Friedrich Schiller’s Overdue TV Licence
October 2, 2008
One of Germany’s most famous poets and playwrights, Friedrich Schiller, was recently ordered to pay his television licence despite having been dead and buried for over 200 years.
The German licence-collecting agency, GEZ, threatened legal action if he did not promptly pay the fee of €17 (£14). The nation notorious for its red tape did not relent when the headmaster of the primary school bearing Schiller’s name in Weigsdorf-Köblitz in Saxony, to which the bill was sent, had relayed the simple fact that “the addressee is no longer in a position to listen to the radio or watch television”.
GEZ replied that unless Herr Schiller could prove he was not in possession of a television set or radio, then the bill had to be paid.
Michael Binder, the headmaster, finally settled the confusion. He said: “I told the GEZ that Herr Schiller has not been with us for quite some time, and included his curriculum vitae with my letter.”
A spokesman for the agency later apologised saying “We have to deal with such a huge amount of data, that something like this can happen, and the name Friedrich Schiller is not so unusual that it stood out as strange. We will now alter his status in our computer system.”
Friedrich Schiller is famous for his poem ‘Ode to Joy‘ which was later adapted by Ludwig van Beethoven into the fourth and final movement of his Ninth Symphony. It is now also the anthem of the European Union.
Osama Bin Laden: Terrorist and Poet
September 28, 2008
A terrorist mastermind and a skilled poet do not usually come together in the same sentence, especially not when the character in question is the infamous Osama Bin Laden. Still further he was once a popular wedding raconteur giving recitals during ceremonies in public and private spheres.
Next week some of Bin Laden’s poetry will be published in the academic publication, ‘Language and Communications Journal‘. Professor Flagg Miller of the University of California, an Arabic studies academic discovered the recitings on tapes found in the terrorist mastermind’s Afghanistan compound after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Millar said the recordings were passed around from person to person rather like pop songs are passed amongst teenagers. The professor’s analysis of the tapes shows Saudi-born Bin Laden to be a skilled poet who weaves mystical references as well as jihadist imagery into his verse, reciting centuries old verses alongside more current mujahideen-era work.
“[The readings] were sometimes given to large audiences when he was recruiting for jihad in Afghanistan… and other times they were delivered at weddings, or to smaller audiences, possibly in private homes,”
Many scholars have protested the upcoming publication fearing that the work has only become of interest due to the notoriety of its author and gives him an unfair forum. However Millar disagrees and believes Bin Laden to be a talented wordsmith with his own unique and distinctive style.
“They also show his evolution from a relatively unpolished Muslim reformer, orator and jihad recruiter to his current persona, in which he attempts to position himself as an important intellectual and political voice on international affairs.”
If alive, Bin Laden would almost certainly still be writing poetry, which is central to the oral traditions of his tribal culture.
“Poetry is part of the oral tradition in the Arab world, which Bin Laden uses to tap into the cultural orientation, the history and the ethics of Islam,” Millar said.
The dozen tapes are currently being refined and digitised at Yale University in the United States and public access is expected to be granted by 2010.
Charles Simic returns to writing poetry
July 28, 2008
Charles Simic, the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States, chose to step down this Summer and not seek an extension to his term for a second year. This led to Kay Ryan being named his successor. The reasons he gave for retiring from the spotlight included the tiring monotony of travelling constantly from one event or performance and the lack of time in which to write poetry. The understandable frustration of not having composed a poem for over a year was the final straw.
“One year is enough,” said Simic. “Washington is too far, and the travel these days is no fun.”
Simic lives with his wife on the shores of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire, where he is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. Within the space of a few months, he had travelled back and forth between Washington a total of nine times and made numerous trips to give readings as far afield as the Mid West and California.
The Serbian-American poet who was born in Belgrade in 1938, moved to the States at the age of 16 with his family and settled in Chicago. He was later to earn a B.A. from New York University. His war-torn beginnings have influenced much of his poetry and indeed his political views.
“I got invitations to the White House, but I didn’t go,”
The poet laureate has an office with a parlour overlooking the Capitol and from there he formed numerous opinions of the national political culture. “Washington is the capital of a corrupt empire fighting two hopeless wars and yearning to have more,” he said. “Every powerful figure in Washington is surrounded by a flock of beautiful, well-educated, highly competent women who run after them all day carrying documents, reminding them of appointments and flattering them how good they look. No wonder these men think they are geniuses.”
The transition from ‘travelling salesman’ back to full-time poet was not a hard one. However whilst relieved he is also aware of the great importance of the position of poet laureate to be vital. “It reminds Americans that there’s such a thing as poetry and that poets are people like them,” he said. “They may believe poets have their heads in the clouds, and then they meet or hear one and are delighted that it isn’t so.”
One thing that has shocked Simic, especially over the last couple of years, is the amount of poetry being written and read in America. He said: “People who do not think so ought to go on the internet and type in ‘poetry’ and be prepared to fall off their chairs. This is a country of loners, and poetry, it seems, is the only place one can speak about that solitude and read the work of others who are in the same boat.”
As well as being a world renowned poet, Charles Simic is also a philosopher, essayist, translator and commentator on various subjects including Jazz and Art. He is currently the poetry editor, along with Meghan O’Rourke, for The Paris Review and was one of the judges for the 2007 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. His latest book of poems, That Little Something, was published in early 2008.
