SNL alum Pedrad / WED 4-19-23 / Ikea founder Ingvar / 1990s hit with the line keep playing that song all night / Prefix with meter to a versifier / Customizable Nintendo avatar / Prokaryotic model organism / Pig of children's TV
Constructor: Joe Deeney
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: POET'S CORNER (47A: Westminster Abbey section hinted at by this puzzle's architecture) — two poets cross in every "corner" of the puzzle:
Theme answers:
Alexander POPE / Ezra POUND (1A: Leader of the world's smallest nation ("An Essay on Man") / 1D: Use a hammer on ("In a Station of the Metro"))
Adrienne RICH / Thomas HARDY (10A: Loaded ("Diving Into the Wreck") / 13D: Able to weather difficult conditions ("Channel Firing"))
Robert BURNS / Gertrude STEIN (51D: Incinerates ("To a Mouse") / 69A: Drinking vessel that may have a lid ("Sacred Emily"))
Robert FROST / Jonathan SWIFT (71A: Coat put on when it's cold? ("Mending Wall") / 56D: Fleet-footed ("A Maypole"))
Word of the Day: HELGA Estby (34A: ___ Estby, Norwegian-born U.S. suffragist) —
Helga Estby (May 30, 1860 – April 20, 1942) was an American suffragist most noted for her walk across the United States during 1896. [...] Due to the financialPanic of 1893and her husband's accidents, the family could not pay the mortgage or taxes on their home and farmland. Together with Clara, her 17-year-old daughter, Helga tried to save her family farm by walking 3,500 miles across country toNew York City.Helga had made a bet with an unknown sponsor that would give them $10,000 if they did the walk in seven months.Clara and Helga started the walk from Spokane on May 5.The women walked 25-35 miles a day and were offered shelter along the way, spending only 9 nights without a roof over their head.On Christmas Eve, 1896, theNew York Worldreported their arrival inNew York City.On arrival in New York, the sponsor of the contest refused to pay or help them back home, saying the women had missed their deadline. Helga managed to return to her farm only to find that two of her children had died ofdiphtheriain her absence // After the Estby family lost their home in Mica Creek, Ole Estby began a construction business inSpokane, Washington. Helga was considered a deserter of her family and was shunned by much of the localNorwegian-Americancommunity. Helga went on to become asuffragistand wrote down her story later in her life. Her notes were destroyed, but her story was carried on through oral tradition, by her family and through newspaper clippings saved by her daughter-in-law. (wikipedia)
• • •
Well this was over fast:
Lord knows I enjoy poetry, but this puzzle fell a bit flat for me. I mean, there it is: poets in corners, POET'S CORNER, ta-da. The poets' names are all clued as ordinary words, so that gives the name set a loose kind of coherence—FROST and HARDY yes, but DONNE and WYATT no. But that's not exactly an interesting coherence—last names that are also ordinary words. And the poets seem mainly to be in the grid because their names are short. The group is bizarre. Several of these poets *are* actually buried (HARDY) or memorialized in (BURNS, POPE) POET'S CORNER, but then there's an Irishman and a bunch of random American poets with short names, so ... I dunno. There are poets, there are corners, the end. The cluing conceit here is kind of interesting, but mostly just redundant. I will say that "An Essay On Man" in the clue definitely helped with POPE, because no way I was going to get that from its straight clue. Yes, Vatican City, blah blah blah "smallest nation" but I never think of the Catholic POPE as leading a "nation," so Alexander POPE to the rescue! Mostly, though, the poem titles are tacked on and ornamental and unnecessary. I just wonder if there isn't a more entertaining way to execute a POET'S CORNER puzzle.
I don't remember much about the fill except KAMPRAD, LOL, no way, that looks like you quickly made up a name or smashed your face into the keyboard. Needed crosses for Every Last Letter. Thankfully, "HEY, MR. DJ" was a radio staple of my youth, and I knew who JEFF (another name!) Probst was, or I could've been in a hell of a lot of trouble with all those proper nouns colliding. As it was, I was in serious trouble back at the first "A" in KAMPRAD, because I had no idea who the "Norwegian-born suffragist" was *and* I had the PELS in as the PENS (bad time to confuse basketball and hockey!), so I had HENG- as the suffragist ... crossing K-MPRAD ... and that looked like one of the biggest Naticks of all time. But then I thought long and hard about how one might shorten "Pelicans" and realized "oh, right, probably you'd drop the "ican" part and not the "lica" part." So in went PELS and, well, HELGA is at least a recognizable human name, so problem solved. But the heart of all these problems, real and potential, is KAMPRAD, a name only a bloated, uncurated wordlist could love. NASIM was also a name I didn't know, but that seems much more like a name I might know or should know, and anyway it had a recognizable name-ness to it, such that I didn't absolutely *need* all of the crosses (though I can see how NASIM / MII might've tripped someone up). Speaking of curating your wordlist, UNPC? Still? It's garbage, junk, a right-wing talking point (I mean, now it's "woke," but same energy, for sure). It's an awful dated crosswordesey crutch and you should shoot it into the sun.
