Poem I wrote ten minutes ago
FinsburyParkCarrots
Seattle, WA 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
0
Comments
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Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
of broken sherds and bones bite through the sword
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 It's all yellow.0 -
I don't mind explaining a little of the poem's subject matter, but I wouldn't at the same time want to rob people of their interpretations.
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......0 -
The Iiliad and The Odessy were only mentioned in the lit courses I had in highschool... and well, you know how those things go...
in one ear and out the bong...
so um...
Homer lived in Troy?It's all yellow.0 -
We don't really have any evidence that Homer existed at all. All we have are 6th century BCE manuscripts taken down from rhapsodes (oral poets singing by lyre to the aristocratic classes). Linguistic evidence, coupled with archaeologcal findings which suggest a date for contemporary references to iron age life, puts the composition of the poems in their "Homeric" form a couple of centuries earlier, at around 725BCE. But it's likely that the poems precede "Homer" (or whoever conceived them in the form we roughly know today) by hundreds more years of an oral tradition. It's suggested that the Trojan Wars, if they ever happened, probably date at around 1250BCE (and there's complex but not very convincing archaeology used to back up this claim).
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.0 -
just a first impression ... no extrapolation .. very good imagery and i do get the hint of current world ..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 green0 -
Thanks, olderman. I didn't want to enforce the topical polemic....I just wanted it in the distance. 0
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Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
topical polemic
is that anything like a ten foot pole cat?It's all yellow.0 -
What, you mean you place your cat on the end of a ten foot pole and get it to say, "Good Evenin' Officer Dibble!"
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...... 0 -
Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
What, you mean you place your cat on the end of a ten foot pole and get it to say, "Good Evenin' Officer Dibble!"
mind-reader...It's all yellow.0 -
What, I've done it again.... a good music and boozin' buddy of mine Dom, who is a scientist and thinks anyone remotely metaphysical is loopy, is even convinced himself that I'm a bit telepathic....I dunno....
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Maybe you have the Force, FPC
These aren't the bongs you're looking for.....0 -
The one on the left'll do! Thanks! 0
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tres telepathos, finlooped and merry, wheeness of hiya and hello.
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 0 -
Where've ya been, cassia?
I missed ya! 0 -
sometimes i just haff to go 'cold turkey' off the computer play for awhile, cuz i get so spun !!! i don't get anything Done !
(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, 0 -
Wellitsuh wan for the moneh.....
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,,,,, 0 -
of antiquity and rare dust...absorb, soak in, the good scent of old libraries...nothing Bettah.
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 (what's the project du jour?)--
ps ever talk to dy about the red elvises (from russia--she says awesome partytimeband)--0 -
Cambridge University Library is one of only three copyright libraries in England, so it's like the Library of Congress.... they've got all manner of rare manuscripts and printed texts..... lots of incunbula!....hula hula!.....and the like. The first part of my course this year is a crash course in the different forms of bibliographical discipline, then we're let off the leash to do our own research. It's a master's (in England, a second, or higher) degree. I might go for the hattrick and do a D.Litt or PhD, or I might do something rad altogether and go around the world by frog.
I shall ask dyaogorgeousness about the Red Elvises!0 -
incunbula...will you get to be near any vellum docs...i'm enchanted by the word 'vellum' and calfylike i think of veal...
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 dyrassoff in the dusty tomes,
haha, squigglez
quite the renaissance man/rocknroll professor/hotballoonist
oh, one more smile to keep us airborne into tuesday eve
ciao for now~0
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