Thanks for this one today. It perfectly suits my mood. There is a reading from Louis Armstrong that is fabulous.
I'll suggest another (much longer) poem about a visit from Santa... The Defective Santa Claus, by James Whitcomb Riley. It is one that has been much enjoyed in my house.
James Jesus Angleton, the Ghost of CIA Past, appeared to me in a dream last last night and said the poem has all the earmarks of early 19th-century Russian disinformation.
"Tastefulness is just small-mindedness pretending to be art" is going into my commonplace book/journal.
Several years before COVID, on Linked-In of all places, I belonged to a group included both literary poets and popular poets (I don't know what other name to use to describe but not dismiss these writers). It's far too long ago to remember details of the discussions, but it was one of the more productive online encounters I've experienced. I remember one "popular" poem (i.e., it was by a writer on that of the discussion) that was strictly metrical but in a meter appropriate for the subject and tone and very effective. The distinction between literary and popular became meaningless. I wish I'd brought "The Night Before Christmas" into the discussion.
As I've probably mentioned here before, my dad loved Robert Service and used to half recite/half read his narrative poems to the gathered family. This made poetry a part of our everyday life in a way the "The Wasteland" certainly would not have. Many of Frost's poems would have worked, though, although they lacked the visceral joy of the rollicking rhythm and internal rhymes of "that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge / I cremated Sam McGee."
I had an illustrated version as a child in a hardback book. I’ve always been very fond of it. I find it hard to imagine why anyone would not be.
Whenever I used the leaf blower on the gravel driveway at my old house, I found these lines sounding in my head:
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
Thus does great literature enrich the tiresome tasks of quotidian life.
Thanks for this one today. It perfectly suits my mood. There is a reading from Louis Armstrong that is fabulous.
I'll suggest another (much longer) poem about a visit from Santa... The Defective Santa Claus, by James Whitcomb Riley. It is one that has been much enjoyed in my house.
Merry Christmas all!
Yep, I do love this poem! Thanks for posting!
"Were we to do some scholarship about the poem...." - I got the bug to do that very thing a year ago, and I love the poem even more after looking into the authorship question. In case anyone else is as interested in archival puzzles as I am, I wrote about it here (with a reading of the 1823 version of the poem at the end): https://open.substack.com/pub/tarapenry/p/who-wrote-the-night-before-christmas?r=1mk0zn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Such fun but...humbug! We all know Will Shakespeare wrote this, and if not, Sir Francis Bacon!
Egad! Time to keep a bucket of smelling salts by the bedside in case the Ghost of CIA Future shows up.
Haha! Definitely Bacon. ;-)
James Jesus Angleton, the Ghost of CIA Past, appeared to me in a dream last last night and said the poem has all the earmarks of early 19th-century Russian disinformation.
Here I was going to vote for the Earl of Oxford, but that seems awfully not creative.
"Tastefulness is just small-mindedness pretending to be art" is going into my commonplace book/journal.
Several years before COVID, on Linked-In of all places, I belonged to a group included both literary poets and popular poets (I don't know what other name to use to describe but not dismiss these writers). It's far too long ago to remember details of the discussions, but it was one of the more productive online encounters I've experienced. I remember one "popular" poem (i.e., it was by a writer on that of the discussion) that was strictly metrical but in a meter appropriate for the subject and tone and very effective. The distinction between literary and popular became meaningless. I wish I'd brought "The Night Before Christmas" into the discussion.
As I've probably mentioned here before, my dad loved Robert Service and used to half recite/half read his narrative poems to the gathered family. This made poetry a part of our everyday life in a way the "The Wasteland" certainly would not have. Many of Frost's poems would have worked, though, although they lacked the visceral joy of the rollicking rhythm and internal rhymes of "that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge / I cremated Sam McGee."
My dad used to recite Sam McGee to us by heart -- love it!
Johnny Cash reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee is wonderful.
Thanks for the info. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJNZwuamwj0
Well said!