Here's the text of the poem.
Playing Pool | Jugar al billar
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Playing Pool The playing surface of the table is called the bed.Oddly,
everything starts with a breaking of balls. A nice layout after the break
is called ...
3 weeks ago
6 comments:
Hmm, I see you feel quite strongly about that....
Heh, it was probably the heels of dead men in the air.
Seriously, though, I think you're right about it being coincidence. The hour of execution was probably a set time across England. If that's so, then 8 a.m. was graven pretty deeply into the minds of people who though about such things, as Housman and Wilde obviously did.
"Compellingly evocative?" "Evocatively compelling?" Tough call, alright.
I agree with what I think you're saying about executions. Does hiding them away from public eyes make them (executions) any more civilized? Who are we kidding?
Does using lethal injection make us any more civilized as a species?
In the end, death is death and trying to disguise that ultimate fact by hiding it away and using needles for the job ... these are only lies, lies, lies.
Interesting questions you bring up: would a poem about a lethal injection be only political? Would "respectful" and "personal" be mutually exclusive in such a poem? Are they mutually exclusive in any poem? Who should a poet be more respectful of? The subject of a poem, the readers or listeners? Are "respectful" and "personal" things that should be consciously considered by a poet?
I think these are all questions which are implicit to some degree in the poem I'm planning to audiopost this evening.
(Yep, you did have a triple post --- blogger seems slow today.)
To my mind, capital punishment (and I'm agin it!) is a societal issue and, as such, if practised, should be carried out before the eyes of the public it claims to protect, not hidden away like a dirty little secret.
Whether or not public executions would provide a platform for the persons executed is immaterial to my mind. How condemned persons choose to portray themselves their last minutes of life is not something that can be mandated by any state.
Our personal dignity is also immaterial to capital punishment, although I'd say we have less of it when we allow such a thing to be practised in camera than when we demand that it be done publicly. Of course, indulging in it at all is probably where dignity begins to seep away.
It would be very difficult to make a good poem about the reasons for public/private executions (I'm too cautious to say it would be impossible).
I do agree that a consciously respectful poem would almost certainly suck. I also agree the personal is the source of all art, great, mediocre, and bad --- greatness results in part from finding a way to raise a thing beyond the merely personal.
Hey, thank you. Enjoyment was mutual.
Heh. Prufrock, another damn poem impossible to ignore. I've given in, I think, and decided that it is a truly great one though I'm convinced that it poisoned the soil for other poems and poets, resulting (and still resulting) in years of stunted growths before an immunity was developed.
(I'm tougher than Prufrock, see --- I've measured out my life in coffee pots, not mere spoons.)
As I said, I'm tougher than Prufrock.
(Acquired immunity, is what I meant.)
You may have mentioned that before --- would explain why the poisoned metaphor leapt so quickly to mind....
As for Eliot and completely simplicity; well, Prufrock, The Hollow Men, The Waste Land, and The Four Quartets are obviously examples of complete simplicity, aren't they now? Christ, he must have been an annoying man.
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