This may be the best thing I'll read all day...or week. It led me to so much inward thinking. Thank you, Greg, for introducing me to Paul Zolbrod, who reintroduced me to Longfellow.
I really enjoyed this..some poetry, maybe just one stanza will catch you in your heart, make you feel and stay. In today's world of endless news, memes and sound bites, we have lost a lot, I think, and perhaps a reason why so many seem unsettled and depressed.
I am a child of WWII and our earlier experiences of poetry in school were much more of the "simple truth" kind, though not much of Longfellow beyond Hiawatha or The Children's Hour. I left it behind when I discovered Yeats, who still often used meter and rhyme but ALSO made us think about ideas beyond our own inwardness. The Second Coming is filled with difficult ideas --to really understand it you have to understand Yeats' whole theory of Anima Mundi. But man, is everyone quoting it today--and it isn't rhymed or metered.
I'm afraid I do find Longfellow way too simplistic. I don't find modernist poetry particularly unsonorous--in fact, is the the sonority WITHIN the lines of free verse that appeals most to me. This is particularly true of Stevens, whose themes often echo the musing of Coleridge on the interaction of perception and reality.
I had occasion just yesterday to look at The Wasteland in light of our current situation. Yes, it is way complicated. But not fully. Consider these lines, as clear and relevant today to thoughts of war, particularly in Gaza, as to they were post WWI:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
I agree with much of what you say, and still regard T.S. Eliot and Stevens exceptional for reasons you express. Yeats, too, occupies a high place in our pantheon of greats. As to Longfellow's being simplistic, in many cases that's the case, but in a fundamental way, that can be effective as a teaching tool. On the other hand, look for subtleties in the versification, or even the diction.
Quite probably. But he has never left me going WOW like Stevens does, for example.
And, in the isolation of the sky,/At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make/Ambiguous undulations as they sink/Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, /The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, /Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, /And of ourselves and of our origins,/In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
or my favorite:
For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
These for me, in the context of the poem and outside it, make me look inward whenever I read them.
I do agree with you completely on the cacophony that is the Internet.
Just to say I enjoyed this whole exchange, and also, a pox on these pretentious people who use lines from "The Second Coming" to title their books. ; )
You, sir, are an inspiration! Being an octogenarian myself, steeped by my one-room-school teacher grandfather in McGuffey Readers, I’m close enough to your generation to understand the value system of your youth and what we’ve lost as a society. I remember well “The Village Blacksmith,” but the one-size-fits-all public school system we had back then, with its multiple choice tests, largely failed those of us a little smarter than average. I got straight ‘A’s without reading anything. As I frequently comment to Greg, and now you, I value the literary appreciation classes you provide, as I never had an inspiring school teacher. The analogy between Longfellow and Rockwell’s paintings helps a lot!
Thanks for selecting an excellent replacement, I felt like I was sitting in a university lecture hall. Sadly poetry has not been a thing for me. Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is my only real connection to poetry but Paul Zolbrod makes me want to devote more attention to poetry. Have good travels, you certainly have the best traveling companions.
Would that the students (many perhaps starved for literature) in Florida, read Longfellow’s “Dream of a Slave”, maybe they would learn of history after all.
The rhythm and imagery of poetry is the ritual that we need to help us remember and reconnect with the knowing that modernity has seduced us into forgetting.
I wouldn't normally have considered Longfellow, so thank you for this!
This may be the best thing I'll read all day...or week. It led me to so much inward thinking. Thank you, Greg, for introducing me to Paul Zolbrod, who reintroduced me to Longfellow.
Excellent ! There are a distinct lack of compilations of Longfellow poems on Amazon, but I’m buying one
I really enjoyed this..some poetry, maybe just one stanza will catch you in your heart, make you feel and stay. In today's world of endless news, memes and sound bites, we have lost a lot, I think, and perhaps a reason why so many seem unsettled and depressed.
Thank you so much for this Greg! Wonderful. A lost appreciation restored.
I am a child of WWII and our earlier experiences of poetry in school were much more of the "simple truth" kind, though not much of Longfellow beyond Hiawatha or The Children's Hour. I left it behind when I discovered Yeats, who still often used meter and rhyme but ALSO made us think about ideas beyond our own inwardness. The Second Coming is filled with difficult ideas --to really understand it you have to understand Yeats' whole theory of Anima Mundi. But man, is everyone quoting it today--and it isn't rhymed or metered.
I'm afraid I do find Longfellow way too simplistic. I don't find modernist poetry particularly unsonorous--in fact, is the the sonority WITHIN the lines of free verse that appeals most to me. This is particularly true of Stevens, whose themes often echo the musing of Coleridge on the interaction of perception and reality.
I had occasion just yesterday to look at The Wasteland in light of our current situation. Yes, it is way complicated. But not fully. Consider these lines, as clear and relevant today to thoughts of war, particularly in Gaza, as to they were post WWI:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I agree with much of what you say, and still regard T.S. Eliot and Stevens exceptional for reasons you express. Yeats, too, occupies a high place in our pantheon of greats. As to Longfellow's being simplistic, in many cases that's the case, but in a fundamental way, that can be effective as a teaching tool. On the other hand, look for subtleties in the versification, or even the diction.
Quite probably. But he has never left me going WOW like Stevens does, for example.
And, in the isolation of the sky,/At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make/Ambiguous undulations as they sink/Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, /The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, /Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, /And of ourselves and of our origins,/In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
or my favorite:
For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
These for me, in the context of the poem and outside it, make me look inward whenever I read them.
I do agree with you completely on the cacophony that is the Internet.
Just to say I enjoyed this whole exchange, and also, a pox on these pretentious people who use lines from "The Second Coming" to title their books. ; )
you are in excellent company. Ceremony of Innocence has the most hits, however. Rough Beast does come close.
You, sir, are an inspiration! Being an octogenarian myself, steeped by my one-room-school teacher grandfather in McGuffey Readers, I’m close enough to your generation to understand the value system of your youth and what we’ve lost as a society. I remember well “The Village Blacksmith,” but the one-size-fits-all public school system we had back then, with its multiple choice tests, largely failed those of us a little smarter than average. I got straight ‘A’s without reading anything. As I frequently comment to Greg, and now you, I value the literary appreciation classes you provide, as I never had an inspiring school teacher. The analogy between Longfellow and Rockwell’s paintings helps a lot!
Thanks for selecting an excellent replacement, I felt like I was sitting in a university lecture hall. Sadly poetry has not been a thing for me. Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is my only real connection to poetry but Paul Zolbrod makes me want to devote more attention to poetry. Have good travels, you certainly have the best traveling companions.
Would that the students (many perhaps starved for literature) in Florida, read Longfellow’s “Dream of a Slave”, maybe they would learn of history after all.
Well done.
Thank you
The rhythm and imagery of poetry is the ritual that we need to help us remember and reconnect with the knowing that modernity has seduced us into forgetting.
I wouldn't normally have considered Longfellow, so thank you for this!