Category Archive: Poetry
Dante Defeats Disappointment
Image of Dante by Agnolo Bronzino
Giosuè Carducci (27 July 1835 to 16 February 1907) refused the Dante Chair in Rome because, among other things, he feared its politicisation, no doubt correctly. Yet it must have rankled because Carducci knew what many of the wise knew: that the life and work of Dante Alighieri is a miraculous example to all. In these times of artistic, financial, intellectual and moral bankruptcy, verged on a new theocratic age, it is salutary to consider this extract of Carducci’s poem to Dante: “Dante, how comes it that my vows I pay To thy proud image? Still I meditate The verse…
Continue Reading →“I am monarch of all I survey”
(Selkirk on his island c/- Hopea114y)
February 2nd (1709) – Regretful beachcomber Alexander Selkirk is rescued. Selkirk’s sojourn inspired Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first genuine English novel, and the following poem by William Cowper: Alexander Selkirk during his Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms Than reign in this horrible place. I…
Continue Reading →Collective Birthday Cake
22 January finds a number of salient birthdays: Lord Byron, 22 January 1788 The Great Romantic Poet, the great romantic, beloved of Goethe. “I may not overlap the eternal bar Built up between us, and will die alone, Beholding with the dark eye of a seer The evil days to gifted souls foreshown, Foretelling them to those who will not hear. As in the old time, till the hour be come When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear, And make them own the Prophet in his tomb.” (The Prophecy of Dante) Conrad Veidt, 22 January 1893 A…
Continue Reading →If…
Rudyard Kipling born today, 30 December 1865, in Bombay (now Mumbai). If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and…
Continue Reading →Leonard Cohen
(photo by Rama)
Leonard Cohen (21 September, 1934 to 7 November, 2016) With a voice even less impressive and more throwaway than Dylan, like a sombre, kindly and perhaps slightly whiskey-giddy uncle, singing his niece to sleep. A sublime indifference to Fame; a gorgeous disregard for money matters, such that he failed to notice his management was cleaning him out. A true poet’s sense, and it is rare, for true poetry to bind with popular music to advantage. Except he did it, in First We Take Manhattan, Dance Me To The End Of Love, Famous Blue Raincoat, So Long, Marianne, and one of the best…
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