Complaint of a Poet ManquéWe judge by appearance merely:If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.So I grew the hair so long on my headThat my mother wouldn't know me,Till a woman in a night-club said,As I was passing by,"Hullo, here comes Salome ..."I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,And, oh Salome; there I was—Positively jewelled, half a vampire,With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzilyLike the gatherer of proverbial samphireOver the brink of the crag of sense,Looking down from perilous eminenceInto a gulf of windy night.And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,And I'm not a poet: but never despair!I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.
July 27, 2022
"I'll madly live the poems I shall never write."
It's too complicated to explain how I arrived here, but I encountered this cool poem by Aldous Huxley:
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22 comments:
the dirty gilt-edged glasses of perception
So this was the Brave New World he was talking about.
Pretty good “public” poem, I’d say. From an era when formal craft and self-conscious word-play were appreciated. (By “public” I mean psychologically guarded; a poem touching on deep interior states but not demanding a nervous breakdown in the reader, nor a special decoder ring).
"I'll madly live the poems I shall never write."
As I have my entire life and as I shall for the remainder.
Indeed, a cool poem.
I don't understand the reference to Salome. How does she fit into this?
That reference reminds me of Prufrock: "head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter."
The three best rhymes for the word vampire are rampire, samphire and camphire -- according to the Rhyme Zone website.
My advice is to not end any poem line with the word vampire.
Shock the Manque!
"Over the brink of the crag of sense"
That's a bit of a clunker in an otherwise charming poem. It feels like a place from The Phantom Tollbooth.
I had to look up "samphire," which I'd been lazily assuming was a misspelling or variant spelling of "sapphire."
Wikipedia:
"Salicornia is a genus of succulent, halophytic (salt tolerant) flowering plants in the family Amaranthaceae that grow in salt marshes, on beaches, and among mangroves. Salicornia species are native to North America, Europe, Central Asia, and southern Africa. Common names for the genus include glasswort, pickleweed, picklegrass, and marsh samphire; these common names are also used for some species not in Salicornia.] To French speakers in Atlantic Canada, they are known colloquially as 'titines de souris' ('mouse tits'). The main European species is often eaten, called marsh samphire in Britain, and the main North American species is occasionally sold in grocery stores or appears on restaurant menus as sea beans, samphire greens or sea asparagus."
Whoa! Mouse's tits!!!
"I'll madly live the poems I shall never write."
Really, since this is a poem, the truth is: I'll madly poeticize the life I shall never live.
Great comments, everyone!
"Shock the Manque!"
I haven't thought about "Shock the Monkey" in 20 years.
"That's a bit of a clunker in an otherwise charming poem. It feels like a place from The Phantom Tollbooth."
Makes me want to read TPT because that sounds apt.
But then again, it makes me want to adopt "over the brink of the crag of sense" as a catchphrase.
How are you? I'm over the brink of the crag of sense!
OTBOTCOS
I'm otbotcos right about now.
"the dirty gilt-edged glasses of perception"
Meade and I are going to monetize this blog with very special merchandise, beginning with dirty gilt-edged glasses of perception.
"I don't understand the reference to Salome. How does she fit into this?
That reference reminds me of Prufrock: "head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter.""
Wow. Makes you want to go read the greater poet!
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, / I am no prophet — and here's no great matter...
I don't really understand. How do you see your head? At least Huxley tells us he -- or his first-person character -- is looking in a mirror.
Is Eliot looking in a mirror as his head is carried by on a platter?
Anyway about that Salome line... I almost gave the post the "transgender" tag. Or "transvestite," which is also a tag. But then I thought, no, it's just about long hair, and I don't have a tag -- other than "hairstyles" (which I used!) -- for the wearing of a hairstyle associated with the opposite sex.
But I don't think he's trying to look like a woman. He's just mistaken for a woman (Salome) ... by a woman (night-club woman) ... as he becomes unrecognizable to the woman who ought to know him best (his mother).
I think it's just a poem about a man who thinks of himself as a poet because he's adopted a poetic style — long hair. Is he a lightweight, a fool? Or is it a good thing to think of your life as wildly romantic... and all because of your tempestuous hair?
He's madly in love with the image of himself in a mirror.
Ditto.
"Or is it a good thing to think of your life as wildly romantic... and all because of your tempestuous hair?"
I'm going to say Huxley's answer is "no," based on the first word of the title.
Samphire? That word jumped out as Huxley’s very conscious allusion to King Lear (Act IV, Scene vi) where Edgar describes an imaginary cliff for blinded Gloucester in order to shock him out of his suicidal mood.
“Come on sir, here’s the place; stand still. How fearful
And dizzy ‘tis, to cast one’s eyes so low.
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles. And halfway down
Hangs one that gathers samphire —dreadful trade.
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head…”
Huxley then uses the reference to tie in his metaphor of a brink of a cliff. Maybe he was trying to hard and, yes, it does seem arch; but that was his way.
I knew a manqué once. He was disappointed that he never had a house with a man cave.
Samphire: succulent, salt-tolerant plants. -- Huxley
"Me thinks he seems no bigger than his head." --Shakespeare
Is this potty, or am I reading it potty? But it is beautiful. Beautiful flaneur.
Project Gutenberg has the entire book text. It's delightful. I had no idea. Many poems about plants, flowers -- a fine gift book. Call Parker's Books in Sarasota.
The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems
This is what happens when someone learns poetic form well enough to play with it, but never fails to aspire and admire it.
The absolute opposite of Allen Ginsberg -- and a metaphor for many other things happening at the time.
I knew a camphire girl once.
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