Thursday, July 6, 2017

OTI:one poem and notes:7/6/17

Open To Interpretation

With And Without

oh
what's a tune without a lyric?
an instrumental, I'd say
and what's a poem without a tune?
some kind of prose, I'd say
and what is love without a song?
nightingales gone deaf and dumb, I'd say
oh,
I've never heard a nightingale
Just so, I'd say

DolphinWords

Notes:...well, to remedy that, here is four hours of Nightingales on youTube!...link...Mockingbirds do the nightly serenade hereabout...on studying out the lyrics of STG's tune, You Are The One, I took note of how their performance is in my head while I read them, a silent reading of a song as it were...most often poems don't have a song to them...hence, I guess, another 'with and without'...lyrics have tunes...and they are just about a hundred times more musical than poems with no tune to them, even if they have rhyme and meter and such...oh, an internet trick is to open another page, set it to a playlist, so one has something to listen to while messing about on the open foreground page...presently the Nightingales are singing...anyway...brb...

quote

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
                        In the next valley-glades:
         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
 
Ode To A Nightingale
John Keats
 
unquote
 
hmmph...annoyed, I discovered Poetry Foundation revamped their website...tried to relearn it...likely all my old links have gone south...it still has all the old issues, and now and then I randomly browse them, and pursuing such happened on Ezra Pound's review of Robert Frost, New Georgics, and an essay by him, The Tradition...this back in 1914...I have a stack of old Poetry on my nightstand, and had just read a commentary from like 1978 lamenting that poetry wasn't being read much...a refrain!...of course it is being heard much, if one includes popular music lyrics...Pound's famous touting of Troubadours is all about this...way back then he was going off on this...words on a page with a tune are much different than words that haven't one...oh, there are all kinds of tricks on a page to give words a tune, rhyme and such, and they work some but there is nothing like 'Wake up Maggie, I think I have something to say to you...' when you have heard the tune, and maybe too Rod Stewart's raspy voice to go with it...but I understand the lament that poetry isn't being read, and it comes to mind: from my very start has been a defense of poetry, and that just a continuance of the ongoing effort in the Tradition by everyone...hmmph...anyway, I happened on:
 
quote
 
Can Poetry Matter?
Poetry has vanished as a cultural force in America.
If poets venture outside their confined world, they can work
to make it essential once more


by Dana Gioia 
 
 
unquote
 
this from 1991, and the article proved out to be the seed of a book and much discussion...and a kind of career maker for Dana, as I learn he is now Poet Laureate of California...until December 2017...every two years one is appointed by the Governor now...I've tried to explore his website, and any sites to do with PLofC, but it's all as problematic as the new layout for the Poetry Foundation!...oh, they need to 'kiss and kiss and kiss' again...anyway, MidNightMovieJohnAdams2008...stuck with this up until Washington takes the oath of office, and bailed...it's a 'Bible Story' film...it dwells long on the affairs of the fledgling American aristocracy, with some glimpses of the aristocracies in Europe...America has this sense that our leaders all come from log cabins like Lincoln...products of Jefferson's meritocracy...it happens...but there was back then, and down to this day, a hereditary aristocracy that rules...medieval times, I've learned, after studying out the casts in movieDivergent, were divided into three, what the French called, 'estates'...King and Nobles, Pope and Priests, and Commoners...American independence is thought to have put all that behind us...and the back and forth debates between Jefferson and Adams, from wiki's take, look to have been about just that...where do leaders come from?...from a meritocracy that elevates naturally gifted people, or from a hereditary aristocracy that educates and trains its progeny to rule?...for either of these, the 'nursery' is the academic world, Colleges and such...and now, here, a jump back to where I was...and a big reach!...Robert Graves' lament was that poetry developed into 'court poetry'...taken away from it's tuneful Natural setting, it became a sycophant form to flatter and amuse the ruling class...and it flourishes in the academic setting which is financed by the ruling class...and it developed all kinds of 'flourishes' in rhyme and meter and such that sets it apart, as the aristocracy is set apart, from the common...from the common 'ear' I guess I'm trying to say...commonly speaking, people don't read the pages of Poetry, or any of the like magazines churned out by the Universities...it has its fans sure, like some obscure Olympic sport...thinking on this, I came to the thought, that there are more academics now who have learned ancient Greek, and write poems, than there ever was over the course of classical Greece!...one can say this started with the likes of Pound, and Eliot, and Joyce, and the usual canonical list academic poets know by heart...at the least they must if they ever want to make a buck doing reviews in poetry magazines!...one can nowadays make a buck, as the universities have positions for teaching poets, and programs for student poets...and that all perpetuates under the watchful eye of the aristocracy...and around and about now every state has a poet laureate...and a national one to boot...but there was a nod to the pop lyricists recently...Bob Dylan received the Noble Prize for Literature...which must have been a travail for him...much as early rockers avoided having their lyrics used in advertisement campaigns...but caved...STG's cover of Major Tom for Chrysler is one of the most remarkable things!...lyrics with a tune sell...and casts a different light on Graves' saying 'there's no money in poetry, no poetry in money' if one includes songs as poetry!...oh, youTube ended early, it does that to too long clips...and the Mockingbird outside has flown off...soon too, August or so, they go quiet...oh...back...for that awhile...
 
:)
 
DavidDavid

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