I'll keep my fingers crossed til then and I thank you for your patience.
If you have ten minutes to spare today, and feel like exulting in the art of an essayist in tip-top shape, please pick just about anything from Clive James' treasury of short essays and enjoy the sensation of your Grey Matter Giggling. I suggest starting here.
Also! Mr. James introduced this concept to ye olde brain theatre and I'm happy to have it dancing on the stage: "There is an untranslatable Italian word for the mental bank account you acquire by memorizing poetry: it is a gazofilacio."
I task myself with this. Commit Auden's "The Fall of Rome" to memory.
The Fall of Rome
by W. H. Auden
(for Cyril Connolly)
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
.
2 comments:
When I was seven, my mother made me memorize Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." At the time, I found the exercise exasperating and futile: I loved the poem, but what was the point of knowing it by heart? Now, I love being able to recall and recite it (in my head, mostly) and other poetry at will. And I still love the poem!
Oops! The above is by Pasley.
[waves]
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