Walt Whitman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IE17z3NvXo
http://composition1302.weebly.com/literary-terms.html
WALT WHITMAN: May 31, 1819- March 26, 1892; Whitman is considered "the greatest and most influential poet the United States has ever produced".
Whitman is credited with having invented the genre of "contemporary American Literature" as he abandoned the rigid rhythmic and metrical structures of European poetry in favor of free verse; this parallels his philosphical view that America was "destined to reinvent the world as emancipator and liberator of the human spirit". His works have been translated into 30+ languages.
He was born on Long Island, NY; his most famous work is "LEAVES OF GRASS", and he would continue to revise and edit it until his death. The first few versions were self-published and not well-recieved. The reserved "Puritan" ethic of the times did not jive well with Whitman's graphic depcitions of the human body. So, while US literary critics were indifferent to his work, he became a world-wide sensation, beginning in France, where his intense humanism would help to provoke the "Naturalist Revolution". By 1864, the book had found a publishing house in the U.S., but he was still considered a "literary outsider". By the end of his life, Whitman was being visited by young artists from around the world and was respected as a "literary vanguard".
Later pictures of Whitman evoke a "Christ-Like" mystique, and it isn't hard to imagine how he got the nickname "graybeard". While he did not invent American TRANSCENDENTALISM, he became its most famous proponent; he also ushered in the blossoming of American Mysticism as well. His name became synonymous with "poet".
It was in the 20th century that Whitman's "immense shadow" would reveal itself. He greatly influenced Modern poets, suchy as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Jack Kerouac, and Allan Ginsberg, who rediscovered his work and offered it to a new, younger, and more accepting audience. He reigns as one of the most influential literary figures-- period.
TRANSCENDENTALISM is "a philosphy that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and the transcendental over the material and empirical" (Webster's Dictionary). It is a view of life where reality exists only in the world of the spirit. What someone sees in the physical world are just appearances or reflections on the spiritual world. It was started by the Unitarians of New England and peaked in the 1840's with the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who thought that the physical world is secondary to the spiritual world. Emerson and his followers believed in INDIVIDUALITY... that humans should find truth within themselves and trust mainly themselves. To learn what is right, people must resisit peer pressure and social codes to do what they believe. People should not be tied down by Christianity but should find god in their own way.
More simply put: Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.
This is somewhat related to Mysticism: Mysticism ( pronunciation (help·info); from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, meaning 'an initiate') is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being.
Whitman was born in 1819 and lived in NY; he was the son of a farmer turned carpenter. He began working in journalism at age 12 and was first publishing by age 15. he became a teacher (gave it up at 21) but stayed in the newspaper industry. He published work in the Democratic Review--the foremost magazine of the Democratic Party, and he was very political by his 20's. He began experimenting with poetry in 1848; he was influenced by music, esp. opera. He also became interested in Astronomy, and "Song of Myself" encompasses some "cosmic concepts". By 1854, he gave up both journalism and poetry to just write. He had developed strong ideas about Pantheism (the universe as a deity). "Leaves of Grass" was published in 1855; the publication of a book like this had been a life-long dream of his... he even wrote some anonymous reviews of his own book. In the mid 1850's, he was writing about the crisis of slavery. His 12 poems called "Live Oak, with Moss" tell a straightforward story of his love for another man. In it, he renounced his role of public poet, seeking knowledge and celebrating America, and chose to be happy in private with his lover. An openly homosexual manifesto would not be tolerated at this time, so he had to express himself more covertly, and did so with the 2nd edition of "Leave of Grass" in 1860. He acted as a hospital Attendant during the Civil WAr and wrote several war poems; he wrote "When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom'd", which is considered a masterpiece, after the death of Lincoln. While working in the Dept. of the Interior, the secretary got a hold of some of the sexual passages in "Leaves of Grass," and he was fired. The last years of his life, known as the "Washington Years", Whtiman held govt jobs and wrote about postwar America. After a stroke in 1873, he had to rely on jounalism again, but he was an outcast due to the sexual connotations of his writings. he was admired by great British poets and so was somewhat accepted in America, but with the 1881 edition of "Leaves of Grass", he was threatened to be prosecuted on the grounds of obscenity. The deathbed edition issued in 1892 was the 1881 edition.
Want to know more?? http://www.whitmanarchive.org/
"Song of Myself" rpresents his general view of humanity. The excerpt shows his intimate/erotic relationship with nature. The use of "YOU" in the poem invites the reader to share his vision... to "get at the meaning of poems" from the inner self. His view is characteristically inclusive and expansive. He uses repetition, questioning, and focuses on nature as the source of EVERYTHING.
