Life - Shockingly Beautiful - Easter Sunday

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Celebration of LIFE ... shockingly beautiful.

Easter - the marriage of humanity and divinity through Jesus based on unconditional love.
... love does not alter when alteration finds ... Shakespeare Sonnet 116

Easter Sunday

pure gold in blue sky
beauty of this risen day
touches all creation

Footnote ...

Infinite Glory (link to a personal poem)

I change the title of this poem to I let your beauty depending on the secular/non-secular audience.

A Shell on Shelley and The Moon

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Some detail I found of interest on Shelley (based in part on the The Young Shelley – Phillip Rush) …

He was born into a very wealthy family (Field Place, Warnham village, near Horsham, Sussex). He had an assured income. His grandfather left him 1,000-pound p.a.

He had a prodigious memory and before he attended school was able to recite poetry after only one reading impressing a family gathering after being put to the test with a recital of Thomas Gray’s  ‘Ode to a favourite cat drowned in a tub of goldfish’. Poetry was in his blood all his life.

When a young boy his grandfather invited him out to lunch at a local pub. His money-land oriented grandfather started to speak unkindly of his father saying he was bumbling and well meaning but would get nowhere. His grandson stood up defending his father drawing attention from others in the pub.

He rebelled against the public school ‘fagging’ and was sent down from Oxford after the co-author writing of the paper ‘The Necessity of Atheism’.  His passion and enthusiasm reflected in sending copy to ‘every bishop on the bench, to the Chancellor of the University and to every college Master, Warden and Dean’.

He stood out against tradition always willing to speak his mind whatever the cost. He worked out his own philosophy. He had great strength and integrity in following what was right for him. Not surprisingly going against the expectations of family both in career and in his relationships (running away with the 16 year old Harriet Westbrook).

He was very generous and supportive of friends especially Leigh Hunt when Hunt was put in prison for libeling the Prince Regent. He was politically active in Ireland and England.

He was one of the so-called  ‘famous regency poets’ (Byron, Keats) escaping the restrictive environment in England after the Napoleonic wars for a life in Italy. He died tragically in a boating accident at the age of 29 and like Keats and Byron at an early age.

 He was cremated on the beach at Viareggio … in the line of a Greek hero … his heart remained and was taken away by friends … however; it may not have been his heart but his liver. This would be a poetic ending given that his most important work was Prometheus Unbound. The bound Prometheus had his liver attacked by vultures.

His most known poems are perhaps Ode to the West Wind and Ozymandias.

He wrote a paper in defence of poetry and he was very appreciative of the ‘poetic cannon’ especially praising Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost.

The moon features in his work … including Prometheus Unbound … have a look at the imagery conjured by these two fragments put together after his death …

THE MOON

I.

 And, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,

Out of her chamber, led by the insane

And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,

The moon arose up in the murky east

A white and shapeless mass.

II.

 Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

For more details here is the Wikipedia link … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

Waiting

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                (long weekend return on the ¹Kings Highway)

                ‘not road works again!’

                a girl with her arm out of the window flicks cigarette ash

                car-doors open at the front of the queue

                engines turn off, a car pulls-up behind

                ‘what’s the hold-up, mate?’

                the fellow behind who tailgated up the ²Clyde

                talks at an open window

                ‘an unscheduled rest stop … ’

                someone’s mobile rings

                ‘it will be a couple of hours, …’

                some start eating lunch

                ‘remember you have a book under the seat’

                one guy is boiling water at the side of the road

                others turn their cars around

                a bit hard for campervans and those with boats

                ‘it could be some time yet, I’ll ring home again … ’

                an arc of people gather further up the road

                then the heavy thump of rotor blades

                chopping the Sunday morning air

                ‘thankfully, the bend and queue hide’

                at last there is much movement

                a rush to return to cars, the relief palpable

                an immediate cortege

                slow, serious momentum

                the long line of vehicles show respect

                ‘don’t look! ’ she says

                (I know she will,

                and of course, she knows I will)

                momentum increases

                the day restarts

                but for unsuspecting family and friends

                the worst of news awaits

                                                                                                                                     

                Richard Scutter 15 March 2012

Footnotes …

1 ... The Kings Highway connects Canberra to the South New South Wales coastal town of Batemans Bay (160km). Long weekend refers to a holiday weekend.

