Ah Stephen, my memory failed me: it's 'at the mill' not 'mills',
though I think I prefer my mistake.
I remember first reading Milton: it was on a summer night when I was
15 and there was a thunderstorm. I've never been able to decide
whether I like Milton or not, he's simultaneously impressive and
disagreeable:
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave
It's a weird bumpy rhythm, yes, but the last line is so beautiful, it
sings (try it, it really does).
He can be so sexist, in our terms, that it borders on the hilarious:
But who is this, what thing of sea or land?
Female of sex it seems
But as Hopkins rightly observed the metric effects in Samson Agonistes
are extraordinary.
Pound loathed Milton, egotists who want to be strong men never get on.
Pre-Christmas I was at a carol service at our cathedral ( I do go the
church on and off although I don't believe a word of it) and Milton's
ode 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity' was read: I'd never heard it
performed in public before: the impression was of something very
organised but bumpy to the point of bumptiousness, it wanted to
overbear.
Never went to uni meself, me ducks.
Best
Dave
2009/1/4 Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]>:
> My Google takes me to an early phrase in Milton's "Samson Agonistes".
> In truth my first awareness of the line was on the 50's or so paperback cover of Aldous Huxley's novel, "Eyeless in Gaza."
> Frankly, still in High School, and before several years of undergraduate training in New Criticism (rooting out a poems ambiguities and ironies down to pair &/or impaired syllables), I was stopped cold - at that age - by what I sensed a contradiction - to be 'eyeless' in the middle the site/sight meant for 'gazing', and that this contradiction had Biblical implications (that someone in the Bible had been struck blind for some misdeed, or capricious act of a punitive God).
> Which is to say, David, Milton nor Huxley had little to do with my interpretation. But more interesting to me now is how a line or combination of words in a poem can be extracted (such as "Eyeless in Gaza" ) and be made durable in such a way as to provide opportunities (again and again) to mirror and interpret situations in our either or both public and private lives.
> No matter the military intelligence, or Israel or Hamas Government 'talking points', I strongly suspect those soldiers in battle or citizens on either side of this conflict are as 'eyeless' or blind as bats as to what is actually happening, and totally in the dark as to what will be the 'unintended consequences' of this invasion.
>
> Since 'pen-point' poems (accurate or not) are not about to replace the current and criminal fiction of 'pin-point' bombing, I suspect it is the one solace and power of poetry to make language (or, in this case a phrase) that speaks or frames events - multiple times over several histories (in this case this 'war' in Gaza) - with an obdurate clarity and resonance, and one that transcends anything necessarily biographic about its original author, Milton or otherwise.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
>
>
>
> --- On Sun, 1/4/09, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Eyeless in Gaza
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Sunday, January 4, 2009, 4:57 AM
>
> Eyeless in Gaza at the mills with slaves
>
> ( a quote from a blind English middle-class woman-despising 17th
> century republican moralising prig whose intellectual world was based
> on the book of lies that is the Bible, plus the despicable Classics.
> Blake was right: all sacred texts cause hell, that appliers to the
> fictions that underlie the State of Israel and the manipulation of
> minds that constitutes Islam)
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> 2009/1/4 Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>:
>> I feel so outraged -god to see others discussing here -cheers me up thanks
>> P old lefty
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Stephen Vincent
>> Sent: 03 January 2009 23:14
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Eyeless in Gaza
>>
>> In 8 years, the Bush Regime - neocons, and no doubt with Israel's
> complicity
>> - imagined Iraq's demise would 'reconfigure the Mideast' with
> democracies
>> up and instantly flourishing in the glow of a successful invasion. Now
>> Israel invades Gaza - with American armor and support - still
>> imagining/dreaming a reconfiguration of the Mideast. If
> 'slaughter' counts
>> as vision 'they' are clearly winning by the dead in numbers. If
> this
>> invasion counts as the Israel/American 'vision' in any other
> sense, 'Eyeless
>> in Gaza' appears to be more accurate than ever. Might as well imagine
> a tank
>> or Cheney threading a needle's eye.
>>
>> What keeps these people - other than pathology - running this wheel over
> and
>> over again? One - somewhat helpless at the moment - can only
> 'hope' that
>> this is Bush & Cheney's "Last Tape" and that
> Hilary-Obama might (might) pour
>> some water on 'the powder' and work out a vocabulary not built on
>> slaughter.
>>
>>
>> Stephen Vincent
>> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>> No virus found in this incoming message.
>> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>> Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.2/1873 - Release Date:
> 03/01/2009
>> 14:14
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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