Says Bret Stephens, recounting what he said in a commencement address, in a conversation with Gail Collins, in the NYT.
Collins reacts: "That’s pretty damn good.... But I’m not going to go so far as to suggest student protesting is a bad or silly idea." Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause.
Anyway, I'm blogging this mostly because of the topic of memorizing poetry and reciting it out loud, because that came up yesterday the post about speaking out loud when alone. I'd said — in the comments:
I don't think Bret Stephens told the graduates to memorize the mottos of the 50 states. You may wonder why I did that, when I could have practiced memorization with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins....I read out loud sometimes when I'm reading poetry, and I would speak out loud while alone if I were memorizing something or checking to see if I'd retained a memorization. I memorized "Ozymandias" recently. And the mottos of the 50 states.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do adviseAnd Edna St. Vincent Millay...
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room....
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, —
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.
There's this little Althouse, memorizing the state mottos. If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you... Mountaineers are always free... To be, rather than to seem....
Anyway, The Real Andrew wanted me to listen to 4 readings of "Ozymandias" and pick my favorite:
1) Bryan Cranston
2) Richard Attenborough
3) John Gielgud
4) Vincent Price
I completed the assignment and picked Attenborough. Andrew agreed. (I put Gielgud second, then Price, then Cranston).
Now, what do you think of the advice "Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much." I'd like enough money so that I don't have to think of it at all, but to make it, I'd be thinking about it, so I'll accept Stephens's weaselly "much."
Posts
94 comments:
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much."
Motto of the US Treasury: "Make money; don't think about it much."
I memorized Tennyson's "Ulysses" a few years ago, but now I probably need to review it. Apparently, I haven't been doing enough reciting it aloud while walking.
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much."
Depends on your ambitions. Living comfortably and reading takes a lot less money than settling Mars. Edison made quite a bit of money, but spent almost all of it on research and various enterprises that changed the world.
I went through a big poetry phase in my twenties, after college. I don't know why, but I did- read a ton of it from poets spanning the 1600s to what was then the present day and memorized many of the more famous ones (between 100-200). I used to recite them silently to myself as I was running or otherwise exercising, organized by poet. I stopped at some point in the aughts. I still read/reread some on occasion and will sometimes memorize a new one for a while. For the ones I had memorized I still remember large sections of all of them, and some of the shorter ones I still remember in their entirety. If I see a portion of any of those in print as a comment or quote, I know instantly the poem and poet.
Well I started a motorcycle ride from Alabama to Dayton, FL in mid afternoon a few years ago. I found myself getting sleepy on I-10. So I composed a limerick on the ride. Worked a champ.
Let's see:
A remarkably shy armadillo....
Well we both agree on two things mentioned here: State mottos are worthy of attention and Bret Stephens is "weaselly," although I would ascribe it to more than his choice of words here.
>Now, what do you think of the advice "Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much."<
Make as much money as you can (without making your life miserable with obsession). You can decide how much of it you actually need later. Then you can experience the joy of giving the surplus away to some who do need it.
Collins reacts: "That’s pretty damn good.... But I’m not going to go so far as to suggest student protesting is a bad or silly idea." Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause.
Of course not! That would require Collins to herself be an adult, and no public Democrat can do that
This totally sounds like fake profundity. "What can I say that sounds like a commencement speech...." At least he wasn't on Ayahuasca, like the speaker at Ohio State.
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much."
To limit my money making would require me to think about it.
Now, I'd change that to "never buy a Veblen good, and dont' hang out with people who do."
Look it up, if you dont' know what a "Veblen good" is
YouTube : Class of 99 ; Wear Sunscreen
The most memorable CS for me.
Oh God, Burt Stephens. Mr. Midwit. Make up Dirty limericks. Oh how risque. No anglo-saxon prudes are we. Says the Rabbi. And maybe if you want to read poetry to yourself, I'd go get the Oxford book of American or English poetry (find one published 2000) and start reading. You'll find better poetry than Hopkins and Millay.
