Category Archive: Poetry
Straggler
"Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Böcklin (1880)
He felt he had lost the edge, Somewhere along the way. He thought he could only improve, That his powers were permanent, But he badly misjudged his talents And the transient mood of the throng, Woke to find he had lost the edge, Somewhere along the way. So he glanced more sharply, more often At the image growing closer before him; Rubbed the surface of the mirror with vigor, To gain clarity of perception, But with deep disappointment, he realized That the portrait grew ever still fainter, One day it would blacken and vanish, Somewhere along the way.
Continue Reading →The Book Show
Summer 2014, Ultimo TVC loves this show, although the initial set was a shameless rip off of “Hidden”. A great argument for the national broadcaster, although surely the Fry-B-C could muck along for a few millions less? We attended a taping some time back (incognito) and thus got stalker-close to Ms Byrne, Ms Hardy and Mr Steger plus guest. Jennifer Byrne is the perfect host – charming, open-minded, enthusiastic (but no pushover – she does generally not abide shite). Marieke Hardy is P’s favourite, hardiest critic – she and P may share few opinions overall, but when she hates something,…
Continue Reading →Ariadne & Theseus at the Mortlock Chamber
Picture courtesy of Dr Daniela Kaleva
To the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library of SA, to hear L’Arianna abbandonata e gloriosa and Lamento d’Arianna (1608), works reconstructed from Monteverdi’s fragmented scores, with solo voice and harpsichord, accompanied by the odd stage effect to evoke waves crashing on lonely Naxos, where (failed Argonaut) Theseus has parked Ariadne to show his gratitude for her help surviving the labyrinth on Minos. This paring away eschews the go-for-baroque approach that could overwhelm the purity of the harmonics, which are quite reminiscent of Purcell’s Dido pieces…
Continue Reading →Piercing the Arras of Canonical Poetry
Poetry is the line of guys doing a Mexican wave in school; the lady laughing in church; the breeze in the trees and your hair on a still day. First lines in poems are for indices only: here, TVC gives you some random, stellar lines from virtuoso poems. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing under the arch of a railway: ‘love has no ending’ (W. H. Auden, As I walked Out One Evening) I do not stir. The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star, the dead bell, the dead bell. (Sylvia Plath…
Continue Reading →The Aeneid
Virgil - A Roman Representation.
(by Virgil) Iliad begat Aenid begat Commedia…Virgil links two classic works 2,000 years apart with a masterpiece of his own, wherein Aeneas goes to Rome and wreaks Trojan revenge on the successors of Attic Greece, with everyone satisfyingly getting what’s coming to them. Full of images and phrases resplendent either in English or in dodgy Latin. Thus Walter Pater (in Appreciations) “I am reading over again the Aeneid, certain verses of which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in one’s head, by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are…
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