Verse for the Depressed Fan

As I reread Tennyson's Lotus Eaters a few days ago, I realized that we fans share a fate similar to that of the stranded Greeks . We've become contented with mediocrity and disappointment, and we know that -- at least for now -- the closest we'll ever come to seeing our team reach its goal is in a REM cycle.

Part VIII of Tennyson's magnum opus:

VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak,	145
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,	150
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.	155
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,	160
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,	165
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.	170
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

From Ulysses:

Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths	60
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’	65
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

In Memoriam XXVII

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,

The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,

Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth

But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It's a shame that so many of us are subjected to Whitman, Longfellow, Kerouac **puke**, and Ginsberg **double puke** while Blake and Tennyson gather dust on some bookshelf in the back of the room.

I have absolutely no problem saying that I think the world would be a better place had Ginsberg never lived and Howl never been published. Ginsberg was a huge influence — there can be little doubt about that. I’d be curious to know just how many adolescents he’s helped channel cognitive pity-parties into self-serving, whiny, yet shocking — and therefore “profound”– rants about society.

Forgive me for not seeing his — and really most of the Beats’ — pseudo-intellectual teen angst as art.

The fact that Ginsberg can be spoken in the same breath as Tennyson and Blake — whether Ginsberg really did have his “Blake moment” — makes me physically ill.

If you can get off from Ginsberg, I highly recommend this.

That's all.