I've heard TOFU DOG way more than SOY DOG, but I suppose the latter is valid (if somehow more awful-sounding). I enjoyed the bonus poetry clue on TETRA- (18A: Prefix with meter, to a versifier). Yesterday I taught Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which is written in iambic TETRAmeter couplets ("Had we but world enough and time..."). Great, freaky poem. Marvell ... not in POET'S CORNER, though his buddy Milton is. Marvell was instrumental in convincing Charles II not to execute Milton after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 (Milton having written anti-monarchical stuff that essentially justified the execution of the King's father, Charles I, in 1649). Marvell is buried elsewhere in London, in the church of St. Giles in the Fields. OK now I'm not talking about the puzzle at all, so I'll stop. Maybe go read some poetry with my coffee. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Re: 38D: Place to retire in a hurry? (PIT)—car racing; think "PIT stop"
Lots of WOEs here. Luckily I was able to infer HELGA from crosses and the "Norwegian" part of the clue. But I totally Naticked at the last letter in the IKEA founder's name (30D). Conflating him with a tennis player, I figured it "had" to be KAMPRAs. That led to the perfectly reasonable-sounding "HEY MRS. J" for the song at 58A, which prevented the happy tune.
Very challenging for me, as there were a bunch of proper names I don’t know, and I’ve never heard of poets corner. I was able to get the idea that the “double clued” entries were writers of a sort but about half of them I didn’t know and I didn’t make the poetry connection until I got the revealer through enough crosses. Plus HELGA and KAMPRAD. I liked the puzzle and appreciated the theme, even if the names were mostly out of my wheelhouse.
Being rather arty-farty, you'd think I would have some experience with these poems, but To a Mouse is the only one I'd previously read. I've now read the others lying here at 3 am with a cold breeze coming into the bedroom where I'm too lazy to get up and close the window. I will reread them today after coffee and see if they're more charming then.
Ezra Pound again. Sigh. And speaking of gross, how about $780 million of UNPC you titans of journalism with your INKS. If they can afford to pay that, just imagine what they made selling that DRAMA.
Didn't need to know the poets or the poems to finish this little gem of a grid. Knowing the name of the IKEA guy would've been helpful, but six crosses and one wild guess will bring most puzzles into submission.
Loved: WHAT THE...I say it all the time.
Ouch: [Press releases.] = INKS.
Ug: These editors hafta know MII/NASIM crossing at the I is poor, and they do it anyway, right? Why?
Tee-Hee: HOOHA.
Uniclues:
1 Well, what're you gonna do? Fit a camel through a needle's eye? 2 Eased through downtown Kathmandu on a Friday night. 3 That moment when a guy in a beanie and a beard says, "I think I'll go back to Bud Light." 4 Asian song celebrating the clod of dirt's enemy. 5 Why the diva's doing dishes in a diner. 6 [Those among whom listening and thinking are under developed skills.]
1 RICH COPAY POPE 2 NEPALIS CRUISED 3 ANTSY IPA DRAMA 4 LAO HOE HYMN 5 I LOST OPERA SOLO 6 CLUES "USA MALES"
Another niche puzzle for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The theme puts a lot of stress on the grid, so if it’s not your cup of tea, the rest of the fill is going to be a pretty boring slog. Enjoy.
I thought this was astounding. Eight poets, all recognizable to me (and I don’t even know much about poetry or read it often) with names that are words, fitting symmetrically (E-W symmetry) in the corners, with a perfect reveal. Bravo. Oh, and it bothered me not at all that only some of them are buried in POETS’ CORNER.
And lots of nice longer fill since the themers are all short and stuffed in the corners (except the revealer). A few clever clues (for FROST and PIT, for example). Yes, KAMPRAD is hilariously obscure but crosses are all fine. NASIM / MII crossing was a potential natick but I seemed like the best bet.
Thought INKS (“press releases”) would be oils.
Thanks for including the HELGA story, Rex. That’s amazing. All that and she ended up rejected by her community for abandoning the family? She is my new favorite person in history.
Had to cheat on NASIM/MII cross, also on ECOLI/CCR. Otherwise the puzzle was very doable, even though I never relied on the parenthetic parts of the clues. Didn't really understand them, anyway.
Googled on the IKEA guy and the SNL alum. Which is bad for a Wednesday. We were just at Westminster Abbey last summer and saw Poets Corner. You can feel an eerie vibe there
I got the theme early on and thought it was pretty clever, although it would have been better if all the poets in the puzzle were actually buried in Westminster Abbey. But maybe that’s too much to ask.
Otherwise, the puzzle was so filled with obscure proper names crossing each other (how many Naticks can one puzzle have?) that I did a lot of guessing. KAMPRAD? You’ve got to be kidding.
Can someone please explain PIT as the answer to 38D: Place to retire in a hurry? ??
But pit stop is also an expression people use all the time, say they are on a car trip and "make a pit stop". I do admit I didn't understand the clue till later, so I had to get all the crosses.
Thanks to my wife, a published but not famous poet (though she ought to be!), I so appreciate not only the craft of poetry, but especially how poetry can express the ineffable. Give me a crossword centered on poetry and my thumb turns up. (Your last offering on February 23 – a hoot – was also poetry related, and again, yay poetry!)
I also love a crossword that throws obstacles in my path, in today’s case, names I didn’t know and many clues whose answers I couldn’t immediately slap down. I love when this happens in the Times, because the puzzles are so well made and edited, I believe I will overcome these obstacles, if I hang in there. (And I did.)