2 ...The Clyde Mountain rises from the coastal side of the journey and at this stage the Kings Highway has many hairpin bends.

The accident involved a double fatality. One person survived and was air-lifted by helicopter to Canberra hospital.

The Song of Mr Toad - Kenneth Grahame

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 The world has great heroes,

As history books have showed;
But never a name to go down in fame
Compared with that of Toad!

The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed,
But they none of them knew one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad!

The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
Their tears in torrents flowed.
Who was it said, ‘There's land ahead'?
Encouraging Mr Toad!

The army all saluted
As they marched along the road.
Was it the King or Kitchener?
No. It was Mr Toad!

The Queen and her ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed.
She cried, ‘Look! who's that handsome man?'
They answered ‘Mr Toad'.

Kenneth Grahame

(Wind in the Willows)

There is something beautiful about ugly toad. Unshamedly proud, he is the sort of animal to wear a bowtie in bed at night in case water rat sees him through the curtains.

The Brook - Tennyson: analysis

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I come from haunts of coot and hern,

Personification I=the brook

Eight syllables, Four iambic feet (Tetrameter)
Coots and hern – where water birds live … haunts gives a mystery to the origin of the brook
Alliteration H and H

I make a sudden sally

Six syllables three iambic feet (Trimeter)

Short and direct with emphasis on the S alliteration and the sound
of water … sally = to set out from a place to do something

And sparkle out among the fern,

Back to eight syllables

You can almost see the water coming out of the greenery into sunlight
Another S

to bicker down a valley.

Then six syllables again

Bicker = argue … the water when in a rush is in conflict with anything in its way

Q1 … Why is bicker a better choice of word than argue?

The lines flow between tetrameter and trimeter with rhyming scheme abab. The brook flows slow in long text and then fast by using short text.

The iambic 8-6 syllable variation and abab rhyme scheme set the musical pattern of the poem.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Thorp = a village or hamlet

Q2 … How do the numbers add to the poem?

More H H alliteration

Look at the close rhyming … one letter variation.

Q3 … Does this add to the reading?

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

The last three lines become a repetition (refrain) throughout the poem. They appear in 4 stanzas and they all have the same rhyme words (flow, river, go ever). Repetition increases the chance that readers will remember words.

Q4 … What do these words say about the poet?

Q5 … Why was Philip chosen?

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

the brook speaks

musical terms introduced (sharps and trebles) … related to the brook … a double meaning … the close quick syllables emulate the brook

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

Q6 … why is fret better than say, erode?

F and W alliteration

fallow = ploughed and harrowed left for a while to restore
foreland = an area of land bordering on another … the bank becomes a set for fairies
mallow – herbaceous plant with hairy stems … pink or purple flowers (fairy colours)

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

repetition of here and there
grayling = edible fresh water fish, silver-grey

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

more alliteration

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

The brook exhibits great life here with the multiple I statements … as though proud of its ability … and much S alliteration

Q7 … in what sense are the sunbeams netted?

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

shingly provides the sound of the water as well as defining the nature of the bars

Q8 … what is the difference between linger and loiter?

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

Again the last three lines are a repetition from an earlier stanza.

Q9 … How important is the contrast between nature and humanity?

Q10 … Tennyson was greatly influenced by the death of a close friend … how could this be reflected in these words?

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Above annotation looks at the ‘music’ generated within this poem by using some of the poetic techniques listed below …

Rhyme (masculine) – repetition of the accented vowel sound … called masculine when only one syllable is involved (grow/flow)

Rhyme (feminine)… when two syllables are involved (frightful/spiteful)

Half rhyme – where only the one syllable of a two syllable words rhyme (shallows/swallows)

Rhythm – the syllables and the accent placed on each syllable so that a pattern occurs (Iambic = unaccented then accented … I SHOUT this To all AND sunDRY)

Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds (fright/fresh)

Consonance – the repetition of final consonant sounds (first/thirst)

Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds (gravel/travel)

Word repetition – strings of words or sentences as in a refrain

Thought …

It has been said that all art is giving structure to two elements – repetition and variation … do you agree?

