Random Pairing

Seduced by its alliteration on the sound of "s" we here lay down the last line of "Sherbourne Morning" by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco in The Tough Romance

sun above them spins halos for angels gone beserk

Coupling this selection with a plucking from Camille Paglia Break, Blow, Burn, selected in a sort of Sortes Vergilianae fashion we come upon her comments on William Blake's London:

Wandering through London's hell, Blake follows the model of Dante as poet-quester cataloguing the horrors of the Inferno. A visitor to the storied British capital in 1793 would have seen a grand, expanding city in economic boom. But the poet, with telepathic hearing and merciless X-ray eyes, homes in on the suffering, dislocation, and hidden spiritual costs of rapid social transformation. The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 1770s and would spread globally over the next two centuries, profoundly altered community, personal identity, and basic values in ways we are still sorting out.

Muddling through the themes of angels and Dante, we learn that Di Cicco published a book under the title The Dark Side of Angels and that critics note

There is a marked difference between Di Cicco's early personal poems, which deal with ethnic identity, social conflict and family relationships, and his later poems about philosophical questions, spiritual ideas and broader global problems.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pier-giorgio-di-cicco/

But those questions, we see, are there from the beginning in a kind of Blakean fashion (thanks to the uncanny juxtaposition with Paglia).

Aquila

you want to get rid of these
little harpies

you want to confess they aren't yours
take the one called song
the way it turns everything you say
into gold
take the one called love
the way it brings out the best in you

get rid of them
there is the real you, ugly and taloned
with eyes like an angel
ready to eat the world
for the first time

from in The Tough Romance

Of course "aquila" translates as "eagle". And "paglia" as "straw". And hence our Rumplestiltskin moment. A rough romance.

And so for day 2107
19.09.2012