I found the clue [Not competitive] for ONE SIDED especially tricky, a terrific misdirect, where I was looking for an adjective describing a person who isn’t into winning and losing. Also, I especially loved learning about Adrienne RICH. I didn’t know who she was, but just reading the Wikipedia article about her made me grateful that I do now.
Joe, you’ve already had three NYT puzzles this year – a lot for this space of time, these days in the Times. But the Times team knows a good thing when they see it, and I’m in full agreement. May your run continue, and thank you for an outing I greatly enjoyed!
Cute idea - filled chaotically. With Rex on the straightforward themers - revealer is neat but clearly gives away the game. The disjoint background of the poets doesn’t bother me - I’ll take FROST - keep STEIN.
The overall fill is Monday-like so the unknowns were backed into - KAMPRAD, NASIM etc. Note to the NYT - SNL hasn’t been relevant in years.
The ECOLI - F CLEF pair is visually interesting. Liked some of the non theme longs - KEEP CLOSE, OPERA SOLO, ENCAMPS etc are all solid. Have tried all of the non meat impersonators - SOY DOGS don’t cut it.
Another odd offering this week - but an enjoyable Wednesday solve nonetheless.
@JJK - "Can someone please explain PIT as the answer to 38D: Place to retire in a hurry?"
PIT riled me up too. Only now, after cursing it do I think it means 'a mine (pit) is the place where one can go dig up a bunch of ore/gems/precious metals and thereby quickly make enough money to retire' but I am still not sure about that.
Today made me fully realize that my particular alley is a cleverly-clued themeless puzzle laden with interesting facts. This puzzle is so far from being up my alley that it’s all the way across town, maybe in the next one over. It felt like one of those that centered the constructor’s craft over the solver’s experience - I truly could not care less about the architecture of a grid, and I’d already clocked that they were poet’s names, so the revealer did nothing but irk me. I would have been much more into the conceit if they all were buried in POETSCORNER. So yes, I’m with Rex, especially as someone who loves and used to write poetry, it feels like what could have been a cool theme underdelivered.
I will say that I’m glad if this introduces folks like @Lewis to Adrienne Rich’s work - her work was a revelation to me as a teenager. If folks want to check out a less-known contemporary poet that will absolutely take your breath away, I couldn’t recommend Danez Smith’s book “Homie” more highly.
In addition to the Natick(s), the fill definitely fell a little flat for me. There were absolutely some fair-to-good clues and answers (I also liked WHATTHE), but just as often, it felt a little bit lackluster. And I loathed HADSOME for “didn’t abstain” - it came way too close to green paint for me. On the whole, I guess I can concede that it’s solid enough, the puzzle, just not my cup of tea.
On a personal note, thanks all for the positive thoughts for my interview yesterday - what sweethearts you are! It went well, I think - I should know by end of day tomorrow. Eek!
Some awful crosses for a Wedensday. HELGA/KAMPRAD - well, the 'A' was the only reasonable guess for HELGA. HEY MR DJ/KAMPRAD - I know (and like) the song, but if I didn't I have no idea what I would have put there. NASIM/MII was a genuine WoE crossing WoE, and only because of analogy with WII did I go with MII there.
Also, there are an insane number of abbreviations today: UN-P.C., I.P.A., P.S.I., B.C.C.S, U.R.L., HEY MR. D.J., E. COLI, D.E.A., U.R.L., G.P.S., I.R.A., PELS, P.D.T., U.A.E., C.C.R., U.S.A. Ugh.
HOOHA? Um, uh, ok. And then crossed with KAMPRAD? That was almost as tough as the NASIM and MII cross. I had to look up Ms. Pedrad thinking I had no idea who she was, but then discovered she was just a not-ready player who I recognized but just who's name I didn't know. (Have you tried to sit through the opening credits of SNL without fast forwarding? It's endless.)
Not a surprise that KAMPRAD appeared for the first time in a NYT crossword, but I was surprised that yesterday's LUXURY also had that distinction. Nice to see that a constructor can still get that minor claim to fame without having to resort to, oh say, SOYDOG.
HAD SOME great fun with this finding all the poets in the corners. Nice addition of TETRAmeter, too. Looked up POETS’ CORNER at Westminster Abbey and found out that Thomas HARDY is buried there. Or, according to interestingliterature.com, at least most of him. The website says Hardy wished to be buried in Dorset, his birthplace, but those in charge said someone so important to the literature of the land must be in Westminster Abbey. The compromise: His heart was buried in his local parish church in Dorset and the rest of him received “full honours” in the Poets’ Corner. Seems unseemly to disregard the man’s request, though.
Agree with Rex about SOY DOG. I’ve mostly heard Smart Dog, a brand name, but my choice would be a Field Roast’s apple & sage sausage, and lots of sauerkraut.
Learned three proper names from the crosses: HELGA Estby, PELS team, Ingvar KAMPRAD. And like @Wanderlust 6:58, appreciated Rex’s sharing of Estby's story.
One woe for a DNF: Chose the wrong vowel for the 66A/62D cross: NASeM/MeI instead of NASIM/MII.
Especially liked seeing Adrienne Rich (has she ever been in a NYT crossword?) and Gertrude Stein, and Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse,” written in November 1785 when Burns felt a kinship with a mouse for ruined “best laid schemes of mice and men” after his plow (that is, plough) scattered her comfy nest and left her homeless, and in winter! But perhaps she moved inside Burns’s home on the quiet. I hope so. No cat there, I gather, but a beloved border collie. John Steinbeck liked the universality of its theme too, hence Of Mice and Men.
