Number 302: William Carlos Williams "Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives"

Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives

Men with picked voices chant the names
of cities in a huge gallery: promises
that pull through descending stairways
to a deep rumbling.

The rubbing feet
of those coming to be carried quicken a
grey pavement into soft light that rocks
to and fro, under the domed ceiling,
across and across from pale
earthcolored walls of bare limestone.

Covertly the hands of a great clock
go round and round! Were they to
move quickly and at once the whole
secret would be out and the shuffling
of all ants be done forever.

A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing
out at a high window, moves by the clock:
discordant hands straining out from
a center: inevitable postures infinitely
repeated—

two—twofour—twoeight!

Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms.

This way ma'am!

—important not to take
the wrong train!

Lights from the concrete
ceiling hang crooked but—

Poised horizontal
on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders
packed with a warm glow—inviting entry—
pull against the hour. But brakes can
hold a fixed posture till—
The whistle!

Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two!

Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating
in a small kitchen. Taillights—
In time: twofour!
In time: twoeight!

—rivers are tunneled: trestles
cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating
the same gesture remain relatively
stationary: rails forever parallel
return on themselves infinitely.

The dance is sure.

-- William Carlos Williams

Hap Notes: There's a lot going on in this poem but certainly one of the primary exciting elements is the way in which Williams shows us a railway station as a sort of art gallery/theater/natural history museum. There are echoes of past civilizations as well as insect colonies in the verses.

While the images are not all cheery; one can't help but feel that the downward spiraling staircases (in addition to thinking of Duchamp's art) in parallel with Dante's inferno or the myths of Persephone and the underworld; still, there's a jazzy feel to the swift and slow syncopations of the train.

A quick note on the use of the word "colored" to denote race. First off, at the time (for what it's worth) this was the most respectful term that could be used. Second, it has always struck me as an odd way of describing anyone since we are all colored are we not? No person lacks color (at least on the outside)– there are no colorless people (again, not on the outside.) When I was a little kid and people would use the world "colored" I always imagined purple or turquoise people and that sounded so exotic to me.

I'll let you explore this poem on your own but let me give you a bit of food for thought. First off, the common name for a railroad station is a terminal. Brood on that a bit and see if you don't find just a few more insights into what Williams is telling us about life. Second, what do you think he is saying about time, both musical and mortal? Are we not all fellow travelers in this life?

This poem puts me in mind of a scene from Terry Gilliam's movie "The Fisher King." It's Grand Central Station and Robin Williams character is following the woman he loves from afar. Here it is:www.youtube.com/watch?v=lASPrnWf6cA&feature=related The masthead pic is Grand Central Station in New York, where Gilliam filmed the dance.


Here's where we have talked about Williams before:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-13-william-carlos-williams-great.html

and here:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-220-wiliam-carlos-williams-this.html

and here:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-221-more-plums-william-carlos.html

Number 301: Wilfred Owen "Dulce Et Decorum Est"

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-- Wilfred Owen

Hap Notes: It was on this day in 1918 that Wilfred Owen's parents received the news that their son Wilfred had been killed in action in WWI. He had been killed by German machine gun fire just one week before the armistice. He was 25 years old.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (1893-1918) wrote poetry about the war graphically explaining what it looked and felt like. The fact that our wars continue leads one to assume that most people have not read these poems. Today's poem makes it clear that war is terrifying and confusing. I think it was one of the first poems I memorized when I was in junior high. The poem still makes me weep.

The Latin phrase at the end of the poem translates to "it is sweet and proper to die for one's country" and is taken from the Roman poet Horace.

Here's a good Owen quote: "My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity."

You can find more Owen here: www.poemhunter.com/wilfred-owen/biography/

Number 300: Jeffrey Harrison "The Angel On The Table"

The Angel On The Table

She's losing her memory, isn't sure
who I am, is bothered by small things
like where that angel made from doilies
came from, the one she made herself
in the home's craft class. I remind her, but she
forgets again and in a minute asks again,
as if she's just noticed it for the first time.

