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sweetgonzotooth.livejournal.com posting in

CHANGE
robert graves

'This year she has changed greatly' - meaning you -
My sanguine friends agree,
And hope thereby to reassure me.

No, child, you never change; neither do I.
Indeed all our lives long
We are still fated to do wrong.

Too fast caught by care of humankind,
Easily vexed and grieved,
Foolishly flattered and deceived;

And yet each knows that the changeless other
Must love and pardon still,
Be the new error what it will:

Assured by that same glint of deathlessness
Which neither can surprise
In any other pair of eyes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jonlaor.livejournal.com

I don't see anything here other than vague words. There's no moment and no things. And what is this changelessness? Deathlessness? I read it a few times and like it less each time.

From:

sweetgonzotooth.livejournal.com

am i supposed to defend it?
'things' are not required content.
'moment' could mean a lot of things (as could 'things':)) and is hugely subjective anyway, don'tcha think? the feelings i've identified with in reading 'change' once every few years over the last decade may or may not ever be recognizable to you in this form - but given that that's not my problem, are you complaining? needling? a mix of the two?
hmm. 'changeless' - reference to 'you never change', perhaps?
'deathlessness' - the form is allowed to remain two-dimensional (before "entering the mind", if you will), you know. you don't have to speak it aloud (although you may have a preference for/insistence on that sort of thing...). if you discount, for example, shakespeare, then there's not really any call for me to argue about syllabic tweakage for purposes of rhythm. or perhaps you wanted to know what he meant by it... although i can understand your possible disdain for people who say little more than "i like it", i shy away from defining work for anyone other than myself. is 'the human condition' or any other grand multidefinable a "thing" or "moment" by your definition? if not, why not? (or why does anything not classifiable as thing or moment bother you so?) if so, how do you see no human condition in this poem?
oh, right, 'deathlessness' - well, to me it seems literal enough, for an abstraction i suppose. 'glint of deathlessness' being, i usually think, a mutual recognition of souls or primordial drives?

your comment is interesting enough to turn on my own work, which i never attempt to publish and rarely show to anyone. i am definitely sparse in the "things" category but i pack a heck of a moment once in a while. more than half of my poems, though, i don't think i'll ever enjoy again. but they are still useful reminiscent/mnemonic devices for what was going on at the time, more useful than my wonky linear ability to recollect or encapsulate.

are you familiar with dylan thomas' work? (new thread for sure)

overall, my hackles were raised because i don't identify with your tactic. i am of course not certain what your comment is in aid of besides dialectic... i'm in the habit of discarding poetry i don't like; someone else will no doubt pick it up if thousands haven't already. i have a somewhat defensive nature, but i certainly wasn't suddenly afraid that i shouldn't appreciate this piece of mr. graves'; but the amount i have invested in it, i think, demanded some kind of representation.
i was also once called to question because i spoke so much of "thinking about emotion". perhaps we have a similar tendency.

good luck with the piano; i didn't have enough patience for it on top of vioiln/viola (don't even seem to have time for the latter nowadays).

oh yes - Janusz. pleased to meet you.

From:

jonlaor.livejournal.com

Hey, I purposely wrote a sharp comment in order to get a response. I don't claim to know enough about poetry to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad'. But I do think there are some objective criteria on which to judge, and they can best be arrived at and understood concretely by discussion on various poems.

Sometimes, when reading a poem, I get a rush. Like, wow, what a way of saying it, what a way of seeing something I always overlooked. It's different than a political statement or an emotional rant in that it considers every word important and checks itself. That's why I think poetry adds to our life- by refining our sense of language and relating it to our experiences.

So in that sense, I think you can defend or critique a poem. It's more than just like or dislike. Or attraction to a particular line.

"overall, my hackles were raised because i don't identify with your tactic. i am of course not certain what your comment is in aid of besides dialectic... i'm in the habit of discarding poetry i don't like; someone else will no doubt pick it up if thousands haven't already."
I think that poetry should be a part of a community basically. If everyone discards or holds onto whatever they like, never sharing, that cuts off any sense of community.

