tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post5854758062548807482..comments2023-10-04T17:13:47.394+03:00Comments on future of my past: This is not a post, this is a page from my notebookAnna MRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13801478271766064478noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-80670937686058069372007-05-12T01:16:00.000+03:002007-05-12T01:16:00.000+03:00Miranda, hei and thank you again for visiting and ...Miranda, hei and thank you again for visiting and for drawing the comparison between the Brecht and these poems - I wouldn't have found it myself but love it now it's been pointed out to me. I agree, bringing the mud-and-innocent-behinds-of-torturer's-horses everyday realism into the poems underlines the poignancy of the philosophical aspects. Makes it more real, if you like - miracles, heroic, tragic failures, in the world where dogs play and children skate - not one world at all, but as many as the people in it. Or something. For myself, of the TS Eliot, though, the line personally closest is "With the voices singing in our ears, saying/ That this was all folly" - not peasants humming away by the roadside as the magi rode on, I think, but more the internal monologue of self-doubt and self-laceration (thank you for the use of your terminology, TPE), so painfully f*cking familiar to some of us.<BR/><BR/>You know, I never went and checked this admirable statistic - I got it, as I recall, from my (American) geography book which gave a table of information about the European countries, including a little trivia of each. That means, of course, it could be an absolute load of old codswallop. Which is why I didn't want to ruin it by checking.<BR/><BR/>Do come back soon, Miranda. Fun having you here.<BR/><BR/>A xAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-55094532708817738542007-05-11T00:10:00.000+03:002007-05-11T00:10:00.000+03:00Hei TPE, the dress rehearsal wasn't brilliant but ...Hei TPE, the dress rehearsal wasn't brilliant but it wasn't terrible either. Don't know whether to worry or rejoice - usually terrible dress rehearsals lead to awful nerves but pretty good first nights - intend to be good on Saturday regardless. Pretty squeezed-dry, thinly-spread feeling now, afterwards, though. <BR/><BR/>The TS Eliot is good, no? I was going to do it in one of our Poetry & Jazz evenings, but the guy organising it made the sensible choice (way too long for being performed out loud by anyone anywhere, particularly me to a café audience). I did Hollow Men instead, and one about preferring masturbation to sexual intercourse, by Fleur Adcock (unfortunate name, real, to my understanding), and maybe a few others, can't quite remember.<BR/><BR/>The MacNeice I thought the best of his stuff I have read - I have a friend who is really keen on him, and I sort of like him but have the feeling you seem to express of it being "almost but not quite". This one, I thought, was a "quite" in its own department.<BR/><BR/>xAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-66712262104006263432007-05-10T22:47:00.000+03:002007-05-10T22:47:00.000+03:00Hyvää iltaa, Anna MR, hopefully your dress rehears...Hyvää iltaa, Anna MR, hopefully your dress rehearsal went well.<BR/><BR/>The TS Eliot (meditation) you linked to is really quite something, isn't it? Phew. I'm going to need to look at that for a while longer, certainly. There is an awful lot to take in.<BR/><BR/>I'm glad you seemed to like the Louis MacNeice poem. I want to make clear that I like it as well, really rather a lot - I just don't happen to feel that it is a terribly good poem, for some reason. <EM>Good</EM> being a rather hopelessly inadequate (and entirely subjective) word in these circumstances, I'm afraid.<BR/><BR/>I've always felt that it is lacking something vital - I'm just not sure what, exactly. Still, whatever it may be lacking, there is more than enough within it already to be getting along with.<BR/><BR/>No poetic links hidden in my name this time, you may be relieved to hear, but I have my work cut out as it is going through your last offering (TS Eliot).<BR/><BR/>Back to the coalface.<BR/><BR/>TPE xThe Periodic Englishmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09539963852299891988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-35696166736938166052007-05-10T15:53:00.000+03:002007-05-10T15:53:00.000+03:00Miranda - magic to find you here. Welcome. TPE - I...Miranda - magic to find you here. Welcome. <BR/><BR/>TPE - I missed you by half an hour at this smokey internet cafe where I have come to kill time before the dress rehearsal (thank you for the breakalegs).<BR/><BR/>I have no time to say a great deal - will get back to you both. I thought I didn't know the Auden poem, Miranda, and when I read it, I thought I'd only just seen it somewhere. Your house?<BR/><BR/>TPE - I don't know whether my taste is impeccable, but I loved the MacNeice - hypnotic, compelling, wounding.<BR/><BR/>The poem I wanted to comment with - again, bloody hell! - didn't appear easily available. This one's kicking, too.<BR/><BR/>More soon - later.<BR/><BR/>xxAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-66725858989953146552007-05-10T15:01:00.000+03:002007-05-10T15:01:00.000+03:00Hello Miranda and hello RTS up at the top of the p...Hello Miranda and hello RTS up at the top of the page, too.<BR/><BR/>Anna MR, hei. Aluksi - kyllä! Ei mitään muuta. Except to say that, like Miranda, I enjoyed this, too. <BR/><BR/>I can see why she was reminded of the two poems she mentions (although I had to look up the second one to have an earthly). Less clear, maybe, why I can't shift a Louis MacNeice poem (<EM>Prayer Before Birth</EM>) from my head as I read what you have posted.<BR/><BR/>You can see it if you click on my name (still not able to embed such a thing in an answer - sorry). I'm not sure that it is even a very good poem (slightly obvious and clunking, maybe) but it has always been there or thereabouts for me since being introduced to it at school - and came rushing at me again whilst visiting you here.<BR/><BR/>A nice idea to post something which then allows you immediate and permanent access to it, Anna MR - internet connection permitting, of course.<BR/><BR/>All hail the Finnish library system, indeed, and good luck in the dress rehearsal tonight, by the way.<BR/><BR/>TPEAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-78366849281250999552007-05-10T04:06:00.000+03:002007-05-10T04:06:00.000+03:00This is very good. It reminds me a bit of a TS Eli...This is very good. It reminds me a bit of a TS Eliot's Journey of the Magi: "A cold coming we had of it", that mix of philosophy and practicalities, how the mud felt underfoot; and WH Auden's "Musee des Beaux Artes": "the torturer's horse scratches its behind on a tree".<BR/><BR/>Does Finland still hold this admirable statistical position?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-87160646233145259552007-05-09T19:10:00.000+03:002007-05-09T19:10:00.000+03:00Yes, they are good, aren't they - I have a cd (in ...Yes, they are good, aren't they - I have a cd (in Hawai'i, so a mite unavailable) of Marianne Faithfull singing Kurt Weil songs - quite a combination.Anna MRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13801478271766064478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25897493.post-85916149125548607152007-05-09T14:35:00.000+03:002007-05-09T14:35:00.000+03:00Nice. I love his songs too - the ones I really kn...Nice. I love his songs too - the ones I really know are from Threepenny Opera with the Kurt Weil music.Reading the Signshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06338983880105866139noreply@blogger.com