The head of Orpheus is said to have continued singing as Thracian Hebrus carried it to the sea. But the tale says nothing of an exuberance of archaicisms, stumbling alliterations and hissing sibilants, about which I must say no more, lest I disturb Mr. Roberts' rest, and further impugn his editors' lapse of judgment.
I've read other poems of his. The reprint of New Lyre 2022 is a poor representation of his work, and David's comment and explanation is rather febrile.
He seems to be uncertain as to whether to use the singular or plural when it comes to the third person pronoun. As you know these days we tend to avoid the singular, except under exceptional conditions. I cannot see those conditions have exactly been fulfilled. And if they have then shouldn't he at least be consistent?
I suppose his early death is romantic... No. Let's do him this much justice, and give him a big R: Romantic. Definitely Romantic.
But, you see, romanticism ended with the first part of the nineteenth century. Since then we've all been very unromantic, if not positively antiromantic.
Kevin Roberts was a real and committed poet. He deserves respect.
His book of poetry Fatal Women is worth having in any poetry lover’s collection. These just happen to be two minor but still interesting pieces. We’ve previously featured a good number of his stellar pieces on The Chained Muse and in New Lyre.
I’ve seen his poetry elicit a lot of favourable reactions from poetry lovers. With the critics it may be a different story. We’ll be giving more of his work a second life here on Age of Muses.
In the meantime, if you need a palate cleanser, I highly recommend Kevin’s poem“Christine” (featured above).
If you want to apotheosize a dead writer, you should pick something with some natural buoyancy instead of mere hot air. You damage the deceased and vitiate your brand.
I once transcribed a ditty that was transmitted to me in quakeresque godspeak, it was during a severe episode of psychological regression. Not just the pronouns but even the verbs, mea maxima culpa. So what do you do with a runaway head. Among other strange things, I transcribed an alien ditty. At some later time it got hung by a pretty well-known war memorial institution, between 2 flags at the entrance to their museum. Don't ask me why it got hung there--but whatever the reason for its surprising placement was, I read it as an honor. But maybe somebody just liked the colors and how they blended with the flags'. I'd had it serigraphed ln white print onto a patch of navy-colored linen, then framed in a decidedly unostentatious old frame I had, which as I remember(?) it, had a dulled gold finish that might or might not've been leaf. So probably it went well with the flags. But let's get back on topic. Well then, for starters, I personally don't give a damn if it's romantic or pornographic, although the latter would no doubt erect my tentpole faster. I'm quite certain some specimens of that genre still could, whether paper or film. No need at all to test it. As to my own quakerese ditty, I can only regard it as someone else's, possibly indicating a sort of possession. Certainly at the time, I wasn't exactly myself. One way my one-time quakerese ditty differs from the first poem above is there's no shifting from oldspeak to newspeak. Its verbs, as well as its pronouns, hew throughout to one lingo. Merely a noted difference, "signifying nothing" except a passing "wonder why." Oblique comments sent me back looking for I had no idea what, thus I happened across the shifts. Maybe what agreed with his ear better was their raison d'etre. You feign may have sounded better to him than Thou feign. Did the 2 comments fart at the poems? One said they're too old fashioned for him and for everybody else nowadays. I couldn't object to that. People prefer writing in the language they speak, and Victorian is rarely spoken anymore. But I've also seen lots of modern ditties that read like hieroglyphics or Wittengstein and that's not the language we speak either. To me both poems are imitative stylewise, but if you like someone's sound you might try to match your own to it. There must be a lot of instances of that. How many start off trying to mimic Shakespeare? Monkeysee monkeydo I suspect is a common beginning. I personally have been devoted only to my own style for quite some time now, which I'd wager doesn't recall anybody else's, and which I'd also wager might be no less likely than Victorianspeak to cause an allergic reaction. But too bad so sad, it could never occur to me to trade in my own mind for anyone else's. Let salve-seekers shop elsewhere, they should have no trouble finding it. Pick your poison I guess. As to Bob's comment, it can only be read as a humorous little caricature of the aghast reaction such a poem might be expected to trigger among today's soi-disant poetry aficionados. In short it's satire. Roberts is not my personal cup of ginseng, but to wrap up this latest flyby fruiting I'll tack on another amusing address:
Do you number yourself among the curmudgeons? Roberts may win a substack popularity contest, but i'll stand by my remarks on the two 2022 New Lyre offerings. I think it's been remarked that you don't put lipstick on a pig -- except perhaps in this corner of the Stack.
