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Kevin
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Hi there Jerome, Like you I have been fascinated by poets in the movies, and, I suppose, by their close adherence to the death drive. I grew up watching Tennessee Williams movies, and was always inspired by Sebastian in Suddenly Last Summer, and the way he wrote one poem a year during a sex-tour of Mexico. And his alter ego, the aged, 90 year old "Nonno" in The Night of the Iguana, who could not die until he had finished his last poem. When he finally intones it at the end of the movie, that was actually my first experience of high camp. Even the child watching the movie is thinking, All that effort to this terrible result? In consequence lines from the poem have always stayed with me. I wonder if they will be my last words, right before I die?!?! How calmly does the orange branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair. Sometimes while night obscures the tree The zenith of its life will be Gone past forever, and from thence A second history will commence. A chronicle no longer gold, A bargaining with mist and mould, And finally the broken stem The plummeting to earth; and then An intercourse not well designed For Beings of a golden kind Whose native green must arch above The Earth’s obscene, corrupting love. And still the ripe fruit and the branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair. O Courage, could you not as well Select a second place to dwell, No only in that golden tree But in the frightened heart of me? (This apparently is the favorite poem of a lot of people!)
Toggle Commented Apr 27, 2010 on Is Poetry Dangerous to Society? at espresso bongo
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Apr 26, 2010