Read The Emperor Of Outer Space

The Emperor Of Outer Space

Harry Guest

4.9/5 (21281 ratings)

Description:- In the evening before his fiftieth birthday a poet is sitting alone in the converted attic he uses as a study. In a short prelude he conceives of his calling as that of a circus acrobat performing on a tightrope high above bears and clowns, trying to hold the attention of a basically indifferent crowd. Considering he may at fifty be halfway through his working life he hopes for another quarter of a century at least before he is forced to make with luck an elegant descent down to the arena of reality, to at last the grave. His musings are interrupted by his third wife who brings him abruptly up against two related problems: one, whether the recipient of a love-poem is as much in the poet s mind as the quality of the love-poem itself and the other, how far the solitude supposed necessary to the creative act is a shunning of social and domestic responsibilities. Partly in self-defence and largely through a sense of guilt he evokes or is visited by the presences of two former wives, now dead, both of whom feel in their different ways that they took second place to his writing. The first challenges him to commit himself wholly to her love - a challenge he evades; the second who was suffocatingly enthusiastic about his poetry, found eventually in his continued infidelities the source of her own utter loneliness and committed suicide. He has over and over again during his life taken stock of the bright confused abyss beneath the tightrope, the abyss he has traversed in order to become the lord of unseen time : periods of repentance however - the very acknowledgement of egotism and callousness have become elements in the never-ending performance, have provided in fact the main themes for his work. One particular section where he is able to alter carrion birds to doves and floods a scene of dark horror with sunlight is criticised as dishonest, as showing only a knack of rearranging souvenirs but he seems unequivocally to believe that art is essentially illusion, that experience provides the raw material of dreams, that the magic of fiction lies in its very ability to transform a page of words by firelight into surf or ice or fog . If he is guilty of being in love with the appearance of the thing more than the thing itself this perhaps means only that he is capable of seeing what is potential rather than what is plain, that is he is concerned with what Browning called telling a truth obliquely not with the apparent facts of a journalist that can deceive. The central character in this poem deals with the conjuring tricks poetry is able to perform. The third wife whom he describes in three adjectives astringent and unpoetic but also necessary cuts out the stage-lighting and displays the props as she thinks they are with all the glamour gone: Dry flowers , synthetic satin and one moth-eaten stuffed macaw . However, she does add perhaps pathetically that she has accomplished nothing and that she may well be the ever-present doubter that his faith requires. Having in the course of the poem gone to deserted areas of moorland and snow-capped mountains where he can find the right spell to work the magic, he tries at last a supremer solitude by leaving earth altogether and heading for a rendezvous in outer space where he is to be given a coronation he feels possibly to be his due. As he prepares to leave however there is a hint he will return to the cycle of experience, withdrawal and self-examination like those prima donnas who keep retiring from the platform year after year he gives his final au revoir to art From the INTRODUCTION by Harry Guest.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with The Emperor Of Outer Space. To get started finding The Emperor Of Outer Space, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: —

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Pig Press

Release: 1983

ISBN: 0903997789

Description: - In the evening before his fiftieth birthday a poet is sitting alone in the converted attic he uses as a study. In a short prelude he conceives of his calling as that of a circus acrobat performing on a tightrope high above bears and clowns, trying to hold the attention of a basically indifferent crowd. Considering he may at fifty be halfway through his working life he hopes for another quarter of a century at least before he is forced to make with luck an elegant descent down to the arena of reality, to at last the grave. His musings are interrupted by his third wife who brings him abruptly up against two related problems: one, whether the recipient of a love-poem is as much in the poet s mind as the quality of the love-poem itself and the other, how far the solitude supposed necessary to the creative act is a shunning of social and domestic responsibilities. Partly in self-defence and largely through a sense of guilt he evokes or is visited by the presences of two former wives, now dead, both of whom feel in their different ways that they took second place to his writing. The first challenges him to commit himself wholly to her love - a challenge he evades; the second who was suffocatingly enthusiastic about his poetry, found eventually in his continued infidelities the source of her own utter loneliness and committed suicide. He has over and over again during his life taken stock of the bright confused abyss beneath the tightrope, the abyss he has traversed in order to become the lord of unseen time : periods of repentance however - the very acknowledgement of egotism and callousness have become elements in the never-ending performance, have provided in fact the main themes for his work. One particular section where he is able to alter carrion birds to doves and floods a scene of dark horror with sunlight is criticised as dishonest, as showing only a knack of rearranging souvenirs but he seems unequivocally to believe that art is essentially illusion, that experience provides the raw material of dreams, that the magic of fiction lies in its very ability to transform a page of words by firelight into surf or ice or fog . If he is guilty of being in love with the appearance of the thing more than the thing itself this perhaps means only that he is capable of seeing what is potential rather than what is plain, that is he is concerned with what Browning called telling a truth obliquely not with the apparent facts of a journalist that can deceive. The central character in this poem deals with the conjuring tricks poetry is able to perform. The third wife whom he describes in three adjectives astringent and unpoetic but also necessary cuts out the stage-lighting and displays the props as she thinks they are with all the glamour gone: Dry flowers , synthetic satin and one moth-eaten stuffed macaw . However, she does add perhaps pathetically that she has accomplished nothing and that she may well be the ever-present doubter that his faith requires. Having in the course of the poem gone to deserted areas of moorland and snow-capped mountains where he can find the right spell to work the magic, he tries at last a supremer solitude by leaving earth altogether and heading for a rendezvous in outer space where he is to be given a coronation he feels possibly to be his due. As he prepares to leave however there is a hint he will return to the cycle of experience, withdrawal and self-examination like those prima donnas who keep retiring from the platform year after year he gives his final au revoir to art From the INTRODUCTION by Harry Guest.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with The Emperor Of Outer Space. To get started finding The Emperor Of Outer Space, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Special Offer | $0.00

Special Offer! | $0.00

The Emperor Of Outer Space

The Emperor Of Outer Space

More Books

Jack Beeching, Harry Guest, Matthew Mead (Penguin Modern Poets, 16)

Jack Beeching, Harry Guest, Matthew Mead (Penguin Modern Poets, 16)

Post-war Japanese Poetry (The Penguin poets)

Post-war Japanese Poetry (The Penguin poets)

Saturday Night Live Writers: John Belushi, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Phil Hartman, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy

Saturday Night Live Writers: John Belushi, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Phil Hartman, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy

Japan (Traveler's Literary Companions)

Japan (Traveler's Literary Companions)

Comparisons & Conversions

Comparisons & Conversions

Some Times

Some Times

Mastering Japanese (Macmillan Master Series (Languages))

Mastering Japanese (Macmillan Master Series (Languages))

Benny's Run Ashore H by Harry Guest (1999-12-01)

Benny's Run Ashore H by Harry Guest (1999-12-01)

Alliance Film Distributors Ltd Present, Terence Morgan, Hazel Court and Robert Beatty in, THE SHAKEDOWN, with Donald Pleasance, Bill Owen, Harry H Corbett, Guest Star, Sheila Buxton: Film Brochure

Alliance Film Distributors Ltd Present, Terence Morgan, Hazel Court and Robert Beatty in, THE SHAKEDOWN, with Donald Pleasance, Bill Owen, Harry H Corbett, Guest Star, Sheila Buxton: Film Brochure