Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Some people on reddit were having trouble understanding the poem, so a user posted this amusing gloss:
I met this dude who came from a country that was oldI wonder what other amusing glosses for great poems could be composed.
and he told me about this old statue he found in the desert out there but it was broken and all that was left of the statue was the legs attached to the base
And laying next to the statue legs was the head of the statue broken off and half buried in the sand and the face had a frown carved into the stone lips and it looked like that of a serious king
And you could tell whoever made the statue, whatever artist it was long ago put into the work the emotion from the ruler.
The fist of punishment and at the same time the soul of one who does foul in order to benefit his kingdom.
there was still a sign at the bottom of the statue that said
"My name is Ozzy, boss mother fucker of all bosses"
"Look at this huge city all around you, and back the fuck up because we roll deep and I run all this entire city!"
But there was no city left, the desert had swallowed it all back into the sands long ago and the only thing left of that once mighty empire was the broken statue from long long ago.
All that is left is the sand.
60 comments:
Lots.
Let us not.
Society is dumbed down enough.
This reminds me a bit of sitting in German beer gardens and translating American and British pop song lyrics and trying to get them to fit the melody. It's low brau humor for intellectuals. Good times.
It was late and I was tired, looking over some old books
I was drifting off, and then there was a knock at the door.
Soft knocking, at my bedroom door.
“Someone’s here,” I grumbled, “knocking at my door. No big whoop.”
It was a dark and stormy night, in December.
The fire was almost out.
It was late and I was still awake, I just wanted tomorrow to come.
I tried to distract myself with books, because I was feeling depressed.
Depressed about losing Lenore. She was hot. But she’s not around anymore.
It scared me, each time the curtains moved. Scared me bad.
I muttered to myself, “It’s just someone knocking. It’s just someone knocking, that’s all.”
I worked up some courage, then immediately responded.
“Hey!” I said, “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I was falling asleep here and you weren’t knocking that loud so I couldn’t really hear. Wasn’t sure what it was.” I opened the door. No one was there.
I looked outside, it was dark! Couldn’t see anything, no one was there. Freaked me out.
No noises, nothing out there.
Then, I heard the word, “Lenore!”
I repeated it back to them, “Lenore!”
I turned and ran back inside, scared out of my mind. But there it was again, a bit louder.
“Must be someone at my window. Let’s see what it is! Calm down, Ed, it’s just the wind, it’s just the wind, that’s all, see, let’s look.”
So, I opened the window, and a raven bounced in. A big one. He came in like he owned the place. Jumped up onto a statue of a lady I have on a shelf above my bedroom door. Just sat there. Didn’t do anything.
Great find Freeman.
That is fabulous.!!! I love it.
TIL: A new meaning for gloss. I had never heard it used in this context.
I'm a bit dismayed, though, that some people are having a hard time understanding the original poem.
Don't get me started on a rant about how horrible our public education system is!
I can't take credit for the find. My mother found it.
DBQ, yes, it's a pretty straightforward poem, so I'm not sure what people were having trouble with. But the gloss made me laugh, so I'm glad the writer was motivated to write it.
I wonder what other amusing glosses for great poems could be composed.
So there was this dude, and he was from Nantucket,
And he had a really big...
Bagoh20: this is your poem. True, different goals, but it illustrates the same problem.
"The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed."
That line's hard to understand. The gloss doesn't clarify.
But I'm slow.
Also, a colon followed by a dash irritates me greatly.
Heh, Paddy, nice!
"My name is Ozzy, boss mother fucker of all bosses"
********
LOL!
Ozzy Ousborne?
There should probably be a gloss of the gloss.
Na.
...it's a pretty straightforward poem, so I'm not sure what people were having trouble with.
Most people had such dreadful experiences of poetry in high school that they go into a trance of learned helplessness when they see a block of compact language with a ragged right edge.
"Ozymandias" is not that difficult as classic poems go, but it's not like reading a newspaper article either. That second sentence, "Near them on the sand ... the heart that fed," is quite complex. The reader would also benefit from hearing the poem read aloud intelligently.
I've read a fair amount of poetry over the years, but my gut still tightens when I start a serious poem. It's all about relaxing and not trying to get the whole thing the first time through.
But if you don't know that, if you expect you're supposed to read it and understand it like most text, you're sunk.
Great job, Paddy!
Look just tell them that the poem is about the ending of "The Planet of the Apes" and they will get it.
There is a saying in spanish my mother likes to quote.
"No es lo mismo, ni es igual".
Lots of times, however, i want to say something is the same.
Showing my age here, but Christ on a crutch, that poem was in our 6th-grade texts--forget high-school! Of course that was school year 55-56 and it was a Univ Lab School. Standards were OBVIOUSLY different then..
