Reading and Language 24 May 2005 12:06 pm
Decompositions
I am too shy to join the party, but C. Dale Young, Peter Pereira, and others have been having some fun decomposing Prufrock.
It reminded me a little of my chopping game applied to Doty’s mackerel poem and Auden’s “At The Grave Of Henry James”. My game, though, is more luck than skill.
on 24 May 2005 at 12:21 pm 1.Josh said …
Ok, that’s officially awesome.
on 24 May 2005 at 12:27 pm 2.Cam Sculpin said …
Isn’t it, though? Smart, smart people.
(I hope my mechanical chopping game does not look too shabby next to all that awesomeness. Maybe it does, but I like it anyway.)
on 24 May 2005 at 11:27 pm 3.Anonymous said …
Oh, that’s brilliant. I’m tempted to have a go at decomposing the “O dark dark dark” bit from The Four Quartets. (I went through this huge T.S. Eliot obsession for a couple of years.)
on 24 May 2005 at 11:29 pm 4.mizducky said …
Oops, I have no idea how my post got credited to “Anonymous,” but that was moi just now.
on 31 May 2005 at 2:34 am 5.Julie said …
I am definitely going to try this. I’ve done versions of it, calling the results “blackout” poems. But that was with texts that were odd & unrelated to poetry (essays on astronomy, things like that) and not with famous poems. Thanks for the great link to C. Dale Young and Peter Pereira.
(By the way, I think you could hold your own with Young & Pereira, if you wanted to join the party.)