Sir Philip Sidney and T. S. Eliot!
"The original title of the poem was "Prufrock Among the Women," and Prufrock, as a balding, weak, neurotic, effete intellectual, is both baffled and intimidated by women. Perhaps the central image of his anxiety is his being "pinned and wriggling on the wall" (58) under the unflinching gaze of women (exacerbated since the women's eyes, much like their "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare" [63], seem eerily disconnected from their bodies). At least here the women seem to be paying attention to him, however hostile they may be. By the end of the poem, Prufrock feels ostracized from the society of women, the "mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me" (124-125). Interestingly, Prufrock's obsession with his bald spot rears its ugly head here; the beautiful, vain mermaids comb the "white hair of the waves blown back" (127). As hair is a symbol of virility, Eliot suggests that Prufrock's paralysis is deeply rooted in psycho sexual anxiety." (http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/prufrock/themes.html )
Yes, Sidney says the ultimate aim of the third kind of poetry to "both delight and teach." Not restricted to any certain subject matter and not actually "reality" portrayed, but probability and idealized situations."
The chief competitors for grandness in poetry will be moral philosophy and history.
Well, heck. Poetry tells a story...shares an emotion...tools and toils the language to bend it to our will as we attempt to express some ideas or stories we just have to put down on paper or in the air. We read words in poetry that we may use in our every day life, yet in print and formidably crafted, they come to life! "I just can't put into words"...."it's on the tip of my tongue"...these sentences are made of language...and express the very desire to express our self with pointed grace.
Yes, Poetry should and can and will be nothing and all things...and as we enjoy it we can know that it is a gift. Surely as I set and write this blog, I am counting on my fingers, my computer, and electricity...and the Internet, of course....but, mostly I am pulling verbs and nouns and adjectives that have been stored in my brain for only a bit over 40 years. Language...expression...love, passion, energy, flow, rhyme, rythm....satire...humor....glib, I love it all. OK, back to the real discussion!
Is Prifrock talking to himself or some one else or to a reader? He's running through these ideas over and over in his mind...he's scared of women! maybe just one woman...but it seems to have deeply affected him. He plays with ideas of telling his thoughts...then recoils?Maybe he just doesn't feel his life has had any value or that he is getting old and realizes missed opprotunity and trying to give himself a "pep talk?" Hmm, I am trying to pinpoint what Sidney might ultimately have to say about a poem such as this. Perhaps that the poem doesn't portray a beauty...an idealized reality...that it has no knowledge to share. I do like the poem...wish I could have been in class as you all took it apart for understanding. Yet, the poem is pretty much a sad lament on living in fear and lost opportunity, iced with a dab of fantasy of what could have been. The poem isn't "sacred" as Sidney would have liked...yet sacred are a human's feelings.
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