The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Between O and V

Between O and V by Maria Scala (Friday Circle, 2008)

I want to give a big shout out to my friend, the talented poet Maria Scala, who has published a lovely collection of her poems. I met Maria on-line through Descant magazine while I was blogging for the magazine and she sent me some insightful and supportive comments about the topic I had written about.

Maria was also one of the inspirations for this blog because when I came across Maria's blog, August Avenue, it was so attractively done and interesting yet also personal. Her natural warmth and kindness and artisitic sensibility shone through in her writing. Now she has her own book of poems that you may purchase here. The poems reflect the best of marriage and family and love and loss.

My favourites are A Story For You, At 70, a poem about an elderly relative recounting a robust encounter with their newlywed spouse and the comic consequences.

Nonna speaks of loss and how, we women, particularly women of our own Italian background, cope with the loss of family and pain. We literally work through it with the many endless tasks that make up our lives.

Now I am married is a love poem to a sometime absent spouse and the joys of sharing a bed with the person you love.

It ends with my favourite I Never Meant To - a sad, sweet poem which seems to be a nostalgic elegy for a bygone love.

So auguri Maria! Please keep up all the great work and all the good that you do every day as a talented poet, a devoted mother, an accomplished editor and a wonderful friend!

Please Note: I could not find an image of my friend to post on-line but I did select a lovely photograph called "date night at beppo's" from a new artist I came across at the Riverdale Art Walk named Tanja-Tiziana who has her own website doublecrossed.ca.

Fear of Poetry (and Other Phobias)

I attended an Art Bar poetry reading which featured three poets including the poetry of Karen Mulhallen, a friend. I can’t tell you how intimidating these proceedings seem to me at times. I repeatedly say to Karen that I am “afraid” of poetry and am reluctant to judge it (in terms of its quality) and I am only half joking. I am a little (afraid that is).

When Karen finished reading from her new book Sea Horses, her other friends present, all well versed, well educated, established writers and/or professors, were remarking on the poems - her allusions to the poetry of Al Purdy, her references to The Odyssey, the clever alliteration used, etc … I could only sheepishly murmur “That was lovely” (and it was - and sensuous and imaginative too).

I enjoyed the first reader, Steve McCabe, as well; his work was erotic and strange but appealingly so, accompanied by moody music and these odd, bright illustrations projected on to a screen which added a great deal to the reading I thought. The third reader, a spoken word artist Andrea Thompson, was young, energetic and fun - all three were so different, all three moved me in different ways.

And that’s the problem for me I think … I can only seem to respond on an emotional level to poetry. My instincts are so primitive, so unrefined, so uncerebral, that I can only think to myself “I like it or don’t like it, it moves me or it doesn’t.” I can’t analyze why the damn things work, why they move me (or don’t move me) or how they are put together, why they don’t seem to be well formed, etc … When I talk to poets/friends about this they always reassure me that this visceral reaction is fine.

But somehow I don’t think so. I think appreciation of poetry requires more than that. This hearkens back to my “What you get away with” blog a while ago … Just because I like it does that make it “good”? Does it make it art? No, I don’t think so. Am I afflicted? Am I unable to decipher the secret code that poetry sometimes appears to be to the neophyte? Am I afraid to like poetry? Am I still that unsophisticated working class kid from Hamilton with a chip on her shoulder who is afraid to use multi-syllabic words because her high school friends will think she’s a dork (nice friends eh?).

Even now, when my dear Mama who "calls it as she sees it" telephones I never tell her that I am reading instead I lie and say I’m cooking dinner, cleaning up, etc … never reading, because I still vividly recall her exasperation with my reading habits and her sense that it was a waste of time (mine and hers). I still hide books from certain friends(?) who only have caustic comments about the thickness or, seemingly to their eyes, complex nature of the reading material and often greet me with the exclamation “Aren’t we ambitious?” with a malicious gleam in their eye.

Am I afraid of poetry or am I afraid of not seeming to get it? I want to learn more. I just don’t know where to start. There are things I like but I am nervous to cite the poets I enjoy as I’m sure they will seem hopelessly old fashioned. See how insecure I am about this?

I enjoyed Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn subtitled Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems because I admired her energy and the enthusiasm she had for the poetry that she loved. I didn’t always agree with her reasoning but it was interesting to read what she thought was moving, emotional, beautiful.

And that’s what I’m looking for - moving, emotional, beautiful ...