Monday, April 19, 2010

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, part 2

I wrote a post about this wonderful song about a year ago, and, in browsing back to it, I realized I'd linked to the wrong version of it.  In the meantime, some kindly soul has uploaded the correct version to Youtube.  Here it is -- it's magnificent.

More on the song from Maclin Horton here.

10 comments:

Rodak said...

The funny thing is that I have always felt, no matter how hard the winter has been, that spring has come too soon. I am never ready for it.

In his excellent book Their Ancient Glittering Eyes, Donald Hall quotes his teacher and poetic mentor, Archibald MacLeish, on the theme of winter's effects on human emotion:

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter's covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no everning birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath; the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man's cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.


MacLeish now all but forgotten...

Pentimento said...

GREAT poem. Thanks for introducing it to me. The only poem I know by MacLeish is "You, Andrew Marvell," which is also wonderful.

Rodak said...

You must also know this one.

Pentimento said...

Oh yes! I do! Thanks for reminding me. I read it as a child.

Rodak said...

I don't recall encountering it until high school--but it's inescapable.

Mac said...

I think probably MacLeish wrote a lot that's not very good, and because of that, and because the way in which it wasn't very good made some influential critics (e.g. Jarrel) disdain him deeply, he went, you might say, violently out of fashion. But he ought to be given his due. This one knocked me over when I read it in a high school English class: Epistle to be Left in the Earth. And I still love it.

Pentimento said...

Mac, that reminds me of my all-time favorite poem, "And in the Hanging Gardens," by Conrad Aiken, who is no less out of fashion. You can read it here; you have to click to the next page.

I need to know how to embed these long URLs in a link, as you and Rodak have done.

http://books.google.com/books?id=JDwaGsTdhDIC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=aiken+%22and+in+the+hanging+gardens%22&source=bl&ots=lEOlYDSdpw&sig=yrljbkFD-reUU9H63wiuKrhMo-s&hl=en&ei=eDrQS_nMFoP68wSJmuk8&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=aiken%20%22and%20in%20the%20hanging%20gardens%22&f=false

Rodak said...

I can tell you how to do it, but not in a comment box. Blogger thinks you have typed a botched HTML formula and won't post it.
Send me an email to irodak47@gmail.com, if you wish, and I'll reply with the formula.

Mac said...

I don't know that Aiken poem, but was it here that we discussed "The Morning Song of Senlin" or "Senlin's Morning Song"--whatever the name of it is? Or was it at my blog? Anyway, I really like it. Must wait till later to read this one. Also to tell you how to do a link.

Pentimento said...

That must have been on your blog, Mac. I will work on that linking thing in the meantime; thanks both.