the future...

[wildsweetone]

i've borrowed this poem of normal jean's and put it here because there's something i'd like to ask... (and normal jean, it is simply that your poem triggered off some thinking out loud for me )

it ocurs to me that shakespeare
was a pansy, yes a pansy
with his quill pen, all fluff and fancy,

i heard he wore pretty bloomers
way past winter, late into spring
but were they his dear wifes bloomers,
it makes a difference, such trivial things

if here he posted a poem
on this here poetry forum,
we'd probably run him off

send him chasing his swords and ere to's
but I do admit that I would be lost
without Juliet and poor Romeo
no tragedy to inspire me to vent
my own tragic shades of sertraline blue

'ears to Shakespeare,
I feign cast thee into a fiery lake,
complete with your own rod and reel

( made of titanium alloy and stainless steel)

one of the theories i glanced at a while back was that the woman Shakespeare is said to have written (was it his sonnets? sorry i've forgotten) for, was actually a man. of course another theory is that it was a black woman. actually, from what i gathered there were many theories and none of them proven.



I have also been reading 'Classic Haiku - An Anthology of Poems by Basho and His Folowers' which is translated and annotated by Astaro Miyamori. In this book Astaro not only translates but also tells us what was probably in Baso's thoughts when he wrote his Haiku.


I wonder sometimes how many people, noted or not, actually get it wrong when they inform us why and what these famous people were writing about.

Sure some things can be proven to be correct. But when there are many opinions around like there are for Shakespeare and for Basho (innumerable people in innumerable languages translate Basho's writing and often come up with very different meanings during the translation process), how do you know which to believe?

How much of our knowledge about these two and other classics, is wrong?

What do you do? Choose an option that you prefer, one that seems more right than the others?

 

[normal jean]

good point, WSO

I think some things are better off left to mystery. Its like 1201's interact threads. What some people thought about my own work was amazing to me, that they saw things in it that I never thought of and it delighted me to no end that perhaps someday someone would be analyzing my stuff and would be so off base, I would love to be a mystery to some and worthy of debate by anyone.

I also have heard that Shakespeare had a black female lover. Who really knows? Not I, but maybe some writers leave out facts on purpose, to give people something to wonder about, perhaps he never thought it necessary to reveal those aspects , maybe he thought no one really cared or maybe it just didnt matter to him what anyone thought.

I do know that I write weird stuff, I write all sorts of odd stories and then get FB saying wow, you did that??? just cause I wrote it doesnt mean I did it...unless like my husband accuses, if you thought it in your heart, youre guilty.... thats just plain wrong. Im divorcing that man as soon as I can, lol

 

[flyguy69]

I've always found it best to propose your own theories, to cite them in later discussions, to offer defense and half-hearted refutation under alternative identitites until your views gain legitimacy.

Like the theory that Mary Ann is posting poetry under the pseudonym "Maria." It is patently ridiculous. They don't even have the same number of syllables.

good point, WSO

I think some things are better off left to mystery. Its like 1201's interact threads. What some people thought about my own work was amazing to me, that they saw things in it that I never thought of and it delighted me to no end that perhaps someday someone would be analyzing my stuff and would be so off base, I would love to be a mystery to some and worthy of debate by anyone.

I also have heard that Shakespeare had a black female lover. Who really knows? Not I, but maybe some writers leave out facts on purpose, to give people something to wonder about, perhaps he never thought it necessary to reveal those aspects , maybe he thought no one really cared or maybe it just didnt matter to him what anyone thought.

I do know that I write weird stuff, I write all sorts of odd stories and then get FB saying wow, you did that??? just cause I wrote it doesnt mean I did it...unless like my husband accuses, if you thought it in your heart, youre guilty.... thats just plain wrong. Im divorcing that man as soon as I can, lol

 

[Angeline]

I love Shakespeare, read him over and over and even get to teach him sometimes. I hated him when I first encountered Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade. I am convinced I did (as do most readers new to Shakespeare) because I didn't, at the time, understand the context of the plays or even the meaning of much of the language as it was intended when the plays were written.

When I studied Shakespeare in college, I took a year-long class in which we studied all the major plays and a lot of the poetry. Having a teacher who taught us how to "preread" for historical and political contexts, for changes in "Standard Modern English" and even to understand how drama (as a genre) has different purposes than a novel or poetry all helped me a lot. I understood plot, was able to figure out how plot and theme are woven together in the plays and--most important--was able to recognize the poetry (!) in much of the writing.

