Well, I'm not sure if Hardy was paralyzed by fear so much as raging against the randomness of suffering. But I was having, uh, a bit of trouble concentrating on Eliot.
Well it seems like yours isn't really analogous to the original in many respects. It seems like in yours you're saying that it would be easier to write if you knew the content didn't matter. But it does.
I think you have improved on the original. Although how anyone could flee Eliot for Hardy is a mystery to me . . .
My essay crisis will be tomorrow night (John Donne), and I like your idea for how to deal with it. In anticipation, therefore, of the moment when I realize that that I do actually have to sit down and finish the essay because the night is nearly gone:
The sun ascending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror To which the books declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice to sigh or lie To be redeemed from lie to die.
Who then devised the torment? Donne. Done is the unfamiliar Name Behind the human hands that spun The formidable text of pain Which my essay's power can't make undone. I only think, only aspire Mid dream and screen my fate is dire.
Oh, I actually like Donne a lot, and the essay doesn't seem too bad. So far, anyway: it's writing itself slowly but, I think, with unusual clarity. I'm ranging rather widely: so far cameo appearances have been made or are concretely planned for The Flea, Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Broken Heart, Feaver, Goodfriday 1613 Riding Westward, a choir of Holy Sonnets, The Anatomie of the World, some of the Devotions, and a Sermon on the Psalms. And who knows what else. Plus: special guest star roles for---your favourites---Milton and Browning (with Skelton and Hopkins yet to commit).
I felt very Oxon, today, in the Rad Cam, with my many stacks of books, staring between my text of Donne, a concordance to his poems, and the OED. You know you've entered strange territory when you're trying to parse Renaissance meanings of the word "it".
Which poems do you like, and which ones did you study?
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I'm not applauding you being up at 4:08 am. Just your poem, which I found entertaining.
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aren't we still friends?
boo hoo hoo
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My essay crisis will be tomorrow night (John Donne), and I like your idea for how to deal with it. In anticipation, therefore, of the moment when I realize that that I do actually have to sit down and finish the essay because the night is nearly gone:
The sun ascending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
To which the books declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice to sigh or lie
To be redeemed from lie to die.
Who then devised the torment? Donne.
Done is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the human hands that spun
The formidable text of pain
Which my essay's power can't make undone.
I only think, only aspire
Mid dream and screen my fate is dire.
Reply
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Oh, I actually like Donne a lot, and the essay doesn't seem too bad. So far, anyway: it's writing itself slowly but, I think, with unusual clarity. I'm ranging rather widely: so far cameo appearances have been made or are concretely planned for The Flea, Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Broken Heart, Feaver, Goodfriday 1613 Riding Westward, a choir of Holy Sonnets, The Anatomie of the World, some of the Devotions, and a Sermon on the Psalms. And who knows what else. Plus: special guest star roles for---your favourites---Milton and Browning (with Skelton and Hopkins yet to commit).
I felt very Oxon, today, in the Rad Cam, with my many stacks of books, staring between my text of Donne, a concordance to his poems, and the OED. You know you've entered strange territory when you're trying to parse Renaissance meanings of the word "it".
Which poems do you like, and which ones did you study?
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