From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
To read the rest of the poem, click here: http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_026.html
All of "Leaves of Grass" : http://www.bartleby.com/142/index1.html
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; 5 I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.
Few poems in Whitman's Leaves of Grass have as long and as complex a history of composition, publication, and revision as "The Sleepers." And no other Whitman poem speaks so directly to current psychological, sexual, and racial concerns.
Poem by Whitman: "The Sleepers" :
http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/whitman/sleepers/poem1881.html
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without
him.
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the
dusk.
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.
Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was
sweaty and panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are
journeying.
Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
http://composition1302.weebly.com/literary-terms.html
WALT WHITMAN: May 31, 1819- March 26, 1892; Whitman is considered "the greatest and most influential poet the United States has ever produced".
Whitman is credited with having invented the genre of "contemporary American Literature" as he abandoned the rigid rhythmic and metrical structures of European poetry in favor of free verse; this parallels his philosphical view that America was "destined to reinvent the world as emancipator and liberator of the human spirit". His works have been translated into 30+ languages.
He was born on Long Island, NY; his most famous work is "LEAVES OF GRASS", and he would continue to revise and edit it until his death. The first few versions were self-published and not well-recieved. The reserved "Puritan" ethic of the times did not jive well with Whitman's graphic depcitions of the human body. So, while US literary critics were indifferent to his work, he became a world-wide sensation, beginning in France, where his intense humanism would help to provoke the "Naturalist Revolution". By 1864, the book had found a publishing house in the U.S., but he was still considered a "literary outsider". By the end of his life, Whitman was being visited by young artists from around the world and was respected as a "literary vanguard".
Later pictures of Whitman evoke a "Christ-Like" mystique, and it isn't hard to imagine how he got the nickname "graybeard". While he did not invent American TRANSCENDENTALISM, he became its most famous proponent; he also ushered in the blossoming of American Mysticism as well. His name became synonymous with "poet".
It was in the 20th century that Whitman's "immense shadow" would reveal itself. He greatly influenced Modern poets, suchy as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Jack Kerouac, and Allan Ginsberg, who rediscovered his work and offered it to a new, younger, and more accepting audience. He reigns as one of the most influential literary figures-- period.
TRANSCENDENTALISM is "a philosphy that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and the transcendental over the material and empirical" (Webster's Dictionary). It is a view of life where reality exists only in the world of the spirit. What someone sees in the physical world are just appearances or reflections on the spiritual world. It was started by the Unitarians of New England and peaked in the 1840's with the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who thought that the physical world is secondary to the spiritual world. Emerson and his followers believed in INDIVIDUALITY... that humans should find truth within themselves and trust mainly themselves. To learn what is right, people must resisit peer pressure and social codes to do what they believe. People should not be tied down by Christianity but should find god in their own way.
More simply put: Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.
This is somewhat related to Mysticism: Mysticism ( pronunciation (help·info); from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, meaning 'an initiate') is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being.
Whitman was born in 1819 and lived in NY; he was the son of a farmer turned carpenter. He began working in journalism at age 12 and was first publishing by age 15. he became a teacher (gave it up at 21) but stayed in the newspaper industry. He published work in the Democratic Review--the foremost magazine of the Democratic Party, and he was very political by his 20's. He began experimenting with poetry in 1848; he was influenced by music, esp. opera. He also became interested in Astronomy, and "Song of Myself" encompasses some "cosmic concepts". By 1854, he gave up both journalism and poetry to just write. He had developed strong ideas about Pantheism (the universe as a deity). "Leaves of Grass" was published in 1855; the publication of a book like this had been a life-long dream of his... he even wrote some anonymous reviews of his own book. In the mid 1850's, he was writing about the crisis of slavery. His 12 poems called "Live Oak, with Moss" tell a straightforward story of his love for another man. In it, he renounced his role of public poet, seeking knowledge and celebrating America, and chose to be happy in private with his lover. An openly homosexual manifesto would not be tolerated at this time, so he had to express himself more covertly, and did so with the 2nd edition of "Leave of Grass" in 1860. He acted as a hospital Attendant during the Civil WAr and wrote several war poems; he wrote "When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom'd", which is considered a masterpiece, after the death of Lincoln. While working in the Dept. of the Interior, the secretary got a hold of some of the sexual passages in "Leaves of Grass," and he was fired. The last years of his life, known as the "Washington Years", Whtiman held govt jobs and wrote about postwar America. After a stroke in 1873, he had to rely on jounalism again, but he was an outcast due to the sexual connotations of his writings. he was admired by great British poets and so was somewhat accepted in America, but with the 1881 edition of "Leaves of Grass", he was threatened to be prosecuted on the grounds of obscenity. The deathbed edition issued in 1892 was the 1881 edition.
