Showing posts with label Ted Kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ted Kennedy. Show all posts

Friday, August 28, 2009

A Graphic-Novel About Senator Kennedy

A couple recent posts noted a favorite poem and a favorite song of Edward M. Kennedy's. Concerning literature about the late senator, writer Patrick Gavin at politico.com reports that a graphic-novel about Kennedy has been in the works but will now, of course, need to be revised.

The working-title of the novel, to be published by Bluewater Productions, is "Political Power: Ted Kennedy." Bluewater Productions has already published graphic-novels about Ronald Reagan and President Obama. Here is a link to Gavin's article:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26511.html

One of Senator Kennedy's Favorite Songs

As noted in an earlier post, a favorite poem of Senator Edward Kennedy's was Tennyson's "Ulysses." Today I discovered in an online article from Time that one of the senator's favorite songs was, yes, an Irish one, but no, not "Danny Boy":

'Speaking on Wednesday, former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, an old friend of Kennedy's, revealed that one of the late Senator's favorite songs was "The Town I Loved so Well". The lyrics lament the decline of the city of Derry during Northern Ireland's 25-year sectarian conflict from a place of "happy days in so many, many ways" to a town "brought to its knees by the armored cars and bombed out bars." It was an apt choice of song for Kennedy, whose dealings with Northern Ireland were often linked to the city.'

(One may easily find the rest of the article online through the usual googlistic means, and I do hope you like that new adjective.)

When I taught in Sweden many moons ago, I met an Irish scholar who liked to sing a comic song called, "Burlington Bertie"; the reference to Prime Minister Ahern helped exhume that memory. The only line I remember is "I'm Burlington Bertie--I rise at four-thirty," meaning the man-of-leisure Bertie sleeps until late afternoon, I reckon.

From my youth, I seem to remember that one of John F. Kennedy's favorite songs was "Greensleeves." I wonder whether George Bush, President Obama, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin have favorite songs, and if so, what they are, and yes, I know I've just set up the stand-up comedians out there with some easy potential jokes.

I assume that politicians would have to think politically when selecting a favorite song to declare--rather like President's Obama's having to select a beer for the beer-summit with Professor Gates and the policeman. He made the safe choice, politically: Budweiser. One assumes he didn't become president by being a fool.

If asked about my favorite song, I'd first get boringly professorial and demand to know the categories, etc., and so forth, and yadda yadda. But if I answered straight from the shoulder, I'd say "Folsom Prison Blues" (or "I Don't Like It But I Guess Things Happen That Way") by Johnny Cash, and especially the former would not be a wise political choice. Nor, I presume, would "Bring on the Funk" by George Clinton and Parliament, but "Parliament" has to be one of the great band-names.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Senator Kennedy's Favorite Poem

According to a wide variety of online postings I've read today, "Ulysses," by Alfred Lord Tennyson, was apparently Senator Ted Kennedy's favorite poem. (On one site, a visitor reminded others that James Joyce had written Ulysses, but of course there is the poem by Tennyson and the novel by Joyce.) So I thought I'd post the poem, as borrowed with gratitude from the Victorian Web, which also supplied the notes following the poem:

http/:www.victorianweb.org


Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[Tennyson's "Ulysses" first appeared in Morte D'Arthur, and Other Idyls. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCCXLII. pp. 67. This, however, was a trial book, printed but not published. The first publication of the poem occurred in Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In Two Volumes. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLII. pp. vii, 233; vii, 231. See "Chronology" in Henry Van Dyke's Studies in Tennyson (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1920; rpt., 1966).

The text of the poem has been checked against the version in Victorian Prose and Poetry, ed. Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom (New York, Oxford, and Toronto: Oxford U. P., 1973) pp. 416-418.