It’s February 2, when bloggers post a favorite poem if they remember to. Here’s John Berryman’s “A Professor’s Song.”<\/p>\n
(. . .rabid or dog-dull.) Let me tell you how
\nThe Eighteenth Century couplet ended. Now
\nTell me. Troll me the sources of that Song—
\nAssigned last week—by Blake. Come, come along,
\nGentleman. (Fidget and huddle, do. Squint soon.)
\nI want to end these fellows all by noon.<\/p>\n‘That deep romantic chasm’—an early use;
\nThe word is from the French, by our abuse
\nFished out a bit. (Red all your eyes. O when?)
\n‘A poet is a man speaking to men’:
\nBut I am then a poet, am I not?—
\nHa ha. The radiator, please. Well, what?<\/p>\nAlive now—no—Blake would have written prose,
\nBut movement following movement crisply flows,
\nSo much the better, better the much so,
\nAs burbleth Mozart. Twelve. The class can go.
\nUntil I meet you, then, in Upper Hell
\nConvulsed, foaming immortal blood: farewell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nOne of my teachers during his student days took a poetry-writing workshop with Berryman<\/a>. Berryman was not gentle in his critiques of the students’ efforts. Forty students enrolled in the course; two weeks into the semester, only fifteen were left. However, of those fifteen, twelve went on to publish at least four books each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s February 2, when bloggers post a favorite poem if they remember to. Here’s John Berryman’s “A Professor’s Song.” (. . .rabid or dog-dull.) Let me tell you how The Eighteenth Century couplet ended. Now Tell me. Troll me the sources of that Song— Assigned last week—by Blake. Come, come along, Gentleman. (Fidget and huddle, … Continue reading “One for the English majors”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-K9O","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177432"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177445,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177432\/revisions\/177445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}