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Cortège for Rosenbloom

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Now, the wry Rosenbloom is dead
And his finical carriers tread
On a hundred legs, the tread
Of the dead.
Rosenbloom is dead.

They carry the wizened one
Of the color of horn
To the sullen hill,
Treading a tread
In unison for the dead.

Rosenbloom is dead.
The tread of the carriers does not halt
On the hill, but turns
Up the sky.
They are bearing his body into the sky.

It is the infants of misanthropes
And the infants of nothingness
That tread
The wooden ascents
Of the ascending of the dead.

It is turbans they wear
And boots of fur
As they tread the boards
In a region of frost,
Viewing the frost,

To a chirr of gongs
And a chitter of cries
And the heavy thrum 
Of the endless tread
That they tread;

To a jangle of doom
And a jumble of words
Of the intense poem
Of the strictest prose
Of Rosenbloom.

And they bury him there,
Body and soul,
In a place in the sky.
The lamentable tread!
Rosenbloom is dead.
Created by guccipiggy
Last modified 2005-03-17 09:04 PM

Thoughts

Posted by guccipiggy at 2005-01-04 01:41 AM
It seems to me that this poem is an attack on those religious traditions which promise life after death - a witty, imaginative attack, to be sure, not without some malice. The pall-bearers are initially the subject of a light hearted jest ("his finical carriers tread, / on a hundred legs"), but this modulates into scorn ("the infants of misanthropes / and the infants of nothingness"), and then outright ridicule. Stevens parodies those voices he dislikes with onomatopoeic babble ("chirr of gongs / and a chitter of cries" calls to mind the hoo-hoo-hoo, the shoo-shoo-shoo, the ric-a-nic of the unruly rabble which is throwing stones on the roof of the poet in "Mozart 1935")

Why is Rosenbloom Jewish? Why is he "wry"?

The constant repetition of "Rosenbloom is dead" puts me in mind of Dickens:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

Hmmm. Jacob's ladder?

The Jew of Malta? - "Look, look, master -- here comes two religious caterpillars"

intense poem

Posted by guccipiggy at 2005-01-27 12:02 AM
The "intense poem" - pomp, circumstance & ritual - centered on the "strictest prose of Rosenbloom" - i.e, the prosaic fact of his death
 

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