Winnie.

[Red Poppy]

God I laughed when I saw the youtube video of "You can't always get what you want."
It was almost as good as a straight answer.
But maybe you don't actually have any answers Mat.
As you'd say yourself - Go back to sleep!

[mat james]

Of course I don't.
But it's all fun, RP.

[Red Poppy]

Indeed it is - and a happy Christmas to one and all down under
Have a or not so Yule (depending on the weather!)

[Andrew McGeever]

I've taken the advice I gave to Mat James, and READ THE POEM AGAIN.
The unfinished business isn't the poem itself (I'm satisfied with it, I think ), but lies inside the poem....what the poem tells/hints at.
I wasn't one of those "sages, writers, the usual acolytes", nor one of "the Eng. Lit. lecturers": not me in the elite .
Yet the poem suggests I had something Auden may have wanted/ desired......youth.
There's more than one interpretation of "undergraduates like me".
I'm getting to know "Winnie" (btw, it had to be Winnie, rather than Wystan: I stand by that title ).
The ants and crampons references are central to the poem: a Canadian poet instructed me to keep it in: there's nothing to change.
It would be better to pick up the references to two of Auden's poems mentioned in the text : "Fleet Visit" and "Funeral Blues". Better still, read the man .

Andrew.

[Alan Alda]

At best the ant/crampon image reduces Auden to a caricature; at worse a simple cartoon.

She (your Canadian poet) and you may be too attached to the line to be objective. That is usually why I hang onto stuff that really does not work. Attachment to my idea as opposed to what the poem needs or does not need. And if you have someone supporting a bad idea, it makes it worse.

Do you really want cartoon ants with lines and hooks crawling on this poetic icon's dis-embodied head in your poem that already shows disrespect with its familiar slang? This IS what you are giving your readers.

Laurie

[Jimmy O'Connell]

I agree with your Canadian poet.
The crampon/ants lines describe the battered face that IS Auden... battered and creviced in more ways than one...

Jimmy

[Red Poppy]

"Do you really want cartoon ants with lines and hooks crawling on this poetic icon's dis-embodied head in your poem that already shows disrespect with its familiar slang? "

Laurie,
I disagree that slang necessarily shows disrespect.
Slang is a form of expression - it may be disrespectful but not ecause it's slang.
It may also be warm and approving.
Depends on the context surely?

[Alan Alda]

Poppy~

Of course you're right. Soon as I posted that, I knew the blanket statement was flawed, but have a bad case of the lazies and just walked away (blamed partially on a headcold).
Anyways, it is all context...and the context of the poem is that someone (W.H.Auden) is revered and put on a pedastal by students all the way up to the uberpoeticcognoscenti...and in this context he is called: Winnie. Ouch. If disrespectful is one way of looking at the phenomenon, another I suppose could be a subliminal evening of the playing field at the revered one's expense.
Achoo.
Laurie

[lazariuk]

Back when
Winnie and I
were fucking
he would reach
for the parsley
and I would reach
for the sage

[Andrew McGeever]

yet neither had the thyme.

Andrew

[jimbo]

Thyme brings all things
to an end,
especialy the lamb.

It will be done,
As my father has said,
Without the fire

At the wedding banquet
Of all time,
And were all invited.

[mat james]

I know another poem with similar imagery regarding "ants".
I'll hunt it down.

[mat james]

Here is another poem about ants and ruts and so on

Nut At Snapper Point Beacon Kangaroo Island

Along the cliff I stormed
As agitated as the sea
At the beacon
I climbed blasted sky
Its smoke blowing east
Rain came
I descended
Sheltered and stared
At the foundation
I watched ants
In the bevelled channelled
Grey concrete joins
The concrete expanded
To a vast windy space
Where giant rain spots
Patterned my mind
I travelled with the ants
Across the rain stains
Around the simple geometry
Of flat channelled spaces
Into the crevices
And fell down one so deep
It might have been mind
And look
I was content
And laughed
And became again
Significant
Became again
The sea the sky
Ants concrete
I studied a strut
A stainless steel bolt
And believe me
I saw everything
Look at concrete runnels
And ants some time
Stare at a bolt
And imagine yourself
Standing under a beacon
Certain you are
A universal nut

Poem by P.R.Eason from his book entitled "Mystic"

[mat james]

I stuffed up. Nothing more to say.

[damellon]

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears. ~W.H. Auden