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Poetry

#81
C C Offline
(Oct 31, 2019 09:16 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Oct 30, 2019 05:28 AM)C C Wrote: Nobody really knows, but my utterly daft, facetious, cherry-picking contribution to the speculation would be that the short piece was partly inspired by this state centennial celebration poem(?) below that wanders all over the place. Written by someone named Joe M'Spadden and published in the The University of Tennessee Magazine, Volume 11, somewhere among issues 1 to 4 (1886 to 1887). Stevens could have even stumbled across it in the years prior to 1918.


Not bad, C C. It's anyone's guess, I suppose. Good thing I asked you about Davidson.


Learned my lesson there, when it comes to forcing a gimmicky scenario to fit a clunky, artificial form. Wait until after the animated gif is done before posting what the text normally looks like on a "page". Because "you know you're going to change some things" in the course of that. And I did. Dodgy

Quote:What about Heidegger's jug? The jar could be something like that.


Time and Being was nine years later (1927 vs 1918) and "The Thing" lecture was in 1950. But some of Stevens' work has been construed in a phenomenological context (i.e., parallel development, maybe they had an in-common philosophical provenance). Firewalled mystery, minus account setup: "The Idea of It": Wallace Stevens and Edmund Husserl

Things merely are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens: Wallace Stevens was ... a poet who thought poetry is or could be a species of world-making. [PLATH: 'I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.'] His poetry can be read as a pursuit of the question, "World-making in what sense?" ... Critchley's thesis is that in his austere late poetry Stevens puts questions of this sort to rest because he realizes that, as a species of world-making, poetry is a noble failure. The paradox is that only poetry can articulate this fact about itself, which also turns out to be a fact about the world itself: namely, as Critchley's title has it, "things merely are." The turn of the screw is that perhaps only poetry can shed interesting light on this fact about things.

Heidegger & poetry (What are poets for?): So, what is the nature of this 'destitution' Heidegger is quoting? The Gods (not only Christ but the Classical Gods) have defaulted, have 'died' as an organising principle, and with them our civilisation has been decentred. This is a common enough theme in modernist literature. Most famously in the English speaking world, William Butler Yeats explored this in the first verse of his celebrated poem, The Second Coming (1920).

- - -

•After the war, Heidegger focuses only on poetry, what he thinks of as the art-­‐form of modernity

•For Heidegger, art has become merely an opportunity for pleasure in the modern world: it has lost the central social role it once had

•He seeks to return us to the age of the Greeks, in which art was a way of grasping truths about human life

•The poet’s job is to diagnose the malaise of the present age in order to prepare the way for the (unlikely) possibility that Western culture will be able to return to an authentic relationship to being

•For Heidegger, our age (the 1940s, but his argument, one could propose, applies also to now) is a time of night, winter and destitution

•We are in this age of destitution because there are no gods to gather men and things into a relationship –the gods (Greek, Christian etc) have all fled the world

Hölderlin recognizes that the meeting of gods and men we have lost once occurred in the Greek festival

•Festivals are holidays, or holy-­‐days, in which one could set oneself outside of everyday activity and work and access our true essences (and recognize the essences of others: to recognize also means to care for)

•Human ‘essence’ is set against human usefulness: for Heidegger, the modern world only sees people in terms of use-­‐value, or as ‘resources’

•In the festive mode (mood), however,we stand not just in the 'essence' of things but also in their 'wonder' and into gratitude for the fact that they are and that we are among them

•In the festive mood, things possess a special ‘gleam’(Glanz), the shining of the essentia

•Things then show up as belonging to a sacred order and since they themselves share in this sacredness,command of us love and respect

--summary points, Warwick classroom
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#82
Secular Sanity Offline
Thumbs up, C C! 

Thanks for all the info. I love it!
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#83
C C Offline
Next month's similarly predictable theme.

Eject Button -- C C (See See, Cece, whatever)

Wan horsemen haunt the bleary morn,
Their one-eyed god blows his signal horn.
You spy a stag dodge arrow's route,
The Wild Hunt rides in ashen pursuit.

A dreaded month has lowered too sudden.
Press the button. Press the button.

Presents, tributes and offerings
For the sundry bewitched underlings
Of pantheons and fey folklore...
Even the ways of laic rapport.

Crowds, costs, and choices hit like a bludgeon.
Press the button. Press the button.