Initiation - Don Nicol

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with blade held high he wept to spy
the wound that he’d inflicted
on flesh so bare, just lying there
completely unrestricted.

with resolve awry, he wiped one eye
and laid the knife aside
in utter gloom he fled the room
and hung his head and cried

in vain he prayed to get some aid
for what he had to do
‘It is my task’, he said at last
and raised the dirk anew

he cut and thrust as he knew he must
until the deed was done
then stood aside to view with pride
a plate of diced onion

Don Nicol

from Intriguing Yarns Odes Poems (Anthology)

An anthology of creative works by senior citizens garnered through the Canberra Tradesmen’s Union Club of the ACT in the International Year of Older Persons (1999).

The mind is led astray in the opening stanzas. It is not till the closing line that there is the clarification. There is wonderful rhyme and half rhyme in each line. A great choice in words – especially awry it fits the occasion perfectly … as so many in the kitchen that attack onions will readily appreciate!

dirk = long, dagger, formerly worn by Scottish Highlanders
awry = crooked; deviant or unsound

... chop - cry ... this always tends to happen at some stage when cutting onions  ... what is the best approach?

Post-Op Respite

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                         all seats are vacant in the courtyard

                        a few dishevelled cushions,
                        the garden at peace with itself

                        waiting,

                        waiting
                        she has been waiting for it to be over

                        for the day after yesterday
                        now there is time,
                        an immensity of time to each measured movement

                        she shuffles slowly forward

                        steadies at the sliding door, grasps the handle
                        gradually the door slides creating space

                        she has a clear determined focus
                        (I’m glad no nurse has come to help,
                         and there is no one around to interfere)

                        there is ample space now

                        and her dressing-gowned frame
                        takes the few steps needed

                        on reaching the closest chair

                        she slowly makes her comfort known
                        as she recovers from her exertion

                        a sigh sags through her body,
                        and as if seeing blue sky for the first time
                        she appreciates every detail

                        absorbing the spring sunshine
                        she gives an internal thank-you,
                        a thank-you meaningful beyond words

                        her contentment dissolves to a doze,
                        but before drifting exhausted to total sleep
                        she is gently disturbed …

                        the sliding doors click-shut
                        patient and nurse disappear
                        the courtyard reclaims the empty seat

Richard Scutter 15 September 2011 

Nought by Time Revealed

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Nought did endure

without measurement or thought
Nought did exist
that is if you call it any kind of an existence
for it really had nought to commend itself (forgive the pun)
save perhaps its unknown immutability

And, of course, nothing was known of Nought
for Nought only began to be known when Nought died
for when Nought died something else started
And when this happened
only then could Nought be defined
like the writing of a word on a blackboard

and whether it took a few minutes, days
or even a whole eternity,
suffice to say that a change occurred
like the gentle shift of an unseen wind on water
or an immense explosion unheard in a distant land
and nothing (I repeat nothing) has ever been the same since!

Richard Scutter 15 February 2012

Time - Allen Curnow

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I am the nor-west air among the pines
I am the water-race and the rust on railway lines
I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs.
I am dust, I am distance, I am lupins back of the beach
I am the sums the sole-charge teachers teach
I am cows called to milking and the magpie’s screech.
I am nine o’clock in the morning when the office is clean
I am the slap of the belting and the smell of the machine
I am the place in the park where lovers were seen.
I am recurrent music the children hear
I am level noises in the remembering ear
I am the sawmill and the passionate second gear.
I, Time, am all these, yet these exist
Among my mountainous fabrics like mist,
So do they the measurable world resist.
I, Time, call down, condense, confer
On the willing memory the shapes these were:
I, more than your conscious carrier,
Am island, am sea, am father, farm, and friend,
Though I am here all things my coming attend;
I am, you have heard it, the Beginning and the End.

Allen Curnow (1911 - 2001)

Award winning New Zealand poet.
This was written when he was living on the Canterbury Plains at the start of his long career in poetry. Lupins were prevalent in the South Island countryside and many schools had only one teacher.

