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Carpal Tunnel
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Faun
Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.
No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.
An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns. Marked how god rose
And galloped woodward in that guise.
Sylvia Plath
Will someone here comment on this poem, in a PM or otherwise?
Thanks,
WindWood
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old hand
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old hand
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Faun:A Semantical Dissection
...ooh goody,I like to interpret poems.
MECHANICS: Faun is a well crafted, maybe even brilliantly, crafted poem. The poem is vocally pleasing. The use of thirty-seven "o's" in eighty-nine words bring about a uniting flow to the lyrics. This occurrence of "o's" is about three times normal usage. But better still, Path's use of seven "double o's",(about ten times normal usage)gives the readers the impression that the owl eyes described in the text are looking up from the page to us. (Subliminally, of course.) Intergraded with this stunt is a remarkable talent for painting a mood and a landscape with only a modicum of words.
STORYLINE: The episode that gave birth to this poem is real rather than allusive; A woman awaits the return of her husband who is very late in returning home. She hears a cry emanating from the swamp by the river. She walks to a stand of barren trees and watches his approach. He is drunk. He falls and fills the stark woodland with a drunken scream. After a moment he gets up, now steady, and walks toward the cabin. The woman turns and walks back to the cabin. She is sad. She knows that the man, the drunkard, the adulterer, will soon walk through the cabin door, glib in manner, mitigating her concerns with charm and flirtatious wit. And the morning will begin another day...
COMMENT: The once obligatory and now simply bothersome literary allusions to classical Greek and Roman mythology almost ruined a great poem, but didn't. I never liked Sylvia Plath. I never forgave her for her posthumous embrace of radical feminism. I've changed my mind.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Many thanks, Milum. The only line that troubles me in your reading is the one in which the faun gallops woodward. In the first lines, he is going home--but at the end he's galloping woodward. Is it that the home is in the woods, simply...or could there be something more threatening suggested here? Yes, he's headed home, but his head is elsewhere--this goat man who's more at home in the woods?
I like your reading very much, by the way.
Best regards,
Woodward
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Carpal Tunnel
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Introduction to Songs of Innocence
William Blake
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
``Pipe a song about a Lamb!''
So I piped with a merry chear.
``Piper, pipe that song again;''
So I piped: he wept to hear.
``Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear:''
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
``Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.''
So he vanish'd from my sight,
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah, Blake! Here's one of his that has become a favorite of mine since discovering it fairly recently, though I've long been enthralled with his work. The odd spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are all his:
THE SMILE
There is a Smile of Love
And there is a Smile of deceit
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet
And there is a Frown of Hate
And there is a Frown of Disdain
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain
For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Back bone
And no Smile that ever was smild
But only one Smile alone
That betwixt the Cradle & Grave
It only once Smild can be
But when it once is Smild
Theres an end to all Misery
--William Blake
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Carpal Tunnel
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I came across this poem by Yeats on another board. It describes the begetting of a certain New Yorker dear to all our hearts. As it is quite a graphic description of sexual violence I've put it in white so that those would rather not read it can hurry on to the next post.
Leda and the Swan W. B. Yeats
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Bingley
Bingley
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Carpal Tunnel
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Bingley, very good to read Yeats here. But why indifferentbeak? That's troublesome.
WW
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Carpal Tunnel
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It describes the begetting of a certain New Yorker dear to all our hearts.
As certain aspects of said begetting have been the subject of prior board discussion, it should be added that Yeat's description represents but one view thereof. Indeed, according to my research it was [pardon, but the choice of word here is both unavoidable and irresistable] a seminal source for that view.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
But why indifferentbeak? That's troublesome.
I assume Yeats is saying that Zeus, like some other males, loses interest once, to be crude, he's got his rocks off .
Bingley
Bingley
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Carpal Tunnel
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Couldn't resist following the last poem and discussion up with this:
THE HEAVY BEAR WHO GOES WITH ME
by Delmore Schwartz
"the withness of the body"
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, the heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
©1938 by Delmore Schwartz
One of the strongest poems on male sexuality I've ever read! But, then again, perhaps that's just an element in a deeper image?
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