Shelley was one of my inspirations to become a "serious poet" at age 14. For me, this is one of the most beautiful and touching poems in the English language:
I was not acquainted with Shelley before I started following this Substack. I knew his name but was not acquainted with his work. He is one of my favorite discoveries over the past year. Thanks you for bringing him into my awareness :)
I still find Shelley's hysteria hard to take. 'I shrieked, and clasped my hands'! I'm sorry I just find this too histrionic.
I prefer Keats's 'Ode To A Nightingale'. I know what a nightingale is. (Even though I've never actually heard one.) And Keats is neither hysterical nor histrionic. He's merely ecstatic. And allows that ecstacy to speak for itself. (Or, rather, sing!) He has found an adequate symbol, or 'objective correlative', for what he is attempting to express. And therefore his project is more fully realised.
I can’t help like feel that’s like complaining because someone said they “jumped for joy.” Some may use it figuratively and others literally “jump for joy.” It works regardless.
I can’t help but think your quibble stems from not really getting what the poem is actually about, or why it’s important.
It depends what drives you to write poetry. Shelley here is describing poetry as a rather selfless act, rather than something one does for oneself. If you write for very different reasons, the poem might not be as well received.
But that’s not Shelley’s fault…
The poet was looking for answers and he found them.
I'm sorry, it sounds too much like a Victorian maiden. I mean, being confronted by *naked ankles*, or something equally 'disgusting'! An act put on to show Mama just how pure and virginal she is.
"I shrieked, and clasped my hands" is something all human beings have done -- in moments of surprise, joy, ecstasy, etc. One does not have to be "hysterical" to have a normal human reaction.
The previous one Wallace Stevens. This one apparently The Luzumiyat of Abu al-Ali al-Maarri. What a wonderful idea! Simply reply with extended quotations.
Shelley was one of my inspirations to become a "serious poet" at age 14. For me, this is one of the most beautiful and touching poems in the English language:
Music When Soft Voices Die (To —)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
-----------------------------
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
I was not acquainted with Shelley before I started following this Substack. I knew his name but was not acquainted with his work. He is one of my favorite discoveries over the past year. Thanks you for bringing him into my awareness :)
I still find Shelley's hysteria hard to take. 'I shrieked, and clasped my hands'! I'm sorry I just find this too histrionic.
I prefer Keats's 'Ode To A Nightingale'. I know what a nightingale is. (Even though I've never actually heard one.) And Keats is neither hysterical nor histrionic. He's merely ecstatic. And allows that ecstacy to speak for itself. (Or, rather, sing!) He has found an adequate symbol, or 'objective correlative', for what he is attempting to express. And therefore his project is more fully realised.
I can’t help like feel that’s like complaining because someone said they “jumped for joy.” Some may use it figuratively and others literally “jump for joy.” It works regardless.
I can’t help but think your quibble stems from not really getting what the poem is actually about, or why it’s important.
It depends what drives you to write poetry. Shelley here is describing poetry as a rather selfless act, rather than something one does for oneself. If you write for very different reasons, the poem might not be as well received.
But that’s not Shelley’s fault…
The poet was looking for answers and he found them.
I'm sorry, it sounds too much like a Victorian maiden. I mean, being confronted by *naked ankles*, or something equally 'disgusting'! An act put on to show Mama just how pure and virginal she is.
"I shrieked, and clasped my hands" is something all human beings have done -- in moments of surprise, joy, ecstasy, etc. One does not have to be "hysterical" to have a normal human reaction.
I can't remember ever doing it.
We live in a camp….Stanzas of final peace
Lie in the heart’s residuum….Amen.
But would it be amen, in choirs, if once
In total war we died and after death
Returned, unable to die again, fated
To endure therafter every mortal wound,
Beyond a second death, as evil’s end?
It is only that we are able to die, to escape
The wounds. Yet to lie buried in evil earth,
If evil never ends, is to return
To evil after death, unable to die
Again and fated to endure beyond
Any mortal end. The chants of final peace
Lie in the heart’s residuum.
How can
We chant if we live in evil and afterward
Lie harshly buried there?
If earth dissolves
Its evil after death, it dissolves it while
We live. Thence come the final chants, the chants
Of the brooder seeking the acutest end
Of speech: to pierce the heart’s residuum
And there to find music for a single line,
Equal to memory, one line in which
The vital music formulates the words.
Behold the men in helmets borne on steel,
Discolored, how they are going to defeat.------W.S.
Many a grave embraces friend and foe
Behind the curtain of this sorry show
Of love and hate inscrutable; alas!
The Fates will always reap the while they sow.
The silken fibre of the fell Zakkum,
As warp and woof, is woven on the loom
Of life into a tapestry of dreams
To decorate the chariot-seat of Doom.
And still we weave, and still we are content
In slaving for the sovereigns who have spent
The savings of the toiling of the mind
Upon the glory of Dismemberment.
Nor king nor slave the hungry Days will spare;
Between their fangéd Hours alike we fare:
Anon they bound upon us while we play
Unheeding at the threshold of their Lair. ==Al M
The previous one Wallace Stevens. This one apparently The Luzumiyat of Abu al-Ali al-Maarri. What a wonderful idea! Simply reply with extended quotations.
They do provide some contrast.
There in Rangoon I understood that the gods
were enemies of the poor human being,
just as God is.
Gods
of alabaster, lying down
like white whales,
gods gilded like wheat,
serpent gods coiled around
the crime of being born,
naked and elegant buddhas
smiling at the cocktail parties
of empty eternity
like Christ on his horrible cross,
all of them ready for anything –
to impose on us their heaven
by torture or pistol,
to buy our piety or fry our blood,
fierce gods made by men
to cover up their cowardice,
and that’s how it all was there,
the whole world reeking of heaven,
of heavenly supermarkets.
– Pablo Neruda
“Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall,
Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain forever pain;
And none escapes life's coils.
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.”
― Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus