Song of a Reformed Headhunter

TLS January 15 2010 from Cairns Craig's Commentary piece "The last Romantics" on the influence of Herbert Grierson on Irish, English and Scottish modernisms: To those who questioned whether it was possible for love poetry to "speak a language which is impassioned and expressive but lacks beauty", Grierson argued that Donne's was a "dramatic" poetry which "utters the very movement and moment of passion itself". More like a novel, Donne's poetry mimics passion in a "vivid realism" with profound psychological insights: "The central theme of his poetry is ever his own intense personal moods, as a lover, a friend, an analyst of his own experiences worldly and religious. His philosophy cannot unify these experiences.  [bold emphasis mine] It is used to record the reaction of his restless and acute mind on the intense experience of the moment, to supply a reading of it in the light now of one, now of another philosophica...

dédicace / dedication To the new temple built with stones the hue of pigeons, I dedicate these seven pairs of feral rock pigeons. Three roads crisscross to form a triangular park. Scatter sunflower seeds and they will bring the pigeons. To celebrate a son a village roasts a pig but lovers feast on twisted skewers of wood pigeons. Not only to the Japanese is a gift a claim. You know I want too much in exchange for these pigeons. Choose perfection of the life or of the work, cries the large angel with a voice damn like a pigeon’s. I stand on a small stage before a blank audience, and pull from a white glove a fluttering grey pigeon. He does not wish to choose between a dove and dove. In Jee’s ribcage contracts the muscle of a pigeon.

TLS November 28 2008 from Alexander Murray's review of Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (until March 22): This strong concept of state was expressed in the Emperor's status. Constantine's move had exposed the imperial office to theocratic traditions older and stronger than anything comparable in the West, traditions which saw a ruler as quasi-divine. These traditions were now to be reflected in the Emperor's cult and court, and included such embellishments as those singing birds made of gold, which Liudprand of Cremona saw on a visit in 949-50, and which would inspire W. B. Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium".  * Consider the ubiquitous Byzantine image of Christos Pantocrator, "Ruler of All". Is he really human, or superhuman? The same man surely could not also have undergone torture and death, like a criminal. This tension left its mark on many artefacts, among them the early crucifixes . . . . Even then, a crucifixion image had to show...

Why does the film quote Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"? In the poem, the sensual world of the young is not for the old because it is at the same time the world of death. Seeking to transcend death, the speaker leaves that country for Byzantium, for "the artifice of eternity." While the brothers Coens' film is certainly concerned with human mortality, it is not impressed by the Yeatsian longing for artistic immortality. Yeats's dualism does not drive the film; the film, and the fates of its characters, are driven by the monochromatic force of chance. If the film is not in dialogue with Yeats's poem, that is partly because it is a monologue. Before the first half hour is up, you get its thesis: chance decides our fate, and the hunter can easily become the hunted. For the first part of the thesis, you get the coin toss practised by the psychopathic hitman, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), to decide if his victim lives or dies; for the second part of the t...

After a few kneejerk reactions, this PFFA thread is developing into an interesting discussion about what Keats meant when he said he hated poetry that has a design on the reader, and about the necessity of considering the reader in one's writing. There are also side comments on Damien Hurst, T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Hopkins and Yeats.