(no subject)

[pipistrellafelix]

I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay


I miss poetry. We're about to start reading Paradise Lost, & we're doing As You Like It & I still miss poetry (in my defense, AYLI is nearly entirely prose). I think what I miss is delving into beautiful language, savouring the way it tastes, & then drawing out fabulously deep, often pretentious, & sometimes useless interpretations. No time for that; I need to read more history...

Comments

[countcomfect.livejournal.com]

In Paradise once Lost, thou shalt soon find
The surfeit for your current sense of loss;
For when on Milton's stormy sea you toss
(So dark a sea, with raging rocks unkind
Unlit because it flows from one yet blind
And hopeless of the light) and strive to cross
The boundless deep, and skim along the dross
That finds the surface of the sea, a rind
Of verse that hardens as your boat draws near:
Why then you'll know how little you can see,
How much unseen can still to sense appear,
And how the world he made by poetry
Is rich enough to satiate your fear;
From language lacking, no more lacking be.

PS

[countcomfect.livejournal.com]

Putting Kaos into fourteen lines
A silly old conviction, I might say;
As well to publish in the New York Times
The pastures on which English heifers graze:
For he is jealous where he may be put
Unwilling or unknowing he’ll despise
To be enforced into a bounded rut
When he, alone, through aerie space can fly.
Thus he mocks the endless tramp of verse
Rocking back and forth and to and fro;
Turning what seemed better into worse
With one substantial, giantlike bellow.
He mocks your rhymes – he turns your good aside
For Kaos, ever present will not be denied.

Re: PS

[elanor-two.livejournal.com]

...and you just wrote two sonnets in lj comments. Wow.

& I am actually very excited for Paradise Lost's poetry...I remember liking it a lot.

[marbletrickwire.livejournal.com]

i love(d) paradise lost. we did it last semester in intro to british lit part 1, and it was my fav all semester. yayyyyy milton!

[elanor-two.livejournal.com]

i read a little of it last year, but i'm really excited to get to read the whole thing (though it is huge...)

[marbletrickwire.livejournal.com]

yeah i spent like 4 hrs a night reading and we did it in 2 weeks. it was kind of a bitch, but when you get into the language it starts to flow so beautifully.