It really says it all about the USA, that the NYT's is our "elite" newspaper. And Burt Stephens is one of the more intelligent writers. Or that he has to tell college graduates (is that who they were?) to read poetry.
As for the poem, i tried several seach engines and approaches but I kept getting directed to the same 4 narrators. Did Olivier or Burton ever read the poem? Maybe, but Youtube and Google don't want to show it. I did turn up Ben Kingsley's version. Tom O'Bedlam has a decent version too. I like V. Price but he doesn't have the right voice for the poem.
Read Memoirs of Hadrian around that age. Also Julian. For those men who like to think about the Roman Empire.
All memorizing is done by saying it out loud. Reading has no affect in memorizing. But no one believes it.
From Catholic High School I still recite Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars... "Veni, vedi, vici" in Latin on my random rambles, my white male Roman studies still haunting me these 50+ years later. Sister St Matthews weilded a mean wooden pointer which she was more apt than not to use.
I memorized Romance poems in high school (1960s) because they were sure-fire ways to get in a girl’s jeans. Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” may as well have been a Spanish fly. But Dylan’s “To Ramona” also worked once. I did it as an experiment.
I’d be surprised to learn that there was ever a time poetry didn’t work as an E-ticket to open the jade gate. Victorian era, too.
In a Christian or Jewish perspective, the Psalms can serve as wonderfully helpful poetry to memorize. That was (and still is) a major part of monastic movements.
Though, the Psalms aren't quite as neat and reverent as most public (and many private) prayers think is fitting.
What does Gail Collins contribute?
"Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause."
Or the argument for it. The point of "protests" is to stop arguing and make the other side shut up.
I agree with Attenborough’s as the best reading on your list. I then googled ‘actors reading Ozymandias’ and came across Ben Kingsley, who was unexpectedly bad, with terrible and distracting music playing under. A surprisingly good reading was given by Mike Rowe—yes, that Mike Rowe—though it was accompanied by a terrible video. I have an idea that James Earl Jones would read it well but I couldn’t find him doing it.
Does Robert W Service count?
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
Came out with a fortune last fall,—
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I’m one.
There is quite a bit more, all excellent. I used to be able to recite most of it but it has been a while since then.
John Henry
Why just poetry and not prose? There are some Conrad passages, especially from Youth, that I can just call up and play in my head.
“And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight.
I find that passage more moving than 95% of all the poetry I've ever read. And I've read a lot.
One of my favorite characters in literature is the narrator, Charlie Marlowe (Also narrator of Heart of Darkness)
That’s pretty damn good.... But I’m not going to go so far as to suggest student protesting is a bad or silly idea.
For Collins and those of her ilk, this of course depends on what is being protested.
It seems like Ozymandias comes up a fair bit on this blog. If it keeps showing up perhaps it will deserve its own tag.
Good for Bret Stephens, that sounds like a typically mundane commencement speech that will be forgotten before he returns to his seat.
A couple of friends attended the Ohio State commencement where the speaker talked about bitcoin and led two sing alongs. Subsequent news articles say that he was on ayahuasca.
Does memorizing song lyrics count? Did Hopkins or Millay have anything hit the top 40?
I haven't even finished reading the post, much less started on the comments, but - Edna St. Vincent Millay and Gerard Manley Hopkins are absolutely my two favorites. I can't wait to read what this fact apparently says about me!
I read Dylan's poem Fern Hill so often that I inadvertently memorized it. I tried to recite it just now, but the memory is gone....By Dylan, I mean the Ur Dylan, the one who didn't win any Nobel Prizes. I can see why Nobel Dylan chose Ur Dylan as his namesake. The prime Dylan wrote some lines that once heard stick in your mind forever....Prime Dylan didn't make enough money to cease worrying about money. Worse yet, he lived in a time when dental procedures were primitive. His suffering was caused not so much by his sensitive soul but by bad teeth and lack of money. On the plus side, Richard Burton recited his poetry. Dylan wrote some great lines that were made even greater by Burton's recital. Also, Dylan was fortunate to live prior to the me-too movement. He didn't score like the Nobel Dylan, but for a guy with bad teeth and poor personal hygiene, he made out pretty good.
