Bunny Does Lit Crit

[poliphilo]

Ailz is revising for her Open University exam (tomorrow) and I've been helping out by reading poems onto tape for her.

Great chunks of Wordsworth and Coleridge and other romantics.

There's an almost sensual pleasure to be had from reading poetry aloud.

Bunny enjoys listening. He went wild over Tintern Abbey- racing round the room and jumping about like a march hare.

But he doesn't like Kubla Khan. First time I read it he bit through the microphone lead. Second time he ran away and hid.

Comments

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I love reading poetry aloud. The way the rythm can somehow reverberate through your entire body, making you a sounding-board for the words and sentiments expressed in them...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Wordsworth is a particular pleasure. I love the way he constructs in long sentences and paragraphs and how you have a prose rythmn superimposed on the tum-ti-tum of iambic verse.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I've always had a thing for aliterations, so I love reading The Ballad of Reading Gaol or Beowulf... Such power in the repetition of consonants!

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace...

-The d's in those lines just send shivers down my spine whenever I read it...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have in my possession a first edition of the Ballad of Reading Gaol- a lttle worm-eaten, but nevertheless....

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

*covets*

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Critics, everybunny's a critic.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And every critic's a bunny....?

No, that doesn't really work.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I have a theory, that Bunny is far more clever than you think.

Or perhaps he is a reincarnation of Wordsworth and is delighted that his works live on.

Now you make me want a bunny of my own, but I think I will restrain myself. We do have two cats in the house...

[jenny_evergreen]

It's definitely a one-or-the-other situation when it comes to bunnies and cats, unfortunately!

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

That's not really true, Jenny - but if Jackie had bunnies AND kitties, she'd need to raise them both together. My brother had kitties and rabbits, and my friend AnnMarie did as well, they all slept together...it was very cute.

[jenny_evergreen]

Oh, that's great to hear. :) I should've thought of it, really!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hear stories of rabbits and cats co-existing in peaceful amity- even sharing a bed- but I suspect they would have had to have been brought up together

[jenny_evergreen]

That is just absolutely priceless. I like Bunny's taste. *grin*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"I like Bunny's taste"

It's pretty much in line with mine.

We tried him with some Keats this morning and he started eating my shoes....

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Bunny probably is a humble creature who doesn't like all those stories of grandure. I am not a big Coleridge buff myself.

I love Wordsworth though, he's so catchy! And was a poet ever better named?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Kubla Khan doesn't quite work for me. If I want visions of opium-fuelled splendour I turn to de Quincey.

But I love the Ancient Mariner.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

My cats hate it when I put harpsichord music on the stereo....they get very jumpy and then leave.

Cindy

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess it jangles their nerves.

Bunny has been treated to a lot of Dylan recently, but hasn't yet expressed an opinion.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Sure he did. When you made him listen to Coleridge after being tortured by all that Dylan, he blew his little bunny stack.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Aaaaw.

Don't be so mean about Bobby......

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Try him on this variant of Kubla Khan and see how he does:

http://www.shoeblogs.com/wordpress/category/be-super-fantastic/

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He-he-heh!

Ailz says he probably took fright at the way I was booming it, so Manolo would probably distress him just as much as Kubla.

[cosmolinguist]

He's got it all backwards. Coleridge is better than any of those other Romantic types.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the sheer power of Coleridge was more than his delicate, rabbity constitution could bear.