The Sheila Variations

In terms of a short poem, my favorite would definitely be Burns' "Scots Wha Hae." I suppose that might be because I'm part-Scots, but I like it because it deals with the struggle for freedom, and the need to take a stand against tyranny. There are few things more important than that.

In terms of an epic, it is definitely Dante's "The Divine Comedy." Hands down, without question, for its combination of beautiful language and spirituality.

Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London by Dylan Thomas and Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone by W.H. Auden.

Emily-

"After the first death, there is no other."

Jesus.

There was a book I read in 8th grade, by a Robert Cormier (who wrote I am the Cheese) called After the First Death. I don't think I put it all together, where that title came from, until right now.

If I have to be all serious and stuff, I'll say The Love SOng of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. If I don't, I think you already know it's Lewis Caroll's Jabberwocky.

Yeah, it's a pretty intense poem. If that's the kind of stuff the guy had drifting through his head, it's no wonder he drank himself to death.

I posted Jabberwocky over at Absurdity here, in case anyone wants to check it out. I love that poem.

O frabjous day, callou callay...

Emily - while you were here, did you happen to get a chance to go to the White Horse Tavern? A great spot. And it's where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. I think he might have even died at the bar, although I could be making that up.

When I first arrived in NYC, I swore one of my first stops would be that place, but I never got around to it. I just didn't have the time. Next visit for sure. FOR SURE.

I'm shamed to confess that I haven't read all that much poetry over the years, even though I do enjoy it. Emily Dickinson is probably my favorite poet - here's one I like:

Emily Dickinson - Complete Poems - 1924 - Part One: Life

CXXXIII

YOU cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer,—
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.

So many...

Let us go then, you and I
when the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherized upon a table...

and

There was movement at the station
for the word had gone around
that the colt of old Regret had got away...

and

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear my trousers rolled

and and and....

Don't know that it's my favorite, but these lines from Auden are incredible:

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came

(The Shield of Achilles)

Being the low-rent "rhyme and meter" kind of guy I am, my taste in poetry runs more to Robert Service and Ogden Nash, both of whom are known more for light verse.

However, I find both Service's "My Friends" and Nash's "Old Men" to be touching.

There have been so many. How to choose one. From Yeats there is "The Second Coming" and "An Irish Airmen Forsees His Death" and a host of other lyrics not to mention "Under Ben Bulben."

Then there's is Thomas's "Fern Hill."

And from Housman I could pick a dozen. "If Truth in Hearts That Perish..."

And Dickinson--so many there.

Hardy's "Channel Firing."

But, if pressed, I'd have to settle for Mathew Arnold's "Dover Beach." For me it anticipates the modern world and it had a particular relevance in my youth some forty years ago.

"Burnt Norton" by T. S. Eliot, and "Love Calls Us to the Things of this World" by Wallace Stevens.

Girl, your site rules.

D'oh... that last one was by Richard Wilber, not Wallace Stevens. Oopsy.

My favorite (to the extent I can pick one) is Southey's "Battle of Blenheim", followed by Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", Shelley's "Ozymandias", Sonnet 116, Tolkien's "The Sea-Bell"...

...actually, I'm also quite fond of the lay Bilbo made in honor of Eärendil in Fellowship of the Ring, as well as Gimli's poem about Durin near the end of the same volume. :-)

Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. Unbelievable poem. Something about washing the cockpit clean, right?

Oh, and Steve Wilson - Isn't Housman wonderful? He is a poet I cherish.

Oh and Crazy jane:

Thanks for the compliment.

I love Richard Wilbur too.

"Ball Turret Gunner" is a masterpiece. Randell Jarrell really knew his stuff...ball turret gunners weren't expected to survive long once they were airborne, hence the brevity of the poem. "From my mother's sleep" to being washed out of the plane with a hose is a reference to the time when birthing facilities used to be cleaned in such a manner following the delivery of a baby...the piece goes from womb to tomb, so to speak. His "wet fur froze"...flight jackets have these fur collars, and if you were in a cold, wet climate, once you got in the air, ice chunks would form on them. He captured this horror with language, the mark of a gifted poet indeed.

Jarrell himself once noted that the way gunners appear in the ball turrets, hunched over, they appeared almost fetal.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"I fell into the State"... Jesus, that is chilling.

The poem, as short and simple as it is, never ceases to startle me.

I believe Garp's father (in The World According to Garp) was a ball turret gunner.

Stephen Ambrose described what it was like for those men in one of his books. Or - he let the surviving ball turret gunners describe the experience. Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

Dearest: Thru you I know the Auden poem. It is indeed wonderful. Tho I love most of Heaney and Yeats, I would have to opt for Leaves of Grass [the whole thing--I know that's cheating]and the famous Frost poems [Stopping... and Road....]. Many years ago [1961] your mother gave me a copy of Frost's Collected poems. It remains my most treasured book [you know I have many] for more than one reason. love, dad

Dad -

1961. Woah.

It was Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" for me as well until I sat down one day and realized I didn't understand a word of it.

