A late comeback

[Photo: Futbol Constant at Blogia]



While the football world speeds to the rocky times of December, I still haven't updated a single thing of the current season. I hope that Zidane promoting a pair of new shoes and Sonic Youth could calm the angst in which I lve. Anyway promptly I will post each and every game by the Gunners before the mark of 14th of November, the day Ireland will face France at home. That should be an interesting match.

I will as well post some things regarding our dear old friend W. B. Yeats. In the year of his 70th anniversary of death I have paid little attention to his drama. In any case things form the Irish will follow as soon as my school life slows down a bit. Remeber that the World Cup is coming so better be tuned in for some news.

Meanwhile I recomend to all of you to watch the U-17 Tournament sponsored by the FIFA. Some great matches have been player, specially with Mexico's one-nil win against Brazil as well as the magnificent display from Muniain and company in the Spanish victory over the Unites States, of 2-1.

I have bought Generation Kill in its second edition. I will shortly be reviewieng and discussing some of it with you!

Cheers and enjoy the vids.

On other anniversary

Although I did not make any special celebrations on Yeats's death, regarding the 70th anniversary of it I still remembered it and worked on it as well. I am making my project's dissertation regarding tradition and poetical identity in Yeats's elegies. I really had a difficult time deciding the theme but now that I have come around of I am facing some challenges.

For example, I finished the presentaton of Yeats and Propetius that I had previously talked baout. And today I found a strange but interesting article, related to Yeats's plays. Strangely enough I have never watched a Yeats' play, even though I have read a vast majority of them. Tha makes it even funnier. Anyway to elegize him a good old poem wil serve us good.



"But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers."

"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" by W. H. Auden

From "Ground Zero"

First, no I do not have Swine Flu. Second, dear reader, I am updating the blog since I left it a couple of months off due to school. Now that school's out until the temptative deadline of May the sixth I have some time to think regarding this disease and football.
I have been reading Geoffrey Hill's poetry in the last months and I am still overwhelmed by the power of his verse. I plan to make my undergraduate dissertation on Yeats but several times Heaney and Hill have crossed my mind, even McEwan.







Regarding McEwan everything went "smooth" in our Colloquium. Unfortunately this time I could not record any presentation. I received three critics from very good friends regarding my subject and these proved to be very helpful. I will be reading another presentation on the Sixth Classical Literature Students Colloquium as soon as classes resume. It will be on Yeats's "A thought from Propertius" regarding Bloom's influence theory.


A Thought from Propertius

She might, so noble from head
To great shapely knees,
The long flowing line,
Have walked to the altar
Through the holy images
At Pallas Athene’s side,
Or been fit spoil for a centaur
Drunk with the unmixed wine.


Did I say InFLUence? Yes. Streets were deserted today and to prove that today I passed through the park to see if some of hte lads were plaing: obviously not. Ussually thi place is packed at noon. I think I should keep reading and working on the blog, since wednesday's match approaches. Come on you Gunners!


Ovid in the Third Reich

non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,
solaque famosam culpa professa facit.
—(Amores, III, xiv)

I love my work and my children. God
Is distant, difficult. Things happen.
Too near the ancient troughs of blood
Innocence is no earthly weapon.

I have learned one thing: not to look down
So much on the damned. They, in their sphere,
Harmonize strangely with the divine
Love. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.

Some things are casual and some causal

In the last week I have had a strange run of "casualties." First a story which I rather no to tell due to the level of boringness in my life. The second is the interesting one. Today as I arrived to my Literay Theory class and I bumped into a little piece of paper that had this:


"nunc admirentur quod tam mihi pulchra puella
serviat et tota dicar in urbe potens!
non, si iam Gygae redeant et munera Croesi,
dicat 'de nostro surge, poeta, toro.'
nam mea cum recitat, dicit se odisse beatos:
carmina tam sancte nulla puella colit.
multum in amore fides, multum constantia prodest:
qui dare multa potest, multa et amare potest."


I took it rather funnny due to my ignorance in advanced Latin and kept on with it. But with my curiosity I looked the words down today and it appeared to be one of Sexti Properti Elegies to be more precise XXVIB from the Second book. Here another version:

"Let them admire the fact, now, that so lovely a girl serves me, and that they talk of my power throughout the city! Though Cambyses, and the golden rivers of Croesus, should return, she’ll not say: ‘Poet, depart my bed.’ While she reads to me, she says she hates rich men: no girl cherishes poetry with such reverence. Loyalty is great in love: constancy greatly serves it: he who can give many gifts let him have his many lovers."

Here, the full text.

Now the funny thing is that yesterday I began a paper on Yeats's "A Thought from Propertius" for the Sixth Classic Literature Students Colloquium. I began my research just yesterday and today came upp with several interesting facts. I will not give you any details until it is finished, but it looks rather good right now. The point is to make an analysis based on the paratextual reference on the title and mention the little criticism that has been provided with poems as short as "A Thought...". Now while I was planning it ealier today I thought that I could use a Latin version of Propertius, since mine is actually in Spanish.
Besides I have been reading from the past two weeks De Fato, and strangely enough I do agree with several statements that Cicero argues against destiny.

So was it the Fate that drove this piece of paper to me? I rather think it not since the adivination as Cicero puts it, is one of the elemnets that does not appear in this strange case, and according to Stoic philosophers it should be mandatory.

I will keep you updated with this paper.

I am doing my Service at UNAM's Poetry Journal. Take a look at it and comment, there are a wide array of reviews, news, calendar and so forth.

"One year have passed"

Colin White departed one year ago, on Saturday.
If you remember well last year I posted something concerning the death of our dear teacher.

I remembered him the other day I was writing my paper on "The Cold Heaven" by Yeats. I am afraid I have nothing more to say but to quote the poem.

I have already stated that in Mexico people do not have memory. Nobody remembered it, even in my faculty. Nobody mentioned anything or at least I did not hear of it. I am sure that there are persons who did remember but the moarners that "wept" last year are not doing so now. Even in the site that was so popular in the previous months did not mention anything. I am not fighting against anyone, just mentioning what happened. Argel mentioned the subject but aside from him no body remembered.

Memory is an important topic on a paper I am writing on Atonement and which will be for the next Colloquium. I promise post will be regularized from Thursday, it has been a tough period.


Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?


Yeats, W. B. Yeats Poetry, Drama and Prose. Jame Pethica, ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

A Yeatsian Moment

I had another of my famous "Modernist Moments." This time it was a Yeatsian Moment." Today as I was going out of my Augustan literature class, I saw a girl, whom I have been thinking all day long. It was really funny and after she passed I sardonically smiled. When I was heading towards the entrance of the faculty I remembered this poem, one of my favorites and strangely not an early Yeats' poem. I took a vow a few weeks ago, I broke it and this happened:

"A Deep-sworn Vow"

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

Finneran, Richard J. ed. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Rhetorical questions

I have been always delighted with rhetorical questions. Here a beautiful example of how it should be done. One is actually a whole poem; I made a clumsy essay about it yesterday. Anyway the pure substance here:

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
Well, when exactly do you mean ?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone

"How Soon is Now" in Hatful of Hollow of The Smiths


Punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet ?

"This Charming Man" in Hatful of Hollow of The Smiths



Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

"No Second Troy" in De Hardey a Heaney. Poesía Inglesa del Siglo XX. Ed. Eva Cruz Yañez. UNAM: México. 2003.