Waste Land Limericks -- Wendy Cope

(Poem #859) Waste Land Limericks I In April one seldom feels cheerful; Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful; Clairvoyantes distress me, Commuters depress me-- Met Stetson and gave him an earful. II She sat on a mighty fine chair, Sparks flew as she tidied her hair; She asks many questions, I make few suggestions-- Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair! III The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep; Tiresias fancies a peep-- A typist is laid, A record is played-- Wei la la. After this it gets deep. IV A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot About birds and his business--the lot, Which is no surprise, Since he'd met his demise And been left in the ocean to rot. V No water. Dry rocks and dry throats, Then thunder, a shower of quotes From the Sanskrit and Dante. Da. Damyata. Shantih. I hope you'll make sense of the notes. -- Wendy Cope

Reams of critical analysis are all very well, but sometimes I think the best
thing to have come out of "The Waste Land" is Wendy Cope's inspired summary
of the poem. Her stripped down version of Eliot's rather impenetrable
masterpiece is (as we've come to expect from Cope) excruciatingly funny, but
it's also amazingly faithful to the original - she seems to capture the
essence of each (long and complex) section in just a few short lines. And in
the pithiest of language, too: phrases such as "After this it gets deep"
invariably set me laughing out loud.

thomas.

[Links etc]

Wendy Cope rules. Check out
Poem #587, Strugnell's Rubaiyat
Poem #693, Strugnell's Haiku
on the Minstrels website.

T. S. Eliot rules too, but in a more, well, rarefied way. See
Poem #9, La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl)
Poem #107, Preludes
Poem #193, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock
Poem #248, Sweeney Among the Nightingales
Poem #258, Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Poem #291, The Journey of the Magi
Poem #466, Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Poem #532, Little Gidding
Poem #574, Growltiger's Last Stand
Poem #630, To Walter de la Mare
Poem #846, The Hippopotamus

and especially
Poem #354, The Waste Land (Part IV)
Poem #858, The Waste Land (Part V)

The entire text of this poem, quite possibly the most influential of the
20th century, can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

"The Waste Land" has a (not completely unwarranted) reputation for being
rather hard to parse. I recommend Hugh Kenner's essay "The Invisible Poet",
and "The Waste Land: A Critique of the Myth" by Cleanth Brooks for perceptive
(if somewhat dated) readings of the poem, and descriptions of Eliot's
then-revolutionary poetic technique. My enjoyment of Cope's limericks was
enhanced immeasurably by my reading of these two scholarly articles (and
others; John Wain's Waste Land Casebook is a good compendium, if you really
want to go into depth).

The Waste Land (Part V) -- T S Eliot

Guest poem submitted by Cristina Gazzieri:

(Poem #858) The Waste Land (Part V) V. What the Thunder Said Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped, in silence. Then spoke the thunder D A _Datta_: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms D A _Dayadhvam_: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus D A _Damyata_: the boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with the sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands I sat upon a shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down, falling down falling down _Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina Quando fiam ut chelidon_ - O swallow swallow _Le Prince d'aquitaine à la tour abolie_ These statements I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih -- T S Eliot

 From "What the Thunder Said", the fifth and final section of "The Waste
Land", 1922.
 Words and phrases surrounded by _underscores_ are supposed to be in
italics.

 These are the last, conclusive, lines of the "Waste Land", which is a text
which often frightens the reader for the obscurity and complexity  of its
references. Yet, I think that, with just a few clues, the text can be fully
enjoyed by any lover of poetry.

 The "Waste Land" is the story of a journey or "Quest" that the man of the
early 20th century makes through the sterility and spiritual aridity of his
modern world, until he arrives, in this final lines, at the Ganges, the
sacred river, where, eventually, he finds some answers to his existential
questions.

 "Ganga", the river Ganges is sunken. Water, a symbol of life and fertility
is scarce in the modern world, yet, here he hears the words of the thunder
tThe voice of God according to many ancient religions). The thunder speaks
Sanskrit, because Eliot goes back to the cradle of Western civilisation to
the roots and the most vital source of Western culture. The Thunder-God
repeats to man the three imperatives of the Upanishad, a Hindu sacred book:
        DATTA = give
        DAYADHVAM = co-operate, accept the others
        DAMYATA = control
 So the spiritual quest of the modern wanderer, the modern knight comes to
these ancient, elementary, basic precepts of life on which to rebuild a
crumbled civilisation.

