[New-Poetry] Re: Rating the Housman

[TheOldMole]

It also has to have bawdy puns in it, and if you don't agree with him 
that some are there, you are a Victorian prude.

Doesn't everyone believe that?

Bob Grumman wrote:
> Linda Sue Grimes wrote:
>> "In the end, the great failure of the poem is that something 
>> conventially seen as beautiful by about 99.9% of the 
>> population--cherry trees in bloom--is seen as beautiful and worth 
>> experiencing over and over by the poet."
>>  
>> By taking literally the final line, *"*To see the cherry hung with 
>> snow*,"* you eliminate this problem. 
>>  
>> lsg
> Actually, you don't: the poet is still saying the cherry trees in 
> bloom are worth seeing as much as one can.  Your interpretation only 
> adds that even that isn't enough: one should experience their beauty 
> when they have snow on them as well.  A great Failure, like the Great 
> Failure of the Dickinson poem in telling us something 99.9% of the 
> population takes as sad, the death of a loved one, will be emotionally 
> upsetting.
>
> One reason I'm so crotchety about this is that I've been arguing with 
> a wack who believes Oxford wrote the works of Shakespeare about 
> "Sonnet 18."   That, he is certain, can't be about its addressee's 
> being more beautiful in appearance and disposition than a summer's day 
> because that's "boring"; for him, it has to be comparing Queen 
> Elizabeth to Queen Mary of Scots--it has to have important people in 
> it.  It also has to have bawdy puns in it, and if you don't agree with 
> him that some are there, you are a Victorian prude.
>
> --Bob
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Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

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