My most insightful blog yet

After giving a lively picture of a stationary urn in a gradual and smooth-going way, the poet triggers the readers' thinking by the last two lines. By the metaphysical phrase "Beauty is truth, truth beauty", the poem invites the readers to search for a certain kind of beauty, the ultimate truth, on earth or somewhere else. The urn, in other words, begins by quoting Sir Joshua (for Keats and his readers, the world's greatest authority on art of all kinds), implicitly affirms the sufficiency of human intellect, explicitly affirms the equation of beauty and truth, and pronounces this knowledge entirely sufficient to create the elegant geometry of such superb art as the urn.

Because of the uniformity of human minds and passions, moreover, the figures inscribed on the urn (which puzzle the observer at first glance) become intelligible as we relate them to our own experience. The first stanza of the poem is filled with questions; the last, with none. Being art, the urn retains its ability to "speak" to all who observe it, reminding us of our paradoxical dilemma as mortals who exist in finite time.

The urn's characters are frozen in time. The lovers will always love, though they will never consummate their desire. The musicians will always play beneath trees that will never lose their leaves.

The speaker admires this state of existence, but in the end it leaves his "heart high-sorrowful." This is because the urn, while beautiful and seemingly eternal, is not life.

The problem with Keats's Beauty and Truth statement arises out of the reader's inability to distinguish between the poet, his reflections on the urn, and any possible statement made by the urn. He concludes that Keats fails to provide his poet with enough characterization to be able to speak for the urn, a flaw that he considers to be corrected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes[29].Bennetts idea is that "the audience is always already figured by narrative, then the intrusion of the 'otherness' of narrative into the self-identical lyric form of the ode necessarily produces an audience-effect" [31].

I'd Just Like to Mention

I have wasted
your time
that was once
so precious

with prose
that has been
masked
as poetry

However I
will never read
your words
so I laugh

This is exactly how I felt after I had read ‘I Would Just Like to Say’ by William. For someone to be so prolific that their account of Plum thievery is considered poetry is beyond me. My parody of his piece captures the humor of the original and also, what I believe, would have been/ was the reaction of Williams once his note became instilled in an anthology of major poetic works. The irony is that after reading his piece a few more times I actually found it humorous.
I have kept the exact form of the original, almost down to the exact syllables per line. I feel that in the original, the form was used add emphasis to each line as the intended plum less reader would pause at every line, letting the revelation sink in. I have conveyed this exact sentiment to you, the reader who will never get back their… well one minuet. Your minuet of life is mine, forever.

Forever Scorned

T.S Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' presents a man who has watched his life fade before his eyes. He has watched himself as he watched the countless possibilities presented in life curtail in response to his own indecision, inside of his head countless times; forever scorned by his own mind. The image presented is the cover of the Forever Scorned EP from It Dies Today; the effigy bound in a forgotten field is a perfect compliment to the poem.
The figure, reduced to shreds by time and the elements, is forced to stare eternally forward as the world passes it by. A dense fog permeates the area causing one to second guess even the most familiar of sights. Just as Prufrock could never be assertive, so are we left to not be sure of our interpretations of anything that surrounds the forgotten wraith. Just as Prufrock believes that one would only take a second glance at him from his sheer ghastliness and then talk of all his short comings, so are we almost forced to look into the empty eyes of that doll and talk of its decay.It's almost like Prufrock would have painted it himself, his own effigy.
Eliot paints a bleak picture of not just Prufrock's view of himself, but of how Prufrock views the world. He uses the yellow fog to convey Prufrock's own alienation from the world; everything outside of his house is a mystery and filled with countless ramifications and possibilities. Eliot then gives multiple examples of Prufrock's dissatisfaction with himself and also his maddening awareness of his self ostracising ways. The entire work is narrated by Prufrock as he recalls the opportunities he missed 'Till human voices wake us, and we drown'.
Eliot uses Prufrock as a symbol, an effigy, for all those who's introverted and overly analytical ways have resulted in them being alone. Alone and cursed to constantly replay past events to see what more could have been done, what more could have been said; yet so stunned by an opportunity that they let it slip by. He could also be used as a warning to not just the aforementioned recluses but to everyone; live life to the fullest because one day it will be too late and you'll spend the rest of your days haunted by what could have been.

And all things will end.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong/ To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Nothing can last forever and we all know this; so cherish every moment as they are all leading to your last. By changing the diction of the couplet the entire effect of the poem is lost. Instead of ending gracefully as yellowing leaves do, falling silently to the ground, the prose version screeches to a halt. The entire effect of the poem is lost by a renegade sentence. However, akin to the dying leaves, whose exuberant end is more celebrated than their entire being, the sonnet ends with it's most powerful lines, turning the entire work from mundane into something beautiful. This heroic couplet blatantly give the theme of the poem and empathises with those lovers of aesthetics who witnessed the once raging fire's gluttony consume itself, and watched as the crimson sky faded into interminable blackness.

All the examples serve to give credence to this final message, so maybe in Shakespear's era it wasn't such common ideology. Yet, now that I think about it, it really isn't in our time either, for by extending the theme it could be interpreted as 'since all things will end, only love what you care for', why waste what's left of your time together hating?

Blllllaaaaahhhhhg:

It's a funny word, blog. BLOG. bbbblluuuuuaaaahhhhhhhg. At least if it was vlog it could stand for virtual-logging, however as it is, it only invokes memories of a Tolkien monster. Balrog. rogbal. balogR. Maybe it's a conspiracy.