look at this

(i'll begin with an apology
stuff like veteran's day hoopla can send me to the darker regions of my own head
the genius of this cummings poem is that merely changing the weapon that makes the mess will make this poem appropriate for any conflict)

look at this)
a 75 done
this nobody would
have believed
would they no
kidding this was my particular

pal
funny aint
it we was
buddies
i used to

know
him lift the
poor cuss
tenderly this side up handle

with care
fragile
and send him home

to his old mother in
a new nice pine box

(collect

Comments

[litbrit]

Oh dear, e.e. always makes me cry. And just did, again.

(I capitalize proper nouns, because I type pretty fast--okay, really, really fast--and it's no extra effort to do so; furthermore, JM school followed by the various writing jobs and doing the book mean I'm used to turning in edited copy, complete with caps and punctuation.

But my all-lowercase blog handle--litbrit--is a quiet nod to one of my favorite poets.)

[minstrel hussain boy]

i have used cummings to illustrate to young players the importance of studying music theory and getting the fundamentals and rudiments of scales and things like that down pat before trying to branch out into the world of improvisation and stuff.

i tell them to study his sonnets especially. look at the way he used the classic structure of elizabethan and pretrachian sonnets perfectly, and used that structure as the framework to hang some of his most wildly creative ventures upon.

to my taste the most exquisite jazz, the most compelling rock&roll is the stuff that never lets you forget the framework upon which the notes hang.

(and exposes yet another reason why i so admire jeff beck and jimi, they are two of the most lyrical players ever)

[kathy a.]

oh, MHB.

[Lisa Simeone]

O/T, but you really must let us know how that paella dinner with the famous gorgeous gal goes.

[litbrit]

Yes! Dish! (So to speak...)

[big bad wolf]

i like what anthony bugess said: craft precedes art

[minstrel hussain boy]

paella is tomorrow afternoon, i am giddy with anticipation.

giddy i tells ya.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

From Elegy for a Dead Soldier by Carl Shapiro (1944)...

"The time to mourn is short that best becomes
The military dead.
We lift and fold the flag,
Lay bare the coffin with its written tag,
And march away.
Behind, four others wait
To lift the box, the heaviest of loads.
The anesthetic afternoon benumbs,
Sickens our senses, forces back our talk.
We know that others on tomorrows roads
Will fall, ourselves perhaps, the man beside,
Over the world the threatened, all who walk:
And could we mark the grave of him who died
We could write this beneath his name and date:

EPITAPH

Underneath this wooden cross there lies
A Christian killed in battle.
You who read,
Remember that this stranger died in pain;
And passing here, if you can lift your eyes
Upon a peace kept by human creed,
Know that one soldier has not died in vain."

I like cummings he teaches you to curl around
words and doze fitfully

I also like Stevens who has Death of a Soldier...
worth a look.

I guess, if we think poetry is of any significance.

Is it?

Leads us to the ending lines of Ulysses, I leave it you to decide which one...

[litbrit]

KN, when I was at UF, I was privileged to take a few classes with the Southern author Harry Crews.

He used to say that writing a book--a novel--was hard, writing a short story was harder still, and writing a poem was the most difficult undertaking of all, because it was like mining for the single gem in all the surrounding rock (I thought you'd like that metaphor). He also said that those to whom poems come (as opposed to other forms of creative writing) are doomed to suffer. It is the least well-remunerated of the writing arts, and the very state of being a poet suggests a tortured soul.

Of course poetry is of significance. It is my sanity--when I read it, and when I write it, too.

But that's just me.

[Wade Kane]

In 1969 I when I read the poem by cummings, I changed the 75 to 122. After Tet '68 we got hit a lot by 122mm Katyusha rockets. But I never heard that term till the mid eighties. We lucked out the first couple of times we had incoming 122s, as the NVA was using a delayed fuse designed to destroy bunkers. We (1st Air Cav) had just moved in to the area near Quang Tri, and had yet to build bunkers. A proximity fuse that would have detonated above the ground would have been much more effective against our helicopters. As it was the ground looked like it has sort of been rotor tilled around where the rocket mortar tube was sticking up out of the ground. A friend from another unit crewed a Chinook that a 122 with the proximity fuse went off near. It looked like swiss cheese up close.
War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Vietnam shouuld have been allowed to become independent after WWII vs reverting to being a colony of France. War is a racket, welfare for the warfare companies. Like the British companies who in 1922 sold torpedo planes and aircraft carrier plans to Japan, as Britain was then allied with Japan. It was Iran has F-14s, and I wonder what current ally that we will sell the new F-35s to that in ten years will be our enemy.