Sprung rhythm!
Money is the means by which we enslave others. And also the means by which we are enslaved.
I'll just note here once again, that the poems of Emily Dickinson are often structured so that they fit perfectly when sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme.....
The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observations omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.
Althouse writes, "Anyway, The Real Andrew wanted me to listen to 4 readings of "Ozymandias" and pick my favorite..."
Regarding Ozymandias, I would recommend the recitation given by Harry Melling in the "Meal Ticket" segment of the Coen Brother's recent film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The presentation by the wretchedly afflicted character, Harrison, is uniquely poignant.
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much"
Superficially wise. But then if you think about that you conclude it's awful advice. In order to not think about it when you're old and retired you have to think about it a lot when you're young.
I'd be more impressed rather than memorizing poetry if you understood the concepts of poetry well enough to write your own. Otherwise, how many in the audience know how to balance a checkbook such that they can finance their debt from college rather than asking others to pay it for them?
may be students should take more solitary walks and discover unbubbled world?
I memorized Keats' "To Autumn" several years ago, and since then it has always amplified and enriched my experience of autumn. However, I have to re-memorize it a little bit each year, because I always find that a few words have been lost or misplaced by my brain during the intervening months.
Lilacs are in bloom, which makes me think of Whitman. To my regret, I can't quote a single line of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". I spent my college poetry time learning: In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. If I had to be a moon-eyed romantic, I wish I'd focused on Keats.
Make up Dirty limericks.
=================
if only protest chants were composed in that manner and counter chants of course
this will also fulfill Steinfeld comedy needs deficit
and Gail Collins won't be called on to disparage student vocality
hitler only has one ball lyrics
The best known stanza consists of the following quatrain:[1]
Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,[a]
Himmler is rather sim'lar,[b]
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
How did that go?
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
.........bale of hay?
.........cheese soufflee?
Or something.
An audiobook of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is rendered useless by the reader trying to put feeling into his words. A robot reading the Blue and Brown books is much better.
Kate said...
"I spent my college poetry time learning: In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree."
Me too. I recited it the other day for my bike group at our rest stop. Soon I was alone...
WWII audiobooks authored by Japanese troops use a robot that's excellent except for occasional half minute clips where it apparently loses its internet connection and starts pronouncing -ed endings and all the vowels silent or not.
Rilke's prose poems are worth reading. Mitchell's translation.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Airdales,
And as silently steal away.
Wordsworth as memorized by Thurber's mother.
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
Also Good:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
I'm more of a Kipling, Tennyson, and Longfellow type.
Aggie said...
I'll just note here once again, that the poems of Emily Dickinson are often structured so that they fit perfectly when sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme.....
The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observations omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.
You are a bad, bad, person.
Thank you!
Sonnets are pretty easy to memorize.
Rhymes also helpful mnemonic.
Longer poems are tough, even the rhyming ones like Byron’s Don Juan.
You can memorize passages of Paradise Lost or the Prelude.
But once you get longer than a Keats’ Ode, it’s probably genetic who can effectively memorize.
I’d skip the Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The Keats Odes, Frosts sonnets, Yeats poems 30 lines and under, Bishops poems from Geography III, and Stevens’ shorter poems reward.
Robert Frost, "After Apple Picking" - My long two-pointed ladder's pointing through the branches still / and there's a barrel that I didn't fill beside it...
A pleasure to read and memorize.
And Horace, - Quis multis gracilis te puer in rosa,/perfusus liquidis urget odoribus / grato, Pyrhha, sub antro... More proof that if not the sense, the beauty of poetry doesn't translate. ... What slim boy, his hair awash with fragrant oil, makes hot love to you now Pyrrha in what snug cave...