The stanza and its translation (I sure needed the translation when I first read the poem; Scottish dialect is tough but I smiled at Burns’s addressing her as Mousie):
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!
But little Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!
No CLUE what was going on here, in the CORNERS or anywhere else, other than a vague sense that it had something to do with poetry. Although I do know significantly more about that subject than about yesterday’s monster movies, I called it a themeless Wednesday and moved on.
Not familiar with the Westminster Abbey reference but POETS CORNER makes me think of beatniks wearing black clothing, snapping their fingers instead of applauding at someone reading a poem. I thought it was just the hip thing to do back in the day but a quick Google search indicates it’s apparently still proper etiquette because it’s considered more polite than clapping. And now I’m filing that away with other useless facts I don’t need to remember because I will never – never – attend a poetry reading.
Not a huge poetry person, so this was actually hard for me. Which was probably more fun.
Pretty unremarkable puzzle. I actually never even noticed KAMPRAD, having gotten all the crosses. But it's bad. Not so much for crossing HELGA (which is inferable) but for crossing HEYMRDJ. @Conrad nails it at 6:15am.
Ran into POETSCORNER fairly early in the proceedings and since I had two corners filled in with POETS already it was fun to see who the other four would be.
That was about it for fun. If I cared about streaks and/or solved online I would have done some alphabet running to try to complete the NASSIM/MII cross or the KAMPRAD/HEYMRDJJ cross, but since theses are example of PPP that I no interest in whatsoever I'll take my DNF and say I learned something, although It's something I hope to not see again. I mean, really.
I liked the POETS part of this just fine, JD, but if you're thinking of doing another deep dive into obscurity, Just Don't. Thanks for some fun, anyway.
@JJK and Cransto "Place to retire in a hurry?": in the INDY 500, e.g., all drivers make at least one very quick pit stop to have their shredding tires changed.
Solved as themeless, didn't see the poets until Burns (because I like that poem, and Burns). I think of Hardy as a novelist. Agree that KAMPRAD was a bridge too far, although I did get him, and HELGA, from crosses.
First the good news. I love the POETS in the CORNER and wish I'd thought of the theme myself. And all of those names at least are names worth knowing and remembering.
And then there are the Natick-y, crossing other names. HELGA and KAMPRAD and PELS (!!!) and the dooky HEYMRDJ. Also NASIM/MII where I Naticked with NASaM/MaI.
Look, even though I don't construct grids, I do know that the limitations placed on making a grid when the theme answers have to be placed in the corners and can go nowhere else are considerable. This limitation can even bring some of puzzledom's greatest grid makers to their knees. And therefore, would the legitimate answer to "why on earth did you include these arcane names that absolutely no one's going to know?" be "YOU try to accomplish this theme any other way."?
But I'm always wondering if what the constructor is really thinking is: "Heh heh, bet I'll stump you with this answer. And this one! And this one! You'll just have to deal with it, won't you, you poor schmucks."
It wasn't only NASaM/MaI that caused me a DNF. It was also the revolting-sounding SOY nOG which I'm glad to find out is not a drink -- at a cookout or anywhere else. Not that SOY DOG sounds any more delish.
If you gave that wonderful theme the excellent (or at the very least decent) fill it deserved, it might have garnered a POW. This way, it was never gonna happen.
So glad to see STEIN in one corner. Brought to mind my Caedmon recording of her reciting her “If I told him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso.” If you haven’t done so, read it with its immortal line “Shutters shut and open so do queens. “ Quite a treat —and “and this is so because.”
What would really have been neat is if all the poems referenced had been in TETRAmeter. The Burns is, buy "Something there is that does not love a wall" is penta-. Opportunity lost.
i actually read a whole article about IKEA and KAMPRAD in the New Yorker, maybe a decade ago, but I still couldn't remember it. And then I had Crop UP for 49-D, and didn't know that song. but I finally saw HOOHA, and it all worked out. NASIM was an almost-pure guess, though.
It was fun to guess the poets down in the bottom with no crosses, I'll say that.
I’m a recovering English teacher 20 years into retirement, so easy peasy around the grid corners! And I CRUISED IKEA’s KAMPRAD with crosses. MII & PIT would remain as WTF correct entries until I was schooled by Professor Parker. Now to Google PROKARYOTIC & enjoy commentariat early postings.
Tough; would have worked as a Fri. for MoI (which I considered at 62 D). lol
Got the NW & NE easily. The rest was a POWDER KEG!
Felt fortunate not to have dnf'ed.
@Megafrim (7:08 AM)
"Nordic Natick" 🤣
Still working on grokking the theme. [ok, got it: POETs in the corners; sadly, knew none of the works]
HELGA Estby: what a story!; thx @Rex for posting! :)
As always, love a challenge; and, this was clearly one! :)
Enjoyed the battle! :)
@Weezie (7:57 AM) 🤞 ___ @pablo: still working on a very tough Mon. New Yorker. Went into 'incubation mode' overnight. Will resume today with the 9 answers I don't know (all crossing one another in the lower Midwest-Carolina's area). ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
When I see a clunky translation like the one you cite for one of BURNS's "To a Mouse" stanzas, I shudder. If one is translating a poet blessed with one of the greatest poetic "ears" ever, you don't take a sledgehammer to his gorgeous meter. You reproduce that meter perfectly: it's part of your bleeping job. And if the task proves beyond you, then give the task to someone else.