The body is a doily twisted into a cone.
A doily cut and folded forms the wings.
The head is a Styrofoam ball, the hair a tuft
of cotton, the halo a gold pipe cleaner.
As simple and innocent as something
a child would bring home from school,
and in fact my daughter made one like it.

But this angel is a small torment to her,
perched on the table beside the photographs
of people she no longer recognizes–
but that doesn't bother her. It's the angel
she eyes with suspicion, even fear.
Where did it come from, what is it doing there,
what on earth does it want from her?

-- Jeffrey Harrison

Hap Notes: Harrison was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and studied under one of our favorite poets, Kenneth Koch (who was also from Cincinnati, by the way.) He is an award winning poet– okay, I'll name some– a couple of Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim and an NEA fellowship, and the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship.

He has published, to date, six poetry collections and his poems have appeared in a variety of periodicals including The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry and The New Republic. His teaching gigs include George Washington University, Phillips Academy and College of the Holy Cross.

This poem comes from his book Incomplete Knowledge (Four Way Books, 2006.) Much of the focus of the collection is on illness, grief and loss. The poems dealing with his older brother's suicide are particularly moving.

In today's poem, we see a woman, possibly a grandma since she lives in a "home" where they have craft projects. Think of the strange, suspicious terror and disconcerting confusion that results from suffering from Alzheimer's as this woman obviously does. Why do you think an angel could be particularly frightening, even a crudely made craft-project one? Can you feel how terrifying this could be? And as an observer of this, let alone a relative of the sufferer, wouldn't this be, at the very least heart-rending and painful?

There is something else here, though. Why would "small things" be particularly bothersome to this woman? Why do the pictures of unrecognized relatives and friends bother her less than the angel?

Here's a good Harrison quote: "I believe that a poet must write what comes naturally, but I also believe (and this may seem contradictory) that there is a necessary restlessness to being a poet, and if a poet doesn’t have this quality, then he or she is destined to be reincarnated over and over in the same poem. One doesn’t consciously change the way one writes, it happens naturally over time, but the restlessness helps move the process along."

You can find more of Harrison's poetry as well as interviews and essays here: home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.harrison/

(The masthead picture features a shot of the notorious "Black Angel" at Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, IA. It was one of the legendary places of my youth and I've always thought the angel was equally comforting, mysterious and terrifying.)

Number 299: Franz Wright "The Mailman"

The Mailman

From the third floor window
you watch the mailman’s slow progress
through the blowing snow.
As he goes from door to door

he might be searching
for a room to rent,
unsure of the address,
which he keeps stopping to check

in the outdated and now
obliterated clipping
he holds, between thickly gloved fingers,
close to his eyes

in a hunched and abruptly
simian posture
that makes you turn away,
quickly switching off the lamp.

--Franz Wright

Hap Notes: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright (born 1953) was born in Vienna and is the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright (who was on a Fulbright scholarship there at the time.) They are the only parent and child to have won this award separately and one suspects it might be a while until that record is broken. Despite his upbringing amidst some of the iconic poets of the last century, and their cautionary examples, Wright has had to fight similar demons and is a recovering alcoholic/addict/manic-depressive.

Wright, a graduate of Oberlin College, has been the recipient of several fellowships as well as the PEN/Voelcker Prize for poetry in addition to his Pulitzer. His poetry usually deals with vulnerability; often about the inevitable conflicts with his dad or crawling back to life from addictions and breakdowns.

Read today's poem closely. The postman, we know, is not actually searching for a home, so who is? Why would the sight of a man, looking "hunched" and "simian" make someone turn away, turn off the light? What is going on? Fear? Repugnance? Denial? All three? How does that postman's tortuously slow progress, with an "outdated clipping," make the observer feel? Confused? Alone? Reading this poem with compassion, who are we more concerned for, the postman or the observer?

