“The Daffodils” by William Wordsworth (Rap)

Posted by Tom Fasano on January 31, 2010 – 11:14 pm -

MC Nuts spits William Wordsworth hip-hop style.

The Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


Tags: ,
Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

Poem of the week: The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy

Posted by Tom Fasano on December 30, 2009 – 9:07 pm -

The Keatsian image of the thrush produces one of Hardy’s most lyrical poems

At once a voice arose among/ The bleak twigs overhead/ In a full-hearted evensong/ Of joy illimited ... - Hardy

[[Thomas Hardy]] and his thrush belongs to the Romantic tradition, in which birds express emotion in “songs” that inform human lives. Hardy was close enough to the 19th century to be able to present the bird as a symbol of hope for the new century. Later on in his career, Hardy became more, not less, despairing — expressed in the great poem of 1912 about the sinking of the Titanic, “The Convergence of the Twain.”

In 1899, however. Hardy was more optimistic. His dark pessimism had yet to metastasize. I agree with most commentators who consider the thrush to represent the poet himself since he was frail and bird-like in appearance and filled, at the time of this poem’s composition, with an abundant hope for the future.

Let the poet-thrush’s “happy good night air” sing us into the new year, with all my thanks and good wishes to friends old and new.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


Tags: ,
Posted in Poem of the Week, Poetry | No Comments »

“The Prelude” by William Wordsworth

Posted by Tom Fasano on November 29, 2009 – 8:36 pm -

william_wordsworth

William Wordsworth

A behemoth of a poem, The Prelude is essentially a philosophical autobiography in blank verse, the story of the growth of the poet’s mind. In the course of the poem, Wordsworth explores his own imagination as worthy fodder of an epic.The poem evolves out of Wordsworth’s overarching metaphor that life’s journey is a circular one whose end is “to arrive where we started / And know that place for the first time” (T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, lines 241-42). The poem dramatizes several journeys, both literal and figurative, through which Wordsworth tries to reconstitute hope in a dark time.

The Google Books edition is more than 250 pages, so better leave this one for a long weekend or holiday. But please make time for it. It is even richer than Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” As long English poems go, “The Prelude” is the most insightful look at the human condition of the past three centuries.


Tags: ,
Posted in Poetry | No Comments »

“The Wanderer”

Posted by Tom Fasano on August 18, 2009 – 1:51 pm -

The Anglo Saxon poem, The Wanderer, consists principally of two different speeches, the first (lines 1-5 and 8-57) uttered by the eardstapa (land-wanderer), the second (58-110) by the philosophical person described as snotter on mode (wise spirit). The poet supplies sage advice in the epilogue (112-115). Some see the poem as having only one voice, that of the eardstapa, who speaks of his experiences and the sufferings of others and thus earns the epithet of line 111, snotter on mode. This is a perfectly good way to read the poem. But I prefer to think that the eardstapa and the snotter on mode are two different voices because the characterization is much sharper if the poem is read that way, although neither approach to the poem alters the sequence of ideas and emotions presented.

What I love most about this poem, and what it has in common with Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, is its emphasis on alleviating personal sorrow by recognizing the inevitable ruin of earthly values and the great need to seek out a lasting satisfaction in another realm.

These themes are presented most artfully in the above Johnny Cash video, “The Wanderer,” with a little help from U2.


Tags: ,
Posted in Anglo Saxon, Literature, Poetry | No Comments »

Simon & Garfunkel – Richard Cory 1966 live

Posted by Tom Fasano on February 13, 2008 – 11:05 pm -

Here’s a great video of Simon & Garfunkel performing their version of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s most-anthologized poem, “Richard Cory.” I find it impossible to teach this masterpiece of a poem without using this song as scaffolding. About all I know of this live performance is that it was in 1966.


Tags: , ,
Posted in Literature, Videos | 1 Comment »

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

Posted by Tom Fasano on December 13, 2007 – 10:47 pm -

by Emily Dickinson

I HEARD a fly buzz — when I died–
the stillness in the room
was like the stillness in the air —
between the heaves of storm —

The eyes around — had wrung them dry —
and breaths were gathering firm
for that last onset — when the King
be witnessed — in the room —

I willed my keepsakes — signed away
what portion of me be
assignable — and then it was
there interposed a fly —

with blue — uncertain stumbling buzz —
between the light — and me —
and then the windows failed — and then
I could not see to see —


Tags: , ,
Posted in Literature | No Comments »