Log24

Monday, January 2, 2012

The Lovely Bones*

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:48 am

An adaptation for the late Barbara Lea

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor shé for her bónes rísen.

— After Gerard Manley Hopkins, Society of Jesus

* "And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it."

    — Alice Sebold

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Meadow

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am

From Nabokov's The Gift

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110427-ApolloButterflyNabokov.jpg

Click for more about the Pushkin verse.

See also Trevanian + meadow and Congregated Light.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Shall I Compare Thee

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:02 am

Margaret Soltan on a summer's-day poem by D.A. Powell

first, a congregated light, the brilliance of a meadowland in bloom
and then the image must fail, as we must fail, as we

graceless creatures that we are, unmake and befoul our beds
don’t tell me deluge.     don’t tell me heat, too damned much heat

"Specifically, your trope is the trope of every life:
 the organizing of the disparate parts of a personality
 into a self (a congregated light), blazing youth
 (a meadowland in bloom), and then the failure
 of that image, the failure of that self to sustain itself."

Alternate title for Soltan's commentary, suggested by yesterday's Portrait:

Smart Jewish Girl Fwows Up.

Midrash on Soltan—

Congregated Light

The 13 symmetry axes 
of the cube

Meadowland

Appalachian meadow

Failure

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me?

Coda

"…meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing…."

Friday, December 13, 2002

Friday December 13, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

Dead Poets Society

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor hé for his bónes rísen.

—  The Caged Skylark,

Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Society of Jesus

In accordance with this sentiment,
this midnight in the garden of good and evil
is the occasion for a change of site music
to “Skylark,” by Hoagy Carmichael
(lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

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