Side note: You know that expression " "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" for the post office? People often say it is the motto or creed or pledge of the U.S. Post Office. It is not. The Post Office has no official "motto" or "slogan." The quotation, written on the side of the James Farley Post Office in New York City, is from Herodotus' Histories and refers to the couriers of ancient Persia. By the by, if you have never read Herodotus' seminal work (it's a good read and is considered the first "study" of history, it is available here, free: www.paxlibrorum.com/books/histories/ If you don't think you have the time to read it, you can listen to it here, free: www.archive.org/details/The-Histories-Herodotus-Audiobook If you can't handle THAT (and now I'm getting a tad disgusted, sorry) you can read a summary of each chapter here: www.livius.org/he-hg/herodotus/logos1_01.htm It's a rousing tale and it is as true as a history book ever is.

Here's a good Franz Wright quote: "When I write now, I feel like someone who came back from the dead."

and

"All true poets are visionaries and experience oceanic instances of seamless mingling with the infinite in the face of everyday things (astronomical perceptions, as Blake and Lorca put it, in the contemplation of very small concrete things; or as Flannery O'Conner said, only in and through sense experiences does a writer approach a contemplative knowledge of the mysteries they embody); and of course poetry, of all arts, is the most moral if we keep Kant's definition of morality in mind, as that act for which no possibility of compensation really exists. There is nothing to be gained from writing poetry (and everything to lose, come to think of it) if it is truly taken seriously." see the whole interview here: nowculture.com/nc3/wrightinterview.htm

You can find more Franz Wright here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/franz-wright

Number 298: Heinrich Heine "Death and His Brother Sleep"

Death and His Brother Sleep (Morphine)

There’s a mirror likeness between those two
shining, youthfully-fledged figures, though
one seems paler than the other and more austere,
I might even say more perfect, more distinguished,
than he, who would take me confidingly in his arms –
how soft then and loving his smile, how blessed his glance!
Then, it might well have been that his wreath
of white poppies gently touched my forehead, at times,
and drove the pain from my mind with its strange scent.
But that is transient. I can only, now, be well,
when the other one, so serious and pale,
the older brother, lowers his dark torch. –
Sleep is so good, Death is better, yet
surely never to have been born is best

-- Heinrich Heine

Hap Notes: This cheerful little poem is characteristic of Heinrich Heine's ( 1797-1856) depressing wit. Heine was a brilliant thinker who presaged the fate of Germany nearly 100 years before the zenith of the Nazi party. He was a prolific poet, journalist, critic and essayist and, in the course of his life, he knew many of the intellectuals, artists and writers who shaped his era. Much of Heine's work is punctuated by a sharp, ironic pessimism which sometimes is expressed with ironic humor and sometimes is just plain frustrated by human nature.

Heine was born in Dusseldorf, Rhineland, during the French occupation under Napoleon and Heine was a fan of Napoleon's expressed ideals in the Napoleonic Code; liberty, justice and equality. Heine was born a Jew but converted to protestantism because he wanted a teaching post and Jews were overlooked for such a position. In fact, his Jewishness stood in the way of his entrance to European culture. However, his conversion did not help him procure a position. In his university days Heine attended lectures by Franz Bopp, F.A. Wolf and the influential Idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

After studying at a variety of universities and writing some poetry and travel essays, Heine went to Paris, in part to escape German censorship laws. Heine had always been an outsider- one can feel this in much of his work. When he got to Paris he was as close to being happy as a thoughtful gloomy German could be. We often use the phrase "fish out of water" to express being out of one's element. The original expression started as "happy as a fish in water" and Heine said that the expression, when one fish would inquire about the other would have to be answered, "I feel like Heine in Paris."

Heine wrote essays, poetry and music criticism. It was he who termed the phrase "Lisztomania" in reference to the fainting and hysteria that followed Franz Liszt where ever he went. ( Sidenote: This was long before the milder, but every bit as wacky, Beatlemania of the 60s. Do you remember the Ken Russel film about Liszt, "Lisztomania"? With Roger Daltrey from the Who as Liszt, soundtrack by Rick Wakeman and Ringo Starr playing the Pope? It's a very odd film.) Heine was friends with Karl Marx (with whom he did not totally agree) and knew Liszt and Georges Sand (of whom he said was the least witty French woman he had ever met.)

