Showing posts with label 1930s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1930s. Show all posts

Friday, November 25, 2016

Bagpipe Music

Today is so-called "black friday" -- perhaps no more fitting time on so many levels can be found for this week's poem. It is both a kind of warped satirical nursery rhyme for adults and a treatise of social criticism. MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" dates from 1937.



Bagpipes, like some politicians, are full of hot air. And so this re-make of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" appropriately refers to Ronnie, presumably Ronald Reagan. The song was part of their album The Janngling Man (1990).




Find out more:

Text of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" at Poetry By Heart
http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/bagpipe-music

With the Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/louis-macneice

French translations of some of MacNeice's poems at Esprits Nomades
http://www.espritsnomades.com/sitelitterature/macneice/macneice.html


Sunday, June 15, 2008

Aimé Césaire & Grace Paley, kin in poetry

Did Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) and Grace Paley (1922-2007) ever meet? Both wrote poetry to speak for the powerless.

"Ma bouche sera la bouche des malheurs qui n'ont point de bouche, ma voix, la liberté de celles qui s'affaissent au cachot du désespoir," wrote Aimé Césaire in Cahiers du Retour au Pays Natal (1939, 1947).

"It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the/ Quakers say/ It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the/ powerless," wrote Grace Paley in "Responsibility" (New and Collected Poems, 1992).

Listen to Grace Paley and read the poem "Responsibility"

Listen to Aimé Césaire (homage on France Culture Radio station, June 14, 2008)