And even with a "formal" education in how to read Shakespeare (which, arguably, anyone can attain now with persistance and a library and/or internet connection), I think I miss a lot. I think everyone does, and there are many, many people who are Shakespeare scholars, spend their life studying his work.

It is not possible to fully understand meaning or implications of one's contemporaries let alone writings hundreds of years old and cultures apart from the reader.

But the key, for me, is that I can still appreciate what I read, for both meaning and literary/poetic enjoyment even without the assurance that I'll ever fully understand it as it was intended when written. If I worry too much about that, I wouldn't bother reading anyone's poetry but my own.

And that would be really boring.

 

[bogusbrig]

I think many 'experts' say the sonnets are about Lord (Earl?) Southampton but such a thing wouldn't be shocking in Shakespeare's time. Homosexuality wasn't defined or frowned upon like it later became. I think that was down to the dastardly Victorians again and their introduction of 'pornography' into the English language.

However, I'm in agreement with the others who say it really doesn't matter what the experts say, the experts are proved wrong time and again and everything has to be reassessed with each new generation and it alters the power of the poetry not one iota.

 

[wildsweetone]

I think many 'experts' say the sonnets are about Lord (Earl?) Southampton but such a thing wouldn't be shocking in Shakespeare's time. Homosexuality wasn't defined or frowned upon like it later became. I think that was down to the dastardly Victorians again and their introduction of 'pornography' into the English language.

However, I'm in agreement with the others who say it really doesn't matter what the experts say, the experts are proved wrong time and again and everything has to be reassessed with each new generation and it alters the power of the poetry not one iota.

but, but, but... i know from my short time of reading poetry here and reading poet's meanings behind their poetry (when it's been available) that the meaning (or origin) can have a great deal of influence over how i understand a poem. often it can markedly improve my enjoyment of a poem.

 

[eagleyez]

Bloom's Critical text, "The Anxiety of Influence," presages this very "questioning" to a tea.

Not just the more obvious Victorian points of view, but also the larger Idiomatic Etymologies that found safe harbour in Pub Dialogue and subsequent Round Files there-in.

In and of itself, it was glorious comedy, too often stuck like gum to the boots of Academia, Which gave notion to a literary, palimpsestuous edifice quite by accident, as if to poke fun at its own poke.

Annie Proulx and McMurtry conceived of this in their more recent "Cowboy Narratives."

(That fishpaper trick again.)

 

[Maria2394]

Bloom's Critical text, "The Anxiety of Influence," presages this very "questioning" to a tea.

Not just the more obvious Victorian points of view, but also the larger Idiomatic Etymologies that found safe harbour in Pub Dialogue and subsequent Round Files there-in.

In and of itself, it was glorious comedy, too often stuck like gum to the boots of Academia, Which gave notion to a literary, palimpsestuous edifice quite by accident, as if to poke fun at its own poke.

Annie Proulx and McMurtry conceived of this in their more recent "Cowboy Narratives."

(That fishpaper trick again.)

My goodness, I feel like an absolute moron, teeny tiny IQ after reading and realizing how smart all of you really are.

I am GRATEFUL to be here and grateful that I have someone I can approach with questions about Shakespeare and sonnets ( hugs, ange) and anything else I need to know, makes me sort of lazy though, knowing that I need not to pursue that as my own knowledge in order to marginally uderstand it. Im abad. and lazy almost a poet. a dumb wannabee poet.

EE, are your kids as smart as you? I have 2 daughters...

 

[wildsweetone]

a few minute glimpse at Bloom and i just want to bang my head against a brick wall... is that a normal reaction?


(searching for 'cowboy narratives' gets me in some very weird places. lol)



so basically... i should settle down and enjoy the poetry for what I see in it and not worry about what others think/thought of it? darn but that's very one-eyed of me.

 

[eagleyez]

I think many 'experts' say the sonnets are about Lord (Earl?) Southampton but such a thing wouldn't be shocking in Shakespeare's time. Homosexuality wasn't defined or frowned upon like it later became. I think that was down to the dastardly Victorians again and their introduction of 'pornography' into the English language.

However, I'm in agreement with the others who say it really doesn't matter what the experts say, the experts are proved wrong time and again and everything has to be reassessed with each new generation and it alters the power of the poetry not one iota.