Finally, someone agrees with me.
Thanks Virgil.
“Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.
Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart.
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.”
~~~
Gloss:
What's her malfunction doc?
Da bitch is wack bro. Just let her walk.
It is absurd because you know immediately it's Ramses.
No brag, just fact, I knew that was specifically Ramses waaaay back there in the 6th grade.
But you know what else kills me about Egyptian statues? It's when curators describe them as elaborate puns when they are no such thing. Say, you go back waaaaay past 6th grade waaaaay waaaaaay past to the beginning of statues where things are like science fiction and the challenge is to carve an image in stone that communicates something and last forever. And you honestly do not know where to start.
It is a serious problem, an image of the king, and say who it is. Forever.
Just as the graphic images are dropped down from the hieroglyphics themselves, enlarged and elaborated, so too are the early 3-dimensional statuary drawn from those same hieroglyphics. You would expect the statue to read like an hieroglyphic ligature, and some of them do.
Ramses does. The famous statue of Ramses as a child. Described as elaborate pun, no it is not, it is the natural development of hieroglyphics into 3-dimensional art. Ra-mes-es
In hieroglyphics you would write mes differently, three fox skins tied together, and I usually relate that to motherhood, but here, "son."
At the Ramses exhibit I admired a statue, the placard said his favorite daughter, this one, and standing directly in front of it I could see, yes, she is beautiful, I can see how she's favored, but the placard did not say that her necklace is saying the word "beautiful" at least one hundred times. And I imagined a king giving his young beautiful bride a necklace in gold, one that says, "youth, beauty, and goodness" all that in a symbol 100 times draped across her flawless young décolletage.
CEO: Actually I'm the only one who disagrees with you and I still do.
I was taught Ozymandias in a good parochial high school and we were a bright class. Nonetheless I remember our teacher coaxing us through that poem. When I read it through now, if I'm honest, it's troublesome, but much easier because I remember the teacher's gloss.
Try diagramming the middle section. Whose hand and whose heart are those? How do you know -- strictly by the text? And who is the "them" being mocked and how do you know?
Chip: You are bragging. No one just knows that's Ramses.
That's impossible to know from the poem unless you also happen to know that Ozymandias is the transliteration into Greek of Ramses throne name (as wiki tells me, because I don't keep that information in my back pocket.)
When Dick came around, we were impressed. He was cool from head to toe, neat and fit too. He was the picture of sophistication, and yet, he retained the human touch. You couldn't help feeling special if you got a "hello" from a charismatic guy like that. He had piles of money and seemed like he'd probably graduated from some fancy finishing school somewhere.
We envied him.
We kept on keeping on, waiting for our ships to come in. Because we couldn't have all the stuff we wanted like Dick, we weren't thankful for the stuff we had.
Then Dick went and shot himself! Can you believe that? I guess we didn't know him as well as we thought we did. I guess we were envying frivolous things.
Here's one of Robert Creeley's most famous poems. Hey, it even rhymes! Take a look and see what you think. Is it difficult? I'll serve up the gloss in a bit.
A Wicker Basket
Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--
Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--
So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--
Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--
And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--
There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands
me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it--
Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it
in my wicker basket.
--Robert Creeley
"The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed."
That is a difficult line, and there are a number of ways that people interpret it. Overall, however, the poem is pretty straightforward.
creeley
I stink at this--but in the beginning of the poem does he not really want to tip?
I'm going with my first instinct on that.
"Bagoh20: this is your poem. True, different goals, but it illustrates the same problem."
No, same goals. Ozzy was a bit of a piker by comparison. I'd never let the Jews get away.
Who made tigers? Tigers are freaking scary like Satan. When Satan rebelled against God, was God happy he'd made him? The same guy who made Jesus and cute baby sheep made Satan and tigers? You'd have to be one tough dude to dare to make tigers.
See I would think it is a cat--but then cats don't eat apple pie.
Gawd this is embarrassing-- I die.
"The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed."
I read that as saying that among the things the sculptor captured were the king's cruelty, and compassion, or "heart that fed" could mean ambition.
That's what I think too, bagoh. Some other people think the hand was the sculptor's hand mocking the king.
I first read it as the sculptor's hand mocking the king, but then switched upon reflection.
My point though is that the poem is not easy to read. The overall idea, especially if you already know it, isn't that hard, but the words are dense and arranged out of the usual order.
Many people when encountering a poem throw up their hands if they can't make the words line up.
I fought hard to learn to read poetry on my own. I have sympathy for people who look at Ozymandias, furrow their brows, and ask Reddit.
Yo! I ate your breakfast plums. They were good. Sorry.