Here's a beautiful translation of that particular stanza:
But little mouse, you’re not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid plans of mice and men Go oft awry, And leave us only grief and pain, For promised joy!
LOL at HOOHA. Big commotion? Sure. Let’s go with that.
Didn’t get that there were poets in the corners even after solving the revealer. Even with the poem titles in the clues. I thought the clue was referring to the actual physical appearance of the puzzle, like the shape made by the black and white parts resembled some part of Westminster Abbey. Just call me Amelia Bedelia, I guess. (Aging myself with that reference, I suspect.)
CITI crossing COPAY foreshadowed a clumsy puzzle, and then UNPC showed up. if you’re going to play the name game, then only theme names should appear in the grid.
This puzzle was challenging to me because of the obvious Natick territory, but doable. The thing I remember most about Robert Burns was what his mother said (apocryphally?) at his grave site. “Aye Bobby, ye asked them for bread and they have given ye a stane”.
@bocamp-That's EXACTLY where I screeched to a halt and started putting in likely letters, then using the "check" feature. Too much PPP for me. Good luck.
Ooh...How do I love thee...until a little name hit me with a brick. Will I remember you forever, KAMPRAD? You made me call home. My wounds healed and I danced joyfully with all the POETS. So creative and in sync. This was very enjoyable. I'll count the ways: When I figured out the POPE POUND, something popped. A smile and an AHA! I don't read much poetry because half the time I don't understand it but these names were all in the "Must Read" category of my English classes. So there's that. Then...you did give me names I didn't know but all except KAM, were gettable for me. Forget the names and fill in some bodacious words. I did. A huge pause at HELGA and her PELS. HELGA made more sense and PELS...well they just sat there hoping they exist. POWDER KEG, for some reason took a while to get as did INDIE and TETRA. Again, I just penned you in and you turned out to be good. I'll say that this was one of the funnest Wed. puzzles I've done in a while. POETS CORNER deserves an applause.
This was challenging for me due to the obvious Natick territory. The thing I remember most about Robert Burns is what his mother (apocryphally?) said at his grave site. “Aye Bobby, ye asked them for bread and they have given thee a stane (sic).”
I was intrigued by the bio Rex provided since Spokaloo is the next berg over. Here’s a more detailed picture of the expanded HELGA saga.
For anyone open to giving poetry another try (it’s good for the soul) begin with Ogden Nash or Billy Collins and enjoy a giggle. Then move on to any of Joe Deeney’s octet & be surprised and delighted (perhaps even enlightened).
Medium-tough. Hand up for NASIM, RICH and HELGA (as clued), KAMPRAD as WOEs...plus I didn’t catch on until I hit BURNS in the SW corner...so a tad tougher than the typical Wednesday for me. Fortunately, I kinda knew the crosses on the WOEs so I avoided Naticks. Clever, liked it.
Ezra Pound. So many complaints in this blog about not wanting see the names of terrible human beings - EP was terrible & this is his 2nd recent appearance. If he’s ok, it’s time to stop pretending it matters whether a name entry belongs to a decent human being.
"I don't read much poetry because half the time I don't understand it but these names were all in the "Must Read" category of my English classes. So there's that." -- @GILL
I'd maintain that the best poetry isn't obscure at all, @GILL. It's pretentious poetry that's [quite deliberately] obscure. And there's so damn much of it. Teachers do their students a huge disservice by assigning poems that are great big "Huhs?" (I'm looking at you, "The Wasteland"!) The less talented practitioners of the art confuse obscurity with depth. But to me, really great poetry is comprised of clear, strong thoughts and ideas -- beautifully, evocatively and musically written.
When I get back home later today, I'll send you a recommended reading list off-blog -- comprised of my lifelong faves. There won't be a soupcon of obscurity or pretentiousness in any of them. What your teachers did to you by making you hate and fear poetry is a real shame.
Of course it might have easily happened to all of us -- but, blessed with an early love of the form, I sought out the poets and works that most appealed to me without waiting for the often dreaded assignment. ("The Wasteland," I'm still looking at you.)
This is a terrible, shamefully anti-intellectual take on poetry. Just because a poem is dense or difficult doesn’t make it bad (or “obscure” or “pretentious”). Eliot is justly famous. It is possible to talk about poems you love without sneering at poems you don’t care for. Your smug self-certainty seems deeply anti-poetic.
WHAT THE? POET SCORNER? Who is this lowbrow who would SCORN a POET?
Had a DNF (but DNC) because of KAMPRA_, NAS_M, _EFF, and MI_. As for the last one, I see at xwordinfo that MII has appeared in a NYTXW 26 times during the Shortz era, 24 times clued as a Roman numeral. My favorite was as a YEAR in the reign of POPE Sylvester II. I would have gotten that one right away.
WHAT THE heck are PELS? (No peeking!)
I did enjoy noticing that "this puzzle's architecture" was a dead ringer for "Westminster Abbey".
M&A is not very knowledgable about poets, but did recognize some of the cornered rhymemeisters. Kinda cool theme idea, tho. Haven't had a "cornered themers" puz in quite a spell, far as I can recall. Primo E-W puzgrid symmetry, btw.