Fast Forward to Hawthornian truths, relegated to the midnight sheep Pens of the Puritans, and its exposure of its own raw and rhetorical mumbo jumbo, complete with smelly sheep boots and pants pulled down around them, and I tend to circle back and forth, historically and thematically, and I catch a whiff of Chaucer, The Wife of Bath, and an even smellier campground, thus my point is, in and of itself, Intertextual gymnastics, like wild and intemeperate intercouse, from the westest west to the eastest east, finds a happy home in the middle, north of the loins where the wine washes off the Clay and the follies of the day, quite ordinarily and with success,

 

[Maria2394]

a few minute glimpse at Bloom and i just want to bang my head against a brick wall... is that a normal reaction?


(searching for 'cowboy narratives' gets me in some very weird places. lol)



so basically... i should settle down and enjoy the poetry for what I see in it and not worry about what others think/thought of it? darn but that's very one-eyed of me.

NO, sweet One, it is not one eyed of you!! Imagine that you are born before the age of internet and instant access to books, and you come across a small chap book somewhere, ( like I did at a junk sale once) and you have NO way of knowing who exactly that poet is, or was, and the book was published over a hundred years ago and it has all sorts of fascinating tales and prose about faeries and some that sound like true stories, well you dont know what others thought, when it was published, you have to use your own ideas and that doesnt lessen the poem's worth or meaning because you had no other interpretation to go by.

Do you read it and say, I have nothing to compare it to therefore I cant base my own opinion? Or do you say, some of it is good, some is silly, I like it, or I hate it or I will just give the book away...because I have nothing to compare it to?

I think I decided that some of it was interesting, but strict rhyme doesnt fare-thee-well with me too often, I still have the book, its small, with a satin ribbon and was printed in 1842...I will find it and give you the name of the woman that wrote the works in it when I have time.

also, YOUR opinion is just as valid as anyone elses regardless of whether you know why a poem was written or understand some meaning behind its origin. you know what you like, right?

 

[eagleyez]

My goodness, I feel like an absolute moron, teeny tiny IQ after reading and realizing how smart all of you really are.

I am GRATEFUL to be here and grateful that I have someone I can approach with questions about Shakespeare and sonnets ( hugs, ange) and anything else I need to know, makes me sort of lazy though, knowing that I need not to pursue that as my own knowledge in order to marginally uderstand it. Im abad. and lazy almost a poet. a dumb wannabee poet.

EE, are your kids as smart as you? I have 2 daughters...

The Boys much prefer that ai teach them Music. Daughters, say ye?, how much for the wee wenches.? My Lads are Good Clean livers, truth be told, (Its Pa ya have to keep an eye er two upon.) We clould go fishin or some damn thing...down by the bog....Ange has slipped thru this equinox a time or two,

 

[wildsweetone]

you make sense Maria (and yes i'd love to know the book you mentioned )

i guess if there's a craving for more knowledge that's when the path becomes a little muddied where maybe some guideline of sorts would be worth following (but then, that guideline is only going to show all the opinions and not particularly define anything. i think these things are mostly left up to the individual to decide in the end.).

Art is such a subjective thing.

 

[normal jean]

The Boys much prefer that ai teach them Music. Daughters, say ye?, how much for the wee wenches.? My Lads are Good Clean livers, truth be told, (Its Pa ya have to keep an eye er two upon.) We clould go fishin or some damn thing...down by the bog....Ange has slipped thru this equinox a time or two,

EE, my spawn are good clean livers too, except the oldest will partake in a social drink on occasion, she is 23 on march 23rd and the other is a smarty pants, will be a bio major this fall at Lander here in SC. I was just curious about the gene pool, and would send them up that way if the genius is really just oozing from them lik e it does from you, and ange better know Im just being me, not making a sly-wink at the love of her life!!!

ps, Iw oudl love to go fishin with you and ange someday, if that could ever happen, I could bring some "greens" for a nice fresh salad

 

[eagleyez]

you make sense Maria (and yes i'd love to know the book you mentioned )

i guess if there's a craving for more knowledge that's when the path becomes a little muddied where maybe some guideline of sorts would be worth following (but then, that guideline is only going to show all the opinions and not particularly define anything. i think these things are mostly left up to the individual to decide in the end.).

Art is such a subjective thing.

