(Untitled)

[george_sand]

Vers de Societe

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid -

Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,

Comments

[alii_cat]

Following on from Steffeny, I don't really like poetry but I like that. I totally disagree with what he's saying though- "it" rarely shows us what should be and sitting by a lamp most certainly does bring peace, to me anyway.

[george_sand]

That's perceptive, I think. Can I enlist your help to decipher one of his called Sympathy in White Major? I can't figure it out so if anybody highbrow asks me what it's about i'll have to bluff and say it's a curious dialectic between Richey Edwards and On The Buses like most of his other poems.

[alii_cat]

I can try if you like but I'm pretty hopeless with poetry. Can I find it on the internet anywhere do you think?

[george_sand]

Probably but i'll type it out, it's easier.

Sympathy In White Major

When I drop four cubes of ice
Chimingly in a glass, and add
Three goes of gin, a lemon slice,
And let a ten-ounce tonic void
In foaming gulps until it smothers
Everything else up to the edge,
I lift the lot in private pledge:
He devoted his life to others.

While other people wore like clothes
The human beings in their days
I set myself to bring to those
Who thought I could the lost displays;
It didn't work for them or me,
But all concerned were nearer thus
(Or so we thought)to all the fuss
Than if we'd missed it separately.

A decent chap, a real good sort,
Straight as a die, one of the best,
A brick, a trump, a proper sport,
Head and shoulders above the rest;
How many lives would have been duller
Had he not been here below?
Here's to the whitest man I know-
Though white is not my favourite colour.

[robotrankin]

My interest lies in Japanese poetry, but here goes:

- this may be a poem but I don't consider it to be particularly poetic. Not to say it's shit (I really like it) but it just isn't poetic.

- the first verse: The poet sits down and pours a drink. Raises it to a dead acquaintance who was A Good Man.

- the second verse: The poet conjectures that he, like Plato, had a higher purpose than mere human relationships. But with perhaps the tiniest acceptance that it may not have been for the best.

- the third verse: The poet remembers how well others thought of his dead acquaintance and concludes that, despite being nice and generous and kind he was a bit of a cunt. How is it that you always hate those who are well regarded by others?

[george_sand]

Thanks for that. The bit involving gin i'm alright with but I just stared too closely at the rest.

[sylviaplath2005]

I agree with robotrankin; also, the poet did not identify with the deceased in all his goodness. Maybe it's the narrator who's a bit of a cunt himself.

Larkin's a cunt

[george_sand]

Indeed he is. Or was. Still, a bit of misery's good for the constitution.

Re: Larkin's a cunt

[sylviaplath2005]

Yeah, I'm glad ted__hughes took his place as British Poet Laureate. I don't know much about Larkin; but I don't think you could get much worse in the department of cunt-ness than Hughes.

[alii_cat]

Well I finally got round to it. It seems to me as if the first verse is basically about a drink despite the fact that a guy is dead. The last verse is obviously deriding the shallow homilies spoken of the dead, and he appears to finish by disparaging even the mythical qualities ascribed to the deceased.

The middle verse, eep (which I appreciate is the whole reason you asked me). Wearing humans like clothes sounds like being exploitativley dependent on their company to me. Missing the fuss and being more or less near etc. sounds meaningless to me- i.e. could have been more or less near and the consequence would have been the same i.e. no consequence.

So the whole poem basically says that all human meaning and interaction is tawdry, exploitative, mendacious and hollow, in the usually deferent surrounds of a funeral.

Rocking! It would be my new favourite poem if the middle verse wasn't such total bollocks.

Erm... that's the best I can do. Hope it's not distressingly fatuous, childishly naive, or anything else I'd sooner not be.

Larkin: the end.

[george_sand]

I think what you have done there is clever. It is much more clear now, I see that his syntax had stopped me from following it. What appeals to me is his bullishness, the cocky way in which he treats prosaic social conventions. In that way he was the maverick type of poet, a Percy Shelley of the post-war decades. It all ended horribly, of course, by which I mean he could not keep his dignity since in truth he was a very depressed old man. Towards the end of his life, he wrote this, which has such a level of pathos and reads to me like any mask he may have been wearing has now slipped

Re: Larkin: the end.

[alii_cat]

I like that poem. As for feeling thick, you beat the hell out of me for even posing the question. This whole conversation has got me a lot more into poetry, which I previously hated, so well done. Perhaps I should get a Larkin book. I think I will.

Re: Larkin: the end.

[alii_cat]

Oh, and I nearly forgot- I didn't agree with robotrankin at all did I? Controversial...

Re: Larkin: the end.

[pvcdiva]

hmmmm...may I join in?

I read the second verse, slightly differently. I took it to say that wearing 'human beings like clothes' is we try on social conventions,things like 'decency', and yet don't really mean them - that we try to be good people, but underneath the veneer of civilisation we are all grasping shits, but some fight, or at least conceal, this tendency better than others.

People project these expectations onto Larkin, and he tries to live up to them, but in the end he fails, even if in the trying at least they are better people for the effort.

I see it as a disbelief that any intention to be a decent person can be anything other than both illusory and doomed to failure. Essentially he sees people as no good, with all pretesne at goodness motivated by a desire to be seen to be good rather than to be good for its own sake. But in the striving, even if for polluted motives, at least some sense of decency prevails.

Re: Larkin: the end.

[george_sand]

Hello, you should be able to read my journal now, I added you.

Larkin's a funny one. I agree with you that in this poem at least, he says that people will always try to be decent, but the attempt is doomed to failure. But at least the obligation and expectation of behaving properly in the company of others gives each of us the chance to hide behind a facade and so keep a bit of dignity. The funeral setting suits what he is trying to say quite well.

A friend of mine once said that he saw his choices in life as either Philip Larkin or Roger Moore. It makes me laugh.