Ezra Pound had to be the most depressed person who ever got famous. Talk about a downer, wow. However, since today’s Daily Downer is the perfect opportunity to present this super depressing poem by Ezra Pound — and Garry’s picture of geese on the river makes a perfect backdrop — I couldn’t resist.
Share this:
Categories: #animals, #Birds, #BlackstoneRiver, #Photography, Daily Prompt, Garry Armstrong, poem
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Marilyn, it is so depressing it is funny.
Leslie
LikeLike
I think it’s supposed to be funny.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t know this poem, so thank you for posting it. I think it’s really meant as a broadside on Housman’s ‘Shropshire Lad’ which could be seen as very very doleful. Ezra is being very wicked actually, and not a little mean. I don’t think Housman really deserves this. But hey, in context, it’s funny too. And Garry does indeed take v. good photos.
LikeLike
I knew he didn’t mean it seriously, but I didn’t know the Housman poem, so I didn’t pick up on what it was mocking. I’ll have to read the original.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of 56 or so ballad type verses – the main themes: ‘the land of lost content’ and lost youth. There’s a free version on Gutenberg Press. It was begun after Housman’s younger brother, a professional soldier, was killed in the Boer War. But it came into its own during WW1 when many a young man took a copy with him to the Western Front. There’s also, according to some, a homo-erotic gloss to the whole work. Housman, a respectable classical scholar, tended to fall in love with heterosexual men, and so was always bound to have his love rejected, which I think especially happened around the time he was composing the cycle. One of the poems makes an appearance in the Out of Africa film, the famous eulogy scene on the Ngong Hills. Another of the poems – On Wenlock Edge – also inspired song cycles by Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, which I’ve written about somewhere on my blog. As I said, though, I can see where Ezra Pound was coming from with his lampoon.
LikeLike
Garry that is an amazing shot. Love the composition, colours and reflections. That is inspiring and lifts the spirit while reading the miserable quote.
LikeLike
Garry takes really good pictures. I wish he would do more shooting.
LikeLike
WOW! what a downer….
LikeLike
Isn’t it just? Jeff loved it.
LikeLike
Sylvia Plath is, IMO, more depressing. At least this one is kind of funny. Then there is this masterpiece of imagism:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
LikeLike
You are right. Sylvia Plath for pure “Why don’t I just end it all right now” misery. Of course, let us not forget the whole Russian crowd. Maxim Gorky comes to mind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
God help us. 😀
LikeLike
I think that’s today Daily Prompt message.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fairly cryptic, no?
LikeLike
Who me? Or Ezra? Or the Daily Prompt? All of the above? I don’t know who makes (made) up these prompts, but they seem to lean toward the dour and depressive. I figure they must be young and thing depressing and interesting are the same thing.
LikeLike
The message of the Daily Prompt (if there is one). I don’t know who they are except they’re deeply narcissistic. Yeah, that’s a paradox.
LikeLike
The last time I thought depressing and “deep” were the same, I was 17 and a sophomore in college. They call it sophomoric for a reason.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was very real to us then, though. We wanted to “suck the marrow out of life” and we thought that was it. Tragical and normal…
LikeLike
Normal at 17 when we live for drama and tragedy. Hopefully one grows past it. I was really AWFUL.
LikeLike
Nothing like a daily prompt to cheer you up and give you a happy go lucky feeling is there.
LikeLike
My sentiments exactly. I thought Ezra said it perfectly and you can’t improve on perfection.
LikeLike
Et cetera, etc, &c… No one writes et cetera anymore, even spell check thinks it’s wrong. Of course, no one uses &c anymore either. Just etc.. But they all mean the same thing. Weird how things change.
LikeLike
Language is alive. But current trends are really annoying the crap out of me. Crypto-speak, the art of using as few words (and the simplest words) possible to convey any meaning at all. Grunting and text-speak. Lord save us.
LikeLike