Penelope wrote:

Do you see 'Blackadder' in the USA? I'm thinking of Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson as Baldric - addressing Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I.

I had a look at Blackadder once and that was enough! I just could not make up or down of it.

OK reading it aloud does improve my opinion of it. Thanks for that tip. But it doesn't 'grab' me otherwise. I guess I'm one to always be trying to pin down meanings. Drives my kids crazy when they invite me to hear some new 'hit' song... I readily bypass the sound to try to comprehend the lyrics. They always protest that this is NOT the point...This one, I like the sound and if that's the point, well Ok....

DWill wrote:Ah, never apologize (well, not really never). It's not "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," granted.


104. "With How Sad Steps, O Moon, Thou Climb'st the Skies," by Sir Philip Sidney. This is Sonnet 31 from Asrophel and Stella. I admit it's hard for me, imbued with the scientific spirit of our age, to be much affected by a conceit like this. Sidney was a skillful poet, but I can only ding once on this.

I think this poem benefits from a little context. When looking for an audio of the poem being read, I found it in print with this title --
Astrophel and Stella XXX: "With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!" It is from a larger work.

From Wikipedia:
The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' (star) and 'phil' (lover), and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star

With this new information I went to Harmon directly. I did not remember that this is the Sidney of Jonson's "To Penshurst". This poem is improved by hearing. I'll give it a ding or two.

103. "Skunk Hour," by Robert Lowell. I won't say a word. What do you think? Well, I will ask if anyone sees the reference to old John Milton.

For Elizabeth Bishop


Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love . . . .' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

Saffron wrote:

From Wikipedia:
The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' (star) and 'phil' (lover), and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star

Thank you Saffron, that post was helpful. However, far be it from me to question the mighty wiki, but doesn't 'phil' mean brotherly love, rather than romantic love (Agape), or sexual love (Eros).....I'm thinking of Philadelphia - that means the City of Brotherly Love - doesn't it?

Pedantic is my middle name.

I think Phil means lover. I once had a friend named Phillip who told me he was so named because it means love of horses. His mother loved horses.

"Skunk Hill" is of course about my part of the world. Blue Hill is a town. "fairy" decorator? Oh by todays standards how condescending! L.L. Bean? A 30 minute drive away

I can't see anything in it but familiarity; including the mother skunk with her column of kittens (once had such a family living under my tool shed)

I can't distance myself enough to read for literary or poetic meaning.

The poem's gloominess and lethargy really bothered me at first. But the depressive mood reminded me a bit of John Clare (who I really, really like). He was of course, addicted to nature --among other things--and had a bit of a problem concerning his mental state. I wonder about Lowell...

The second reading came up with something that surprised me: look at the colors! You expect the black and white (of the skunk) and colorlessness, or at least gloominess. And what does he do? Throws orange and red at you.

So I read it again and liked it better....in the gloominess, there's humour! a Tudor Ford! So, that got me hooked. This poem has a lot more to offer than I thought (and believe me, after the first reading, I thought it would be a no-dinger).

Still, the mood and admissions of his mind not being right bother me, as do Clare's poems. But both seem to find solace in nature, although Clare's a bit more enthusiastic and obvious about it. Lowell prefers the more minimalistic approach with the skunk. And what about the skunk? Isn't that traditionally, at least, an animal to be avoided and not admired?

This is slowly becoming one of my favourite poems in spite of myself and gets 4 dings, even though I have problems with the metre.

Oh, Dwill, Milton.....was that a quote from the Hell section of Paradise Lost? I have no idea (blush). I don't know what else in the poem could refer to Milton (I myself am hell) and Milton does deal with Hell quite a bit.

Ding!--you're right about the Milton quote. And thanks for sticking with the Lowell. It's a fascinating poem, supposedly a breakthrough for Lowell as he invented confessional poetry. You don't realize at first how non-objective it is until about the fifth stanza. The rhyming and near-rhyming in this is great, and I also love the effect he achieves in some of the last stanza lines, with their concise commentary. Is this bathos? I'm not sure. Anyway, one of the best in this volume, I think.

102. "Dulce et Decorum Est," by Wilfred Owen. As the website I pulled the poem from said, this is the most famous poem to come out of WW I. It's savage and great.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.

2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.)

3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer

4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks

9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue

10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks

11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling

12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth

13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea

14. ardent - keen

15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above.

it IS savage and great. I can smell the sweat and blood, and feel the despair and stress of these men. I like how he is painting the opposite picture from the usual war is honor and glory, without the politics. 3.5 dings from me.

It reminds me of German Exprssionist poetry (Benn, Trakl) which I greatly love. No punches pulled, confrontation with reality. 3 dings.