The Benny Hill comparison is quite apt Edmund, recall Eliot was a keen fan
of vaudeville aka the music halls where people like a young Benny Hill would
have learnt their trade before becoming tv.
Yes, Sweeney Agonistes is part slapstick, part creepy, it also latches into
something like the reality of what Greek classical plays were meant to be,
in context, something like a combination of the Hamlet soliloquys and the
Carry On Films ( I mean how things were actually done, it seems, with
Serious Tragedy flanked by utter bawdy) : raucous, moralistic, cheap and
deep!
Oedipus Rex starring Sid James and Hattie Jacques.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edmund Hardy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: Help! The grass is singing
> >you should have read that already: I expect such commitment to poetry
from
> anyone who would talk to me as a practioner.
>
> hi Dave -
>
> i have read it already - but I'd forgotten it - but now i've read it
again -
> Parts of it reminded me of Benny Hill (who i like) actually, "you've got
the
> hoo-ha's coming to you"
>
> Edmund
>
>
>
>
> Edmund
>
> I might, in e-mail land, act
> the part of a fool, but that's a defence mechanism, although I am far well
> read than many I am always conscious of the tones of social inferiority,
> it's a maelstrom of feeling, I always recall that when I first went on
> poetry lists I had this naive idea that I was entering open fora about the
> art I love, it's not so, as we all really know (that rhymes, note it: I
must
> be a poet)
>
> At the age of fifty-one I suspect I have just grown up ( a couple of years
> ago Ms Croggalogs said something accusatory to me b-c on the lines of when
> will you grow up - she was quite right then, fair cop Al)
>
> My friendship with my ultimate human disaster area Victoria has made me
> acknowledge my own humanity, Vicky in turn is getting interested in
poetry,
> it's also reminded me of my roots.
>
> Which is where I belong, always. One of the many little mental tussles is
> with my local poet, Mr WS, I'm from Warwickshire too, I love his writing
at
> its best, I also hate the fucker because he is the type of the West
Midlands
> businessman who ran our lives in childhood.
>
> Pradoxes, paradoxes.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
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