[New-Poetry] Toads

[Jeff Newberry]

Tad,

Thanks for posting this.  I love Larkin's work, toads and all.

Jeff Newberry

On 7/2/07, TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org> wrote:
>
> And, of course, Larkin:
>
> Why should I let the toad work
> Squat on my life?
> Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
> And drive the brute off?
>
> Six days of the week it soils
> With its sickening poison -
> Just for paying a few bills!
> That's out of proportion.
>
> Lots of folk live on their wits:
> Lecturers, lispers,
> Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
> They don't end as paupers;
>
> Lots of folk live up lanes
> With fires in a bucket,
> Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
> They seem to like it.
>
> Their nippers have got bare feet,
> Their unspeakable wives
> Are skinny as whippets - and yet
> No one actually _starves_.
>
> Ah, were I courageous enough
> To shout, Stuff your pension!
> But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
> That dreams are made on:
>
> For something sufficiently toad-like
> Squats in me, too;
> Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
> And cold as snow,
>
> And will never allow me to blarney
> My way of getting
> The fame and the girl and the money
> All at one sitting.
>
> I don't say, one bodies the other
> One's spiritual truth;
> But I do say it's hard to lose either,
> When you have both.
>
>
>
> Mccall, Steven NAVAIR wrote:
> > Keats also mentions toads in his essay "The Philosophy of Shelley's
> > Poetry" as follows:
> >
> > "In "Prometheus Unbound" he sees, as in the ecstasy of a saint, the
> > ships moving among the seas of the world without fear of danger
> >
> >                     by the light
> > Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
> > And music soft,
> >
> > and poison dying out of green things, and cruelty out of all living
> > things, and even the toads and efts [newts] becoming beautiful, and at
> > last Time being borne "to his tomb in eternity.""
> >
> > Not a very sexy quote.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
> > Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 14:59
> > To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
> > Subject: [New-Poetry] Toads
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jul 2, 2007, at 2:46 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> >
> >       The toads are a quotation from a Yeats essay, actually, and I
> > once read it in the essay of its origin, but never was able to find it
> > again.
> >
> >       --Bob G.
> >
> > ==============
> >
> > I'm skeptical.  The phrase "literalists of the imagination" Moore
> > ascribes to Yeats, but not the toads.  She was typically very scrupulous
> > about acknowledging her borrowings.
> >
> > The Yeats is from *Ideas of Good and Evil*:  "The limitation of his view
> > was from the very intensity of his vision; he was a too literal realist
> > of imagination, as others are of nature...."  He's discussing Blake's
> > illustrations of Dante.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ========================================
> > David Graham
> > grahamd at ripon.edu
> >
> > Home Page:
> > http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html
> >
> > Poetry Library:
> > http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> > ==========================================
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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> >
> >
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
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—William Faulkner, Light in August


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