I rolled-out down the road when it split in two directions. Couldn't decide which way to go. They both looked about the same, but one had more grass growing on it. I welked down that one. Thought I might go back someday and walk down the other one. I never did. Who knows what would have happened if I had.
Most people had such dreadful experiences of poetry in high school that they go into a trance of learned helplessness when they see a block of compact language with a ragged right edge.
Interesting. I have the same reaction when I see math equations.
creeley--
You promised the gloss!
madawaskan: Thanks for giving it a shot. Please don't feel bad. You're illustrating the usual response people have to poetry after being traumatized by it in high school. I assure you I was thoroughly baffled when I first saw "Wicker Basket."
Since then I've read a number of interpretations by smart people -- poets, critics, Ivy Leaguers -- who could generate slick patter about "the authentic Lawrentian way," or "the soul-crushing culture," or the soul as "active interface between self and image," and the poem's "singability."
But that's all obtuse bullshit IMO.
I got stoned and went out to eat with some friends. We laughed hard! After the meal, I was still so stoned that my hands felt like walrus flipper's as I picked up the change, and my face felt huge like a barndoor, but my head seemed tiny, just my two eyes. You know how it is.
Then I had to get out of the restaurant and left before my friends noticed. So I'm out on the street, alone on a typical night, but suddenly my old friend Liz pulls up in her cadillac with some friends and I get in the back. Liz passes around a joint and I get high again.
O man did I get high! The stars looked huge.
We get to her place and there's a party going on. I've got the munchies bad and someone breaks out apple pie and vanilla ice cream, and serves me a beautiful slab of pie a la mode. I eat it slowly, relishing every bite. Everyone can see how stoned I am and they're laughing at me, but I don't care.
I hear the party going on. All the cats are trying to score with the chicks and not getting anywhere, but I'm happy and content, and curl up to fall asleep in a big wicker chair.
creeley23 said...
I got stoned and went out to eat with some friends. We laughed hard! After the meal, I was still so stoned that my hands felt like walrus flipper's as I picked up the change, and my face felt huge like a barndoor, but my head seemed tiny, just my two eyes. You know how it is.
Then I had to get out of the restaurant and left before my friends noticed. So I'm out on the street, alone on a typical night, but suddenly my old friend Liz pulls up in her cadillac with some friends and I get in the back. Liz passes around a joint and I get high again.
O man did I get high! The stars looked huge.
We get to her place and there's a party going on. I've got the munchies bad and someone breaks out apple pie and vanilla ice cream, and serves me a beautiful slab of pie a la mode. I eat it slowly, relishing every bite. Everyone can see how stoned I am and they're laughing at me, but I don't care.
I hear the party going on. All the cats are trying to score with the chicks and not getting anywhere, but I'm happy and content, and curl up to fall asleep in a big wicker chair.
August 2, 2013 at 5:37 PM
************
Oh--holy crap!
Now it makes sense!
Seriously I have never been high--not even pot, and I have never been exposed to poetry.
Remember we were talking about the question--
"what would you fight for?"
Poetry.
Damn I saw you do that on a thread and I thought at first I don't think I like poetry by the end you changed my mind.
Gawd that was a great thread.
"That's what I think too, bagoh. Some other people think the hand was the sculptor's hand mocking the king."
"My writing is clear and concise. It says exactly what I intend it to say. It's not my problem if you people are too stupid or lack the reading comprehension to appreciate my work."
P. B. Shelly
Would anyone like to argue that Shelley is a poor writer?
No, but his sailing skills could have used a little work.
madawaskan: Thanks, I'm blushing.
Anyway, after going at poetry since my twenties, much of it is learning to trust yourself, as trite as that sounds. Poems aren't tests you pass or fail. They are experiences, and whatever experience you have is the only real door you have into a poem.
You can read criticism or listen to other people and that can help, but you have to get in there yourself with your own head, heart and gut. That's where the riches are. Otherwise it's like knowing the answer to 6 x 7.
Besides, you can't entirely trust the teachers and critics. I had a high school teacher, a nun no less, who insisted that "the ooze of oil crushed" in Hopkins' "God's Grandeur" was about popping a pimple!
Then you get the academics who will go on about all sorts of big think stuff in Creeley's poem, when it was really a marijuana poem. (Creeley never cleared that up. I heard a recording of him and he just says the title and reads the poem.)
And if you don't get a poem or a poet, it's not a problem. You can come back later and that may change, or not. But as you read, you'll find more of what you do like, and from that you learn to find even more.
I had a high school teacher, a nun no less, who insisted that "the ooze of oil crushed" in Hopkins' "God's Grandeur" was about popping a pimple!
********
Ugh--what a romantic/sarc
when it was really a marijuana poem.
I think that's why I would never get it--unless you did the gloss.
