Thomas's psychodrama played out in that poem has little do with
Sitwell's fertive spinning. He might have intended it as a political
gesture - after all, he worked for the BBC during the war - but for
Thomas, the poetry was for being the seer, the ur-worldly, biblical
prohphet so little intentionally political is in the poem. The
politics is in the context, the refusal to mourn, get on with life
during war. Without the context, it becomes something else.
The poet is the seer, but the prose, the film and the radio work are
more politically aware; he himself kept the two apart.
Roger
On 8/24/07, Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> "In that great poem A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child
> in London, with its dark, magnificent, proud movement, we see Death
> in its reality -- as a return to the beginning of things, as a robing,
> a sacred investiture in those who have been our friends since the
> beginning of Time. Bird, beast, and flower have their part in the
> making of mankind. The water drop is holy, the wheat ear a place of
> prayer. The 'fathering and all-humbling darkness' itself is a
> begetting force. Even grief, even tears, are a begetting. 'The
> stations of the breath' are the stations of the Cross."
>
> -- Edith Sitwell
>
>
> Is the unstated fact that the poem is about a child who died in the
> Blitz make this a political poem? Does knowing or not knowing it
> change the poem?
>
> --
> ===================================
>
> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
>
> ===================================
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons."
Roman Proverb
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