it's so effective when you present the erasure like that, the words you chose are bold. I think there is double meaning there. We all have a choice. You chose peace. We all should!
I've really been enjoying these and think you're really onto something. Dana Gioia famously said that while most Americans may not read poetry on the regular, they still treat it as if we should. We still celebrate poetry by naming football teams after it, by writing some of our best movies and TV shows around it, and by relying on poetry to mark our most important occasions. It's not the common, everyday speech of commerce, but the speech of wonder, of milestones and tipping points.
I saw something the other day in the paper, I think it was about Rob Reiner's death, and it was something like, now it's up to poets to take over.
I do really feel what you are saying. People want poetry. It's just become so inaccessible.
Actually you are giving me idea. I'm imagining a kind of Paladin (show in the late 1950s) like card that says, "Has Pen -- Will Travel" and it's a kind of volunteer thing for maybe people on hospice or something. I will think about it.
Absolutely loved this piece! I must say that it’s sad we will never see Brooke’s evolution, but in both his and Knighton’s defense, I must say that at the time the situation was unprecedented. The Great War was the first highly industrialized total war and the young lads who were signing up didn’t know about the trench warfare and mustard gas that would soon follow.
I agree and I realized this and pulled back a bit on Brooke. But it is interesting though, because Hviezdoslav is 65 and writes his Bloody Sonnets some months before Brooke writes these (this is the last of 5 sonnets).
Both are now statues.
But you get the sense that with age, Hviezdoslav knows where this all going. Every time I re-read the Bloody Sonnets I have to remind myself they were written in August 1914.
I think there is a certain perspective that comes with age, especially if you are poet. Also, Brooke was born into the capital of the top Colonial Empire, Hviezdoslav was born into a dominion of a regional power. For the former, that world was all he knew, whereas the later had been seeing the writing on the wall all of his life.
Josh! I like what you were able to find in the poem and that Banksy artwork is wonderfully brutal. Great work as always! I hope you and the family are doing okay!
This is very powerful, but a tough read. Brooke is taught in a lot of WWI poetry courses. I had never thought about the irony so bluntly. "Were he to have lived, would he feel the same?" Damn. I'm glad you wrote this, Josh.
If you want your country to cast you in iron, write poetry. This of course can either mean a jail cell or a mold of a statue."
A lovely way of saying poets matter.
We seek to inspire or infuriate :)
I'm voting for BOTH inspire and infuriate! :)
it's so effective when you present the erasure like that, the words you chose are bold. I think there is double meaning there. We all have a choice. You chose peace. We all should!
Thanks! I got the tip from @X. P. Callahan : https://open.substack.com/pub/xpcallahan/p/1252024-60a
I've really been enjoying these and think you're really onto something. Dana Gioia famously said that while most Americans may not read poetry on the regular, they still treat it as if we should. We still celebrate poetry by naming football teams after it, by writing some of our best movies and TV shows around it, and by relying on poetry to mark our most important occasions. It's not the common, everyday speech of commerce, but the speech of wonder, of milestones and tipping points.
I saw something the other day in the paper, I think it was about Rob Reiner's death, and it was something like, now it's up to poets to take over.
I do really feel what you are saying. People want poetry. It's just become so inaccessible.
Actually you are giving me idea. I'm imagining a kind of Paladin (show in the late 1950s) like card that says, "Has Pen -- Will Travel" and it's a kind of volunteer thing for maybe people on hospice or something. I will think about it.
Yep, agree! That's my plan #2 for the storytelling: nursing homes and vets' facilities.
“Have pen will travel reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9P04Mpb6DQ
These poems always hit different once you understand the first world war
Yeah, it’s such a crazy time. Each one of these I get to peek a bit more at it and I just seek the well going deeper.
Absolutely loved this piece! I must say that it’s sad we will never see Brooke’s evolution, but in both his and Knighton’s defense, I must say that at the time the situation was unprecedented. The Great War was the first highly industrialized total war and the young lads who were signing up didn’t know about the trench warfare and mustard gas that would soon follow.
I agree and I realized this and pulled back a bit on Brooke. But it is interesting though, because Hviezdoslav is 65 and writes his Bloody Sonnets some months before Brooke writes these (this is the last of 5 sonnets).
Both are now statues.
But you get the sense that with age, Hviezdoslav knows where this all going. Every time I re-read the Bloody Sonnets I have to remind myself they were written in August 1914.
I think there is a certain perspective that comes with age, especially if you are poet. Also, Brooke was born into the capital of the top Colonial Empire, Hviezdoslav was born into a dominion of a regional power. For the former, that world was all he knew, whereas the later had been seeing the writing on the wall all of his life.
Yeah, very good point, thanks.
Love the simplicity of the erasure. Has an innocence to it, a portrait of the young boys like Brooke who never returned.
Yeah, exactly. Thanks Elijah!
Josh! I like what you were able to find in the poem and that Banksy artwork is wonderfully brutal. Great work as always! I hope you and the family are doing okay!
Thanks Martin! We are doing OK yeah! Apparently they tried to wash off this banksy but it left a stain, which is itself kinda poetic I think.
This is very powerful, but a tough read. Brooke is taught in a lot of WWI poetry courses. I had never thought about the irony so bluntly. "Were he to have lived, would he feel the same?" Damn. I'm glad you wrote this, Josh.
It is a beautiful poem he wrote. It makes me want some Earl Grey, it really does.
For someone to write words like that, I believe he deeply loved his country.
But, as another English poet wrote a few hundred years before Brooke, “love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.”