KAMPRAD had a superbly apt, symmetric(al) partner entry of WHATTHE. Tough entry to suss out … felt over-ENKAMP-ed. Lost precious nanoseconds.
M&A is, probably to his loss, not much of a poetry or literature reader. I blame it on my school system, I guess. Havin to spend endless crucial youthful spare time readin looong, borin books as home-Work assignment duty really turned M&A off to delvin into further readin material, when later given his own choice. [Exception: Did enjoy the "Tale of Two Cities" book assignment.]
Young M&A did read lotsa sci-fi short story anthologies, when between the school's borin book assignments, tho. He also managed to absorb every single Sherlock Holmes story, long or short. And any Carl Barks (Disney ducks) comic book was also a must. Rest of the time, Lil M&A would draw his own comic books.
Nowadays in spare times, M&A sorta prefers creatin stuff, like artworks and runtpuzs, rather than readin stuff. Just m&e. Don't begrudge other folks' [like my PuzEatinSpouse's] luv of readin, at all. De Bustagut.
Thanx for the Deeney-esque fun, Joe D dude. But, I kinda digressed.
@Nancy 10:15 – Thank you! I thought that translation was off, too (particularly the jarring “often” for “oft”), but hadn’t time to search for better. The one you chose is certainly that, and more. As you say, beautiful to read, the rhythm wonderful. Do you know who the translator is? I’d love to see the whole poem translated by this person.
YUP, I also had HEY, MRS. J! "A radio staple" for Rex... but not for this non-American who was negative 5 years old when the song was released. As such I spent 41D - EONs looking for my mistake. Luckily MII was a gimme. I still would've achieved a slow time for a Wednesday, but with aaaall the time it took to spot that one square, my result was in hard Saturday territory.
I was already worried when the 1A clue looked theme-related. Themers on the edge tend to lead to subpar fill and this grid delivered IN SPADES. UNPC made me think of Rex immediately. And then HELGA NASIM KAMPRAD CCR(?) FCLEF. And the only fill I liked besides the revealer itself was POWDERKEG (KAPOW!) and learning about SOYDOG.
Adding to the chorus here. Too many obscure names. Never heard of Helga Estby, Ingvar Kamprad, Jeff Probst, or Nasim Pedrad. Hey Mr. DJ was released 28 years ago and apparently peaked at number 6 in the US. Is that really what we’re going for in a crossword? They were all borderline inferable, but not great to have 4 of these 5 crossing each other in some way. I don’t know why this wasn’t polished more to get that stuff out, or at least minimized to avoid the crosses. More than a little frustrating.
I never complain about PPP no matter how much I detest it, particularly the categories of PPP that pass for modern or hip. The NYT puzzle is beautifully edited, as someone else said, so those obscure references are always inferable.
This was true today, though just barely -- it was close. This was almost too far.
Almost DNF, but I guessed the Nintendo avatar must be a Wii MII. (Hi @kitshef) Funny. There’ve definitely been Worse Wednesdays. And then the Wiki expedition - from Ezra (and Joyce and Hemingway, et al) to the Rothschilds to one of their decendents’ inlaws, Amartya Kumar Sen, an Indian economist and philosopher, to Indian atheism. Gotta love puzzles.
HELGA's story was heartbreaking - including the longer version with her family burning her story. Wholehearted agree with you @Nancy re pretentiousness of obscure poetry. I finished this puzzle, but guessing the naticks doesn’t leave a satisfying feeling. PIT had a good clue.
If they had just given HELGA a suitable Wednesday-level clue via Hagar the Horrible, that would have made that area a lot smoother. I don’t remember Hey Mr. DJ, but at least I was able to infer the D by running the alphabet.
An appropriate puzzle for April - Poetry Month. I appreciate the positive comments on this one, without feeling quite so positive myself, what with the familiar poets pushed off into the CORNERs and the middle occupied by a throng of strangers: HELGA, PELS, KAMPRAD, NASIM, MII, CCR, JEFF, and MR. DJ. Very nice central concept and reveal, though, gotta give it that.
This week I've been reading poems by the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. Here's one I like, The Raincoat.
Initially, the clue "this puzzle's architecture" threw me off. I was staring at how the puzzle was built (white and black), not it's word fill. It seems like architecture is the wrong word to use.
I wonder if the “architecture” part is a piece of the design …. The layout of Westminster Abbey has a double arch (viewed from above) similar to the layout of the central black squares. It’s not letting me attach a picture here but google it and see if that’s relevant.
Kind of weird to say that Swift is out of place here because he’s “an Irishman.” Swift was an Anglican priest, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (where he’s buried.) Other Irish poets are buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey— Sheridan, for instance.
I’m a bit surprised that no confusion over PDT has been mentioned. These time zone fills are usually a gimme, but Sonoma is in the Central time zone. Arizona does not observe daylight savings time so I think, technically, they remain in CST which, conveniently for us west coasters, is the same as PDT.
Well, I have no beef with long and complex poems and am quite an admirer of T.S. Eliot ... but as a poet he does not come close to Walt Kelley, of POGO fame:
“The little frog was colored pink, What does a pinkie froggie think? I’ll tell you what the froggie thunk... He thunk: ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk...”
