Friday, February 20, 2009

Poetry Friday: Robert Graves & Wallace Tripp



As I debated whether to take a bus or a taxi this afternoon in the chill New York wind, the four wallop-packing lines below came to mind. I first encountered them in one of the great poetry anthologies, Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet, collected and illustrated by the uncompromising Wallace Tripp, edited by the brilliant Walter Lorraine, and published by the redoubtable yet now-owned-by-a-failing-Irish-venture-capital-firm, Houghton Mifflin. Robert Graves brings a laser's intensity to the artist's life. Do we stick with our comic rabbits and live in their comfort? Or do we give them up, try comic hippos, and risk all?

Epitaph for an Unfortunate Artist

He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid.
Till in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

-- Robert Graves

And if I told you which mode of transportation I ended up taking, you'd think the less of me. So I will leave it to your speculation.

2 comments:

Christine Tripp said...

Ah yes, the unfortunate occurance of sterotyping yourself.

Anonymous said...

I like the poetry a lot , I always sit in a park in front of the genericviagra's store and I read some books like this one, so I think That Robert Graves and Wallace were great people.