{"id":1570,"date":"2009-01-30T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2009-01-31T14:01:51","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T20:01:51","slug":"poetry-friday-wondering-at-the-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1570","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Wondering at the Wonder . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

My husband and I have finally made our way to season six, the final season, of The Sopranos<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. Today’s Poetry Friday entry is inspired by a poem one of the characters on the show reads to another character in one of the early episodes of this season, which we watched just the other night. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone (though I know we’re slow in getting to the show and the rest of the country has seen it, I’m sure), so I won’t name names, but it may or may not have been during an existential crisis of sorts that one of the characters was having. In fact, this character was experiencing his own visions of life after death when the poem was being read. <\/p>\n

Now, I am convinced that I think about life after death more than a person should (not in a morbid way, but in an enormously curious way) and that I’m, likely, terribly abnormal in this regard (as in, a total<\/em> weirdo). But to me, it’s Life’s Greatest Mystery, and I think one reason I don’t mind aging at all<\/em> in this wild life is that, each day, I’m one step closer to finding out the big answer. To say I claim to have no answers on the matter is a big ‘ol understatement, but I hope the atheists are wrong and that, in the words of Peter Pan, to die will be an awfully big adventure. All of that is to say that, well…you give me a book or a movie or a whatever that deals with the issue in an intelligent way, and I’m so hooked. This is one reason the poem really intrigued me. The character only reads the first two lines of the poem before the camera cuts away (to the other character’s ongoing journey through what you figure out is his own afterlife — not that he necessarily stays<\/em> there, mind you), but my interest was piqued nonethless. (And the first show of this season opens with William Burroughs’ spoken word recording, Seven Souls<\/em>, which was OH MY a TERRIFICALLY captivating way to open a season, but that’s a Poetry Friday entry for another day.)<\/p>\n

Jacques Pr\u00e9vert<\/strong><\/a>—who wrote this poem, who is pictured here, who was born at the turn of the last century, and who is new to me—was a French poet and screenwriter. Evidently, he was an active participant in the Surrealist<\/strong><\/a> movement and also often wrote of sentimental love, even creating poems that were eventually set to music by the likes of not only many French vocalists, but also folks like Joan Baez. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I can’t seem to figure out when this poem was written. I’ll have to look further. For now, I take my chances anyway in being sent to Poetry Prison by including the entire poem—which takes such a remarkable turn in tone, now doesn’t it?—here: <\/p>\n

Our Father who art in heaven
\nStay there
\nAnd we’ll stay here on earth
\nWhich is sometimes so pretty
\nWith its mysteries of New York
\nAnd its mysteries of Paris
\nAt least as good as that of the Trinity
\nWith its little canal at Ourcq
\nIts great wall of China
\nIts river at Morlaix
\nIts candy canes
\nWith its Pacific Ocean
\nAnd its two basins in the Tuileries
\nWith its good children and bad people
\nWith all the wonders of the world
\nWhich are here
\nSimply on the earth
\nOffered to everyone
\nStrewn about
\nWondering at the wonder of themselves
\nAnd daring not avow it
\nAs a naked pretty girl dares not show herself
\nWith the world’s outrageous misfortunes
\nWhich are legion
\nWith legionaries
\nWith torturers
\nWith the masters of this world
\nThe masters with their priests their traitors and their troops
\nWith the seasons
\nWith the years
\nWith the pretty girls and with the old bastards
\nWith the straw of misery rotting in the steel
\nof cannons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today’s round-up is being handled by Suzanne at Adventures in Daily Living<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Enjoy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband and I have finally made our way to season six, the final season, of The Sopranos. Today’s Poetry Friday entry is inspired by a poem one of the characters on the show reads to another character in one of the early episodes of this season, which we watched just the other night. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}