The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Wed 6/13/2007)

[RetroLounge]

To a Student who Reads "The Second Coming" as Sexual Autobiography

Reading your essay, I find the “widening gyre”
Might be Maude Gonne’s; falcon and falconer,
The disaffected lovers who can’t hold
The bitter-sweet anarchy of their world
After her “blood-dimmed tide” is loosed, and everywhere
Illusions of lost innocence are drowned.
Lovers, you say, (“the best ones like the worst”!)
Are blinded by passionate intensity.

Surely, to claim a second coming’s at hand
Bodes well for romance; on the other hand,
It smacks of locker-room bravado, a lout
Who thinks his “vast image” a Spiritus Mundi
Rising again, unsated, for dessert,
His prowess more a lion’s than average man’s,
His “slow thighs” moving. Yes, that pitiless sun
Might signify his coldness after it,
Her indignation’s reeling desert birds
As he rolls over to a stony sleep.
More than leaving her to rock the cradle
Of unprotected sex, that twice he didn’t last
For her to finish, you close, “cannot be borne.”

Jeffrey Franklin

****************



Jeffrey Franklin grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but now calls Colorado home. He holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Florida. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Hudson Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, and Third Coast, as well as in Best American Poetry (2002). A manuscript of his poems was co-recipient of the 2001 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America. His scholarly book, Serious Play: The Cultural Form of the Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel, appeared in 1999 from the University of Pennsylvania Press. His collection of poetry, For the Lost Boys, will be published in 2006 by Ghost Road Press, and a manuscript of formal verse, titled Stooped Ancestral Gods, is in circulation. He teaches Victorian literature and creative writing at the University of Colorado at Denver. He lives in Denver with his wife, Judy Lucas, and their children, Tyler and Emma.

****************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[RetroLounge]

1. By the way, Today is W.B. Yeat's Birthday...

:party:

RL

[xchrom]

2. indeed it is.

''slow thighs'' -- hmmm.

[Inchworm]

6. Ever see this.. err, hear this?

:)

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

He read Yates today. I do dig Kiellior's voice and style.

:party:

[RetroLounge]

8. One of my favorite sites to visit...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Good morning, my dear Retro!

Hmmm....this one's complicated........I think!

A lot of literary illusion here.......

Interesting, to say the least!

Thank you...:hug:

[RetroLounge]

4. Here's the original, if you are interested

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats - 1920

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Thank you!

I know this one well.......and I love it!

It's perfect, since as you say, today is Yeat's birthday...

To me, this poem flows together better than the one you originally posted...:shrug:



:hi:

[RetroLounge]

7. Yes, I agree.

But I've already posted this one, aand I posted Yeats the other day.

So I went with an allusion to a yeats poem instead...

RL