Rodya:

"Understanding" is highly over-rated! In my humble opinion. The books that confuse me the most, the books that I cannot seem to pin down, that seem to shape-shift every time I read them are the books I love the most. Like Ulysses, or Moby Dick, or lots of others.

I fell in love with "Dover Beach" the first time I read it in high school - I could SEE that beach, the poem filled me with a sense of doom and foreboding, but I had no idea what it meant. I still don't.

But damn, could he write, huh?

I was in a film called "The Darkling Plain". And I have no idea why the film was called that. No idea. But I loved that it was.

FYI, "darkling" is a Lewis Caroll neologism: to darkle is the opposite of to sparkle.

I truly wish I could appreciate any of it, but unfortunately all of them are a scramble of words evoking neither feeling nor sense to me. Oh well. That's why God gave me TV.

*God* gave you TV? And to think, I got mine at Sears. I feel so boring now.

Emily Dickinson's 712. And William Blake's Tyger. And a million more.

I can't forget this one, written by my daughter.

Since Emily mentioned Randall Jarrell, here are some lines from another Jarrell poem;

In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."

The said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

One of my favorites is also, in my opinion, the most romantic poem ever written: Yeats' A Drinking Song.

And I've always held a special love for Uncle Walt's One Hour to Madness and Joy.

http://www.bartleby.com/134/21.html

http://www.bartleby.com/103/91.html

http://www.plagiarist.com/text/?wid=2984

here's some i couldn't find elsewhere

http://www.deadjournal.com/users/redclay/6204.html

http://www.deadjournal.com/users/redclay/20317.html

I hope you are aware the Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about Abortion. Emily is inaccurate in her understanding of the poem. It is not the medical facitities that are washed out. It is "I" the fetus. This poem is about a life unlived. Randell died in 1965 - Before the Pill (1969) was invented and abortion was backalley.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
"Mom" is in hospital. Note that State is capitalized. This poem was written prior to the Pill (1969) Randell died in early
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
In the womb
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life) This refers to the Umbilical cord being severed.. the next line is about the pain of being flushed out.. flak is collateral damage.

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The procedure is done. "I" never had a chance to live. In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition.

I hope you are aware the Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about Abortion. Emily is inaccurate in her understanding of the poem. It is not the medical facitities that are washed out. It is "I" the fetus. This poem is about a life unlived. Randell died in 1965 - Before the Pill (1969) was invented and abortion was backalley.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
"Mom" is in hospital. Note that State is capitalized. This poem was written prior to the Pill (1969) Randell died in early
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
In the womb
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life) This refers to the Umbilical cord being severed.. the next line is about the pain of being flushed out.. flak is collateral damage.

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The procedure is done. "I" never had a chance to live. In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition.

I hope you are aware the Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about Abortion. Emily is inaccurate in her understanding of the poem. It is not the medical facitities that are washed out. It is "I" the fetus. This poem is about a life unlived. Randell died in 1965 - Before the Pill (1969) was invented and abortion was backalley.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
"Mom" is in hospital. Note that State is capitalized. This poem was written prior to the Pill (1969) Randell died in early
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
In the womb
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life) This refers to the Umbilical cord being severed.. the next line is about the pain of being flushed out.. flak is collateral damage.

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The procedure is done. "I" never had a chance to live. In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition.

David -

"In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition."

And so ... to you ... there is just ONE meaning, is that correct?

I hope you are aware the Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about Abortion. Emily is inaccurate in her understanding of the poem. It is not the medical facitities that are washed out. It is "I" the fetus. This poem is about a life unlived. Randell died in 1965 - Before the Pill (1969) was invented and abortion was backalley.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
"Mom" is in hospital. Note that State is capitalized.
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
In the womb-procedure has begun
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life) This refers to the Umbilical cord being severed.. the next line is about the pain of being flushed out.. flak is collateral damage.

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The procedure is done. "I" never had a chance to live. In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition.

I hope you are aware the Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about Abortion. Emily is inaccurate in her understanding of the poem. It is not the medical facitities that are washed out. It is "I" the fetus. This poem is about a life unlived. Randell died in 1965 - Before the Pill (1969) was invented and abortion was backalley.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
"Mom" is in hospital. Note that State is capitalized.
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
In the womb-procedure has begun
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life) This refers to the Umbilical cord being severed.. the next line is about the pain of being flushed out.. flak is collateral damage.

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The procedure is done. "I" never had a chance to live. In reading poetry you must unpack the meaning to gain recognition.

David -

STOP HITTING POST. STOP IT. NOW. Your comment has been duly noted.

David, you are so wrong it is almost funny.