[OFB Cafe] Tuesday, Boris the Mayor, and Thomas the Rhymer

[Timothy Butler]

Hi Terence,
	OK, I owe you a defense of Eliot. :-) Sorry for the delay.

> If any one person's enthusiasm can arouse a similar feeling in others
> (as my mentors have done in me) that is a great gift. I would love to
> have it, but recognise that loving something and being able to impart
> that love to others are two different things.

	Quite true. I have many poems in half written states, while I search  
for the words to make them actually work. I am on the quest for the  
objective correlative. After all, "a poem should not mean / But  
be." (Perhaps my second favorite 20th century poet hath now been  
quoted.)

> Thinking of Eliot and Swinburne- they really appear at first sight  
> (i.e.
> me, after a long day and some good Scotch) to be very different.
>
> I can enjoy Eliot for all sorts of reasons in many of his various  
> works
>  for extended periods, until I have to give up through sheer mental
> fatigue- there is so much there to understand and enjoy, and a lot of
> his writing demands a lot of effort to do so. (In parenthesis, so does
> Shakespere, Marlowe et al)

	True. Eliot is obviously more contemporary in language, though which  
language at any given moment may be up to question. "ΣιΒυλλα  
τἰ θελεις;" λεγεν, "αποθανειν  
θελω."Ελιας γινοσκεν πασαν γλοσσην.

> Swinburne, on the other hand, is much more accessible (at least to me,
> and probably for superficial reasons) for his emotion and superb lyric
> sense. However, I cannot him read for long, as it is a rich diet of
> (Devonshire clotted) cream and exotic images, exciting and challenging
> to visualise, rhythmic to the mind and tongue, before it becomes  
> cloying.

	I'll confess in the past Swinburne did not hold my attention, but I  
should return to him and give him another try. Often that helps. I  
have garnered a greater appreciate of over quoted poets such as Frost  
by giving them more time. "After Apple Picking," amongst others,  
resuscitated my view of him.

> But, going back to my earlier point, are they really that different?
>
> Both engage the reader/listener (I read out loud to myself, and
> occasionally others), both challenge the one engaged, and involve
> him/her in a multi-level, multi-lingual, multi-cultural attempt at
> understanding "life, the universe, and everything".

	Hmm. An interesting point. I think the key distinction that I find  
with Eliot is that his poetry is radically different, encapsulating  
the feeling of the post-Great War era (such as I can place myself into  
it from a distance) better than anyone else. He ushers in modernist  
poetry, while -- unlike later modernists -- still serving as the  
"catalyst" (to borrow Eliot's own term) for tradition. I've yet to see  
another free form poet that continues to maintain a sense of meter as  
well as Eliot.

	I am at a loss of an objective rationale for why I would say Eliot is  
the best. However, I find that few literary figures other than Eliot  
have offered a blackhole of depth to their works since the time of the  
Bard himself. It's almost as if the whole of the literary canon  
converged -- and promptly exploded -- about Eliot's mind. And that  
nebulousness I suck "as a weasel sucks eggs. More! I pr'ythee, more."

	That's not to say others aren't good poets. Pound is certainly one.  
And I quoted from another above. And lets not forget W.B. Yeats.  
Largely, though, I'd say the great works of the twentieth century were  
elsewhere -- e.g. in novels and drama, such as Kafka's  
"Metamorphosis," Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an  
Author," or Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead."

	Notice I don't mention that other playwright, however, from whom I  
continue to be waiting for a plot. Aristotle rolls over in his grave  
in hopes of an endgame.

> And I haven't even mentioned Pound- but my taper is quenched for  
> this night.



"I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read this ink -  
wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the Nine Muses, no more to  
scorn the sacred mysteries of" Eliot. :-)


	-Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "He that has and a little tiny wit—
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                                   -- Feste the Fool (Shakespeare)