torture future English Lit classes.
I do not mean to disrespect your style though it may seem so. And it is perhaps an unfair analysis because I don't know you very well, but I have always felt that biopsy of poetry while writing is preemptive at best. To move with structure in mind is to limit, in my mind. Flowing in and out of structured thought while maintaining the bread crumbs back to the original flow and the original dream, much more entertaining and, more importantly, much more human.
I believe you are an excellent poet in the technical sense, in fact highly accomplished in that regard, and a heavyweight intellectual. I suppose that all I'm asking is to shut off the right brained poetry and let the left regain control. I think your words may rediscover a passion that has long since left you during your long nights of post descriptive analysis, research papers, and analogous diatribe.
Again I mean no disrespect. Please pardon my rudeness, though it may be difficult to do so now.
I don't often write poems of this sort of density and allusion to particular disciplines such as archaeology. And I agree with your statement that poetry should be communicable. Yes, it was Blake who said we should strip away a poem to get at its essence. However, we can say a lot of things with poetry and certain things we say are sometimes going to reach different audiences rather than a universal ideal readership. I admit I was writing that poetry for a particular audience of people whose interest is specifically in Homeric studies, but because I'd just produced it, I put it up on the board just to see if it did communicate anything to a broader readership of people who read, write and discuss poetry to an often very high standard.
However, a lot of poetry and prose is difficult to digest without one's recourse to a companion-volume or an edition with scholarly notes...many of the Modernists can be deliberately obscure at times...and their work can read as dry formalism from the point of view of someone excluded from the work's intended readership.
I often feel excluded from the contemporary British poet Geoffrey Hill's work, before I've "studied" it. However, I agree with what Yeats said about "the fascination of what's difficult"...some poems are like ancient tablets....you try to decipher them thinking they'll be the Rosetta Stone, but sometimes they're as dull as Linear B tablets giving accounts of someone's stock (of reference sources, in this case).
Thanks for taking the time to give a judicious and eloquent response. I look forward to reading more of your work on the board.
Richard:)
The poem is about how the act of reading a poem is like an act of archaeology. We dig to get to its core. If we dig too quickly, to get to some immediately communicable essence of truth or a single, universally admirable idea, we treat the poem as a product and are disappointed when it does not speak to us about ourselves. We have laboured to tear away a build up of stratified structures to find the gold, but we find nothing, only archaic foundations.
I was trying to convey that the mystery, the passion, the communicable experience of poetry is often most satisfactorily revealed as the process of reading in itself: in the act of digging diligently...The gems are diffuse, not signposted, through the site of the text; they are small, sometimes they are unquantifiable. Sometimes you don't know they're of any worth, until you carry them around with you for a while, then they get heavier, heavier, and a glow starts to shine from the lips of your pockets.
There are little clues that if you strip away the structures of the poem in order to get tothe content, you'll lose what you're looking for....I repeat "o" and "no" sounds a lot. "AgamemNON" contains reflections of the words "no", "none", "known", and "none known": the "a" sounds are, like in Shakespeare's sonnets, supposed to suggest negation, like the a- negative prefix on many words.
Okay...now I'm off to do some work!
I believe wholeheartedly that there is a need for that aesthetic, and my own mother dislikes my poetry because it "gives her a headache" and she says 'i'm sure it's very good, but i can't understand it.' I have experimented with form and style, and can dumb-down my vocabulary and references.
But even in simple of simple of poems, the word-associations are so hyperpersonal that each reader internalizes a meaning (and we all have our personal-experience allusions, if not academic).
I thoroughly love a richly dense multi-disciplined, highly esoteric poem. I am in a small audience, i know. If there's beauty, cadence, the more allusion the merrier. Makes a poem a palimpsest, and what i love about favoUrite poems, is the pleasure of going back to them again and again.
One of my favorite poets, I fell in love with in college with a book i found in the university library one day. Language completely over my head...talk about Latinate polysyllabic images, whoa
but god, you know, i loved it, loved it. And now, i've got about every looked up
I think there's a need for a remnant to hold to the archaic, the lyrical, yes--even the academic. But a time and a place, perhaps yes, and
there were those who felt the 'true' poet also had the responsiblity/calling of a prophet--
to tell forth truth to the 'masses'....
and in this sense, i can appreciate setaside's argument.
I prefer beauty over politic. For me, it is not just pretty mental window dressing, but a real transcendental moment of made magic (and what i like to write).
Let's most of all write what We like to read--if we find an audience that's great. Most here at this board dislike my stuff.....
and i know i don't fit here...but i was invited over by my pearljammergirl...i could try to shift my sensibilities...but that would be dishonest, somehow.
But it has been wonderful interacting with several voices. And to whomever reads: thank you. and Adieu~~
Oh my girl! You so fit! You're just delightful and passionate and full of love and sunshine and smarts and poetry!
You have been kind and gentle and sweet and I LOVE your stuff!
Please re-think bidding adieu!
But should you decide to stay away, take care and be safe and be happy and be full of all that love that you have! You shall be missed very much by myself as well as many others!
Love, {{{{{{BE}}}}}}}}}