I miss him too, John.
RJ: "Dream Song 111", John Berryman.
Fact, confusion. "I miss him." Fact. "Then I shot him dead. / I don't remember why." Confusion. If you can say that a Berryman poem is actually about something - and we must, or else why read & try to interpret anything - then this would seem to involve a Wild Bill Hickok-style card game, with tempers running high and guns in the room. Neat idea about the cards: all of them are implied to be red. With all of the violence implied on this ship, it would seem that the sudden profusion of red points us to an act of violence the speaker catches up with only after the end dash. It's as though he's been shot or, more reasonably, realizes he's been hurt.
*
PoemHunter, take note: no one, but NO ONE, wants the "Fun Cursors" your site so tirelessly peddles along the left margin of your Web page. Especially if they're animated. Criminy.
*
The Great Pyramids of Giza, as monuments to the lost, are beginning to make tremendous sense to me. Not in terms of the slavery and loss and cost in their construction. More in terms of this totemic statement of permanence - or as close to permanence as we can come. This impulse to memorialize hugely.
Fact, confusion. "I miss him." Fact. "Then I shot him dead. / I don't remember why." Confusion. If you can say that a Berryman poem is actually about something - and we must, or else why read & try to interpret anything - then this would seem to involve a Wild Bill Hickok-style card game, with tempers running high and guns in the room. Neat idea about the cards: all of them are implied to be red. With all of the violence implied on this ship, it would seem that the sudden profusion of red points us to an act of violence the speaker catches up with only after the end dash. It's as though he's been shot or, more reasonably, realizes he's been hurt.
*
PoemHunter, take note: no one, but NO ONE, wants the "Fun Cursors" your site so tirelessly peddles along the left margin of your Web page. Especially if they're animated. Criminy.
*
The Great Pyramids of Giza, as monuments to the lost, are beginning to make tremendous sense to me. Not in terms of the slavery and loss and cost in their construction. More in terms of this totemic statement of permanence - or as close to permanence as we can come. This impulse to memorialize hugely.
posted by Wil at
9:36 PM
3 Comments:
Do you have Google Earth? Pop those pyramids into the finder. It's amazing to watch the "camera" zoom in from the globe to these colossal monuments, just about the closest we've come to big and permanent, reduced to miniscule size on a temporary planet.
And remember that you are, yourself, a colossal monument to him.
By
Anonymous, at 7:29 PM
Hey now. That's amazing. On your advice I've downloaded the program and it's everything I thought it might be. Thanks for the recommendation. And your kind words.
By
Wil, at 9:11 PM
Are you familiar with the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xi'an (China)? Talk about memorializing hugely.
By
junebee, at 9:52 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home