Author: Meghan (bess-proxytcs.rose.net)
Date: 04-20-05 09:26

Okay. So we have to do this poetry project and each person has to find poems which involves their particular word. Mine is ambiguity, and, strangely enough, I cannot find any poems that I like that are ambiguos, or can have more than one meaning.

In the Beginning
---Dylan Thomas

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face,
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

Les

A Riddle Song
by Walt Whitman

THAT which eludes this verse and any verse,
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world
incessantly,
Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,
Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted,
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd,
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
Behind the mountain and the wood,
Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage,
It and its radiations constantly glide.

In looks of fair unconscious babes,
Or strangely in the coffin'd dead,
Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,
As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,
Hiding yet lingering.

Two little breaths of words comprising it.
Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.

How ardently for it!
How many ships have sail'd and sunk for it!
How many travelers started from their homes and ne'er return'd!
How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!
What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it!
How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it--and
shall be to the end!
How all heroic martyrdoms to it!
How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!
How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and
land, have drawn men's eyes,
Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the
cliffs,
Or midnight's silent glowing northern lights unreachable.

Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,
The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,
And heaven at last for it.

Les

Thank you!!! Much obliged for the poems! Just to talk...I am also using the song, the Phantom of the Opera, for ambiguity, too. There are many interpretations for the personality of the phantom, for example. Such as the tragic hero, the sinister woman-napper.... Well, thanks again!

>Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
>The ribbed original of love.

He was using a condom?

pam

I think he was referring to Adam, of Adam and Eve, but as much as Dylan drank he might have meant that, Pam.


Les

Yeah...I was thinking along the lines of Adam and Eve, too. The creation. Dylan Thomas was a drunkard?

>Dylan Thomas was a drunkard?

Apparently so, Meghan, read this:

[www.theatretoursinternational.com]

Hmmm...so he was. Do you have any idea what the Riddle Song is about? I was thinking maybe the meaning of life or something. What else could be un-obtained?

Dylan - my what a lovely man!

He didn't drink - he absorbed alcohol. It was his crutch - his titty bottle and it transported him into another world -

the riddle song is about meaning.

What else can a riddle be about?

gill

Thoroughly insulted. A riddle can be about many things....such as what has four legs in the morning....two at noon....and three at night?

Haha...you know not. Therefore, you are not. Anyway, the answer is, man. As a child he crawls on all fours, as a man he walks upright on two feet, and as an elder he walks with the assistance of a cane; therefore, he would have four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night. Therefore, a riddle can have more interpretations than just meaning. Bah, you people. Anyway, how can you absorb alcohol? Are we speaking osmosis here?

4 minutes! You think everyone is reading this forum like all the time?

It's a very famous riddle from Sophocles (in Oedipus rex).

Right. Probably the most famous riddle of all time. Next would be Homer's riddle? Wally's is less well known, and never solved as far as I am aware. Cassell's Dictionary of Riddles does not include it, for example. I know that for sure, since I just now unsucessfully searched for it there.

The initial letters of the first four lines spell out 'tuna', but I doubt that has anything to do with the 'secret' mentioned. E A Poe wrote a number of 'acrostic-type' poems where one takes the first letter of the first line, the 2nd of the 2nd, &tc.;, but that technique seems also not to have been used here.

Looking at the clues given,

>That which eludes this verse and any verse,
>Unheard by sharpest ear ...

>here and now I challenge for my song.

[...]

>Two little breaths of words comprising it.
>Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.


So, the solution is apparently two (related) words. He seems to say all the letters of the alphabet are contained therein, but if so, they cannot really be two little words, so that is unlikely to be the fact.

From first to last usually suggests alpha and omega, so that is a possible solution, but it is less than totally satisfying. I have my own theory, but I will leave that for a later post, knowing how speculation from other geniuses (genii?) here leads to interesting threads.

My guess Hugh:

Life...Death



Les

here's the entire riddle:

[www.bartleby.com]

my guess:
The truth?

Desi, I posted the entire poem above.

My second guess:

eternal youth



Les

My apologies...I'm just used to people responding in under five minutes.....

If it really *was* intended as a riddle, Wally did not ever provide the solution so far as I am aware. To me, a Proper Riddle should have a single unique solution, a requirement I believe Riddle Song fails. I can think of several answers that could well be correct, but I infer we are required to guess only the one the author had in mind.

Elsewhere, Whitman refers to “the puzzle of puzzles ... that we call Being”, but that does not seem to fit his riddle song. The last stanza mentions God's riddle, but I can remember only two such enigmas. One is Samson's Riddle, where I believe (honey) bees is the answer. The other is the Handwriting on the Wall thingie at Belshazzar's feast, also apparently irrelevant.

The words dream, beauty, and love could fit the text, but one assumes the author would not include the solution in his verse, and all those words appear therein.

We are therefore left with such examples as,

The Unknown (add 'the' due to the two-word clue)
Immortality (but only one word, so Eternal Life?)
Justice (just and ice?)
The Truth (although truth is suficient in itself)
Knowledge (know and ledge)

I vote for The Truth, as it fits all the clues, but I again must complain about the conditions, and the fact that Truth alone would suffice as a single word gives me no confidence in that response.

Hello,

Sorry I wrote that late at night without really thinking about the riddle. Guess I should keep my nose out - didn't mean to upset anybody
Sorry
ginnyfly

Don't worry- jump in where you feel like it.

pam