If you’ve listened to our Danto episode, our Republic episode or read any Plato yourself you know that the Big P didn’t have a high regard for poetry. If you’ve listened to anything we’ve done over the last year, you know Mark doesn’t have a high regard for my blog posting efforts. I do start posts, but often times find the zeitgeist has passed before I’m done (I think and write really really slowly). So here’s something to hit on both sore points: a poem about Plato’s cave!
I am listening to a podcast called Essential American Poets put out by The Poetry Foundation. I just listened to a past episode on Allen Tate. I heard there the following of his poems:
More Sonnets At Christmas IV
Gay citizen, myself, and thoughtful friend,
Your ghosts are Plato’s Christians in the cave.
Unfix your necks, turn to the door; the nave
Gives back the cheated and light dividend
So long sequestered; now, new-rich, you’ll spend
Flesh for reality inside a stone
Whose light obstruction, like a gossamer bone,
Dead or still living, will not break or bend.
Thus light, your flesh made pale and sinister
And put off like a dog that’s had his day,
You will be Plato’s kept philosopher,
Albino man bleached from the mortal clay,
Mild-mannered, gifted in your master’s ease
While the sun squats upon the waveless seas.
I won’t pretend to have grasped the meaning but it is cool to hear him read it in his old school southern accent. Better than reading it on the page for sure. The same series has a prior episode on Billy Collins, who was Poet Laureate for the United States from 2001-2003, reading his poem Aristotle. Also very much worth a listen.
–seth
this is fantastic. I’m reminded a little of Milton’s De Idea Platonica quemadmodem Aristoteles intellexit (The Platonic Idea as Aristotle Understood It).
Obviously, as a person who makes his living teaching language and writing about peotry, I think Tate was actually a massively underrated poet right now for essentially political reasons: he came off as neo-confederate in his debate with Robert Lowell. Anyway, I love Tate and was glad to see him referenced.
The poets in the series were selected by Donald Hall. Perhaps Tate is experiencing a renaissance. I have to say again how wonderful it is hearing the poems read by the authors. I listened to an Australian podcast recently in part on Paul Celan and the recording of him reading Todesfuge made my blood run cold.
Yes, enjoy the podcast and have all the episodes. I have noticed Tate more in popular culture, but he’s still not popular among younger poets.
Seth, could you please post the link to this Australian podcast you referenced? There is only so much on thepoetryfoundation and I think I exhausted their reserve. I would be much obliged.
Here you go Margaret.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/a-message-in-a-bottle-encounters-with-paul-celan/3100000
I wait anxiously for the next Poetry Off the Shelf and have consumed all of the Essential American Poets myself.