Recuerdo - Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable– But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Note: I am very tired but not so merry (as I was this past Saturday) but I thought I should post this poem before it slips from my mind. I found this poem after I chanced upon a phrase from it - "...all night on the ferry" - as I was getting off the Staten Island Ferry (swinging hands with N), written in large letters on the inside of the Whitehall Terminal, located at the southern tip of Manhattan, after a pleasurable (and free - yes, I am, um, chea-intelligent) sunset cruise, back and forth, across the gold speckled Upper New York Bay.
Also searching for this poem lead me, via this page, to a great audio open-source archive called LibriVox. Go listen to a poem, an essay, or even a book.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment
Ouch, Mr. Auden!
I didn't know Auden could be as tart (and hence true) as this:
"“Why do you want to write poetry?” If the young man answers: “I have important things I want to say,” then he is not a poet. If he answers: “I like hanging around words listening to what they say,” then maybe he is going to be a poet."
"The girl whose boyfriend starts writing her love poems should be on her guard. Perhaps he really does love her, but one thing is certain: while he was writing his poems he was not thinking of her but of his own feelings about her and that is suspicious. Let her remember St Augustine’s confession of his feelings after the death of someone he loved very much: “I would rather have been deprived of my friend than of my grief.”"
"The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means that, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets."
Book Posts
... link (no comments) ... comment
A Classic Movie (For Free)
Folks over at Rajshri.com have put out a pretty good list of old Hindi films, including some classic lovelies such as "Chitchor", "Amar Akbar Anthony", "Abhimaan" etc for online viewing, all for phukat, i.e., gratis. Now imagine my surprise when in this heap-o-good fun Bollywood movies, I also discovered Mirnal Sen's critically acclaimed movie "Bhuvan Shome"!!
Recommend that you watch it, kind reader, to see what Indian film makers can do when not forced by the dirty god of the rupee to make actors run around trees.
Movie Posts
... link (4 comments) ... comment
Next page