An eccentric female acquaintance had her pair of pet piggies trained to beg for oreos. Apparently that was the best they could expect. No German chocolate cake, no coconut custard meringue pie. I'd have gone on strike. No more kneeling for crumbs!!
The head of Orpheus is said to have continued singing as Thracian Hebrus carried it to the sea. But the tale says nothing of an exuberance of archaicisms, stumbling alliterations and hissing sibilants, about which I must say no more, lest I disturb Mr. Roberts' rest, and further impugn his editors' lapse of judgment.
Nil de mortuis nisi bonum.
Let it be noted that Kevin Roberts wrote most of his poems in a more modern style and was one of the more musical modern poets in his best poems.
Kevin Roberts has long been one of my favorite contemporary poets and he was considered the consensus best of his tribe, the New Romantics.
Thanks to David Gosselin for helping to keep his work in the public eye.
My comment is directed to what was printed herein. I can't speak for anything beyond those four corners.
Understood.
Kevin Roberts is a poet well worth reading, in poems like his lovely "Rondel" and "It Is Too Late."
His best poems can be read here:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Kevin%20Roberts%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm
I've read other poems of his. The reprint of New Lyre 2022 is a poor representation of his work, and David's comment and explanation is rather febrile.
He seems to be uncertain as to whether to use the singular or plural when it comes to the third person pronoun. As you know these days we tend to avoid the singular, except under exceptional conditions. I cannot see those conditions have exactly been fulfilled. And if they have then shouldn't he at least be consistent?
I suppose his early death is romantic... No. Let's do him this much justice, and give him a big R: Romantic. Definitely Romantic.
But, you see, romanticism ended with the first part of the nineteenth century. Since then we've all been very unromantic, if not positively antiromantic.
(I mean even Yeats knew it was old hat.)
I detect some grumpy curmudgeons in the chat.
Kevin Roberts was a real and committed poet. He deserves respect.
His book of poetry Fatal Women is worth having in any poetry lover’s collection. These just happen to be two minor but still interesting pieces. We’ve previously featured a good number of his stellar pieces on The Chained Muse and in New Lyre.
I’ve seen his poetry elicit a lot of favourable reactions from poetry lovers. With the critics it may be a different story. We’ll be giving more of his work a second life here on Age of Muses.
In the meantime, if you need a palate cleanser, I highly recommend Kevin’s poem“Christine” (featured above).
If you want to apotheosize a dead writer, you should pick something with some natural buoyancy instead of mere hot air. You damage the deceased and vitiate your brand.
