09-05-2015, 07:43 PM
(09-05-2015, 03:35 PM)ellajam Wrote: It makes one understand why "poets" work so hard to whittle away each piece down to its essence, in its normal state the brain is quite the whirlwind. I'll have to find that Line Length thread for quix. It got butchered with True's deletions but, milo, you were so good at quoting along the way I think last time I read it it still held up.
I see I made the odd contribution, and as I read through, wondered why I had ever let some stuff pass. Milo's version of 'non sequitur' - petty to point out. Dale's initial talk about the origins of English, and the poets trying to impress 'the French Court' , well, perhaps one should have clarified that yes, of course Old English was Germanic, and inclined to have the verb at the end, doing this in verse or the curious kind of Wisdom Literature, was quite natural:
Ræd sceal mon secgan, rune writan, leoþ gesingan, lofes gearnian.
One should give counsel, write secrets, sing songs, earn praise.
The origin elaborated by Dale, suggests to me simply that inversion is in the DNA of the language. How else would it make its way onto the Hallmark cards so loved by the public, and sniffed at by the Ivorians from their towers above?
And, how could I have left Milo crying in the wilderness, for just one line --just one line, written in the last 100 years by a published poet? Not good or bad -- just published. Since 1915 (was that the year inversion's permit ran out? I had wondered about that one). If I were going to respond now, a poem written by Edith Sitwell might come to mind. It was about the Blitz, in 1940. She was a nutty old girl, but fifteen years later, I had to study the poem in school. It is called - don't laugh - 'Still falls the Rain' . I suppose more moving would be ''Still pissing down, ffs''
But (conjunction, albeit disjunctive!) I have not taken these months to return, hurdling all the Pig's barriers, merely to rake up old embers; far from it! I shall join you in a minimalist mode, whittling away all the adornments I once thought beautiful, till nothing remains, and I shall discard all the possessions I previously thought lovely, and live in a pure white minimalist globe. It may not make me happy, in the bourgeois sense of the word, but by fuck it'll be meaningful when people come. If they ever do.
