April Is The Cruelest Month, Breeding Lilacs Out Of The Dead Land, Mixing Memory And Desire, Stirring Dull Roots With Spring Rain.

[sandyRoe]

Is it, or is this just a melancholy man's musings?

[Rosie29]

Thanks Sandy I love this poem x

[Canary42]

Is that the entire poem (I've not encountered it before). It sounds fairly melancholy to me.

[Peter Pedant]

chaucerian

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

( hey look at that - a" what dat den" from 1476)

it's when really

[Peter Pedant]

oh look at that again, the heavy bold 'e's are pronounced

drochchchccht - but soh-ter - technical, technical on how to pronouce late middle english. sozza folks

[Canary42]

For those in a similar position to me (i.e. ignorant 😋), I've got this off Google (not sure whether I've got it all, there's a whole book it seems, The Waste Land by T S Eliot) :-

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                      Frisch weht der Wind

                      Der Heimat zu

                      Mein Irisch Kind,

                      Wo weilest du?

‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

[Peter Pedant]

a bit pascal ( eastery ) son  of man.... got  me read the  whole bit.

also -" laid out like a patient etherized on the table" ( albert j prufrock) -  I used that in an anaesthetic exam and the examiners were er blown away...

[ichkeria]

The Waste Land. Genius or pretentious codswallop?

[jourdain2]

If not genius ichkeria, then I've been living my life haunted by the beauty and depth of rubbish.  The opening of The Wasteland seems more and more perceptive as I age - and almost incredible that it came from such a young man.

It's the life imperative isn't it? No matter how unpromising and difficult we strive to continue. Cruel in many ways.

[jourdain2]

Yes, PP, I've noticed the Chaucerian link.  That part of the 'Tales' is rather my 'party piece' to recite in Middle English!  (I used to be able to get much further than the first few lines.)    :)

[ichkeria]

The opening of the poem is very beautiful. I don't  pretend to have read the whole thing and I am not qualified to answer my own question. But the title of last part: "What the thunder said" has always made me cringe slightly 

[jourdain2]

I'd have to have a re-read of the whole, Ich, before I could brush up on my lit.crit. enough to work out why you cringe a bit.  From very-long-ago memories, (so I'll not vouch for it) I think it was phrased  like that in order to act as the start of a change in mood of the poem.  If you split up the syllables they are not dissimilar to the rumbles of distand thunder.

Gosh, all this before lunch!

[ichkeria]

Like I say Jourdain mine is a very superficial view. I'll maybe try to read the whole 

[Peter Pedant]

before I could brush up on my lit.crit. enough to work out why you cringe a bit.

(english ) men dont read poetry. hard wired ( DNA probably) in anglosaxons. One man at work told me he read poetry and he only told me as everyone thought I was fracking weird anyway. I think I said I read shakespeare

[Peter Pedant]

I remember my English master robin atthill saying " pair-sed" as he attempted a few lines in 1965

https://oldshirburnian.org.uk/obituaries/atthill-robin-staff-42-48/

[sandyRoe]

"... Muscular Christianity...".

In these times that phrase seems very old fashioned.

[jno]

he also wrote

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

which has probably bought in a lot more money to his estate even while producing one of the weirdest films ever made.

[wolf63]

My favourite poem is currently: 'This be the Verse' - Philip Larkin.

[jourdain2]

jno - we  called our ginger tom (neutered) Skimble, aka Skimbleshanks.  Our kids loved Old Possums book (as did I  as a child) and  then the musical 'Cats' came along.

[douglas9401]

It's the cruelest Friday anyway as I sit in a layby at Drumochter pass taking my enforced break, 2 degrees, snow on the ground and currently raining.

To add to the fun I have a knackered wiper blade thanks to a suicidal pheasant resulting in an area in my eyeline that doesn't clear.

Got a petrol station sarnie though so mustn't grumble. 🙄

[jourdain2]

That's the spirit, Douglas, always look on the bright side etc..  :)