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  #31  
Unread 03-13-2022, 04:27 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Thank you for the Ransom, Tim, I’d not seen that before. Yes, Heaney’s metrics are rough, but I think that’s how he wants them, like Apollinaire’s alexandrines.

Cheers,
John
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  #32  
Unread 03-14-2022, 11:42 PM
Tim McGrath Tim McGrath is offline
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To come full circle, I think that Ransom is as good as Robinson.
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  #33  
Unread 03-15-2022, 12:35 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Here's a Ransom poem more or less at random:

Winter Remembered

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat and center.

Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing;
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.

And where I walked, the murderous winter blast
Would have this body bowed, these eyeballs streaming,
And though I think this heart's blood froze not fast
It ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming.

Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch,
And tied our separate forces first together,
Were ten poor idiot fingers not worth much,
Ten frozen parsnips hanging in the weather.
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  #34  
Unread 03-15-2022, 08:35 PM
Tim McGrath Tim McGrath is offline
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In addition to his eulogy, I love "Dead Boy," "Janet Waking," and of course the great and glorious "Captain Carpenter."

Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime
Put on his pistols and went riding out
But he got well nigh nowhere at that time
Till he fell in with ladies in a rout.

It was a pretty lady and all her train
That played with him so sweetly but before
An hour she'd taken a sword with all her main
And twined him of his nose for evermore.

Captain Carpenter mounted up one day
And rode straightway into a stranger rogue
That looked unchristian but be that as it may
The Captain did not wait upon prologue.

But drew upon him out of his great heart
The other swung against him with a club
And cracked his two legs at the shinny part
And let him roll and stick like any tub.

Captain Carpenter rode many a time
From male and female took he sundry harms
He met the wife of Satan crying "I'm
The she-wolf bids you shall bear no more arms."

Their strokes and counters whistled in the wind
I wish he had delivered half his blows
But where she should have made off like a hind
The bitch bit off his arms at the elbows.

And Captain Carpenter parted with his ears
To a black devil that used him in this wise
O Jesus ere his threescore and ten years
Another had plucked out his sweet blue eyes.

Captain Carpenter got up on his roan
And sallied from the gate in hell's despite
I heard him asking in the grimmest tone
If any enemy yet there was to fight?

"To any adversary it is fame
If he risk to be wounded by my tongue
Or burnt in tow beneath my red heart's flame
Such are the perils he is cast among.

"But if he can he has a pretty choice
From an anatomy with little to lose
Whether he cut my tongue and take my voice
Or whether it be my round red heart he choose."

It was the neatest knave that ever was seen
Stepping in perfume from his lady's bower
Who at this word put in her merry mien
And fell on Captain Carpenter like a tower.

I would not knock old fellows in the dust
But there lay Captain Carpenter on his back
His weapons were the old heart in his bust
And a blade shook between rotten teeth alack.

The rogue in scarlet and gray soon knew his mind
He wished to get his trophy and depart;
With gentle apology and touch refined
He pierced him and produced the Captain's heart.

God's mercy rest on Captain Carpenter now
I thought him Sirs an honest gentleman
Citizen husband soldier and scholar enow
Let jangling kites eat of him if they can.

But God's deep curses follow after those
That shore him of his goodly nose and ears
His legs and strong arms at the two elbows
And eyes that had not watered seventy years.

The curse of hell upon the sleek upstart
Who got the Captain finally on his back
And took the red red vitals of his heart
And made the kites to whet their beaks clack clack.

Last edited by Tim McGrath; 03-15-2022 at 08:41 PM.
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  #35  
Unread 03-17-2022, 08:33 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Tim,

Yes, that’s a weird and wonderful dream vision. Dead Boy I like as well. He is certainly worth a gander.

Cheers,
John
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  #36  
Unread 03-27-2022, 05:58 AM
E. Shaun Russell E. Shaun Russell is offline
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Incidentally, Robinson teaches very well (at undergraduate level, at least). I've taught some of his Children of the Night poems a couple of times now, and they've fostered a ton of conversation both times -- more students involved in the discussion than for almost any other poet (which is saying a lot for a survey course). "Richard Cory" is a classic, but even ones that don't make many anthologies like "Cliff Klingenhagen" and "Aaron Stark" work well too.
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  #37  
Unread 03-27-2022, 10:35 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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That makes a lot of sense. As I’ve noted, my sister as a teen found Richard Cory splendid.

Cheers,
John
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