Heine wrote an influential history of Germany, The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, in which he pretty much nailed the German political outlook that would grow over the following hundred years. He was a thinking philosopher-poet, not a political pundit, and he saw the writing on the wall more clearly than most. It will not surprise, then, that this book and many others authored by him were burned by the Third Reich. Heine himself wrote, in the 1800s, " ...where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also." Chillingly accurate.

Many of Heine's poems were put to music by composers including Schumann, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn just to name a handful. Here is Silcher's famous compostion for Heine's "Die Lorelei" (which all good students of German can sing)- this one is sung by the incomparable Richard Tauber: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJweIV8OqT8&feature=related

In today's poem, Heine is talking about Thanatos and Hypnos, the twin brothers, in Greek mythology, of death and sleep. Hypnos and Thanatos are the sons of Nyx (Night) and Darkness (Erebos) and are often linked together. The poppies are their symbol from the flower's hypnotic reputation (and its opiate pharmacology.) Heine did not take morphine that I know of- this is strictly a poetic reference. Hypnos is often portrayed with wings around his face, Thanatos is depicted with dark wings and carrying an inverted torch (the extinguishment of life.) The last line sums up Heine's bitter sense of humor.

Heine was very ill the last eight years of his life. In 1997 a hair of the poet was analyzed and it was found he was suffering from chronic lead poisoning. He took to his bed for those last years and called it his Matratzengruft (mattress-coffin.) Friedrich Nietzche said of him, "“The highest conception of the lyric poet was given to me by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain in all the realms of millenia for an equally sweet and passionate music. He possessed that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection… And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language.”

Here's a good Heine quote: "Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ."

and

"When words leave off, music begins."

and

"It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of - another Jew?"

You can find more Heine here: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a1049

(The masthead is Evelyn Pickering De Morgan's Night and Sleep)

Number 297: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Tears, Idle Tears"

Tears, Idle Tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Hap Notes: Tennyson said he wrote this poem while visiting Tintern Abbey, a place which draws the poetry out of many writers. One of the most famous poems written about the place is Wordworth's "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey." (The masthead pic today is a photo of part of the abbey.) So what is Tintern Abbey that it inspires so much versifying rumination? One supposes part of the appeal is that it was built in 1131 and was abandoned in 1536, so the ruins are haunted by hundreds of years of human history. When both poets visited the site it was more than likely festooned with ivy and vines, adding to its lonely beauty.

Tennyson said that he wrote the poem as he felt the memories of a bygone era around the abbey and that the poem was about "the passion of the past, the abiding in the transient." In the first stanza Tennyson makes it clear that there is a contrast between the "happy autumn fields" and the feelings that are arising within him. He is vividly recalling things from the past that move him as he looks on the current scene. How can the past feel so real in the present? And how can it be so real and yet so unreachable- one can remember so acutely and yet, it is as ephemeral as smoke.

Many composers have set this poem to music. Here is contemporary music genius Owain Park's version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZ1CMoFHXo

Why do you think Tennyson calls these tears idle? Have you ever teared up thinking about a happy memory of the past? Why do we do this?

There is an amusing and famous story about this poem in the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. It seems that Tennyson was on a boating trip with some friends and in the course of a conversation about tobacco (which he loved) he mentioned that the first pipe he smoked in the morning was the best one of the day. To which Sir William Harcourt, traveling with the party, quipped, "Ah, the earliest pipe of half-awakened bards." Tennyson was not amused. (He loved this poem and had no sense of humor about it.)

Tennyson's fame put him under a great deal of scrutiny and he was eccentric in dress (with a big cape and a sombrero or beret) and tousled locks. In 1855 he was at the Oxford Theatre receiving an honorary D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil/Canon Law- it doesn't make him a barrister, it's a high honor reserved for heads of state and writers of exceptional distinction.) A voice called out from the gallery, observing his blowzy hair style (see inset pic) "Did your mother call you early, dear?"

Tennyson has always been one of my favorites and, in spite of some sentimental stuff that can embarrass one, he has also, I believe, written some of the finest poetry ever penned in the English language.

