A Poetry Class for the End of the World

 Milo and the Professor are back with a special episode of Friday Night’s All Right, available on Censored.tv!


With protestors storming the Capitol Building and tempers running high, what better poem to capture the Spiritus Mundi than “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats? 

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: somewhere in sands of the desert   
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   
Reel 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?

Milo and I talk about the meaning of the poem, its imagery and symbolism, and how well it applies to our current moment. We explore the context in which Yeats was writing in 1920, the importance of falconry, the Riddle of the Sphinx, and how much it hurts to look at the sun. What do falcons have to do with the soul? Why can’t the center hold without the falconer? And what is about to be revealed? We also talk about how memes make studying poetry easier, and how poetry is necessary to culture. And, of course, why Western civilization should properly be called “Christendom.”


Watch on Censored.tv!

Don’t miss the poetry my friends and I have been writing in the Dragon Common Room! We finished our “Dunciad” in November. Watch this space for news on where to read it!

For a complete list of my video, radio, and podcast appearances, see Bear On Air. 

Comments

  1. justthinkinJanuary 10, 2021 at 8:39 AM

    Not on UnauthorizedTV?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fencing BearJanuary 10, 2021 at 8:44 AM

      This is a Censored.TV special! But you can watch without having to subscribe.

      Delete
  2. whitewallJanuary 10, 2021 at 4:43 PM

    In reviewing your long list of books and seeing Jim Webb's "Born Fighting", I wondered if you had come across this in your "spare time":
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-the-yankees

    Robert

    ReplyDelete
  3. HispaniaCatholicaJanuary 13, 2021 at 9:42 AM

    https://censored.tv/watch/shows/friday-nights-all-right/episode/poetry-for-the-end-of-the-world

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fencing BearJanuary 13, 2021 at 9:46 AM

      Thank you for watching! The link was in the post, too. Was it too hard to find?

      Delete
    2. DLWJanuary 15, 2021 at 10:53 AM

      The links in the post just go to the Censored.TV homepage; you then have to search for you or Milo by name to bring up the video. No problem and not hard, just pointing it out!

      Great show by the way! Yeats' Second Coming has always been one of my favorites.

      Delete
    3. Fencing BearJanuary 15, 2021 at 11:25 AM

      Ah! Okay! That helps.

      Delete
    4. HispaniaCatholicaJanuary 16, 2021 at 5:39 AM

      Thank you Fencing Bear for your work, It's an honor to listen, to watch and to read you.

      Sorry for posting that raw comment with the direct link, thank you DLW for your excellent explanatory reply, although in my case I had some hard time to find the awesome talk with Milo. At censored.tv they have a lot of entries and kept scrolling and scrolling to find the podcast. I did not thought of using the embedded searcher, now I know better.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

Image
Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, ...
Keep reading

Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

Image
1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a...
Keep reading

Draco Layer Three: The Moral or Tropological Sense

Image
Learn to discern. We all know what sin is, right? Right?!  Once upon a time in the desert , the hermit Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) set out to make a list of the most deadly ones, albeit he called them “deadly thoughts,” not “sins.” You probably know the list, even if you don’t think you do: gluttony, impurity (a.k.a. lust), avarice (a.k.a. greed), sadness (a.k.a. feeling sorry for oneself), anger or wrath, acedia  or sloth, vainglory, and pride (two different things).  Not quite the list you were expecting? That is because some centuries later—we’re talking ancient times here, when centuries passed like decades do now (or vice versa)—Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) revised the list, somewhat accidentally, in his commentary on Job.  Gregory had been expounding Job according to its multiple layers—yes, that’s right! Job, like Shrek, has layers! —and he happened somewhere in book XXXI to mention the “seven principle vices” to which Pride,  the “Queen of S...
Keep reading

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca...
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in ...
Keep reading