[Milton-L] Lost Lines

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Maybe this will help.
   
  Jeffery Hodges
   
  http://www.conncoll.edu/meredith/works/volumes-of-poetry/opensea.htm
   
  The Open Sea and Other Poems by William Meredith
   
  Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1958
Dedication: In Memory of Donald A. Stauffer
   
  http://www.conncoll.edu/meredith/works/volumes-of-poetry/op_opens.htm
   
  To a Western Bard Still a Whoop and a Holler away from English Poetry
   
  I read an impatient man
Who howls against his time,
Not angry enough to scan
Not fond enough to rhyme,

  And I think of the terrible cry
The brave priest Hopkins raised
The night he raided the sky
And English verse was praised.

  And the infinite, careful woe
That informs the song of Blake,
The stricter because he knew
The jog that madmen take.

  Or our own poets rage,
Yeats', in his decorous care
To make singing of old age
And numbers of despair.

  It is common enough to grieve
And praise is all around;
If any cry means to live
It must be an uncommon sound.

  Cupped with the hands of skill
How loud their voices ring,
Containing passion still,
Who cared enough to sing.

   
  

Nancy Charlton <pluscachange at comcast.net> wrote:
  Hello,

Not really Milton-related, but I hope that you all might be able to help me with this before it drives me up the wall.

I can't find a certain poem anywhere handy, and I know it is well known to literati. It surfaced in my memory when news broke of the death of William Meredith, and I think he is the author. I think the title refers to Ginsberg's "Howl" and certainly is referenced in the line that sticks in my memory:

        . . . when I think of the cry
        the brave priest Hopkins raised
        the night he raided the sky
        and English verse was praised. ...

And the poems chastises poets "not [something] enough to rhyme,/ not fond enough to scan".

Thanks to all who are more amply anthologized for helping me retain sanity.

Nancy Charlton

P.S. Speaking of Meredith, here is the best memoir of him that I have yet seen:

  http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=11a7f021-d70f-4241-b725-6e59db781a70 

or

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University Degrees:

Ph.D., History, U.C. Berkeley
(Doctoral Thesis: "Food as Synecdoche in John's Gospel and Gnostic Texts")
M.A., History of Science, U.C. Berkeley
B.A., English Language and Literature, Baylor University

Email Address:

jefferyhodges at yahoo.com

Blog:

http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/

Office Address:

Assistant Professor Horace Jeffery Hodges
School of English, Kyung Hee University
1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu
Seoul, 130-701
South Korea

Home Address:

Dr. Sun-Ae Hwang and Dr. Horace Jeffery Hodges
Gunyoung Apt. 102-204
Sangbong-dong 1
Jungnang-gu
Seoul 131-771
South Korea
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