Holly wreaths and mistletoe clumps
Will meet bright wrappings in garbage dumps.
You shun the Scots pine tree this year
For its ersatz kin that oozes cheer.

But tinsel gold feels as blue as Prussian.
Press the button. Press the button.

Through the halls of Yuletide lights
That bedight abodes and street flanked sights,
You join the season's pagan rites
That march in snowscapes on jewel-specked nights.

A parade float gores a clown named Sutton.
Press the button. Press the button.

Candy canes and peanut brittle.
Fruitcake perchance you will belittle.
Holiday ham and roasted goose.
Spiced beef, pies, fudge, nuts and apple juice.

These festive times will make you a glutton.
Press the button. Press the button.

Wrong toy complaints from lass and lad.
Mee-maw's dementia is flaring bad.
Nicholas does his naughty deed.
It's Saturnalia with locoweed.

Angst burns in your tract like poisoned mutton.
Press the button. Press the button.



Revision below of what was prematurely (in retrospect) posted here. This is the version that actually wound-up in this month's animated gif.

Where the hell is Davidson? -- C C [See See, Cece, etc, whatever]

When is Davidson returning?
We're assembled here... waiting, yearning.
Beast and fowl are carved for the feast.
But an empty seat at table's end
Evokes concern about our friend.

When is Davidson coming back?
In his quick trip out did he lose track
Of dinner's time and signs above?
How many holiday sheaves accrue
At raptus warehouse he dashed to?

When is Davidson returning?
His bread, lamb, fish and wine are turning
Eyes from yams, jam and pumpkin pies.
His employee is still talking shop,
Predicting any jiff he'll drop.

When is Davidson coming back?
Did he suffer a panic attack?
Trumpets and Babylon strumpets!
Could he at least get here long before
There are maggots rife in the boar?

When is Davidson returning?
Our patient party is discerning
That though this vigil has gone flat,
Such is hardly cause for losing trust.
He's just not as famished as us.

When is Davidson coming back?
In the Clarion we read that lack
Of saucer to take them above
Justified all the more their bruised hope.
Hot damn, now that's the way to cope!
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#84
Secular Sanity Offline
(Nov 23, 2019 11:00 PM)C C Wrote: Next month's similarly predictable theme.
Eject Button

Good thing you clarified that or I would have thought you were referring to the BUY NOW button.  Press the button! Press the button! Wink

I like it. Well done, C C!
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#85
C C Offline
(Nov 25, 2019 08:30 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Good thing you clarified that or I would have thought you were referring to the BUY NOW button. 


LOL. I was clueless as to how to clarify what it was until -- duh -- just put it in the title.
EB is so old and associated now with cassettes, disks, etc that it might not even be a clear metaphor anymore for the afflicted wishing they could dramatically exit an _X_ situation.
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#86
Leigha Offline
I like your poetry, CC. Your style resonates with me.
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#88
Zinjanthropos Offline
I call this The Cold Case Shower. Was taking a shower the other day and you know how it is. Next thing you know you’re humming a tune and making up lyrics to fit it. Can’t explain why this topic but it is what it is. My first four verses here. II have ten but I haven’t time to type them all.

Victim number one
Shot down with a gun
Splayed out on the street
For all who could see
The killer rather cunning
Left the motor running
Sped away from the scene
As if it’d never been

Victim number two
Was run through and through
By someone who wielded
A very long sword
The killer was smart
One thrust through the heart
Walked calmly away
On St. Valentine’s Day

Victim number three
Found hanging a tree
He managed the bank
At 12th Street and Main
His hands and feet bound
Eight feet from the ground
With a sign round his neck
That said ‘one cancelled check’

Victim number four
Face down upon the floor
Six slugs in her bod
From a .38 cal
Was a lady of the evening
Who’s done a little thieving
We suspect it’s an ex
But not sure of their sex
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#89
Leigha Offline
Has kind of a rap feel to it, Z.   Cool
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#90
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Feb 4, 2020 05:21 PM)Leigha Wrote: Has kind of a rap feel to it, Z.   Cool

Never thought that...lol. Actually the tune going through my head was the Oom-Pah-Pah song from the movie version of Oliver. I just changed the lyrics. I don’t watch Cold Case Files so the words aren’t well researched, just how I imagine the show I guess. Why Oliver? Don’t know. The tavern scene with Nancy singing while trying to protect the boy from Sykes has always been a favourite of mine.
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