I memorized this myself when I was a Latin student in the early '60s, and forgot it since, along with the rest of my Latin. The introduction to my book of odes recalls that on his return from a Japanese prison camp, a soldier friend would recite this riding his horse across the Australian countryside. Freedom and grace. The book itself has like its owner suffered from the years, and it looks as if we will each depart our bindings at about the same time, - a Horatian end to things.
"Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause."
It was only yesterday that we were hearing of beautiful and profound lessons from 3 year olds.
Re: Freeman Hunt:
I memorized Tennyson's "Ulysses" a few years ago, but now I probably need to review it. Apparently, I haven't been doing enough reciting it aloud while walking.
When I was in hospital for a stroke, I spent a lot of time reciting "Ulysses" (and "Ozymandias," "An Arundel Tomb," "The Whitsun Weddings," "MCMXIV," "Invictus," "The Hollow Men," a few Shakespearean soliloquys, and any other snippets I picked up over the years) to myself. Apart from the pleasure of reciting poetry under circumstances where I had no other amusements -- when waiting for imaging appointments and surgery I couldn't bring my phone with me -- I think it helped immensely with maintaining my English language enunciation. Unfortunately, I didn't do the same with Japanese or Korean, so it took several months for my speech in those languages to become natural again.
I'm not word perfect on most of these, and constant repetition has ingrained the errors (e.g. in "MCMXIV," I almost always say "the sun / on moustached antique faces," when it's "the sun / on moustached archaic faces"), but close enough for my purposes. But I ought to practice.
More on topic, I don't find Hopkins easy to read aloud. It often sounds quite jarring. So I've never had the inclination to memorise it. I think we might have done "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" and "God's Grandeur" in school, but they didn't stick in my memory.
I'd listen to Attenborough narrate the assembly instructions for IKEA furniture.
Re: rhhardin:
WWII audiobooks authored by Japanese troops use a robot that's excellent except for occasional half minute clips where it apparently loses its internet connection and starts pronouncing -ed endings and all the vowels silent or not.
Any recommendations? I've read some by Harutaka Sasaki (佐々木春隆), but wasn't aware there was a market in English.
If you're writing screenplays, you better read them out loud. Because your actors will be.
In fact, any writers should read their stuff out loud. It's the best way to proof read.
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much"
Ironically, the way to succeed in investing is to focus on your investments, and not to think about money at all. Otherwise, greed gets in the way and you cash out too fast.
"Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much"
Yeah. That was a lot easier befor Biden.
Posting on Althouse
Brings with it much wisdom
I can spot liars now
I wonder if Stephens is fully familiar with the arguments against his Never-Trump position.
Actually, I don't really wonder.
"More on topic, I don't find Hopkins easy to read aloud. It often sounds quite jarring."
I also find Hopkins tough to recite aloud and someone above referred to the reason- sprung rhythm.
Whenever I read of disparagement of "money," or a criticism of those who seek "money," I recall Francisco's "Money Speech" in Atlas Shrugged.
https://youtu.be/u-T0ey0IKDA?feature=shared&t=30
"Commit great poems to heart, starting with those by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recite them aloud on solitary walks.”
Learn to code.
What? Not a good word for Housman...until now. And no one has mentioned Kipling. Perhaps the most germane poem of the past century or so is Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings." It will never cease to be relevant, but it's more relevant in some ages (like now) than in others.
Yeats was a great crafter of lines. He had what one critic said is essential to great poetry "to enchant the ear." And Shakespeare has not been recommended. Because we have forgotten, because we don't like him, or because we think of it as theatre (which it is ) rather than the great poetry that it is.
All in all, it strikes me as somewhat condescending from someone who hasn't scaled the Olympian heights he thinks he has, sort of like anyone in government these days.
