I'll be stopping all this soon - as you know, dear readers. Just not today, that's all.
This is a finance blog.
Anyway ...
I really think I've discovered the perfect length for a "great" poem. Forget the number of lines for a moment. Count the words, man! My big poem is roughly 40 words longer than Ode to a Nightingale, and roughly 70 words longer than The Whitsun Weddings. That's the right length. 580-650 words. Maybe 500 to 800 words, if you're writing quite a few of these things.
What about short great poems like The Second Coming ... ??? Well, sure. Anything up to forty lines, 150 to 350 words, is fine, I suppose. There's nothing is 34 lines, roughly 200 words.
However ... there's a difference between small greatness and big greatness, you dig?
Of course, I don't recommend the writing of epic poems these days. I don't even think you should write poems the length of The Waste Land. Eliot got lucky with that poem. And got lucky with Ezra Pound, too. Most very big poems are so ooo ooo ooo boring. Just look at Four Quartets.
EMERGENCY - !!!
Oh, I woke up this morning with the idea of an emergency novel in my head like Papillon. But I looked at my revised first page from whenever it was ages ago and it's not in the same league as my recent poetry. I guess I will just have to write a volume of poetry that sells like a successful novel. Yeah, yeah. How will that be possible??? Ha, ha, ha! I'll have to stick to my crazy plan. You know the plan, kooks.
Christ.
And the cosmos is still trying to help. With music, surprisingly. I've had two amazing dreams lately. In the first one, I was on this stage at a big open-air concert. The band was behind me, and I was walking around the stage - a bit like Jim Morrison or Frank Sinatra - and singing this pretty cool song. Words and music, yes. I couldn't remember much of it when I woke up. The strange thing about this dream was ... I was looking down at my feet, and I could actually feel my feet on the stage. Strange, eh? / In the second dream ... well, this pissed me off because I heard an awesome rock ballad, words and music, from beginning to end, better than any song I've written, and just the greatest song ever, probably, but ... I woke up and could only remember the verse melody, which I sang into my Zoom Handy recorder. So ... am I going to write this song? I doubt it. I haven't even touched my guitar for two or three weeks. I'm just really angry that I couldn't remember the whole song. Really angry! And the thought of having to work on that bit of melody now doesn't appeal to me. / And, oh ... I don't blame the cosmos, by the way. It's my stupid fault for not being able to get a grip on my dreams. Or I can't control my sleeping, I don't know.
And, yeah, yeah ... I've dreamt various lines of poetry, too, which I can't remember. Music is easier to remember.
I just ...
How the hell did Ramanujan manage it?! All those mathematical formulas, you know?
Never mind.
Laters!