I once transcribed a ditty that was transmitted to me in quakeresque godspeak, it was during a severe episode of psychological regression. Not just the pronouns but even the verbs, mea maxima culpa. So what do you do with a runaway head. Among other strange things, I transcribed an alien ditty. At some later time it got hung by a pretty well-known war memorial institution, between 2 flags at the entrance to their museum. Don't ask me why it got hung there--but whatever the reason for its surprising placement was, I read it as an honor. But maybe somebody just liked the colors and how they blended with the flags'. I'd had it serigraphed ln white print onto a patch of navy-colored linen, then framed in a decidedly unostentatious old frame I had, which as I remember(?) it, had a dulled gold finish that might or might not've been leaf. So probably it went well with the flags. But let's get back on topic. Well then, for starters, I personally don't give a damn if it's romantic or pornographic, although the latter would no doubt erect my tentpole faster. I'm quite certain some specimens of that genre still could, whether paper or film. No need at all to test it. As to my own quakerese ditty, I can only regard it as someone else's, possibly indicating a sort of possession. Certainly at the time, I wasn't exactly myself. One way my one-time quakerese ditty differs from the first poem above is there's no shifting from oldspeak to newspeak. Its verbs, as well as its pronouns, hew throughout to one lingo. Merely a noted difference, "signifying nothing" except a passing "wonder why." Oblique comments sent me back looking for I had no idea what, thus I happened across the shifts. Maybe what agreed with his ear better was their raison d'etre. You feign may have sounded better to him than Thou feign. Did the 2 comments fart at the poems? One said they're too old fashioned for him and for everybody else nowadays. I couldn't object to that. People prefer writing in the language they speak, and Victorian is rarely spoken anymore. But I've also seen lots of modern ditties that read like hieroglyphics or Wittengstein and that's not the language we speak either. To me both poems are imitative stylewise, but if you like someone's sound you might try to match your own to it. There must be a lot of instances of that. How many start off trying to mimic Shakespeare? Monkeysee monkeydo I suspect is a common beginning. I personally have been devoted only to my own style for quite some time now, which I'd wager doesn't recall anybody else's, and which I'd also wager might be no less likely than Victorianspeak to cause an allergic reaction. But too bad so sad, it could never occur to me to trade in my own mind for anyone else's. Let salve-seekers shop elsewhere, they should have no trouble finding it. Pick your poison I guess. As to Bob's comment, it can only be read as a humorous little caricature of the aghast reaction such a poem might be expected to trigger among today's soi-disant poetry aficionados. In short it's satire. Roberts is not my personal cup of ginseng, but to wrap up this latest flyby fruiting I'll tack on another amusing address:
Thomas Hardy - An Ancient To Ancients
Where once we danced, where once we sang,
Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then
Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,
Gentlemen!
Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,
Gentlemen,
And damsels took the tiller, veiled
Against too strong a stare (God wot
Their fancy, then or anywhen!)
Upon that shore we are clean forgot,
Gentlemen!
We have lost somewhat of that, afar and near,
Gentlemen,
The thinning of our ranks each year
Affords a hint we are nigh undone,
That shall not be ever again
The marked of many, loved of one,
Gentlemen.
In dance the polka hit our wish,
Gentlemen,
The paced quadrille, the spry schottische,
“Sir Roger.”–And in opera spheres
The “Girl” (the famed “Bohemian”),
And “Trovatore” held the ears,
Gentlemen.
This season’s paintings do not please,
Gentlemen
Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise;
Throbbing romance had waned and wanned;
No wizard wields the witching pen
Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand,
Gentlemen.
The bower we shrined to Tennyson,
Gentlemen,
Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon
Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,
The spider is sole denizen;
Even she who voiced those rhymes is dust,
Gentlemen!
We who met sunrise sanguine-souled,
Gentlemen,
Are wearing weary. We are old;
These younger press; we feel our rout
Is imminent to Aïdes’ den,–
That evening shades are stretching out,
Gentlemen!
And yet, though ours be failing frames,
Gentlemen,
So were some others’ history names,
Who trode their track light-limbed and fast
As these youth, and not alien
From enterprise, to their long last,
Gentlemen.
Sophocles, Plato, Socrates,
Gentlemen,
Pythagoras, Thucydides,
Herodotus, and Homer,–yea,
Clement, Augustin, Origen,
Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day,
Gentlemen.
And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list,
Gentlemen;
Much is there waits you we have missed;
Much lore we leave you worth the knowing,
Much, much has lain outside our ken;
Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going,
Gentlemen.
Do you number yourself among the curmudgeons? Roberts may win a substack popularity contest, but i'll stand by my remarks on the two 2022 New Lyre offerings. I think it's been remarked that you don't put lipstick on a pig -- except perhaps in this corner of the Stack.
An eccentric female acquaintance had her pair of pet piggies trained to beg for oreos. Apparently that was the best they could expect. No German chocolate cake, no coconut custard meringue pie. I'd have gone on strike. No more kneeling for crumbs!!
Meanwhile, is everybody happy?
I've long had a fondness for roast suckling pig Peking style: a course of the skin, then the meat, and finally a soup from the bones.
Thanks for the warning, I can be a bit of a ham every now and then.