The note was published as part of the poem. It was the first title and refers to characters she created in her fantasy world, Gondal -- Rosina Alcona to Julius Brenzaida.
These poems are more depressing than those I usually choose to read, that's the spirit of "Poetry of Sadness."
Ah, it's the lover to her long-dead love.... sorry, I did not put the two together. I've been sleeping on two feet recently, because of the insupportable weather.
Perhaps we should have a 'Poetry of Elation' thread, then, to counter the balance?
OK, one coming right up! I was thinking of someone else starting it, but I may as well!
This was written by Oscar Wilde for his dead sister.
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it
I've always felt this sad:
So we'll go no more o' roving
So we'll go no more o' roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more o' roving
By the light of the moon.
dròm_et_rêve wrote:Learning Shakespearean English is a better option than falling into French right away. It's easy to speak if you know modern English, but it also shows key parts of French in a very simple way.
For instance. In French, the motion verbs make their composite past from 'etre' (to be) rather than avoir (to have.) This makes sense when you think in Shakespearean English-- they would use 'I am come,' 'you are come,' instead of 'you have com, etc.' So it makes an easier translation:
I am come
To bid my king and master aye good night:
Is he not here?
(King Lear)
Translating directly from either 'thou' or 'you' (informal and polite) meants that you have less of a chance of insulting someone by calling them 'tu' if they're above you or 'vous' if you're familiar with them.
And plenty of other reasons, too. -, -(e)st, -(e)th, makes translating into French conjugations (je parle, tu parles, il/elle/on parle, etc) easier too...
Or maybe I'm alone in this one.
fascinating - I'd never noticed but you are absolutely right. I love the poetry threads, love poetry but am not very good at literary criticism
so stick mainly to reading!
I was struck by that very same thing when I began to study French! The first thing I noticed was that vous/tu thing, I thought it odd until I remembered that in old English there was a similar difference between you and thou. Of course then I began to notice other things like that, conventions that had been dropped from the English language but kept in the French. I wonder if the same is true in reverse, whether some things formerly held in common have been dropped from French but kept in English?
Red - Ted Hughes
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains -- ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar -- temple.
Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.
And outside the window
Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail
As the skin on blood,
Salvias, that your father named you after,
Like blood lobbing from the gash,
And roses, the heart's last gouts,
Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.
Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,
A lavish burgandy.
Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.
You revelled in red.
I felt it raw -- like crisp gauze edges
Of a stiffening wound. I could touch
The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.
Everything you painted you painted white
Then splashed it with roses, defeated it,
Leaned over it, dripping roses,
Weeping roses, and more roses,
Then sometimes, among them, a little blue
bird.
Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit -- not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.
In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.
But the jewel you lost was blue.
Event - Sylvia Plath
How the elements solidify !
The moonlight, that chalk cliff
In whose rift we lie
Back to back. I hear an owl cry
From its cold indigo.
Intolerable vowels enter my heart.
The child in the white crib revolves and sighs,
Opens its mouth now, demanding.
His little face is carved in pained, red wood.
Then there are the stars-ineradicable, hard.
One touch: it burns and sickens.
I cannot see your eyes.
Where apple bloom ices the night
I walk in a ring,
A groove of old faults, deep and bitter.
Love cannot come here.
A black gap discloses itself.
On the opposite lip
A small white soul is waving, a small white maggot.
My limbs, also, have left me.
Who has dismembered us ?
The dark is melting. We touch like cripples.
Sylvia and Ted sure had a hard time of it. DO you have any theories as to why?
Despite reading their letters and SP's diaries through the ages, I never really took a huge interest in their traumatic relationship, because I found that their poetry, taken purely, was something better on which to concentrate. Nonetheless, I think that Sylvia went away because she had far too high a trust in people. As she wrote in her diaries:
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation[.]
That her innate trust was broken in someone with whom she had 'matched' so well was a sign-- with an interesting parallel to the life of Timon of Athens-- that she could live no more.
I think that, despite their desires, they both weren't 'marrying' people. When two independent spirits are caged, the constriction eventually kills both.
I felt Ted ended up with pity for her. His poems give me that feeling. Must have been unconsolably sad for SP.
The Time Around Scars
Michael Ondaatje
A girl whom I've not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.
My wife has scars like spread raindrops
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse panes
and yet, apart from imagining red feet,
(a nymph out of Chagall)
I bring little to that scene.
We remember the time around scars,
they freeze irrelevant emotions
and divide us from present friends.
I remember this girl's face,
the widening rise of surprise.
And would she
moving with lover or husband
conceal or flaunt it,
or keep it at her wrist
a mysterious watch.
And this scar I then remember
is a medallion of no emotion.
I would meet you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love
that never occurred between us.
That's amazing, Cav. I had never heard of Ondaatje before, but that's masterful... when did you first hear of him?
That's what I'd think optimistically, Panz; that he kept quiet against allegations because that was, to him, the best way to show his love. Yet, what letters of his I have seen seem to deride her, in a way.
Michael Ondaatje is a local Toronto writer whose major claim to fame is penning the novel "The English Patient", which that horrid movie was loosely based on. The novel itself is so complex it's unfilmable, so, in true Hollywood spirit, they dumbed it down to retard level. Anyway, here is a brief bio:
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Ondaat.html
)
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