Want to know more?? http://www.whitmanarchive.org/
"Song of Myself" rpresents his general view of humanity. The excerpt shows his intimate/erotic relationship with nature. The use of "YOU" in the poem invites the reader to share his vision... to "get at the meaning of poems" from the inner self. His view is characteristically inclusive and expansive. He uses repetition, questioning, and focuses on nature as the source of EVERYTHING.
From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
To read the rest of the poem, click here: http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_026.html
All of "Leaves of Grass" : http://www.bartleby.com/142/index1.html
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; 5 I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.
Few poems in Whitman's Leaves of Grass have as long and as complex a history of composition, publication, and revision as "The Sleepers." And no other Whitman poem speaks so directly to current psychological, sexual, and racial concerns.
Poem by Whitman: "The Sleepers" :
http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/whitman/sleepers/poem1881.html
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without
him.
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the
dusk.
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.
Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was
sweaty and panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are
journeying.
Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
T.S. Eliot
Born: 1888; Died 1965. T.S. Eliot famously remarked that he was a "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion". He felt he was both a "New Englander and a Southwesterner"-- he was born in St. Louis and died in London; both America and
England try to claim him as one of their own. His family visited Boston every summer and kept a connection to New England. He attended Harvard and excelled-- he received an M.A. in English Lit. He was fluent in many languages, including French and German.
In 1908, while browsing through the Harvard Library, Eliot came upon the book "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" by Arthur Symons; this book changed his life. His introduction to Symbolist poetry, (Remember Rimbaud), esp. Jules Laforgue, gave Eliot his own voice. He said that these were the poets from who "he first learned ot speak". He became Secretary of Harvard's literary magazine, the "Advocate". He would eventually return to Harvard to work on his Doctorate. In 1910, he spent the fall in Paris, France, where he "entered the intellectual life of France"... he was able to meet numerous contemporary artists and writers. It was here that he met Jean Verdenal, a medical student who would later die in war, a friend to whom he'd dedicate "Prufrock".
"In 1910 and 1911 Eliot copied into a leather notebook the poems that would establish his reputation: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "La Figlia Che Piange," "Preludes," and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night." Combining some of the robustness of Robert Browning's monologues with the incantatory elegance of symbolist verse, and compacting Laforgue's poetry of alienation with the moral earnestness of what Eliot once called "Boston doubt," these poems explore the subtleties of the unconscious with a caustic wit. Their effect was both unique and compelling, and their assurance staggered his contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript.His friend Conrad Aiken, for example, marveled at "how sharp and complete and sui generis the whole thing was, from the outset. The wholeness is there, from the very beginning."
"In August 1914 he was in London with Aiken and by September Aiken had shown Eliot's manuscript poems to Ezra Pound (leading American Poet), who, not easily impressed, was won over. Pound called on Eliot in late September and wrote to Harriet Monroe at Poetry magazine that Eliot had "actually trained himself and modernized himself on his own."The two initiated a collaboration that would change Anglo-American poetry, but not before Eliot put down deep English roots."
Through his friend Bertrand Russell (philosopher), Eliot would meet his wife. Eliot married Viven Haigh-Wood in 1915. She had physical and emotional problems, and Eliot's family never quite took to her. They would have no children. Eliot would take a job at a bank and would keep it-- balancing the work with his poetic endeavors.
"Prufrock and Other Poems" was released in 1917 with the financial backing of Ezra Pound. Through a very elite group of friends, Eliot found himself at the center of the intellectual world. He was able to spend time with leading figures in Poetry, Art, Philosophy, etc... he was in the right circles.
In 1921, Eliot's problems came to a head; he had impending guilt about his father's death and was dealing with the burden of his wife's physical and emotional problems, and Eliot suffered a nervous breakdown. He had 3 months of writer's block following this, but when he snapped out of it, the result was "a series of dramatic vignettes" , inspired by jazz,-- "intense, diverse and ryhtmic"-- and centered around Eliot's London life. A poem suffused with Eliot's horror of life, it was taken over by the postwar generation as a rallying cry for its sense of disillusionment: this was the poem that shaped the Modernist movement. Pound gave the work excessive praise. The poem was very successful and won the 2,000$ prize and publication in "Dial", a literary magazine. However, Eliot's life was still distressed, especially after Viven's NEAR death in 1923-- Eliot was close to a second breakdown. It was after this that his poetry would begin to deal with religious situations. It was then that he began to "exchange the symbolist fluidity of the psychological lyric for a more traditional dramatic form."