I find it interesting, but unsurprising, that two NYTimes'ers who are very likely on the DEI Train, list dead white poets/authors.
Imitate the writers or artists you most admire; you’ll find your own voice and style in all the ways your imitation falls short.
Boy! Did that work for me. I had just entered graduate school working on a master’s in computer science when a new course was developed based on Chapter 2 of a brand new book: Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1 - “Fundamental Algorithms.” I loved the notion that there was a sound theoretical foundation for what had once been grab bags of programming tricks. Amazing! But I also loved Donald Knuth’s writing style and set out to imitate it. I never succeeded (the man is utterly unique), but in attempting to mimic his style I found my own, and it was effective.
After going to work for large government contractors starting in 1985, my perceived skill at explaining technical (sometimes very technical) concepts in “plain English” got me involved in writing numerous proposals for business development with differing branches of the federal government. And this in turn made me nearly “fireproof,” because if I could win business for this corporation, I could win business for a competitor.
Any recommendations? I've read some by Harutaka Sasaki (佐々木春隆), but wasn't aware there was a market in English.
Japanese troops audiobooks can be found at WW2 Tales and a half dozen similar channels, click on the Japanese ones. There's no immediate clue what the actual book they're using is.
Meh. I would rather not.
Funny thing about poetry. When I reread books or watch movies which I thought were good when I was 20 or so I'm usually disappointed. But the poetry I liked then I still like a lot: Hopkins, Shelley, Fearing, MacNeice ....
The night was dark
The sky was blue.
Around the corner
The shitwagon flew.
It hit a bump
A cry was heard.
A child was killed
By a flying turd.
Bret Stephen’s is a vagina.
What happened to Kahlil Gibran? Fifty years ago you got nowhere with a girl unless you could recite some Kahlil Gibran. Please tell me he hasn’t joined Rod McKuen on the “ash heap of history.”
I'm not into poetry, partly because... I don't really know... maybe how poetry has been co-opted and abused in our era.
But I do really like Patrick Kavanaugh and think this worth memorizing myself:
That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind
That I may break
With these hands
The bread of Wisdom that grows
In the other lands.
For this, for this
Do I wear
The rags of hunger and climb
The unending stair.
And the Psalms in general of course, but this one is that sweet spot for memorizing in my low memorization reality:
Psalm 13
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Jean Shepherd put me on to reciting Robert Service, particularly those evergreens The Cremation of Sam McGee and the Shooting of Dan McGrew. Especially effective in a barroom setting. There are strange things done in the midnight sun....
Re: Steve Wilson:
What? Not a good word for Housman...until now. And no one has mentioned Kipling.
Kipling has been mentioned a couple times. Housman isn't bad, but I never got into him. The only poem of his I memorised was "Here dead we lie." Brief and poignant.
Also, Auden hasn't been mentioned (unless in a comment yet to be released), but his "Fall of Rome" is another favourite of mine, committed to memory. But when reciting, I struggle with some of the half-rhymes. Disciplines with marines and clerk with work. Still, fun to recite if it's raining and you're by the pier.
“Riches, my boy, don’t consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don’t want to do. And don’t you forget it. Riches is being able to thumb your nose.”
From Brat Farrah, by Josephine Tey.
tcross
"A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon.
The kid that handled the music box was palying a jag tome tune.
Back of the bar in a solo game sat Dangerous Dan McGrew..............
As others said above, Robert Service has a lot to offer for reciting,
Comfort
Say! You’ve struck a heap of trouble –
Bust in business, lost yohttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68881369ur wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don’t care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you die –
Why, you’ve still the sunshine left you
And the big, blue sky.
Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it’s heaven shining through,
Earth is smiling ‘way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows –
Don’t you mope, you’ve still got these.
These, and none can take this from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! You’re tired and broke and beaten? –
Why, you’re rich – you’re got the earth!
Yes, if you’re a tramp in tatters,
While the blue sky bends above
You’ve got nearly all that matters –
You’ve got God, and God is love.