Here's where we have talked about Tennyson before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-73-alfred-lord-tennyson-eagle.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-193-tennyson-brook.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/09/number-265-alfred-lord-tennyson-break.html

Number 296: A Penny For the Guy "Remember Remember"

Traditional Guy Fawkes Rhymes

Remember, Remember

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent to blow up King and Parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below to prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d with a dark lantern and lighted match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip hoorah!

-- Traditional

AND (often added):

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.

A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.

Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.

Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

-- Traditional

And another version:

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember! 

The fifth of November, 

The Gunpowder treason and plot; 

I know of no reason 

Why the Gunpowder treason 

Should ever be forgot! 

Guy Fawkes and his companions 

Did the scheme contrive, 

To blow the King and Parliament 

All up alive. 

Threescore barrels, laid below, 

To prove old England's overthrow. 

But, by God's providence, him they catch, 

With a dark lantern, lighting a match! 

A stick and a stake 

For King James's sake! 

If you won't give me one, 

I'll take two, 

The better for me, 

And the worse for you. 

A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope, 

A penn'orth of cheese to choke him, 

A pint of beer to wash it down, 

And a jolly good fire to burn him. 

Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring! 

Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King! 

Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

-- Traditional

Here's another:


Remember, remember the fifth of November
It's Gunpowder Plot, we never forgot
Put your hand in your pocket and pull out your purse
A ha'penny or a penny will do you no harm
Who's that knocking at the window?
Who's that knocking at the door?
It's little Mary Ann with a candle in her hand
And she's going down the cellar for some coal

Sometimes this gets added:

We come a Cob-coaling for Bonfire time,
Your coal and your money we hope to enjoy.
Fal-a-dee, fal-a-die, fal-a-diddly-i-do-day.
For down in yon' cellar there's an owd umberella
And up on yon' cornish there's an owd pepperpot.
Pepperpot! Pepperpot! Morning 'till night.
If you give us nowt, we'll steal nowt and bid you good night.
Up a ladder, down a wall, a cob o'coal would save us all.
If you don't have a penny a ha'penny will do.
If you don't have a ha'penny, then God bless you.
We knock at your knocker and ring at your bell
To see what you'll give us for singing so well.

Still, some say this:

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A fagot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

--All versions traditional variations

Hap Notes: It's Guy Fawkes Day so bonfires and fireworks are the order of the day in Great Britain. Before Guy Fawkes, the word "guy" meant to lead or referred to a rope. After Guy Fawkes, the word "guy"first started to take on the characteristics of how we now use it, in reference to a person or group of people like "you guys" or that guy.

In 1605 Guy Fawkes was one of a group of Catholic conspirators who wanted to get the Protestant King James I off the throne (or any other Protestant who would take the throne- it was only slightly personal and mostly religious.) It was planned that a bunch of gunpowder would be lit to explode under the House of Parliament when James I was in attendance and take out the lot, more or less. The conspirators leased a room which was close to the House of Lords and from which they could tunnel under the legislative building. A full 36 barrels of gunpowder was smuggled into this room.

Fawkes was charged with guarding it, at some point he was going to light the fuse and then run like hell, escaping across the Thames river. Word of the conspiracy leaked out (one member of Parliament, Lord Monteagle, was warned in a letter to stay away from the building) the conspirators were aware of this, the servant of Monteagle told them about the letter, but they felt it would be dismissed as a hoax. And it would have been. Except. Monteagle was sort of freaked out by the letter and told King James I, who, also a little freaked, sent some men to investigate around the Parliament building.

The gunpowder was hidden under piles of coal and firewood. Fawkes, in the early morning hours of November 5, was caught coming out of the cellar and arrested. The piles of gunpowder and flammables were found and Fawkes found himself in the soup. (one always wonders why he was leaving. Bathroom break? Time for a smoke? A quick pint? A breath of fresh air?)