What I meant by 'moment' and 'things' is real life objects. That's not to say that the 'human condition' should not be involved. But it should be put into under the microscope, I think, rather than blurred by generalities. That's what I see in such words as 'changelessness' and 'deathlessness' when they are not explained. I guess I need to illustrate the point. One example of what I mean by using 'things' is from this quote from Macbeth.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

For some reason, I love the concrete imagery, and I think it shouldn't be sacrificed. I think it's the essence of what makes this poetry. The same thing could be said in a simpler way: "I feel life is pointless, and I wouldn't care if I died. At least I would suffer less." And so you have the vague ideas of 'death', 'pointlessness', and 'suffering', but there is no actual experience. And what made this quote all the more powerful was the general context of Macbeth's life, that's what I meant by 'moment'.

I think both comments you two gave helped me understand the poem's literal meaning better. I do think the poem makes its point nicely. Basically, that a person's temporary changes can be understood better from knowing the general personality of the person over a long period. That the 'child' lives in the adult. Also, the ideas of deathlessness that the two of you bring up clarified the poet's meaning for me.

I don't intend to make you agree with me on the value of this poem. I just wanted to get your ideas out on what made this poem worthwhile, and I think you did a good job. Usually, it's troublesome to get even at the literal meaning of a poem. Then the even harder part is to see it in a general sense, to understand where it is coming from. That's why I commented, because I felt maybe I could learn from others who had a different taste in poetry than I. And I did. :)

I have not read Dylan Thomas yet. I am working on reading some Wallace Stevens now. Afterwards, I think I'm going to try Byron and Shelley. But if you post any of Dylan Thomas' poems, I'll be glad to read them and perhaps I could ask you about your take on them. I don't want to sound cotemptuous of anybody, but I want to be open about my opinion. And I want to have a complex one- not simply 'like' and 'dislike'. But I'm also open to change, I'm too new to poetry to have any stubborn beliefs.

Thanks!

From:

sylphbranching.livejournal.com

i agree with you, jon: i think it's very useful to discuss poetry, to interact with it rather than simply inhaling it. we all connect with different images and turns of phrase in different ways, and to share our different perceptions opens new worlds of thought, new perspectives. i find it useful as a critical reader (and writer) to critique poetry, analyze where it does and doesn't succeed - how and why. that leads me to a fuller appreciation of different kinds of writing, awe at great writing, and a better understanding of writing i don't "like" - i can discover whether it is a flaw of technique, or something i don't quite connect with, or some combo thereof. anyway, i will climb down off my soapbox and get back to work now;)

From:

sylphbranching.livejournal.com

i'm not writing to defend the poem, i don't mind if you dislike it. but here is what came across to me, why i liked it:

to me, this poem seemed to present a "moment" at the beginning, with the conversation, where friends claim that the second person in the poem has changed somehow. the poem changes to the speaker's reflection about this moment and a monologue directed to the second person.
in meaning, it seems to present that:
sometimes people see different sides of each other, and think the other has changed, but people closer to one might recognize more fully that the person hasn't changed. because the speaker says, in effect, that "you" haven't changed and are still making mistakes and displaying faults, i see the reflection as a type of humor, forgiveness, and love - affection despite knowing the person maybe too well. amusement that others think that the people have changed, and love for the undefined "you," regardless of his or her inflexible, faultful nature. changelessness seemed to me to mean that the person still is fallible, and deathlessness that despite mistakes, we still keep going on, and sometimes think of ourselves as immortal, not being able to imagine something so drastically different as death.

i hope my writing tonight makes some sense and clarifies what someone else might find pleasing in the poem. i hope you can see it too!

From:

sweetgonzotooth.livejournal.com

that quite closely parallels my reception a little over four years ago. although then "the changeless other" was a reference to core identity, inner nature... and definitely a dash of knowing all too well (the 'changeless other' in this instance had declared more than once that we were both too smart for our own good)

my consistent association with 'deathlessness' is that anyone who is momentarily still up and about, communicating physically, experiencing 'waking life' - has no direct connection with death, and can therefore access a collective energy that defies it.