Joanna Lumley criticises modern poetry
July 22, 2008
Joanna Lumley, the star of the British comedy ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ has created waves recently with her condemnation of modern poetry. She started the most recent furore when writing the introduction to Liz Cowley’s forthcoming book, A Red Dress and Other Poems by stating: ‘It is a rare modern poem that achieves the balance between being challenging and accessible.’
Most of contemporary poetry she goes on to say is frustratingly incomprehensible and vague and at worst, self-indulgent. Many of Britain’s best known writers have been deeply offended as a result.
Wendy Cope, a former short-listed poet for the 2001 Whitbread Poetry award said: ‘Joanna Lumley might be widely read, but sometimes people who make comments like this don’t know very much about poetry. People make very good poetry out of the humdrum and commonplace. There are lots of poets writing good poetry that is obscure, and the answer is to educate the public to help them understand that.’
The BBC Radio 3 presenter Ian McMillan, who is widely tipped to be the next Poet Laureate also launched an attack on Lumley’s choice of words. ‘It’s sad and frustrating that people can still come up with generalisations like this. You shouldn’t be able to get poems on the first reading. Part of the delight is the time you take with them to understand them,’ he said. ‘But what’s wrong with humdrum and commonplace, anyway? Frank O’Hara called his poems “lunch poems” because he wrote them in his lunch hour. By the act of writing down his humdrum, it became delightful.’
Other critics of Lumley’s remarks included Dannie Abse, the winner of the Wales Book of the Year award and poetry critic Al Alvarez both of whom directed, perhaps rather unjustly, their attacks at the 62-year-old’s age.
‘This is such an old-fashioned remark. It is not well-informed. In the old days people said modern poetry was obscure, but now people everywhere read it. It is true that most poetry is very bad, but this is true of all poetry in all times.’ said Abse.
However there are many people who share Joanna Lumley’s views including the actor, novelist and comedian Stephen Fry who termed the work produced by many modern poets as ‘arse-dribble’.
Liz Cowley, whose introduction Lumley was writing, also demonstrated her support and said: ‘The problem is that Britain no longer has a cultural voice: it’s all so messy and muddled because people aren’t educated to write word constructions any more. With rare exceptions, I stopped enjoying poetry written any time after the 18th century.’
The debate is set to continue after the former professor of poetry at Oxford University James Fenton added: ‘Poetry has a large audience in the UK and that’s because it hasn’t been obscure for quite a long time. She’s thinking back, perhaps, to the obscurity of modernism, but there’s been a lot of ink spilled since TS Eliot and Ezra Pound.’
In 1985, Joanna Lumley was on the panel of judges for the Booker Prize.
Eusemere Daffodils house up for sale
July 21, 2008
Set in a very attractive private estate on the north eastern shores of Ullswater, the location is where William Wordsworth was said to have penned his renowned poem ‘Daffodils’, in the year 1804.
“William Wordsworth used to sleep in a particular bedroom there and I still have a piece of the original wallpaper framed as a picture.” - Lady Kagan was noted as saying in a local Yorkshire newspaper in 2008.
The Kagans, once friends of former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had first come across the house in the early 1970s when flying their little Auster one-engined plane across the region.
“We all fell in love with Eusemere immediately, it has such a wonderful atmosphere and character but I’m afraid it needs a poet’s imagination to do justice to it. It is light and airy and somehow uplifting, I don’t know why” Lady Kagan, mother of three, now aged 84 also remarked.
The 16-acre site was originally built as a countryside retreat for the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in the latter part of the 18th century. His tireless work, with fellow abolitionist William Wilberforce, often led to the need for breaks in the rural wilds of the English countryside amongst the beautiful and tranquil surroundings of the Eusemere Estate.
Below is Wordworth’s famous poem.
Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
by William Wordsworth
New US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan
July 19, 2008
The American Library of Congress announced on Thursday that the award-winning Californian poet Kay Ryan will become the 16th poet laureate, this approaching autumn. The self-described “modern hermit” who writes Emily Dickinson-style metaphysical poetry will receive a $40,000 salary for her one year stint as the acme of the US poetry world.
Ryan was born in 1945 in California and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She would go on to receive a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
She was said to have been ‘delighted and surprised’ when the Library of Congress had contacted her and thought at first she had forgotten to return some overdue books.
Her favourite poets include the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, the English novelist Philip Larkin and John Donne the Jacobean who is catagorised as being part of the 17th century metaphysical poetic movement.
Kay Ryan’s poetry style is of a reflectively short but profound and seriocomical nature which focuses on both the confines of our lives and the illimitable vastness of the universe and existence. She has published a number of works including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which incidentally was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).
Her poems have also been printed in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review and Parnassus, to name but a few.
Today she lives with her partner Carol Adair in Fairfax, California.
For an example of her work visit Poetry Magazine.
-
Recent Comments Gravatars
george enobong on Osama Bin Laden: Terrorist and Poet
tiniak on Poetry Prompt 8 - ‘Copper Trees’
Preston Valdez on Poetry Prompt 3 - ‘War’
Greg White on The Iranian Nuclear Question - ‘War’
Loraine Weaver on Charles Simic returns to writing poetry
Dana Barton on Poetry Prompt 5 - ‘The Olympics’
Sue Burns on Olivia - A Poem
Thurman Carney on One Word: ‘Allah’
Jaqueline on Poetry Prompt 9 - ‘Birthdays’
Donald Avery on Joanna Lumley criticises modern poetry