Or perhaps the fish has to decide if she's hungry enough to go run this Art fella, all tied up and shiny with a riddle and good bit of eatin in his middle,he is, and go corner him.

Women make mighty wily with a rod and reel dont ya know.

 

[eagleyez]

EE, my spawn are good clean livers too, except the oldest will partake in a social drink on occasion, she is 23 on march 23rd and the other is a smarty pants, will be a bio major this fall at Lander here in SC. I was just curious about the gene pool, and would send them up that way if the genius is really just oozing from them lik e it does from you, and ange better know Im just being me, not making a sly-wink at the love of her life!!!

ps, Iw oudl love to go fishin with you and ange someday, if that could ever happen, I could bring some "greens" for a nice fresh salad

I'd be plenty a partial to that.
I have to get this Middle Englysh out me head right quick, so Im going to
Roust thru the music piles for a look see. Dont mind me, Im fumbling with cd's over here on these corner sheles. Looks ike a good place to start.

 

[wildsweetone]

Or perhaps the fish has to decide if she's hungry enough to go run this Art fella, all tied up and shiny with a riddle and good bit of eatin in his middle,he is, and go corner him.

Women make mighty wily with a rod and reel dont ya know.

i understand.

i have a thing about making sure i have as much information as i can before i can make an informed opinion.

there is an abundance of information and differing opinions Out There already.

so does it end up something like 'going with the majority'? chances are that is mostly likely to happen (obviously).

the interest is within, perhaps the means will be available soon and i'll be caught up in the net before long.

 

[eagleyez]

The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom of the Univ of Chicago literary gang...

http://books.google.com/books?ie=UT...fluence+Bloom&sig=IJ4TP7sHRtAbFfhS69EoQvnNXpk

 

[eagleyez]

http://books.google.com/books?ie=UT...fluence+Bloom&sig=IJ4TP7sHRtAbFfhS69EoQvnNXpk

He works with Saul Bellow, which is how I came to know his texts and ruminatory backflips.

 

[wildsweetone]

okay i'll share my complete ignorance with the entire world... who is Saul Bellow - wait i'll look him up.

aah, wow. his biography is impressive. i might make a note to delve a little deeper.

the link for Bloom's Anxiety of Influence didn't work for me but i jumped into my amazon and found it. i think i'd need to read it in conjunction with a literacy course and a really big dictionary. i'll hunt it out at the library and see if i can understand it at leisure.

 

[normal jean]

I'd be plenty a partial to that.
I have to get this Middle Englysh out me head right quick, so Im going to
Roust thru the music piles for a look see. Dont mind me, Im fumbling with cd's over here on these corner sheles. Looks ike a good place to start.

yer Old Englysh is kinda nice. Around here we are used to silly stuff, my favorite is a pretty decent Irish accent, but I am good at several of them, and I do some impersonations that just tear my family up. My oldest does a wonderful German and my youngest is into cartoon voices. ya never know who you will run into around here, just never know. My hubby is the only one that has no vocal dexterity. He is a yankee from Ohio who has acclimated his whaaa into a pure southern-fried red neck drawl, lol..its kinda cute actually...

have fun with your cd's hug ange for me

 

[eagleyez]

okay i'll share my complete ignorance with the entire world... who is Saul Bellow - wait i'll look him up.

aah, wow. his biography is impressive. i might make a note to delve a little deeper.

the link for Bloom's Anxiety of Influence didn't work for me but i jumped into my amazon and found it. i think i'd need to read it in conjunction with a literacy course and a really big dictionary. i'll hunt it out at the library and see if i can understand it at leisure.

Bellow is a great American novelist, won the Nobel for Lit in Mid seventies I beleive, for a body of work which includes "The Dangling Man," "The Adventures of Augie March," "Seize the Day", "Humboldt's Gift," "More Die of Heartbreak," "The Victim" "Herzog" "Henderson the Rain King" to name just a few.

I had the good fortune to study Bellow under a preeminant Bellow Scholar, Dr. Andrew Gordon, while I was enrolled at the Univsersity of Florida. The list above comprises about 1/2 of the syllabus that he handed us on our first day of the semester, an ungodly volume of work to plow thru, but I got lucky and the entire experience Taught me about what is was to be a "Mensch" which Ironically, the explanation there-of rolls off of Ange's lips like sweet butter "vit a smear."

