Prufrock on the Web

[e_dog]

humor like chocolat when dark can be too bitter.


dont know fer sure why i am holdin grudge 'gainst litkicks probly cause the discussion threads were shut down an only selectively preserved such that tons of genious n insite was lost to the web. no 'vance warning to speek of.

brooklyn was an autocratic dichtator unlike our brave leader doreen.

basically when they 'spanded b'yond beat they sold out their base.

so pranno ni bass.

sing sing salla ding.

[Totenkopf]

Listen to Prufrock carefully. The writer's not a bad ivory tickler: sort of like a schoolboy performing a little Mozart Sonata at the Rotary Club. Yet given the historical context--Verduns and so forth (and Einsteins)----he seems quite ineffectual, even escapist and narcissistic. Ever read Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" ? At least Papa H. (fan of Conrad as well) represented for the boys (and word is Hem. wanted to off TSE).

[mnaz]

Yes, 'tho probably a bit more than "not bad". Hemingway, for all his likely disdain of Eliot ("Mr. & Mrs. Elliot", etc.), and contempt of modernist poetics in general, came to admit TSE's influence on his own work, if not style. True, he wrote some bizarre (tongue-in-cheek?) obit when Conrad died about grinding up TSE and sprinkling it on Conrad's grave (if by doing so, Conrad would rise up and start writing once more). As for Einstein, it seems some degree of escape (from convention) was ultimately necessary to reach his phenomenal insights.

True, Papa H represented. No doubt. But listen to what Papa H said in the years and decades since, a la these Hemingway quotes:

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet and fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."

"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem."

"The first panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency. The second is war. They both bring temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin."

"For me, war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit."

[e_dog]

War is what made Hemingway.

What a com plainer.


War is the force that gives us oil.

and defense contracts

.

[Totenkopf]

As I said read Soldier's Home. Put's that neurotic narcissism of Eliot and his pals to shame. I agree Hem. was horrified by WWI, as were many. But he's not writing about a pair of "ragged paws in some distant ocean" or whatevah. He was as adept with frenchy and espanol as most of those freaks. Hem., journalist as well as fictioneer, was closer to dialectical materialism and a secular perspective as well, we aver, unlike TS Eliot oxferd wannabe who joins the anglo-catholic church and proclaims his love for monarchy (while sending love notes to a few brownshirts n vichy).

[mnaz]

Well, Totenkopf, obviously, you know more about literature and history than I ever shall, and I cop to reaching in the "connections". But we all bring our own biases to the field, no? If a transforming, translating poetic dimension is dismissed out of hand, then naturally it shall be read as something akin to narcissism. Indeed, much of it is.

This also points to the philos. question of art itself vs. its creator. Can detailed knowledge of the latter negate the power or presence of the former?

[e_dog]

God is creator of All.

TS Eliot no more a Christofanatic than the Old Man in the See.

Hemingway's just a good wordsmith story tellin jive talker. like HST without the chemicalstimuli. hence, boring.

for trenchwarfare, Wilfred Owen does it betta.


when you learns that Heidi was a Nazi it ruins the philosophy of Da seein' eye. when yo learns Pound was too, it make ye 'preciate Willie C. Williams, mo, methinks.

Art is for punks. and junkees.

Hey hey were the Flunkies
people say we're Demo-crats.
We're just busy passin'
any bill that Bush lays down.

[Totenkopf]

It doesn't get more boring than prufrock or the wasteland, or most modernist lit. History always outranks lit, especially the booj-wah narcissism of the poesy racket. WC Williams defines bo-ring. Poesy is the preferred ahht for the opportunistic belle-lettrist--too lazy or incompetent to write something meaningful in prose , or attempt journalism or non-fction (Eliot or Williams collected squiggles hardly match the first chapter of Farewell to Arms), they drop little images, arrange flowers in the tea room, in effect mistake their emotions (or emotional disorder) for some type of truth. Even a decent Bach prelude puts most poesy to shame .......

[e_dog]

yeah but all music unless its militaristic must be decadent an narcissistic, too, eh?

What a pussy L. v. Beethoven was for writing stuff like Fur Elyse. Shoulda been writing more warlike themes.

[e_dog]

but, agreed on Willie C.

Williams is bo-ring.

admittedly

[Totenkopf]

Hemingway does not glorify war, whatsoever. Au cuntraire! AS even the maz-man noted, he was appalled, shocked, distressed, alarmed, in short like way f-n irked by WWI. Nasty bidness, meat grinder of Verdun etc. Yet with the modern PC type of interpretations, even to write about the miseries of war somehow makes a writer too macho or something. What should he have written about? Like some daffodillies in the spring rain, or yeah April is cruel.? etc. Nyet. Hem's no more macho than most traditional scribes (ever read Stendhal's Red and Black? Not too touchy feely either. Or Dostoyevsky, or Conrad again).

The cult of niceness and tenderness is itself booj-wah. Crime and Punishment: not tooo PC or tender there, eh: Raskal pondering whether to snuff his landlady, and then does it. Whoa! The dizziness of freedom, baby. You on occasion sound like that preacher bitch that was on here , ee

[mnaz]

It doesn't get more boring than prufrock or the wasteland, or most modernist lit. History always outranks lit, especially the booj-wah narcissism of the poesy racket .... Poesy is the preferred ahht for the opportunistic belle-lettrist--too lazy or incompetent to write something meaningful in prose

Outranks? More like history is intertwined in lit., so it seems. And you speak of poesy and prose as if they never cross paths. And yes, Papa H was fucked up by modernist war. It comes through at times in his prose. Define "meaningful". Maybe it's about sex. Poets don't get the sex thing, you know, making love to ground meat and all...

[Totenkopf]

I'm not an expert Lit-critic: res ipsa loquitur. Let's put it this way: anyone who finishes Crime and Punishment knows that's all about people in the real world, and concerns pain, poverty, greed, power, violence, and sex. Poems are generally about the poet: not about the world. That's my view. Some poets--Shakespeare, obviously, or say Shelley--are geniuses. But stilll even great p. tends to affirms a certain narcissistic, even solipsistic POV. It's a noble's sport. Yet in a sense, compared to say Beethoven or Bill Evans for that matter, poesy seems a bit bogus. Ever read some of Pound's more cynical writing: he suggested poets should write in Latin to start, if not greek..................

[e_dog]

why do soldiers go ta war if not for daffodils and mom's apple pie.

Homer was a poet. knew to cry and to kill his characters

no war without daffoldils
no daffoldils w/o war.

or poppies.

blood for oil/smack.

Hemingway too wrote pomes.

[mnaz]

Poems are generally about the poet: not about the world.

You think?

Poetry's Ahht (or insight) is generally about the ahhtist-- and the world. On more than one plane. Otherwise, why would the world care? Ever?.... A 'noble's sport'? Okay, maybe. Or its antithesis. Or both. Not sure what that means. Narcissistic? Narcissism is not about the world. Not all poetry is poetic? Probably not.