Not only does he paint vivid mental puctures but as he reads I'm imagining the sounds too -- the sea, ships, the creatures.... This is probably my favorite in a while.
I describe myself similarly, or near enough. I'd ask if you want to be friends -- somehow as we get older we lose that ability. I just felt what you said echo. 😌
VI OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM There once the penitents took off their shoes And then walked barefoot the remaining mile; And the small trees, a stream and hedgerows file Slowly along the munching English lane, Like cows to the old shrine, until you lose Track of your dragging pain. The stream flows down under the druid tree, Shiloah’s whirlpools gurgle and make glad The castle of God. Sailor, you were glad And whistled Sion by that stream. But see: Our Lady, too small for her canopy, Sits near the altar. There’s no comeliness At all or charm in that expressionless Face with its heavy eyelids. As before, This face, for centuries a memory, Non est species, neque decor, Expressionless, expresses God: it goes Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows, Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham. VII The empty winds are creaking and the oak Splatters and splatters on the cenotaph, The boughs are trembling and a gaff Bobs on the untimely stroke Of the greased wash exploding on a shoal-bell In the old mouth of the Atlantic. It’s well; Atlantic, you are fouled with the blue sailors, Sea-monsters, upward angel, downward fish: Unmarried and corroding, spare of flesh Mart once of supercilious, wing’d clippers, Atlantic, where your bell-trap guts its spoil You could cut the brackish winds with a knife Here in Nantucket, and cast up the time When the Lord God formed man from the sea’s slime And breathed into his face the breath of life, And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill. The Lord survives the rainbow of His will. ~ From "Lord Weary’s Castle"
I have discovered this poem only recently, but I can already tell you it's going to be one of my personal favourites for the rest of my life. very, very powerful piece.
He was a master of language. Some lines of this poem have stuck with me all my life. "The airy tanks are dry. / Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;" "Their monument sticks like a fishbone / in the city's throat." "Everywhere, / giant finned cars nose forward like fish; / a savage servility / slides by on grease."
Our Tony. Never really forgiven for speaking his own language and rhyming and that. The buggers will get it one day, when they're tired of Auden and Betjeman. Viva 'arrison! Poet Lauriat of the republic!
@@poets-speak Infinite thanks. I’m directing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and I’m knee deep in research mode and I’m all but certain Mr. Wilson wove this story into his play.
This is a lesson in the power of editing. I'd wager Jarrell had 50 or 60 lines between "nightmare fighters" and "When I died," but he cut them all during a moment of clarity after a night of drinking. Probably. Anyway, Mr. Grau in 10th grade English used this poem to explain poetry to the class, and I've been hooked ever since.
My favorite book that my parents bought me was Why Does The Caged Bird Sing, I felt her spirit and heard her soul when all the trials she went through to get where she was today! RIP Mother Maya Angelo🪽✨🕊️👑🔥🔥🔥