"Regarding Ozymandias, I would recommend the recitation given by Harry Melling in the "Meal Ticket" segment of the Coen Brother's recent film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The presentation by the wretchedly afflicted character, Harrison, is uniquely poignant."
I agree. That's one of my favorite movies and is the reason for my recent interest in the poem. I blogged about it here, with a clip of the recitation.
While we're naming poets, I forgot Donald Justice. His "Men at Forty" and "There is a Gold Light in Certain Old Paintings" are among my favourites, and at one point I could do the latter from memory.
"Jean Shepherd put me on to reciting Robert Service, particularly those evergreens The Cremation of Sam McGee and the Shooting of Dan McGrew...."
When I think of Jean Shepherd — I, who used to get in bed at 10 pm in time to listen to the show — I think of:
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.
Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death....
(Previously blogged here.)
@Althouse, I followed your “Previously blogged here” link and got: “Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist.”
Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much....
There are many people for whom making money is a game, and how much they accumulate is the way they keep score. To me, these people are dangerous, because i’ve never met one who cared about the impact of their activities on other people. All that counts is the score.
Imagine attending a school where Bret Stephens is the big idea of a commencement speaker. Just walk in front of a bus- faster and less expensive…
I know Casey at the Bat and The Cremation of Sam McGee, Pretty good, huh?
1. Problem with memorizing psalms is that they are in translation, and therefore often wrong. I recently read a passage in Isaiah that Handel famously set: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace." Is this all about Jesus? Since when is the government on his shoulder and he the everlasting Father?
It's actually about Hezekiah, king of Judah at the time. The 2nd sentence should be translated as: "the wondrous counselor, the mighty God, the eternal father, called his name Prince of Peace".
2. I'm with Churchill in loving to memorize Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, e.g.:
Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet’s blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.
Also, Ogden Nash
To a Small Boy standing on my shoes
Let’s straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won’t stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won’t pretend that we’re Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I do not like the things that you say
And I hate the games that you want to play.
No matter how frightfully hard you try,
We’ve little in common, you and I.
The interest I take in my neighbor’s nursery
Would have to grow, to be even cursory,
And I would that performing sons and nephews
Were carted away with the daily refuse,
And I hold that frolicsome daughters and nieces
Are ample excuse for breaking leases.
You may take a sock at your daddy’s tummy
Or climb all over your doting mummy,
But keep your attentions to me in check,
Or, sonny boy, I will wring your neck.
A happier man today I’d be
Had someone wrung it ahead of me.
"Commit great poems to heart"
Or... Enjoy them anew each time you read them.
I have had The Raven (and used to have The Bells) committed to memory for some sixty years now. Has gained me nothing and I enjoy reading it more than mentally reciting it.
For JAORE:
A remarkably shy armadillo
Who wound up just as flat as a brillo
Saw the car coming fast,
Jumped up so it could pass
But wound up as a part of the gillo.
Saint Croix:
In fact, any writers should read their stuff out loud. It's the best way to proof read.
Like I said in another post, that's standard writing technique. Anyone not doing it is more or less only writing for themselves.
mccullough:
Longer poems are tough,...
Try an Icelandic ode. I used one for the basic stanza and rhyming scheme for one my poems that evolved out of a short story I wrote around the old tale of a king's friend trying to screw him by using a chessboard.
Big Mike:
To me, these people are dangerous, because i’ve never met one who cared about the impact of their activities on other people. All that counts is the score.
And the score is just numbers and you can always add for bigger numbers
Dammit - grillo
Sorry about the bad link. Here’s the old post where I discussed the poem Jean Shepherd used to like to recite, the one about the tadpole and fish.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/03/audible-althouse-its-back-its-80.html
You can talk o gin and beer when you're quartered safe out here
And have your penny fights and Aldershot it.
But when it comes to slaughter
You'll do your work on water
And lick the bloomin' boots of him what got it.
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