RE: Blooms Critcal Text, your notion to have it, and a host of its allusory subjects is a sound one indeed. As a literary critic he is interesting. He eschews Derrida and the deconstructionist crowd, implales the formalists and post modern schools with equall vigor and lust, Talks about the WHY of it-his postulations re this gymnastic justification for the CANON-HIS CANON, is quite simply the fact that serious students of literature shoud forgo labels and read erverything. That is an oversimple rendering, but one thing is true, He HAS read these classics, these ethnics, these hitoricicms, all of them and he teaches them all on equal footing, of course, circumnavigating his universe with Shakespeare. To much to keep blustering on about about. Thanks for reading

I dont consider myself a poet, I write prose, but I love Poetry , the rip and the rap of it. Its music all that and so much more it delivers to my coil which in turns sucks the guts out of the electrical system, the immortal coil...Besides, one can read Bellow and the poetics found paragraph after paragraph make it an amalgam of poems strung together in elements of fiction, that tell glorious stories. in and of themselves, just the language alone, omg...

 

[wildsweetone]

Bellow is a great American novelist, won the Nobel for Lit in Mid seventies I beleive, for a body of work which includes "The Dangling Man," "The Adventures of Augie March," "Seize the Day", "Humboldt's Gift," "More Die of Heartbreak," "The Victim" "Herzog" "Henderson the Rain King" to name just a few.

I had the good fortune to study Bellow under a preeminant Bellow Scholar, Dr. Andrew Gordon, while I was enrolled at the Univsersity of Florida. The list above comprises about 1/2 of the syllabus that he handed us on our first day of the semester, an ungodly volume of work to plow thru, but I got lucky and the entire experience Taught me about what is was to be a "Mensch" which Ironically, the explanation there-of rolls off of Ange's lips like sweet butter "vit a smear."

RE: Blooms Critcal Text, your notion to have it, and a host of its allusory subjects is a sound one indeed. As a literary critic he is interesting. He eschews Derrida and the deconstructionist crowd, implales the formalists and post modern schools with equall vigor and lust, Talks about the WHY of it-his postulations re this gymnastic justification for the CANON-HIS CANON, is quite simply the fact that serious students of literature shoud forgo labels and read erverything. That is an oversimple rendering, but one thing is true, He HAS read these classics, these ethnics, these hitoricicms, all of them and he teaches them all on equal footing, of course, circumnavigating his universe with Shakespeare. To much to keep blustering on about about. Thanks for reading

I dont consider myself a poet, I write prose, but I love Poetry , the rip and the rap of it. Its music all that and so much more it delivers to my coil which in turns sucks the guts out of the electrical system, the immortal coil...Besides, one can read Bellow and the poetics found paragraph after paragraph make it an amalgam of poems strung together in elements of fiction, that tell glorious stories. in and of themselves, just the language alone, omg...

just as an aside... the bit in bold stuck out like a sore thumb for me. i dislike labels (in life in general) - they are useful to a point and then no further. it pays to be openminded and as you say 'read everything'.


did i read Bellow died only last year?

if Bloom gives his Critical Text with no bias then he will be a definate worthwhile read. thank you for telling me of him.

 

[Angeline]

EE, my spawn are good clean livers too, except the oldest will partake in a social drink on occasion, she is 23 on march 23rd and the other is a smarty pants, will be a bio major this fall at Lander here in SC. I was just curious about the gene pool, and would send them up that way if the genius is really just oozing from them lik e it does from you, and ange better know Im just being me, not making a sly-wink at the love of her life!!!

ps, Iw oudl love to go fishin with you and ange someday, if that could ever happen, I could bring some "greens" for a nice fresh salad

Every now and then he strolls out from behind the cowboy poems and shows himself for the literary scholar he really is.

Then he gets over it and goes fishing, Brought me back a string with ten big bass on it last summer and discussed the literary canon with me while he ripped their guts out. He's a strange un, but I love him.

 

[anonamouse]

a few minute glimpse at Bloom and i just want to bang my head against a brick wall... is that a normal reaction?


(searching for 'cowboy narratives' gets me in some very weird places. lol)



so basically... i should settle down and enjoy the poetry for what I see in it and not worry about what others think/thought of it? darn but that's very one-eyed of me.

I believe retching is a more common reaction to Bloom. Think of him as the Dr. Phil of poetry, think of Maya Angelou as Oprah.

Gazes into the crystal, I am beginning to see.....


hope for you.