 Yet, the poem does not finish on these three imperatives. Eliot now
introduces the image of the fisher, (which is reminiscent of many legends
and myths: the Fisher King, King  Arthur, Christ, and which represents Man
in his best specifications); this man wants to reorganise his life, his
kingdom, his future, saving something from the collapse of the ideals that
he has witnessed. Of course, he saves poetry, (Dante, Latin literature,
French poetry, Elizabethan drama) which contains those elements of the
growth of the human soul that must not be lost. Probably, in this context,
the last words, "Shantih shantih shantih" (which mean "peace" in Hindi, and
which conclude the Upanishad), are, at the same time, a message, a farewell
and an element of quotation from a consciously "poetic" text  Eliot
eminently loved.

 I have certainly oversimplified things, but basically, starting from these
ideas, I think a reader can go deep further into the interpretation of the
text and find a rich texture of references and suggestions.

Cristina.

Links:

  Poem #354, "The Waste Land (Part IV)"

Chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon' -- Algernon Charles Swinburne

Guest poem submitted by Vikram Doctor:

(Poem #857) Chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon' Before the beginning of years, There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after, And death below and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span, With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south, They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labor and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. -- Algernon Charles Swinburne

Swinburne is known for the musicality of his verse. There's another
frequently anthologised part of Atlanta in Calydon, "When the hounds of
spring are on their winter traces", which is one of the most insistently
rhythmic and musical pieces of verse I know. But he also had the ability to
create verse which is almost epigrammatic in its precision and polish -
without any loss of musicality. These lines sound like they are engraved on
the wall of a tomb - omniscient, tragic, hard edged and clear. They are so
simple that they enter your memory almost without your knowing it.

Vikram.

[thomas adds]

Swinburne's poetry fascinates me, and repels me. There's no denying the
felicity (I would hesitate to call it 'beauty') of his verse, the flowing
end-stopped lines, lush with alliteration, laden with promise. But it's a
promise which never seems to be fulfilled. Instead, the poetry turns in on
itself, phrase piled on phrase until the reader is left gasping for any
breath of meaning, any escape from the suffocating music of the words. The
synaesthesia they induce is tempting at first, but its sickly sweet odour
quickly becomes cloying.

Part of the problem is the poet's irritating vagueness. Swinburne never
particularizes; indeed, he delights in using twenty words where one will do.
He never offers details for readers to latch on to; his material is almost
completely abstract. And yet, to rebuke him for this is to miss the point
entirely: for Swinburne, words _are_ meaning; they do not exist to describe
an external world; they form a world in themselves. Their vagueness is not
the vagueness of bad poetry; rather, it forms a vital part of the poet's
style. Eliot puts it well: "The diffuseness is essential; had Swinburne
practised greater concentration his verse would be, not better in the same
kind, but a different thing. His diffuseness is one of his glories".

thomas.

Epigram -- Martial

Guest poem submitted by Salil Murthy:

(Poem #856) Epigram You puff the poets of other days, The living you deplore. Spare me the accolade: your praise Is not worth dying for. -- Martial

All I know of this gem is that Martial wrote it of a critic of his; the chap
must have curled up and died. I read this ages ago and the fragments have
been buzzing around in my head ever since we got onto this theme. Classy
little number, this one.

Salil.

[Minstrels Links]

The theme referred to above was one on epigrams, run earlier this year:
 Poem #665, Dreams -- Robert Herrick
 Poem #666, Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog which I gave to His
Royal Highness -- Alexander Pope
 Poem #667, Reflections on Ice-Breaking -- Ogden Nash
 Poem #668, On Problems -- Piet Hein
 Poem #669, Epigram on Charles II -- John Wilmot

Note that the last of the epigrammists above took Martial's advice, and
composed his couplets while Charles was still alive.

