Comments on: “The only thing I’d really like to be.”

By: Annie FInch

Annie FInch — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:01:32 +0000

…. meaning, I think, that Franny would definitely have considered Burns a poet.
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By: Annie FInch

Annie FInch — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:55:59 +0000

or not.

thank you james for evoking those other glorious songs/poems…

By the way, here’s a quote from Franny and Zooey, which I bought by coincidence and decided to read for the first time a week before JDS passed….

“I know this much, is all,” Franny said. “If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you’re talking about don’t leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn’t have to be a poem, for heaven’s sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings—excuse the expression.”
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By: Annie FInch

Annie FInch — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:46:51 +0000

that may well be so, Stephen– But then, who’s to say that Salinger didn’t die at that time because it was near Burns’ birthday….
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By: Stephen Sturgeon

Stephen Sturgeon — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:28:05 +0000

Just because Salinger died.

Stephen
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:58:10 +0000

Kent, how, then, to explain Burns’s poem, “The Slave’s Lament” of 1792, in which he gives voice to a Senegalese man enslaved in Virginia? As B.’s biographer Robert Crawford remarks, it may seem “an odd poem from a white poet who might well have gone [but did not] to help manage a Jamaican plantation, but it was in tune with growing and widespread unease” with the slave trade. The poem counts among its admirers Maya Angelou, who calls it “a perfect example of the ways in which a poet transcends race, time and place.”

None of which is intended to downplay in the slightest all the troubling things about Burns, but to show that things are a bit more complicated than your name-calling lets on. And if we’re looking for character flaws, his treatment of women – which you didn’t mention – is extremely troubling.
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By: james stotts

james stotts — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:34:41 +0000

not just because salinger died, but as a belated reminder of robbie burns day, too, that’s right, annie. you’re not but senseless asses.
a death, even if it comes as late as jerry’s (he was 91), is significant becauses it is the end of his authority.

by the way, annie, he was a great women’s writer in other very singable songs–remember ‘green grow the rashes’: ‘the wisest man the world e’er saw, he dearly loved the lasses’ and ‘auld nature swears, her lovely dears/her noblest work she classes/her prentice han’ she tried on man/an’ then she made the lasses.’
and john anderson is the prime example of singing the other part. sorry, to go on, but when it’s your favorite writer…
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By: Annie FInch

Annie FInch — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:37:48 +0000

Great to see this here, posted ipso facto in honor not only of of Salinger’s deathday but also of Robbie Burns’ birthday two days earlier–for those who don’t know, a huge national and global celebration of the poet and of Scotland. It’s one of my favorite Burns poems (I have another posted for the occasion at my blog AmericanWitch http://annieridleycranefinch.blogspot.com/)

This has one of the best singing tunes of any of his poems imho, and it is one of the relatively few where female sexuality is celebrated in its own right..it really feels like a poem that could have been written by Jenny herself, coming through dew-wet fields early in the morning to slip into bed after a night out.

Thanks, Travis!
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By: Stephen Sturgeon

Stephen Sturgeon — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:51:05 +0000

He posted it because Salinger died.

Stephen
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By: thom donovan

thom donovan — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:40:00 +0000

I am wondering how to pronounce “draigl’t a’”–that “gl” most difficult…

and thinking of Duncan’s muthologies…

were you inspired to post this poem for any particular reason Travis?

the mind goes wild with association. especially via sound…
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:15:15 +0000

It’s interesting to note that Robert Burns was a rabid supporter of the slave trade.
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