Post by RonPrice on Feb 11, 2005 20:44:00 GMT -5
THE NEW ROAD AHEAD
Pushkin created a body of poetry enduring in its appeal and still unsurpassed in quality....He has accompanied Russian citizens into the darkest recesses of personal anguish...and sustained their spirits against all the odds....He can capture the essence of a sensual experience and deposit it in a memory bank open to us all....He is both flippant and serious-minded, insouciant and laborious, dismissive and deeply reverential. Sadly, he is an alienated and unhappy spirit incapable of establishing a deep and permanent relationship with anyone. His poetry is springy, supple, warm, precise and clear. He plays with everything. -A.D. P. Briggs, Alexander Pushkin: A Critical Study, Croom Helm, London, 1983, pp.17-21.
Whether Price’s poetry would have an enduring appeal; whether it would accompany this emerging Baha’i community into the dramatic and arduous years ahead; whether it would sustain anyone’s spirit, this remained in the future. That he could recapture a sensual experience and deposit it in the memory of a reader; that he was serious and reverential as well as light and flippant; that he was often both obscure and simple and easy to digest: anyone who took time to read his poetry would find out. Happily, his spirit, his personality, was able to form relationships with people quickly and with meaning. For this reason he was a successful teacher and lecturer. His poetry often lacked metre; rhymes were frequently forced and simplistic, mechanical; but there was a flow of ideas, of prose, of meaning, of inspiration that kept right on going, year after year. Some of it was tedious; some of it was flat and difficult to understand; but some of it touched the heart and uplifted the soul. -Ron Price with thanks to Briggs, Alexander Pushkin: A Critical Study, for some conceptual material which I have elaborated upon extensively.
Here is a lover of literature, who loved no other,
no individual, loved love, women, their parts,
in one great enchantment; for life, for him, however
cold and hollow, was filled with a rich sensuality,
a poignant perception, instants of ecstacy and enlightenmentthat make their way into ordinary lives, some celebrationof femininity, however arduous, lonely and despairing.
Some spiritual detachment, some freedom, is where
happiness is found here, above the pain and darkness,
the severed breasts and driest genetilia, perhaps in balladry where people learn without effort and without knowing it,within some ordinariness and gaity whose centre is sad,but where delight covers the eyes even amidst turmoil :oand stillness, tears and wetness, for the new road ahead.
Ron Price
14 April 1996
(could not get the poetic form here; I'll try again
Pushkin created a body of poetry enduring in its appeal and still unsurpassed in quality....He has accompanied Russian citizens into the darkest recesses of personal anguish...and sustained their spirits against all the odds....He can capture the essence of a sensual experience and deposit it in a memory bank open to us all....He is both flippant and serious-minded, insouciant and laborious, dismissive and deeply reverential. Sadly, he is an alienated and unhappy spirit incapable of establishing a deep and permanent relationship with anyone. His poetry is springy, supple, warm, precise and clear. He plays with everything. -A.D. P. Briggs, Alexander Pushkin: A Critical Study, Croom Helm, London, 1983, pp.17-21.
Whether Price’s poetry would have an enduring appeal; whether it would accompany this emerging Baha’i community into the dramatic and arduous years ahead; whether it would sustain anyone’s spirit, this remained in the future. That he could recapture a sensual experience and deposit it in the memory of a reader; that he was serious and reverential as well as light and flippant; that he was often both obscure and simple and easy to digest: anyone who took time to read his poetry would find out. Happily, his spirit, his personality, was able to form relationships with people quickly and with meaning. For this reason he was a successful teacher and lecturer. His poetry often lacked metre; rhymes were frequently forced and simplistic, mechanical; but there was a flow of ideas, of prose, of meaning, of inspiration that kept right on going, year after year. Some of it was tedious; some of it was flat and difficult to understand; but some of it touched the heart and uplifted the soul. -Ron Price with thanks to Briggs, Alexander Pushkin: A Critical Study, for some conceptual material which I have elaborated upon extensively.
Here is a lover of literature, who loved no other,
no individual, loved love, women, their parts,
in one great enchantment; for life, for him, however
cold and hollow, was filled with a rich sensuality,
a poignant perception, instants of ecstacy and enlightenmentthat make their way into ordinary lives, some celebrationof femininity, however arduous, lonely and despairing.
Some spiritual detachment, some freedom, is where
happiness is found here, above the pain and darkness,
the severed breasts and driest genetilia, perhaps in balladry where people learn without effort and without knowing it,within some ordinariness and gaity whose centre is sad,but where delight covers the eyes even amidst turmoil :oand stillness, tears and wetness, for the new road ahead.
Ron Price
14 April 1996
(could not get the poetic form here; I'll try again