Dear Amiga @Nancy; I knew you liked poetry; you're one yourself. Yes...I had teachers that would foist the obscure into my brain...nothing clicked. My brother was a lover of poetry and was determined to get me hooked as well. He gave me W.H.AUDEN's collection of poems hoping I would change my mind. It did - but only for Auden. I still have the book and at times I'll open it up to "Funeral Blues." I loved that one and understood it well. I agree with @MJB....you should post you poetry list here. I'm sure the moderators won't mind since today's topic is poetry.
Ezra Pound left us with great poetry. Funny that I just recently started reading him—-because of a scene in the new series Spy Among Friends.
As a guy having a minor in English lit. and never having been introduced to such a great poet, I feel a little bit , well, betrayed.I can only assume that he was not taught becase like many people like you all thought he was a terrible man, without reading one line of his magnificent oeuvre.
Liked the puzzle overall. Agree that it pushed the limits of name crosses. Thought the last letter would be an I as in NASIM but left it blank by accident (dead tree edition). I actually like reading poetry in high school but never buy poetry. Only read them in book reviews. However, I do like the opening, April is the cruelest month....in the Waste Land. Don't think I ever read the whole thing. To be fair to crossword favorite T.S. Eliot the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a great poem. Wonder if Nancy likes it.
Maybe I’m too new to this, or maybe I’m not thinking clearly since I’m on the train, but this puzzle has way more than 78 clues. Can some explain what I’m not getting with that clue?
@dgd (4:39) Ah, yes. Prufrock. "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?" Yecch. No, I hate that poem!
But while I'm not at all an Eliot fan, of the poems of his that I do know -- and there are surely a great many more that I don't know -- there are some lines from "The Hollow Men" that I absolutely love. That are way up there in my pantheon of great poetic lines:
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
I'm gratified that more than a few of you here are interested in my thoughts on poetry. I promise that I will post my list of favorites right here on the blog. I just walked in the front door -- so if I can't do it by 10 or so tonight, I'll do it tomorrow morning.
I don’t come here often. for April is the cruelest month for me but I was quite interested in comments by @nancy about The Wasteland which I have always , how should I put it, held in high esteem, , enjoyed immensely, , been actually thrilled to read . Love to get her list as @Gilli suggests. To sorta push aside a work that many consider a true English great needs some comparisons to other works. I guess Pound is out.
@Carola, Thanks VERY much for the link to the Ada Limón poem. I'd heard of her but had never read any of her poems. I really liked this one and may look for more.
Nancy, Thank you for the link to Stewart Everett’s translation. It’s lovely and clear and has a nice cadence. I bookmarked it.
T S Eliot’s The Waste Land is a tough poem, obscure in parts, long, and difficult. It’s so long it gets italics! Some revere it, some don’t, and that’s the way it’ll always be (and thank goodness, right?). Words have different shadings for different people. Like colors and painting. Like singing and songs (i.e., poetry, really, as you certainly know). Of course this isn’t news, though often there’s a consensus about what’s good. The Waste Land isn’t a favorite of mine. I’m with Gill about “Funeral Blues” by Auden. I thought the actor (John Hannah) who read the poem at the funeral in Four Weddings and a Funeral of his character's friend – his mate, really – did it so well.
In a completely different way, I also think A A Milne’s poem “Forgiven” is wonderful.
Good prose, too, has a euphonic rhythm, and you can sense when something’s not quite right. Reading has a silent sound of tone and emphasis and length of pause. Reading aloud is just not silent, but same thing. A change in any of those three components changes the meaning.
Have you seen the recent documentary Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb? In case you haven’t, I recommend it. Truly wonderful. Erudite, humorous, enlightening. Fun. Though I don’t think I’d circle the wagons for every punctuation mark because sometimes a comma just sounds better than a semicolon and maybe you can’t explain why.
I’m also with Gill and @MJB 1:52 – If it’s workable, can you post your poetry list here?
Am I missing something? The clue for 12 down says "this puzzle has 78 of them" and the answer is "clues". There are 71 across clues and 65 down clues. How does that add up to 78?
@Aelurus 6:57. Thank you for posting "Funeral Blues." I had seen Four Weddings and a Funeral and that part made me cry. When my brother died way too soon, This poem was read at his funeral. So there are poems that I not only love, but that I understand.
@Aelurus and @Gill -- Auden is one of my favorite poets and "Funeral Blues" is one of my favorite poems. I'd forgotten that incredibly moving scene from the movie, so many thanks for the link.
My favorite poems are the those that fall into at least one of two categories:
1) At least one stanza in the poem makes me cry 2) The poem has gorgeous sonority
If they manage to possess both, then wow.
What I personally don't care about are metaphors. I never met a metaphor I would cross the street for. "Like a patient etherized upon a table." Yes, I suppose the sky can look like that if you squint, but the line does absolutely nothing for me emotionally. When there are too many metaphors in a poem, I can hear the wheels turning in the poet's head. The effort shows. The perspiration drips. And I do feel that so much modern poetry has replaced gorgeous sound and exquisite form with wall-to-wall metaphors.
So now you know some of my biases. But I've also been careful to fulfill my promise to @GILL in making up a list -- i.e. that she would understand every single poem that was in it. I was, for example, going to put "Kubla Khan" in my list -- such glorious sound! -- but when I reread it, I realized that some of Coleridge's drug-induced visions were sort of, well, off-the-wall and that while the poem has many virtues, complete clarity may not be one of them.
