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[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by robustpuppy
And any suggestion re Irish Literature that omits Yeats can't be taken seriously.

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

[mmm3587]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
[American version of The Office]

This has been in the news a few times over the last year or so, and I've always thought that it will suck. The commercials are painful. They're forcing what seems to come easily and naturally to the actors in the original.

I am glad that the Daily Show guy and the guy who was on Six Feet Under are two of the main characters. Maybe they will save it, but I doubt it.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

Seems almost sacreligious to post that here in Slouching Toward Thongs.

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by bilmore
Seems almost sacreligious to post that here in Slouching Toward Thongs.

But the title - to a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing - is apt. Furthermore, Yeats himself wrote "Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement."

[Replaced_Texan]

Colorblind test. All is well with my vision.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by robustpuppy
But the title - to a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing - is apt. Furthermore, Yeats himself wrote "Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement."

Yeats depresses me. I've never recovered from reading "The Second Coming" as a young Not Bobby.

Hmmm. Now that I think of it, it's a perfect addition to my typical St. Patrick's Day routine of drinking whiskey and crying while singing "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Wearin' O' The Green." I'll recite it at the Michael Collins Inn later.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Colorblind test. All is well with my vision.

This test is going to make Fringey want pizza.

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Yeats depresses me. I've never recovered from reading "The Second Coming" as a young Not Bobby.

Hmmm. Now that I think of it, it's a perfect addition to my typical St. Patrick's Day routine of drinking whiskey and crying while singing "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Wearin' O' The Green." I'll recite it at the Michael Collins Inn later.

Not only is The Second Coming Yeats's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," it's nothing on the depressing scale. If you want to be depressed by Yeats, read The Stolen Child (Coma away/ O human child!/ To the waters and the wilde/With a faery, hand in hand/For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand), or Adam's Curse (I had a thought for no one's but your ears:/That you were beautiful, and that I strove/To love you in the old high way of love;/That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown/As weary-hearted as that hollow moon), or any of his poems to and about Maud Gonne.

I actually don't find his work depressing. His poems are sad, of course, and reflect dissatisfaction and frustration with life, but the language is so beautiful it hurts, in a good way, like wasabi. Reading his poetry makes feel more alive. I just fucking love Yeats.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Lou Reed did the best reading of this. Made you want to join him in a heroin OD.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Yeats depresses me. I've never recovered from reading "The Second Coming" as a young Not Bobby.

Hmmm. Now that I think of it, it's a perfect addition to my typical St. Patrick's Day routine of drinking whiskey and crying while singing "The Minstrel Boy" and "The Wearin' O' The Green." I'll recite it at the Michael Collins Inn later.

....The Second Coming ...

Yeats may be too profound to last past the first drink or two.

After you've had a few, try Seamus Heaney:

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman's quick eye
And turned observant back.
Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Yeats may be too profound to last past the first drink or two.

After you've had a few, try Seamus Heaney:

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman's quick eye
And turned observant back.
Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled.

Ah, yes, the merriment of Irish verse. Got any Wolfe Tone?

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by robustpuppy
Not only is The Second Coming Yeats's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," it's nothing on the depressing scale.

I always thought of Easter: 1916 as his "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." (I am assuming that this term means something along the lines of it being his most popular, but not his best, work.)

Anyway, I agree with you about the power of poetry. I re-read Prufrock (I know, I know; I am a cliche) all the time. Hmm. Reading a little J. Alfred would also be good for my plan of inebriated melancholy for today.

[notcasesensitive]

This is not cutting it for me today. Could we return to a beer discussion or something? What is the proper beer to follow my Guinness this evening? Is Harp English or Irish?

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
This is not cutting it for me today. Could we return to a beer discussion or something? What is the proper beer to follow my Guinness this evening? Is Harp English or Irish?

Philistine.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by bilmore
Ah, yes, the merriment of Irish verse. Got any Wolfe Tone?

i think this guy's Irish

• Fuck this and fuck that
  Fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat
  She don't wanna baby that looks like that
  I don't wanna baby that looks like that