After 1925, his marriage steadily deteriorated, but he did not consider divorce due to his Anglican religious beliefs. Viven was committed to a mental hospital in 1938. During the war, he would publish a 4-part structure poem very sombre in voice, the last of which, "Little Gidding" would examine the "subject of the individual's duties in a world of human suffering". "Four Quartets" would replace "The Waste Land" as Eliot's most celebrated work. After the war, Eliot would write no more major poetic works... he devoted the end of his career to writing literary criticism (most notably on the French Symbolists) and to drama.
One guiding theme in Eliot's poetry is "love in its various forms"... And like with "Prufrock", Eliot's poems project a painful sincerity.
:"Lovesong" is about a man who ironically never sings his love song to any woman. It begins with an epigraph that takes us to Dante's Hell-- the idea is of a voice that is a "flickering flame", a voice that cannot be understood. There is an intimacy about the poem; it begins with "you and I" on the way to a party. The 2nd paragraph evokes a modern world that is tainted (symbols?). Then there's a discussion about time as he contemplates the notion that we can put thigns off because there will "always be more time" (what do you think about this?). He questions himself-- wonders if he should approach this woman, but his self-doubt keeps him from doing it.. Inconsequential things, like his bald spot, hinders his confidence. He worries about how he is perceived and is bothered by his appearance. He says that he has lived for a while now but can't figure out how to "presume", to move forward. He discusses the women that he's known; he is taken by their perfume and their dress, yet he can't approach them-- can only admire them from afar. He admits, "I was afraid" and contemplates if it would have been worth it to approach a woman and let her in... is it "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all??" He talks about who he is not-- not "hamlet, a lord, a prince", etc... and equates himself to "the FOOL", the joke whom no one will take seriously. He 'grows old' and is lonely, and it ends this way.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, 1917
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”--
95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Below is a student video project interpreting the poem--not a very good interpretation, but they sure made a good quality video!
The second one is better, but spell the authors' names correctly-- Eliot has but ONE "l" in his name! :) :
England try to claim him as one of their own. His family visited Boston every summer and kept a connection to New England. He attended Harvard and excelled-- he received an M.A. in English Lit. He was fluent in many languages, including French and German.
In 1908, while browsing through the Harvard Library, Eliot came upon the book "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" by Arthur Symons; this book changed his life. His introduction to Symbolist poetry, (Remember Rimbaud), esp. Jules Laforgue, gave Eliot his own voice. He said that these were the poets from who "he first learned ot speak". He became Secretary of Harvard's literary magazine, the "Advocate". He would eventually return to Harvard to work on his Doctorate. In 1910, he spent the fall in Paris, France, where he "entered the intellectual life of France"... he was able to meet numerous contemporary artists and writers. It was here that he met Jean Verdenal, a medical student who would later die in war, a friend to whom he'd dedicate "Prufrock".
"In 1910 and 1911 Eliot copied into a leather notebook the poems that would establish his reputation: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "La Figlia Che Piange," "Preludes," and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night." Combining some of the robustness of Robert Browning's monologues with the incantatory elegance of symbolist verse, and compacting Laforgue's poetry of alienation with the moral earnestness of what Eliot once called "Boston doubt," these poems explore the subtleties of the unconscious with a caustic wit. Their effect was both unique and compelling, and their assurance staggered his contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript.His friend Conrad Aiken, for example, marveled at "how sharp and complete and sui generis the whole thing was, from the outset. The wholeness is there, from the very beginning."
"In August 1914 he was in London with Aiken and by September Aiken had shown Eliot's manuscript poems to Ezra Pound (leading American Poet), who, not easily impressed, was won over. Pound called on Eliot in late September and wrote to Harriet Monroe at Poetry magazine that Eliot had "actually trained himself and modernized himself on his own."The two initiated a collaboration that would change Anglo-American poetry, but not before Eliot put down deep English roots."
Through his friend Bertrand Russell (philosopher), Eliot would meet his wife. Eliot married Viven Haigh-Wood in 1915. She had physical and emotional problems, and Eliot's family never quite took to her. They would have no children. Eliot would take a job at a bank and would keep it-- balancing the work with his poetic endeavors.
"Prufrock and Other Poems" was released in 1917 with the financial backing of Ezra Pound. Through a very elite group of friends, Eliot found himself at the center of the intellectual world. He was able to spend time with leading figures in Poetry, Art, Philosophy, etc... he was in the right circles.
