The Logical Conclusion
Ezra Pound
When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall "baaa" on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;
When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;
Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look.
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About the poem: I'm not embarrassed to say that I decided to post an Ezra Pound selection for two reasons:
(1) I wanted to see if Ezra Pound had ever written any poem other than "In A Station Of The Metro," which is the only Pound poem schools bother to teach anyone. (Turns out he has!)
(2) Once I thought to myself "I wonder if Ezra Pound ever wrote any other poems besides In A Station Of The Metro," I then thought "Wouldn't it be cool if someone decided to take all Ezra Pound's poems and set them to music and have various singers perform them?"
Because it would, and I thought that that idea was too good to have not been put into practice already, so I eagerly Googled it when I got to work, and I found that nobody has yet done it...
... so, dibs...
... but I also found out that Ezra Pound wrote music, including two complete operas, which is interesting because I just this morning I convinced Sweetie that it would be a good idea to take Mr F and Mr Bunches to a free showing of "The Pirates Of Penzance" tomorrow (I'm not saying that this was fate, but it pretty clearly was fate), an opera where I hope they'll perform this song:
So you can see how this all comes together. I am truly a Renaissance man.
About the Hot Actress: Sweetie said we should pick Kirstie Alley last week, but I didn't post a poem last week, so here she is. Is she still on Dancing With The Stars? I kind of gave up even trying to follow that. (But I'm still a Renaissance Man.)
ALSO : Michael and I had a debate about the relative merits of Moby-Dick over on Rogue Mutt's blog, and as far as I can make out, Ezra Pound is 100% on my side; as I like to say, that's a lot of percents.
1 comment:
I tend to think little kids at the opera is not a good idea. But then I tend to think anyone at an opera is not a good idea.
For my "American Music" class in college (one of those phony classes you have to take as an "elective"--aka, a way to make more money for the college) we had to go to a showing of a musical called "Pirates of Finance" based on Pirates of Penzance, only as you may have guessed the pirates were Wall Street people. This was the late '90s so it was kind of foreshadowing the next decade.
(As for Kirstie Alley, no comment.)
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