Word: poems
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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T.S.ELIOT once said of Samuel Johnson that, solely on the basis of his poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes," he could be considered a major poet. Johnson's poem appeared as a twenty-eight page leaflet in 1749, and was the first of his published works to bear his name on the title page. Obviously he had no previous reputation as a poet, nor do most people remember him as one, though Boswell somewhere speaks of Johnson as "perpetually a poet" (a statement intended to refer to his quality of mind. The only two poems which appear to have survived...
...metrics of Horace; for the Alsaic stanzas of two of the odes he successfully substitutes short lines with a varying number of stresses. In the "Spring" ode, however, the meter of the original, a strange mixture of falling dactyls and trochees alternating with rising lambs is important for the poem's mixture of moods. Mr.Lowell substitutes a more regular series of five-stress lines, but supplies energy and excitement with repetition, and improves in at least one passage of typically Horatian philosophy by turning a flat statement into a metaphor...
...seven original poems which occupy the first half of Near the Ocean, "Waking Early Sunday Morning" and "Forth of July in Maine," standing first, seem best. But they are all good. The reader of Lowell will recognize much familiar thematic material: New England, the sea, war, religious allusions, classical references, and the effect of technology in the large city. There are quite specific reminiscences (Compare "Forth of July" with "The Mills of the Kavanaughs," for example). Mr.Lowell's mastery of rhyme seems as vigorous as it was twenty years ago in Lord Weary's Castle; indeed, the collections in that...
...past two years, Ellington has written a symphonic tone poem, a chamber piece for clarinet, saxophones and rhythm, and a film score. Last week he recorded his new background music for a play, The Jaywalker, which will be performed at Coventry Cathedral in June. At the high school auditorium in Montclair, N.J., last week, Ellington and his band played his concert of sacred music, composed 18 months ago to demonstrate the Duke's belief that "every man prays in his own language." This week the Ellington troupe is off on a 30-city tour to play his latest showcases...
...electronic wave generator). The 77-minute Turangalila Symphony (1948), a thick layer cake of orchestral textures, is part of Messiaen's treatment of the Tristan legend, which he considers "the greatest myth of human love." Chrono-chromie (1960) echoes the sounds of nature in a complex tone poem, climaxed by an ear-ringing passage in which 18 solo strings each play a separate bird song simultaneously...