Just a quick word about Fawkes. Born in York in 1570, he later converted to Catholicism and fought in the Eighty Years War on the side of Catholic Spain. He often signed his name "Guido Fawkes" and, indeed, he did so when a confession was tortured out of him by James I's men. Fawkes, when asked what he was doing in the cellar of Parliament, spat out, ""to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains." Fawkes, until his final tortures, often spoke French to his captors, leading James to believe he was French. The conspirators hoped that Catholic Spain would help them but they would not.

Fawkes, especially to British children of the last several hundred years, was a figure of some dark and evil glamor. Clad like a gentleman, he reputedly answered his inquisitors with his head high and a bright wit. He gleams with evil, swashbuckling, rebellious dark magic. I don't know that British children see him like this now but for several hundred years he had this evil charming enchantment around his story.

Fawkes stoicism in the face of torture was much admired, even by James I. Have you ever heard or seen the expression" et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur "? It means, "and by degree proceeding to the worst." They started out torturing Fawkes with manacles, then eventually the rack. He was so beat up that when he climbed the scaffold for his hanging he could barely walk. He ended up giving out some conspirators names and signing a confession. It is said he suffered much in the way of torture, that it would take much to bow a bright and difficult and proud man.

He was found guilty and his sentence was to be hanged and then drawn and quartered. The actual sentence read that the conspirators should be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both". Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become "prey for the fowls of the air". Fawkes avoided the torture of being even remotely conscious of this by jumping from the gallows and breaking his neck. His corpse was still drawn and quartered and his body parts were distributed throughout the land. (Um...eww! Seriously? Eww.)

Lest one get too romantic about Fawkes and his compatriots, I suppose it should be pointed out that their gunpowder explosion would have killed hundreds of people; in addition to killing off some spoiled inbred aristocracy it would have also killed dozens of serving people and working class folks who labored in the building as well. Neither cool nor noble, that. Fawkes, as he climbed the ladder leading to his death, asked for forgiveness from the king and God. Fawkes, by the way, was no means the leader of this conspiracy, he was just the one caught.

After the whole thing, the people in London were encouraged to celebrate the king's escape from this assassination plot with fireworks and bonfires. It was actually endorsed by Parliament as a day of thanksgiving and was officially a holiday until 1859. In the course of the celebrations, many are burned in effigy including the Pope, and sometimes, whomever was in power at the time (like Margaret Thatcher). Fawkes is most particularly burned in effigy, though. Children go from house to house collecting clothes for their bonfire effigy, begging for old clothes or a penny to buy newspapers and various items to fill out or finish their effigy. Then the effigies are burned in the bonfire.

In recent years, the movie "V is For Vendetta" has brought Fawkes to the forefront. The movie (and comic book series by Alan Moore and David Lloyd) is about an ailing society and a group of freedom fighters called Anonymous and an enigmatic fellow," V", who all wear Guy Fawkes masks. The mask has consequently been used by a variety of groups from Occupy Wall Street to anti-Scientology protests.

All this information on Fawkes may seem like historical trivia but it will come in handy for understanding a great deal of literature, not the least of which is T.S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men". Here's a good annotated version of it: aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Poem.htm


It's Saturday so here are our cartoons and music and other assorted amusing bits of junk:

This pretty much explains the day: www.youtube.com/watch?v=khdDSkNQ4iQ

Here's the BBC's take on it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBVrPurrqCw

Here's Cat Face on Guy Fawkes Day: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0KoqA4w02s

Here's Greg from We are Klang on cBBC (for kids- it's great though): www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyj8VX_1rjQ

Did you see the Colbert Report with the Guy Fawkes mask?: www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/01/colbert-anonymous-hacked-_n_829604.html

Here's Green On Red with "The Ballad of Guy Fawkes": www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-0_huUXRmI&feature=related

Here's the Krewmen with "Guy Fawkes": www.youtube.com/watch?v=snJDOX6Au28

John Lennon mentions today's poem in his song "Remember": www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eds5X0K7t3Q

Here's a bit of The Penny Dreadfuls take on Guy Fawkes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sklMRFVdiXo&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL77A5011347C108C0

Here's Big Jim McBob and Billy Saul Hurok with the Farm Film Report: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dfoVqhQVyQ