Coleridge or Shelley?

How many poets does it take to change a light bulb?
jisbell00
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Fri Jun 09, 2023 9:08 am

Ah yes, the great Yeats. A man unafraid of repetition! What a great ear he had.

Cheers,
John
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Leaf
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Fri Jun 09, 2023 12:29 pm

"He had but one ear, but it was great," deduces W.-B. (^v^)

A pleasant sonnet, upstream. Perhaps Coleridge took a little less opium before writing that one, to adhere to the form. Were he to avail himself of the fast thick pants, there might be no need for a plank! Woo-hoo! Anyway, we are all shaking here and must to luncheon. Back later, all being well (^v^)

Cheerie,
F & (^v^)
jisbell00
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Fri Jun 09, 2023 12:39 pm

W.-B. could be onto something! Bob Dylan once said he'd love to have Brian Wilson's ear (he of Beach Boys fame).

Yes, perhaps Coleridge had run low on his supply of laudanum that day, or perhaps he did have the fast thick pants and so finished quicker than usual! Who can say, who can say? But he did later say the laudanum hamstrung his creative faculties, as I recall. In any case, nice to see his foray into the sonnet form. :)

Cheerie,
John

Here are The Beach Boys demonstrating Brian WIlson's ear:

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Leaf
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Fri Jun 09, 2023 7:10 pm

It is excellent to have a good ear! (^v^)

Thank-coos for The Beach Boys, John. And ooh yes, laudanum, that's the word. I wonder how it compares with morphine sulphate solution, for example. Anyways, we enjoyed the sonnet (^v^)

Cheerie,
F & (^v^)
Macavity
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Sat Jun 10, 2023 4:32 am

Would you say Coleridge or Shelley has most influenced your writing John?

I do think of his conversational poems when I read your work:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... t-midnight

Perhaps it is my inclination of feeling poems speak to poems, the conversation of poems, that I hear🤔

And then there is Berryman...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... o-the-lord
jisbell00
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Sat Jun 10, 2023 4:56 am

What a superb, sad Berryman poem! I hadn't known it, so thanks, Phil. My favorite sad line: "Forsake me not when my wild hours come."

I do chat. Shelley and Keats do less of that, Coleridge and perhaps especially Wordsworth more. But I think I was shaped by the C20th, starting with Yeats and Eliot. Though actually I suspect Wordsworth shows up a lot.

The Coleridge is great, that last stanza in partiuclar. I think my midnight vigils I owe to the Romantics.

Cheers,
John
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Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:17 am

Yes, you do like an iambic😃 So I get WW. My volume of Yeats is neglected, but I do enjoy his famous ones. I was surprised you mentioned Eliot, in relation to your writing. He is a fav of mine, Alec Guinness captures the tone...





I like this scary reading of the Hollow Men by a YouTuber...



The Berryman was impactful.
jisbell00
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Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:29 am

Yes, the Berryman packs a punch. Self-laceration without self-pity, just a simple reckoning with where he's at. I think he found a faith again along a ways, and that poem seems a part of that.

Eliot overwhelmed me and my writing when I was about twenty, so forty years ago now. He broke me out of bombast, as I recall, and I've never gone back (I think). Dante remains my fave poet, and much of my taste was shaped by him. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" had an impact. I am further form him now, but he's still great. "The dove descending breaks the air." Or this:

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia

Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia

Wallala leialala
“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

That close is Dante: "Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma." Oh, and Yeats is astonishing.

Cheers,
John
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