Poetry By Inches, Words By a Mile - T.S.Elliot

The Hollow Men
A penny for the old guy




I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpeice filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication
of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Walking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

by

TS Elliot

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

A Feast of Posters

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

Bellowhead

I caught this band on Later With Jools the other night and impressed by their enthusiasm and re-juvinating the UK Folk scene.

Wikipedia says -

"The band debuted at the first Oxford Folk Festival in April 2004, and were an instant success. Festival audiences have destroyed three dance floors such was their enthusiasm. As a result, they independently released a five-track EP of "English World Music" entitled E.P.Onymous, which generated very positive reviews. The following year, after only four gigs, the band won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for Best Live Act 2005 for their live performances at festivals around Britain, including Cambridge Folk Festival and Womad Reading. The band are described as:
"Merging a joyous, uplifting cacophony of sound with a slightly sinister, distorted collision of music hall, Lotte Lenya, Robert Wyatt and pure theatre." Themselves. "Bellowhead are surely the best live act in the country" The Independent.
In 2006 they released their first full-length album, Burlesque, featuring material from the Napoleonic Wars (Rigs of the Time), the American minstrel movement (Jordan) and sea-shanties from Brazil (Across the Line). They also appeared alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers, Keane and Thom Yorke on the BBC TV show Later... with Jools Holland, winning praise from Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis. In the 2007 Folk Awards they won "Best Group" and "Best Live Act", the following year they won Best Live Act once more. Towards the end of the year they became Artists in Residence at the Southbank Centre, making their inaugural appearance with a special Christmas Revels event.
In 2008 Bellowhead released their second album Matachin and performed at the Proms which was broadcast on BBC Four and BBC Radio 3. The following year in August the band were approached about recording music for a 20th anniversary episode of The Simpsons. They finished off the year with a nautical themed New Year's Eve party at the Southbank Centre, with silent disco and an ABBA themed céilidh.
Bellowhead were named Best Live Act at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2010 for an unparalleled fourth time. On 4 October in the same year, Bellowhead released their third studio album, Hedonism. In honour of the new album, the band developed a new ale named after the album. Band members were involved with the taste testing of the beverage."

For the latest C.J. Duffy essay...go here: The Wayward Ways of C.J. Duffy

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

A Feast of Posters

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

Chuck Berry

Found this amongst the collection the other day. A great double LP which only cost 3 quid back in the 80's . Some fantastic tracks here for anybody who likes rock 'n' roll and blues. Chuck was a big influence on lots of people including the Beatles and the Stones and one can see why - these tunes are so catchy. If you are not tapping your feet you must have something wrong with you!

Wikipedia says -

"Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962 Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963 Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place To Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine", but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality.] His insistence on being paid cash led to a jail sentence in 1979—four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several Rolling Stone "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked sixth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Now in his eighties, Berry continues to play live."

The Art of Jazz

Of all the musical styles that have come out of America it is Jazz which, in my opinion, is the single most original of all. It also produced album sleeves that revolutionised art and design. Here is one of the late and great Billie Holiday LP covers:

...aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

Dump The Kit Bag!

Who wants to pack up troubles?
Much less put them in a case.
for then it might be all too easy
to lug 'em all over the place!
Leve 'em behind you, let 'em all go!
You'll be much happier then you know!

Bit Of A Teaser

Though not of the usual kind. This is an example of an etheree - ten lines, each growing by one syllable per line, from one to ten. Not quite as easy as it may appear... Try to write one, if you don't believe me...

Pocketed
 
Red
shiny
snooker balls
cluster tightly
in a triangle.                            
Like ripe, juicy cherries
sitting plump on green baize ground,
they wait for the game to commence.
Cannoning cue ball breaks formation;
one red sphere rolls to meet its destiny.

A Feast of Posters

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.