I like this list that a friend of mine posted of the 100 Greatest Writers of All Time. Many fantastic poets are included along with some interesting facts and photography. I like the Saul Bellow photo myself.
A few excerpts:
Of Ezra Pound: "Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest poet who was an asshole"
Of Emily Dickinson: "She is in every poet we read, every word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks."
Of Ovid: "Invented eroticism."
Showing posts with label Ezra Pound. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ezra Pound. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, November 8, 2010
The worst
For 30-some hours last week, I stayed in the hospital with a family member who was ill. I've never spent the night in a hospital before, at least not since I can remember. It struck me how much like a prison it is, not only in the sense of being trapped in the building but of being seized by fear and anxiety.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
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