I always hang around people that do pot and what not--they are my best friends--we can debate for hours but one thing they all agree on-- I shouldn't do drugs.
I believe them--so I didn't want to sound all snotty about that.
The one thing I think I am realizing about poetry is it makes you "feel"--and some of it is melancholy.
I think I have a hard time doing that.
Also I think what you suggest about hearing it read or reading it aloud is bang on--never thought of that before.
But, I sure as hell get Shakespeare more when I see or hear actors perform it.
Thank you creeley.
Ya I am bashful as heck in real life--I am considering drugs for that..
I had a high school teacher, a nun no less, who insisted that "the ooze of oil crushed" in Hopkins' "God's Grandeur" was about popping a pimple!
My. That tops my high school English teacher who insisted that the speaker in Browning's My Last Duchess did not kill his Duchess.
Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.Will 't please you rise? We'll meet The company below then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object.
I suppose there could be room for debate, but the last stanzas suggest the Duke is leaving his painting to negotiate a new marriage.
madawaskan: I've shown that Creeley poem to lots of people and read many interpretations. I've only run across one person who got it as a marijuana poem. Most people believe the narrator hooks up with Liz, but there is no indication in the poem that he has sex or is even interested beyond "She turns me on" which of course has an alternate reading.
I suppose I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Here's a non-melancholy, somewhat-famous poem a college roommate once showed me with a glint in her eye. I'll bet you can do the gloss on this one.
she being Brand
she being Brand
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff I was
careful of her and (having
thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.
K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch (and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell) next
minute i was back in neutral tried and
again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning) just as we turned the corner of Divinity
avenue i touched the accelerator and give
her the juice,good
(it
was the first ride and believe I we was
happy to see how nice and acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens I slammed on
the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
breaks Bothatonce and
brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.
stand-
;Still)
--e.e. cummings
We've had some great glosses here for some famous poems. I get stuck on what a famous poem is these days. What poems are in current common memory?
We got "The Raven," "Richard Corey," "Tiger, Tiger," and "The Road Not Taken." That's pretty good. I can think of poems, but not ones that most people know.
***
A vain baseball player strikes out and loses the game, disappointing his team and fans.
I've lived long enough to see posterity plain. Ponder this: a great king commissions a great statue of himself. The statue is 100 cubits high and just as wide. Hundreds of men work on this project for their entire lives. In order to service their needs, brick ovens, barracks and slit trench latrines are built. The monument is built. The men die. The memory of the king passes away. Due to an earthquake and the vicissitudes of recurrent sand storms, the monument is shattered and buried. However, those same whims of fate, leave the service buildings undisturbed. They are discovered and become a huge tourist attraction. The graffiti in the latrine holds special interest for the tourists......That's sort of what happened to T.S. Eliot. Of all the dead poets, his estate is the wealthiest. They royalty checks don't come from The Wasteland but from Cats. It seems that his posthumous wealth and fame rest not upon his ever so serious and darks poems, but upon a book of light verse that became the libretto for Cats. Look upon his works and despair.
William: Ha! Well-spotted.
I was surprised and charmed that the jazz standard, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" was based (loosely) on the first line of "The Wasteland": "April is the cruelest month."
Thanks, and thanks for posting an e e cummings poem. Even when I don't understand his poems, I enjoy them.
heh creeley, I believe my gloss of that ee cummings would be
rated
X.
yashu: They read it on NPR. That makes it OK doesn't it?
They read it on NPR. That makes it OK doesn't it?
Oh of course; NPR is as proper as tea in the afternoon.
But if I were to read my gloss aloud-- as plain-spoken a paraphrase as possible-- I might have to charge by the minute (18 and over only).
Ozymandias is my favorite poem, and it distresses me that people can't glean the rather clear meaning from it. Just how far have literacy standards fallen?
And I see that DBQ was way ahead of me with the mini-rant.
Icepick: Literacy for reading poetry is without doubt at an all-time low. But, as much as I love poetry, reading it is a specialty.
What you are seeing, I believe, is a resistance to poetry, not an inherent inability to read it.
Poets and poetry lovers have done such a horrible job of communicating poetry to ordinary people that I don't blame anyone for not bothering with it.
Icepick: Literacy for reading poetry is without doubt at an all-time low. But, as much as I love poetry, reading it is a specialty.
I largely agree with your comment, creeley. But for the record, I'm no fan of poetry, nor particularly skilled at reading it. That's one of the reasons I like THIS poem: it's pretty straightforward. I'm not left wondering "Why the fuck are we talking about some shitty wheel barrow?"
Lots of poetry is on CD or cassette.
Its actually more enjoyable and understandable that way, although sometimes the narrator imposes their own interpretation.
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