This post is dedicated to the Baron.
Did you know Bill Whittle grew up in Bermuda and thus had the same educational advantages the Baron did in Yorkshire? They both enjoyed the opportunity to attend British schools while they were still good.
These are exceedingly fortunate men, for part of their education included memorization of poetry, reams and lashings of words to know by heart. Now, as he ages in wisdom and grace, I am the fortunate recipient of all that learning for the Baron not only recites John Donne, he explains him.
Poetry, both the reading and the writing of it, is a pastime the Baron and I share. Yeah, I know: we need a TV. Nuh-uh.
So with that it mind, you can see why this charming video particularly resonates for me:
One year for Christmas the Baron gave me Kipling’s works. As my fibromyalgia progressed, the book became difficult to hold and keep open, to my frustration.
I found this edition today, and its shipping weight is a tad over seven ounces.
Kipling: Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets)
In other words, I can hold this book. It’s going on the Baron’s Wish List page so I can ask for it when next Christmas comes.
[If you don’t already use it, I recommend that Wish List function on Amazon. It’s a handy place to park things one needs to remember. For the ADDled among us — raise your hand, Dymphna — and those with a tendency toward impulse buying at sales — raise it higher, D — the Wish List page is invaluable: out of sight, out of mind, right? Then when I visit the List occasionally, I find myself promptly deleting half the things that were on my momentary “must have this” mind 3 months ago. Cherry preserves, for instance. WHAT was I thinking? On the other hand, with Autumn coming the brass lawn sprinkler I tucked away will be just the thing for watering our grass seed. Having that gadget where I can find it saves a lot of time sorting back through all the sprinklers on offer…]
About poesy:
Since the first poet put together the first rhyme and decided he was a bard, you can bet he was stealing at least part of his creation from a half-remembered lullaby his momma sang. I should know: one of my sons is a writer of songs — a very good one — but he didn’t get it from the ground.
Then there are those Psalms, sung in front of the Lord with lyre and dancing feet; they were the result of a long, time-out-of-mind oral tradition. All the parallelisms and repetitions and mnemonic devices weren’t accidental; a poet has his tricks and devices, each of them necessary if he wants his words to outlive him.
In other words it’s not only rosemary that’s for remembrance.
I am a lover of rhyme and rhythm — perhaps the same thing? As Paul Simon said, “and only the rhythm remains”…
Kipling understood this well:
When ’Omer Smote ’Is Bloomin’ Lyre
He’d ’eard men sing by land an’ sea;
An’ what he thought ’e might require,
’E went an’ took — the same as me!The market-girls an’ fishermen,
The shepherds an’ the sailors, too,
They ’eard old songs turn up again,
But kep’ it quiet — same as you!They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed.
They didn’t tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at ’Omer down the road,
An’ ’e winked back — the same as us!
A printable version, please.
@ Flintlock: Why not just copy and paste into your favourite text editor – then you can pretty it up all you want to.
KIPLING . His complete poems can be found at the web site below:click on`Readers Guide`…..`The main works`……Poetry,`Definitive Edition`.SEE http://www.kipling.org.uk
KIPLING . His complete poems can be found at the web site below.Click on`Readers Guide`…..`The main works`…….Poetry`Definitive Edition`. SEE http://www.kipling.org.uk
Oops!
Which do you believe, is it morally right or is it morally wrong for an individual to commit suicide? Is it morally right or wrong for a society or culture to commit suicide? Logically there is no right or wrong answer; it’s just a choice we make.
If one sees a moral virtue in committing suicide, either individually or as a society, then the past and future are of no consequence and the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” can be ignored. (For example, many in the environmentalist camp, fall into this category.)
But if one sees a moral virtue in always choosing life, then the future outcomes of today’s choices have moral consequences. In which case, we respect the past so that we can learn from it and let its wisdom guide our decisions going into the future.
Somehow, questions of morality are inextricably entwined together with the flow of time, from past, to present, to future. There can be no morality of the here and now, only a short-term social dynamic consisting of infantile “I wants.”
Not strictly relevant, I know, but it’s satisfying to know that Raymond Chandler and P G Wodehouse went to the same English public school (ie. “private” in the US- I know it doesn’t make sense!) and had the same English master.
There may be little apparent connection between Knight Errant Philip Marlowe (despite being named after a great British dramatist who didn’t write Shakespeare!) and Wodehouse’s dim, over-privileged Bertie Wooster, but both authors delighted in unusual, even poetic metaphors.
How right you are about about the lamentable state of education in Great Britain compared to forty years ago, about the time that I left school at the age of fifteen, with NO qualifications after a very average public education. I now find myself bordering on genius level compared to even university graduates, especially in terms of wider general knowledge, and I find their appreciation of the higher arts and the classics (Classical Greek and Roman literature, not classical music, although their appreciation of that is totally abysmal ) to be so low as to be virtually none existent.
It’s easy to see why, our education systems, especially the universities have devoted themselves for the last forty years or so, to churning out politically indoctrinated cretins.
Your average graduate would not have the attention span to have listened to more than the first couple of lines of Bill Whittle’s little monologue, let alone actually enjoy it or understand it !
The same is true of U.S. public education, as THIS http://beforeitsnews.com/education/2013/08/newly-discovered-eighth-grade-exam-from-1912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become-2444988.html
from the internet today demonstrates.
May I add a link of my own to those who do have an appreciation of literature http://monologues.co.uk/Dramatic/Foxs_Prophecy.htm
The sentiments expressed in this 19th ? century poem are so resonant of our current situation that it could have been written yesterday. Unfortunately, when I have read or shown it to younger people all I get is a perplexed look of total bafflement, but for anyone capable of appreciating it, it is a quite enjoyable and inspiring piece of literature
I have to admit a bit of impatience myself with most poetry. Rhyme and meter mean that a poem cannot be read silently and speedily, one must enunciate the words, letting the syllables ring in the audience’s ear. It is an intolerable burden to read a poem that is bad in construction or content.
But there is a great pleasure in good poetry.