The Second Coming made this phrase popular and later inspired Chinua Achebe to write his remarkable novel -'Things Fall Apart'. With strong opinions on anarchy, this poem actually takes the term for the return of Jesus from the heaven - the Second Coming. The idea that the centre cannot hold gave rise to what can be the modern age. The anti-centrism in this poem is unmistakenly clear.

This poem has two parts. One is the time before the Second Coming and one soon after. The last line can be compared The Lamb by Blake, where the poem raises questions. Who made thy? Or in the poem, The Tiger, who made thy fearful symmetry? Simmilarily, in Doctor Faustus, Helen's face is cannot be discribed and therefore the question is "Is this the face that lauched a thousand ships?" So throughout literature we see how questions are the best substitutes for a doubt in description. Now, with this background, Yeats presents a clear picture of imagery. Every line in the poem talks about the visual element and conjures strong images. Image and sight are strong words meant to imply that when the Second Coming happens, one can clearly see it. And it is only a matter of time before that happens.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming!

Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

This poem gives us a complete idea of the modern poet Philip Larkin and his style of writing. While the first read may seem like he is discouraging the reading habit, it actually puts forth his attitude towards all things and people. Many call him "Possessed by death" and the death mentioned here is a reference to the reading habit. Larkin contemplates the use of things in all his poetry. The bottom line can be - "What is use of anything?" even reading. However, one has to observe that this question comes to the poets mind after having spent a significant amount of time over reading books. There is also a suggestion that end of the day all things probably have the same result. All things are too familiar. One may also observe what can be called a "reader's Block" in this poem.

It is almost like he expected so much from books, but after investing time, he realised that they dint live up to his expectations.


A Study of Reading Habits

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

-Philip Larkin

The question usually is "do you believe in God?"

But here is "are you looking for a God?"

Establishing a new genre, what can be called Bhakti Poetry (new because it is Bhakthi poetry in English), Arun Kolatkar opened the doors of English Language to the cultures of Hindu Worship. With Sarpa Satra and the Khala Ghoda poems, Kolatkar's imagistic presicion distinct to modern poetry amalgamates with the ancient myths of India or the streets of Bombay. Be it a pi-dog claiming affiliation to Yudistira or lepers showcasing their scaly paws, Kolatkar's poems leave one wanting more of Indian mythology and its streets.

Vamangi, lived in the illusion that Vittala was by her side, shoulder to shoulder, but when it was broken to her by a devotee, it rushed upon her - 28 millenia of loniless, all at once.

Sarpa Satra surfaces the modern themes of ethnic cleansing with the story of Asthika and Emperor Janmejaya.

The following poem is Yeshwant Rao from his collection called Jejuri. Bone setters and miracle workers are given their ironic credit in this one. There is a tone of confessional peotry in this one. The use of unusual metaphors and similies is the hallmark of confessional poetry. And the comparision to Lava pie and the shape of protoplasm mark this as confessional. Direct speech in poetry allows the poetic constructs of the "I" and "you" to be post-structuralists. And the place of this God - outside even of the outer wall-brings in the concepts of 'otherness' and post-modernism. The aspects spoken in the same breathe include lepers and tradesmen negating the idea of binarism. Rejection of the symetrical or the theatrical gods once again establishes anti-centrism.

You are welcome to post your observations and surface more layers to this beautiful poem.

Yeshwant Rao

Are you looking for a god?

I know a good one.

His name is Yeshwant Rao

and he's one of the best.

look him up

when you are in Jejuri next.

Of course he's only a second class god

and his place is just outside the main temple.

Outside even of the outer wall.

As if he belonged among the tradesmen and the lepers.

I've known gods prettier faced

or straighter laced.

Gods who soak you for your gold.

Gods who soak you for your soul.

Gods who make you walk on a bed of burning coal.

Gods who put a child inside your wife.

Or a knife inside your enemy.

Gods who tell you how to live your life,

double your money

or triple your land holdings.

Gods who can barely suppress a smile

as you crawl a mile for them.

Gods who will see you drown

if you won't buy them a new crown.

And although I'm sure they're all to be praised,

they're either too symmetrical

or too theatrical for my taste.

Yeshwant Rao,

mass of basalt,

bright as any post box,

the shape of protoplasm

or king size lava pie

thrown against the wall,

without an arm, a leg
or even a single head.

Yeshwant Rao.

He's the god you've got to meet.

If you're short of a limb,

Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand

and get you back on your feet.

Yeshwant Rao Does nothing spectacular.

He doesn't promise you the earth

Or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven.

But if any bones are broken

you know he'll mend them.

He'll make you whole in your body

and hope your spirit will look after itself.

He is merely a kind of a bone-setter.

The only thing is,

as he himself has no heads, hands and feet,

he happens to understand you a little better.

-Arun Kolatkar

Lets start with this

Without a configured idea of where or how to start, I decided to post the following poem.
One of my favorites and I specially like looking at this from the new criticism point of view. New Criticism is a structuralist school of thought that looks at thematic binaries. Again thematic binaries are important or significant for a lyric poem, because it has to do justice to the reader who invests attention.
Jonathan Culler, a structuralist gave Theme and Epiphany to be among the conventions for a poem to be a lyric. But outside these structures, the binaries in this poem are inspiring and give us a better understanding of the different ways of conjuring poetry.
The poem is The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot.
The recognisable binaries are:
1. Pain and Pleasure
2. Birth and Death
3. Doubt and Faith
4. Reality and Appreance
5. Onward and Return Journey
6. Old and new Dispensation

Please post your observations on this poem.

The Journey Of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
-- T. S. Eliot