General-Zod wrote:
George J. Dance wrote:
Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
Christmas Violets, by Andrew Lang
Last night I found the violets
You sent me once across the sea;
From gardens that the winter frets,
In summer lands they came to me.
[...]
https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2023/12/christmas-violets-andrew-lang.html
#pennyspoems
Again....
Excellent choice...
Yo!
Thank you, as always, for trying to keep the attention on the poetry and off the trolling, Zod. I suppose i should seize the opportunity to say something about it. I chose it because it was a Christmas poem -- the author is writing to (or as likely just
thinking about) someone close who sent him a Christmas present of violets -- but with a darker edge: the violets are dead, black and scentless, symbolizing the fact that the relationship is over. As such, it looked like a good segue between the Christmas
poems that precede it in the monthly archive and the darker poems that follow it.
I not only liked the poet, but what the author drew from it. The common way for a poet to deal with an ended relationship is to mourn and grieve the loss, to turn its ending into a tragedy. Instead, Lang's take is positive; rather than getting hung up on
the fact the relationship's over, he's able to get beyond that, to appreciate the positive aspects of the relationship (it was "not all in vain") and get closure.
I enjoyed that, with the underlying idea of not dwelling on the past but accepting what's done as done, and I think it's something worth keeping in mind. In fact, looking back I see it was already influencing me without my realizing it.
On the weekend I blogged Lang's poem we were working on the "Fun and Games" Dancehall, and of the songs we'd collected, I'd already decided to close it with Clay Aiken's version of Neil Sedaka's "Solitaire". The song is a perfect illustration of the "
tragic" take on an ended relationship ("he'll never love again"), and I think Aiken's version of it is far more tragic, and more powerful, than the most well-known version by the Carpenters. For one thing, Aiken's a far more dramatic singer than Karen
Carpenter was; for another, the fact it's a man singing gives listeners the idea that he's singing about himself, baring his own soul (while letting the listeners figure that out by *not* singing "I'll never love again"). I thought it was too bleak to
end on, so I followed it with Tommy Edwards' "It's All in the Game" (a song you suggested) as a sort of coda; but I was convinced that "Solitaire" was the perfect penultimate song and a blockbuster of a finale.
Clay Aiken - Solitaire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQgPSv2Zmc&list=PL_uEAOzPGnDFcWpJzQXq5HP-qA6OYeO1C&index=28
But on Sunday, after rereading and blogging Lang's poem, I decided that I didn't want to end on that tragic note; I thought it was the wrong note to end on. I wanted to go beyond Sedaka's tragic view to Lang's positive view of the relationship and his
acceptance that it's over. I spent hours looking for one, and I finally found one I thought was strong enough, Coldplay's "Fun." So that became the penultimate song instead, with "Solitaire" being moved back. As I say, I think that take the more
preferable way to think about it, and I'm hoping that listeners to Dancehall will get it as well.
Coldplay - Fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xannI2K4JnY&list=PL_uEAOzPGnDFcWpJzQXq5HP-qA6OYeO1C&index=29
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