Hey - i took a look at my favourite American (New York) blogger's site The Rant today
Tom Degan -
http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/
The only man who can make my laugh at atrocity
Anyway can you believe it? At the bottom of his latest write up (which is excellent as always) he's put a 'Suggested Reading' title - and guess what it is?
`
Man Without A Country
by Kurt Vonnegut
Yeah!
I don't know it. Anyone? Hey maybe this is the one i'm meant to get...
I'm supposed to be writing about the draft - but i can't leave this poem alone that i've been working on. I don't know what i'm going to do with it. It's ...i dunno...something special to me. But maybe not great.
Hmm
Anyway - Cheers
Endy
@Endymion,
Endy, I have a brother seven years my senior (I'm not yet 50). He introduced me to Vonnegut when I was in my teens. It's been many years since I read any, aside from excerpts, and even those only as recently as when Vonnegut died, so I'm uncomfortable endorsing any specific book… but I’m not reluctant to endorse Vonnegut in general. I loved him then.
Go for it. I’d be interested in your thoughts. In fact, I think I’d be interested in *my* thoughts on the matter
Maybe I’ll pick it up myself.
@Joeblow,
hey Joe
I will definitely find this book Tom recommends and read it
Hope you get a chance to do the same
(I'd certainly be interested to hear what you thought on it)
cheers
Endy
Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
1917