Some comments ...

The poem contains sets of three rhyming lines.

In the first line time is expressed as the wind moving in trees. A good place to start. Biblically the universe started by the movement of wind. Wind cannot be seen so much at the effects of what wind does - as in the movement of a tree or the sound from branches. Just as we cannot see time but are ever conscious of what happens over time. This is the most important aspect of time in that time continually facilitates change. In line two time is latent in both the movement of water and the change that water can make to the environment and in lines three and four we see that time is integral in defining distance and of course speed.

Time is independent of the measurement of time which is a human structuring based on the cyclical movement of the heavens over time. Time ‘just is’ and resists such measurement but such measurement allows definition of set events as in the office is clean at 9:00am (line 7) or the time set by a need as in the milking of cows (line 6).

Everything is defined by time including of course our personal association with specific events as in the time lovers meet in a park (line 9).

Time is like a mountainous fabric in which we clothe our lives (line 14). Mountainous because of the continual build of events. We only see life through a mist because we are limited by our perceptions and senses. Perhaps time has a purer view of life?

We can reflect on time past but it is only a poor second to what time can provide (line 18).

And of course the last line has Biblical connotation to the a ‘beginning’ and an ‘end’. Interestingly we tend to favour that there was a beginning and that there will be no end. Perhaps time has and will always be - if you like - a never ending fabric. I guess in due time we will find out.

Annoiting Ann Anonymous

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when she was a child

and she was quite sure
that no one was looking
she picked up a stick
to scratch in concrete
      ‘I was here’

each day

as she walked to school
she would see her work
and laugh to herself
no one would know it was her

in her teenager years

she had that teenage crush
and melting against his name
cleared the dust on his car
with words that only she could write
      ‘I love you’

She thought he really knew
but she would never tell,
in later years
when thinking about him
she would laugh inside
with a little embarrassment

she had a long and ordinary life
a husband, children
and memories to drown
and if she could paint the sky
these would be her words
     ‘life is beautiful’
      
before she died
and with a knowing smile
she left these words
especially for you …
     ‘I was here
      I love you
      life is beautiful’
                            
© Richard Scutter (and for a certain anonymous person)

15 September 2011

Analysing Prufrock: T. S. Eliot

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This well-known poem by T. S. Eliot was written when TSE was in his last year at Harvard and completed in 1911 when on vacation in Munich while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. TSE was only 22 years old.

 What is the nature of this person Prufrock. The following is the first part of a discussion in relation to this poem …

First, look at the name J. Alfred Prufrock. It has a certain pretension or arrogance whether or not given by family. Of course if that was the case Prufrock would never change it because of his timid nature. Apparently there was a Prufrock family in existence in America.

An interesting choice ...

PRUde … a person who affects extreme modesty or propriety.

PRUdent ... a concern for the future and the taking of action in relation to what might happen … careful of one's own interests; provident, or careful in providing for the future.

FROCK ... well, feminine dress association ... and one definition … a coarse outer garment with large sleeves, worn by members of some religious orders.

deFROCK /unFrock... to deprive of priestly status

… so maybe to prufrock (as a verb)… is to deny self-expression or the self by fear and inaction … in the severe case it could lead to death by inaction … to deprive oneself of one’s own being … to be a fraud (consider the reference to Dante in the epigraph below).

So Eliot creates the subliminal connotation of a ‘prude’ in a ‘frock.’

The Dedication

Jean Verdenal was an important friend from his time in Paris. Interestingly, TSE’s foundation work is dedicated to this person and not to family or other friends so perhaps Verdenal understood TSE as a fellow student and one with an appreciation of literature. Verdenal was certainly not a Prufrock. Unfortunately he died in the Dardanelles in 1917 in action while treating a wounded soldier. TSE updated the dedication in the 1925 edition of Prufrock with details of his death. (Verdenal was born on 11 May 1890 and not in 1889 as recorded by TSE.)

The quote is from Dante … Purgatorio, Canto XXI, lines 133-136

Or puoi la quantitate
Comprender dell' amor ch'a te mi scalda,
Quando dismento nostra vanitate,
Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda.

