Tag Archives: literature

The Tiger by William Blake [w/ Audio]

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Tiger, tiger, burning bright
 In the forests of the night,
  What immortal hand or eye
 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
  On what wings dare he aspire?
 What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
 Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
  And, when thy heart began to beat,
 What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
 In what furnace was thy brain?
  What the anvil? What dread grasp
 Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
 And watered heaven with their tears,
  Did he smile his work to see?
 Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
 In the forests of the night,
  What immortal hand or eye
 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

BOOKS: Wonderful Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek

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Wonderful, Wonderful TimesWonderful, Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

If I said this book was A Clockwork Orange meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream it would be in some ways deceptive but in other ways, accurate. The book has none of the otherworldliness of those other stories and, instead, is set in a realistic 1950’s Vienna. Furthermore, those comparisons might confuse readers into not realizing this book is unambiguously a tragedy.

The book is set around four kids (Rainer, Anna, Hans, and Sophie) who like to beat up and rob adults, usually using a kind of catfishing scheme where they trick a middle-aged man into thinking he is about to have a getting lucky with Lolita moment before the other three gang up on the man in a moment of shock and awe. Here lies the “Clockwork Orange” comparison: youths enamored of violence as a means to combat the boredom and meaninglessness of their lives — possibly while passing on the abuse they receive in their own lives.

The “Midsummer Night’s Dream” part comes in with the book’s love geometry. Like that Shakespearean play, there are two boys and two girls and both boys are in love with the same girl (Sophie,) leaving the other girl (Anna) in a sad unrequited territory.

The book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and not only because it deals heavily in sex and violence. There are a couple factors that make the book feel strange. First of all, it is written in present tense. Secondly, it spends a lot of time in the minds of the characters and relatively little time with the action. Thirdly, the pacing of the conclusion and resolution of the book is abrupt and might feel forced — like the author was 245 pages in when the publisher told her that she had 250 pages, maximum, and that she’d better be wrapping it up. I didn’t find any of these factors to be problematic, but I can see how they would rub some readers the wrong way.

If the premise intrigues, you should definitely read this book – particularly if the previous paragraph’s warning didn’t turn you off.

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BOOKS: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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The Picture of Dorian GrayThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This is a book about what happens when you hollow out a person of all the complexity of the human condition and idealize them. At the beginning of the story, Dorian Gray is young, attractive, and preternaturally likable in a naïvely innocent kind of way. Almost to the novel’s end, through the magic of a wish made upon a portrait, Gray is still young and beautiful, though that naive innocence cracks under the strain of the impossible bifurcation of man and his soul. The artist, Basil Hallward, and Lord Henry (a man who will become a mutual friend of Gray and Hallward) cannot see Gray as a fully formed human being, but rather see him as an emblem of youth and beauty. But this unnatural ideal cannot hold, and a string of tragic deaths will be left in its wake.

The book is full of clever witticisms, albeit often of a nihilistic nature. These are almost all spoken by Lord Henry, who is the Polonius of the story – but a hipper kind of Polonius than Hamlet‘s. That said, it’s telling that toward the end of the book Gray does some of this epigrammatic philosophizing. (e.g. Such as when Gray tells Hallward, “Each of us has heaven and hell in him…”) One might dismiss this as Gray parroting Lord Henry, but I think that life has defrocked him of his naïveté, and he begins to think in ways that were impossible in his [true] youth.

This is a must-read. It’s interesting, thought-provoking, and well worth the time.

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BOOKS: The Poet Li Po AD 701-762 Trans. & Ed. by Arthur Waley

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The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762The Poet Li Po A.D. 701-762 by Arthur Waley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available online at: Project Gutenberg – The Poet Li Po

Li Po, also Romanized “Li Bai,” is one of China’s most famous poets, the prolific Tang Dynasty poet wrote extensively at the nexus of intoxication and the beauty of the natural world. His well-loved and evocative poem, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight,” is a prime example [and is included in this selection.]

The selection consists of a small number of translations by [20th-century Orientalist] Arthur Waley. It’s only 20-some of the 1,000-ish extant poems of Li Bai, but it does offer variety in form and subject matter. It doesn’t include all of Li Bai’s most anthologized poems, which I consider a plus — i.e. Waley didn’t just assemble a greatest hits album.

The Waley translations aren’t as sparse as many that one will read. That offers the advantage of being clearer in meaning while losing some of the feel of the original. That said, I enjoyed this group of translations and didn’t feel they were too verbose – for the most part. It’s a selection well worth reading for those who enjoy poetry.

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Five Wise Lines from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

All art is quite useless.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are fascinating.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

PROMPT: Cultural Heritage

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Daily writing prompt
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
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It’s not something that I’ve thought of much. In my youth, I was attracted to most every culture but that of my own ancestry. In my late teens and early twenties, I visited Liverpool two or three times (just across the Irish Sea from my ancestral homeland,) but (sadly) never made it to Ireland. I’ve been to over 40 countries, but not yet my ancestral homeland. I think that’s not so uncommon to come around to an interest in such things later in life.

But the answer to the question is certainly to be found in the literature. Yeats is among my favorite twentieth century poets (if not my favorite,) and Seamus Heaney is certainly in the running. Of late, I’ve gotten on an Oscar Wilde kick, and his work definitely appeals to my ornery yet thoughtful nature. Even Joyce, who I had trouble getting into in his role as novelist, is a writer whose use of language I love.

Five Wise Lines from Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore

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In the drowsy dark caves of the mind / dreams build their nest with fragments / dropped from day’s caravan.

From the solemn gloom of the temple / children run out to sit in the dust, / God watches them play / and forgets the priest.

The wind tries to take the flame by storm / only to blow it out.

The same sun is newly born in new lands / in a ring of endless dawns.

When death comes and whispers to me, / “Thy days are ended.” / let me say to him, “I have lived in love / and not in mere time.” / He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?” / I shall say, “I know not, but this I know / that often when I sang I found my eternity.

Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore is in the public domain and can be read at sites such as:

Fireflies is available at PoetryVerse

Rickety Gibberish [Free Verse]

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A long time ago,
 I listened to the audiobook of
    Kerouac's "On the Road."

In that format, 
   I became aware of how often
     Kerouac used the word
       "rickety." 

Almost as aware as I became
   of how often Twain uses
      the N-word in Huck Finn
      when I unwisely listened to 
      that audiobook while driving
      through downtown Atlanta
      with my windows rolled down. 

I'm now reading Hunter Thompson's
   "Kingdom of Fear," and I've become
      aware that Thompson had a love
      of the word "gibberish" almost on par
      with Kerouac's love of "rickety."

And I think about how much beautiful
   rickety gibberish I've read from those
      authors, and what a fine 
      thing it is if one can write 
      rickety gibberish that stands up 
      under its own weight.

Five Wise Lines from The Book of Thel by William Blake

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Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? / Or Love in a golden bowl?

from Thel’s Motto

I am a watery weed, / And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales: / So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head. / Yet I am visited from heaven and he that smiles on all / Walks in the valley.

from Part I

Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies, / How great thy use, how great thy blessing

from Part II

every thing that lives. / Lives not alone nor for itself

from Part II

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction? / Or the glistening Eye to the poison of a smile!

from Part IV

Five Wise Lines from Macbeth

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Macbeth & Banquo Encounter the Witches
by Theodore Chasseriau

“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”

Duncan in Act I, Scene 4

“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.”

Macbeth in Act I, Scene 7

“when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors”

Wife of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2

“Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat up the honest men and hang them up.”

Son of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2

“Life ‘s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Macbeth in Act V, Scene 5