[Biography]

Marcus Valerius Martialis was a Roman poet who brought the Latin epigram to
perfection and provided in it a picture of Roman society during the early
empire. Martial was born in a Roman colony in Spain. In his early 20s
Martial made his way to the capital of the empire and attached himself as
client to the powerful and talented family of the Senecas, who were
Spaniards like himself. Yet precisely how Martial lived between AD 65 and 80
is not known.

When he first came to Rome, Martial lived in rather humble circumstances in
a garret on the Quirinal Hill. He gradually earned recognition, however, and
was able to acquire, in addition to a town house on the Quirinal, a small
country estate near Nomentum (about 12 miles northeast of Rome). In time
Martial gained the notice of the court. As his fame grew, he became
acquainted with the literary circles of his day.

Martial's first book, On the Spectacles (AD 80), contained 33
undistinguished epigrams celebrating the shows held in the Colosseum. These
poems are scarcely improved by their gross adulation of the emperor
Domitian. In the year 84 or 85 appeared two undistinguished books that
consist almost entirely of couplets describing presents given to guests at
the December festival of the Saturnalia. In the next 15 or 16 years,
however, appeared the 12 books of epigrams on which his renown rests. After
34 years in Rome, Martial returned to Spain, where his last book was
published, probably in AD 102. He died not much over a year later in his
early 60s.

Martial is virtually the creator of the modern epigram. Though some of the
epigrams (1,561 in all) are devoted to scenic descriptions, most are about
people. Martial made frequent use of the mordant epigram bearing a "sting"
in its tail, i.e. a single unexpected word at the poem's end that completes
a pun, antithesis, or an ingenious ambiguity. Poems of this sort would later
greatly influence the use of the epigram in the literature of England,
France, Spain, and Italy.

        -- [broken link] http://library.thinkquest.org/11402/bio_martial.html

Lady Xi -- Wang Wei

(Poem #855) Lady Xi No present royal favour could efface The memory of the love that once she knew. Seeing a flower filled her eyes with tears. She did not speak a word to the King of Chu. -- Wang Wei

 Original circa 8th century AD.
 Translated by Vikram Seth.
 From "Three Chinese Poets", 1994.

[Notes]

 The King of Chu in the seventh century BC defeated the ruler of Xi and took
his wife. She had children by him but never spoke to him.
 Fourteen centuries later Wang Wei, then twenty years old, wrote this poem
in the following circumstances. One of his patrons, a prince, had acquired
the wife of a cake-seller. A year later he asked her if she still loved her
husband, and she gave no answer. The man was sent for, and when she saw him
her eyes filled with tears.
 This took place before a small but distinguished literary gathering, and
the prince, moved, asked for poems on the subject. Wang Wei's poem was
finished first, and when it was read out, everyone else agreed it was
pointless to try to write something better.
 The prince reportedly returned the cake-seller's wife to her husband.
        -- Vikram Seth, "Three Chinese Poets"

[Commentary]

I've always found Chinese poetry to be imbued with a peculiar poignancy, a
sense of loss which is no less acute for being remembered. I don't know if
this an artefact of translation, or part of the essence of the poetry
itself, informed as it is by the weight of millennia of history. Probably a
bit of both; either way, I like it.

thomas.

[On Wang Wei, Tu Fu and Li Po]

 To compare the incomparable, if the difficulty of translating Wang Wei is
akin to the difficulty of playing Mozart, the difficulty of translating Du
Fu with his rich counterpoint of historical allusion can be compared to that
of playing Bach. As for translating the wild and romantic Li Bai -- it is
rather like playing Beethoven, often full of sound and fury, signifying
(usually) a great deal. But in each poem, as important as the texture or
tone of the work is the exact content of what is being said -- and the
translator's task is not to improvise cadenzas in the spirit of the piece
but to stick, as tellingly as he can, to the score.
        -- Vikram Seth, "Three Chinese Poets"

[Minstrels Links]

 Li Po:
Poem #504, About Tu Fu
Poem #683, To Tu Fu from Shantung
Poem #749, Parting
Poem #794, In the Quiet Night
Poem #826, Self-Abandonment

 Vikram Seth:
Poem #650, All You Who Sleep Tonight
Poem #754, Protocols
Poem #460, Round and Round