tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post5740323409825241534..comments2024-03-28T19:56:32.848-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `The Lot of Man'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-61118568573577444302014-12-29T03:57:04.860-06:002014-12-29T03:57:04.860-06:00You will have to help me with this, Mr Kurp. I am ...You will have to help me with this, Mr Kurp. I am new to the etiquette of blogs, so, if I transgress against it, you will have to alert me to the fact. I have been moved to comment on Larkin in verse, using a Larkinesque form as a tribute to him (while the content contains some criticism). It feels that this may be illicit in this context? I couldn’t say.<br /><br />Larkinesque<br /><br />First water, poetic aristocracy,<br />a cricket lover, plied exquisite line <br />and length. An expert witness in elegy<br />he mourned his life, alive, as he refined<br />the elegant corralling of a phrase;<br />the management of words schooled to erase<br />the early grief afflicting him. His main<br />relief and consolation found in art,<br />whose sorcery’s felicity imparts<br />integrity to dull quotidian pain.<br /><br />For him fulfillment gained from causing change<br />was insufficient. Being able to<br />impinge and choosing how to rearrange<br />was little privilege. No clue<br />how to charm mortality’s blind funk,<br />nor how to raise foundering courage sunk<br />in terror. Unless, like Baudelaire, the verse<br />he fashioned conjured fears, rescued his life<br />in metre, end-stopped time, consoled the strife<br />that froze his heart, helping dissolve the hearse<br /><br />that passed so near. Momento Mori were<br />his stock in trade. He was danse macabre’s hep cat.<br />But why should this unman us? Let’s concur<br />that old Skull Hill’s our natural habitat.<br />The Bone House is our living room, it throws<br />things into focus. Such perspective grows <br />us balls. It sets life’s gemstone, making keen <br />the sweetness we receive. Colours brightened<br />and sounds more plangent. Tastes, too, are heightened<br />knowing the lease will be guillotined.<br /><br />While Bechet wailed out an enormous yes<br />he always kept his options open, knew<br />“What will survive of us is love”, confessed<br />he sensed, though, this was only “almost true.”<br />Preferred half measure modern alienation,<br />a fifties form of British constipation,<br />insisting on his English diffidence,<br />was unconsoled and less deceived, defined <br />by negativity. The yes declined <br />in non-commitment. Never once relents.Subbuteohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11263202102536057266noreply@blogger.com