[TSE’s translation from the Italian - Now can you understand the quantity of love that warms me towards you, so that I forget our vanity, and treat the shadows like the solid thing.]

TSE ensures Verdenal will be remembered with love.

The Epigraph

The published version of the epigraph also came from Dante's Inferno:

S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tomasse al mundo,
questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo
non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

A translation …

‘If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would remain without further movement; but as no one has ever returned alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy.’

These words are spoken by Count Guido da Montefelltro (1223-98) in Dante's Inferno xxvii, 61-6. Dante recounts his visit to the underworld. In the eighth chasm of Hell he meets Guido, punished here, with other false and deceitful counsellors, in a single prison of flame for his treacherous advice on earth to Pope Boniface. When the damned speak the voice sounds from the tip of the flame which trembles. Guido refers to this, and goes on to explain that he speaks freely only because he believes that Dante is like himself, one of the dead who will never return to earth to report what he says.

(TSE had a a draft version of the epigraph - Purgatorio, Canto XXVI, lines 147-148.)

Relating the Epigraph to Prufrock in the poem …

Prufrock is fraudulent and deceitful – if only to himself – guilty and being punished … punished by his continual paralysis … living a shadow existence … ‘like a shade’ in Dante’s underworld.

Prufrock is only willing to share his unfortunate nature to himself… never to the world at large … in the form of dramatic monologue … TSE invites the reader into this hidden world of his sub-conscious thinking … Just as Dante invites the reader to the shaded world of the dead who speak without being heard.

Looking at lines 1-12

Let us go then, you and I,
An invite to join Prufrock as he talks to himself …

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;

To Prufrock the sky is etherised … ether,  an anaesthetic to take away pain … Prufrock can’t appreciate the sky … he also fears pain … ironically his fear of pain is much more crippling

Later we see that Prufrock himself is an etherised patient … unable to stir from his mental paralysis

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The streets are half-deserted in another sense because of Prufrock’s internal preoccupation

The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

Connotation of cheap love … unable to sleep … unhappy, and of course something is on his mind

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
The floor of cheap restaurants with shells as plates … concentrating on negative

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

… perhaps the physical journey and the mental are one of the same, I know people who find the mental indecision in this poem a little tedious

To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

He has a problem … like many who have problems … don’t ask me  … it is too big to discuss … I don’t want to think about it … while of course it is ever present and it is usually followed by an elaboration ... in this case provided by the poem

Let us go and make our visit.
Come join me (Prufrock) on this journey … and you will discover more of Prufrock

Prufrock is clearly a thinker and his indecisive thoughts contribute directly to his paralysis. But perhaps of more import living in his thoughts and fears dulls his awareness of the present. He inhibits sensitivity to his surrounds which are somewhat a bleak and empty city, an expression of where he is mentally.

Later we will see how ‘his problem’ surfaces through the continuing expression of his underlying thoughts. He may be a solitary figure vying for communication but at least he invites you to a privileged insight into his underground world (perhaps under the sea is more appropriate).

How would you like all your underlying thoughts known to others?

End of the first part of a discussion for U3A.

Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures

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At the National Library Canberra

An extraordinary exhibition open to 18 March 2012 ... and features 100 unique manuscript treasures from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library).

Spanning more than 1000 years of history, the exhibition includes exquisite illuminated manuscripts, rare letters, sketches and documents and priceless musical scores, each handwritten by major figures in literature, religion, science, music, exploration and philosophy. Beethoven, Galileo, Goethe, Kafka, Michelangelo and Napoleon are just some of the many names represented in this exhibition.

See this link ...    Australian National Library

Exhibition of Manuscript Treasures

Australian National Library Canberra
(The Bonhoeffer Exhibit)

precious scrapple from the table of the famous

foundation of thought from the fragments of a life
give a certain personal perspective

a handwritten strangulated poem
Bonhoeffer, condemned unjustly
now glass-celled and preserved for posterity

thoughts flow freely on the mighty mind of man

and the truth escapes
rattling the freedom of visitors as they pass along the way

Richard Scutter 15 January 2012