In 1921, Eliot's problems came to a head; he had impending guilt about his father's death and was dealing with the burden of his wife's physical and emotional problems, and Eliot suffered a nervous breakdown. He had 3 months of writer's block following this, but when he snapped out of it, the result was "a series of dramatic vignettes" , inspired by jazz,-- "intense, diverse and ryhtmic"-- and centered around Eliot's London life. A poem suffused with Eliot's horror of life, it was taken over by the postwar generation as a rallying cry for its sense of disillusionment: this was the poem that shaped the Modernist movement. Pound gave the work excessive praise. The poem was very successful and won the 2,000$ prize and publication in "Dial", a literary magazine. However, Eliot's life was still distressed, especially after Viven's NEAR death in 1923-- Eliot was close to a second breakdown. It was after this that his poetry would begin to deal with religious situations. It was then that he began to "exchange the symbolist fluidity of the psychological lyric for a more traditional dramatic form."
After 1925, his marriage steadily deteriorated, but he did not consider divorce due to his Anglican religious beliefs. Viven was committed to a mental hospital in 1938. During the war, he would publish a 4-part structure poem very sombre in voice, the last of which, "Little Gidding" would examine the "subject of the individual's duties in a world of human suffering". "Four Quartets" would replace "The Waste Land" as Eliot's most celebrated work. After the war, Eliot would write no more major poetic works... he devoted the end of his career to writing literary criticism (most notably on the French Symbolists) and to drama.
One guiding theme in Eliot's poetry is "love in its various forms"... And like with "Prufrock", Eliot's poems project a painful sincerity.
:"Lovesong" is about a man who ironically never sings his love song to any woman. It begins with an epigraph that takes us to Dante's Hell-- the idea is of a voice that is a "flickering flame", a voice that cannot be understood. There is an intimacy about the poem; it begins with "you and I" on the way to a party. The 2nd paragraph evokes a modern world that is tainted (symbols?). Then there's a discussion about time as he contemplates the notion that we can put thigns off because there will "always be more time" (what do you think about this?). He questions himself-- wonders if he should approach this woman, but his self-doubt keeps him from doing it.. Inconsequential things, like his bald spot, hinders his confidence. He worries about how he is perceived and is bothered by his appearance. He says that he has lived for a while now but can't figure out how to "presume", to move forward. He discusses the women that he's known; he is taken by their perfume and their dress, yet he can't approach them-- can only admire them from afar. He admits, "I was afraid" and contemplates if it would have been worth it to approach a woman and let her in... is it "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all??" He talks about who he is not-- not "hamlet, a lord, a prince", etc... and equates himself to "the FOOL", the joke whom no one will take seriously. He 'grows old' and is lonely, and it ends this way.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, 1917
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”--
95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Below is a student video project interpreting the poem--not a very good interpretation, but they sure made a good quality video!
The second one is better, but spell the authors' names correctly-- Eliot has but ONE "l" in his name! :) :
Raymond Carver
Biography Raymond Carver
The American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, on May 25, 1938, and lived in Port Angeles, Washington during his last ten, sober years until his death from cancer on August 2, 1988. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979 and was twice awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1983 Carver received the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award which gave him $35,000 per year tax free and required that he give up any employment other than writing, and in 1985 Poetry magazine\'s Levinson Prize. In 1988 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Hartford. He received a Brandeis Citation for fiction in 1988. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
At least that\'s the basic biography. Of course there\'s no room in it for the nature of the hardship he and his family went through during most of those fifty years between birth and death. There\'s no mention of his marriage at 19, the birth of his two children, Christine and Vance, by the time he was 21. No mention of his sometimes ferocious fights with his first wife, Maryann. No mention, either, of his near death, the hospitalizations - four times in 1976 and 1977 - for acute alcoholism. -from agonia.net
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?
The American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, on May 25, 1938, and lived in Port Angeles, Washington during his last ten, sober years until his death from cancer on August 2, 1988. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979 and was twice awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1983 Carver received the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award which gave him $35,000 per year tax free and required that he give up any employment other than writing, and in 1985 Poetry magazine\'s Levinson Prize. In 1988 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Hartford. He received a Brandeis Citation for fiction in 1988. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
At least that\'s the basic biography. Of course there\'s no room in it for the nature of the hardship he and his family went through during most of those fifty years between birth and death. There\'s no mention of his marriage at 19, the birth of his two children, Christine and Vance, by the time he was 21. No mention of his sometimes ferocious fights with his first wife, Maryann. No mention, either, of his near death, the hospitalizations - four times in 1976 and 1977 - for acute alcoholism. -from agonia.net
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?