So here's my list. It includes a number of poems universally thought of as "chestnuts" -- and that's okay with me. Things tend to become chestnuts because people love them so much.
1. "In Memoriam" by Tennyson. It's very, VERY long and it's also very wonderful. There's one stanza I can never read without crying: The "Behold we know not anything" quatrain.
"Crossing the Bar" by Tennyson (very chestnut-ty, yes I know.)
"The Lamb" by Blake
"Jerusalem" by Blake
"The Road Not Taken" by Frost
"Do Not Go Gentle" by Dylan Thomas
"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
"Ozymandias" by Shelley
"Tommy" by Kipling
"I Have a Rendezvous With Death" by Alan Seeger
"Eros Turannos" by E.A. Robinson
"Love Among the Ruins" by Browning
"A Psalm of Life" by Longfellow
"The Second Coming" by Yeats (It lacks music, but it has so much to say...)
"My father moved through dooms of love" by cummings
"In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by Auden
"The Hollow Men" by Eliot (the only poem of his I like)
And then there are the poems I like exclusively for their sound since none of them really seem to have a great deal to say. (Well, maybe "Gunga Din" -- except it says the wrong, unenlightened, colonialist thing.) But the sound of each of these poems is exquisite; Tennyson, Poe and Kipling had such extraordinary poetic ears:
"The River" and "The Splendor Falls" by Tennyson
"The Raven", "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee" by Poe
"Gunga Din" and "Mandalay" by Kipling
I'm sure I've left out dozens of poems I love and that have meant a lot to me over the years. But these were the ones that came most readily to mind.
If anyone here has poems that they especially love, please share them with me and with everyone else.
Thank you, @Fearless One, for your last-second PS, for otherwise I was primed to ask what on EARTH the word PIT had to do with that clue.
That was one of several guesses that I made...all of them fortunately correct. The one in the SW (HAS_M/M_I) was a pure natick.
A neat idea, having all those POETs in the CORNERs, but boy, did we ever stretch things to make it work! Somebody named RICH who apparently wrote something called "Diving Into the Wreck?" If you say so. The unpronounceable name of a foreign company CEO? Gimme a break. Some foreign-born suffragist NEVER mentioned in ANY history class that I know of? Come ON! Oh, and that guy from SNL...I guess that's my fault. I just never got into that. Other things were happening on Saturday night, as I recall...somewhat foggily.
Theme nice, execution not so much, fill...Yecch. Bogey.
Loved the theme but I did not like the Natick at 62D and 66A (MII-NASIM). Learned about HELGA Estby today. Challenging for a Wednesday. Overall, quite good.
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Hi friends! Let’s have a Natick party in the southern cross! Painful.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteLots of WOEs here. Luckily I was able to infer HELGA from crosses and the "Norwegian" part of the clue. But I totally Naticked at the last letter in the IKEA founder's name (30D). Conflating him with a tennis player, I figured it "had" to be KAMPRAs. That led to the perfectly reasonable-sounding "HEY MRS. J" for the song at 58A, which prevented the happy tune.
Crying laughing at “HEY, MRS. J!” Excellent wrong answer! ~RP
DeleteThis puzzle had too many Naticks. Otherwise, enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteVery challenging for me, as there were a bunch of proper names I don’t know, and I’ve never heard of poets corner. I was able to get the idea that the “double clued” entries were writers of a sort but about half of them I didn’t know and I didn’t make the poetry connection until I got the revealer through enough crosses. Plus HELGA and KAMPRAD. I liked the puzzle and appreciated the theme, even if the names were mostly out of my wheelhouse.
ReplyDeleteBeing rather arty-farty, you'd think I would have some experience with these poems, but To a Mouse is the only one I'd previously read. I've now read the others lying here at 3 am with a cold breeze coming into the bedroom where I'm too lazy to get up and close the window. I will reread them today after coffee and see if they're more charming then.
ReplyDeleteEzra Pound again. Sigh. And speaking of gross, how about $780 million of UNPC you titans of journalism with your INKS. If they can afford to pay that, just imagine what they made selling that DRAMA.
Didn't need to know the poets or the poems to finish this little gem of a grid. Knowing the name of the IKEA guy would've been helpful, but six crosses and one wild guess will bring most puzzles into submission.
Loved: WHAT THE...I say it all the time.
Ouch: [Press releases.] = INKS.
Ug: These editors hafta know MII/NASIM crossing at the I is poor, and they do it anyway, right? Why?
Tee-Hee: HOOHA.
Uniclues:
1 Well, what're you gonna do? Fit a camel through a needle's eye?
2 Eased through downtown Kathmandu on a Friday night.
3 That moment when a guy in a beanie and a beard says, "I think I'll go back to Bud Light."
4 Asian song celebrating the clod of dirt's enemy.
5 Why the diva's doing dishes in a diner.
6 [Those among whom listening and thinking are under developed skills.]
1 RICH COPAY POPE
2 NEPALIS CRUISED
3 ANTSY IPA DRAMA
4 LAO HOE HYMN
5 I LOST OPERA SOLO
6 CLUES "USA MALES"
Another niche puzzle for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The theme puts a lot of stress on the grid, so if it’s not your cup of tea, the rest of the fill is going to be a pretty boring slog. Enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was astounding. Eight poets, all recognizable to me (and I don’t even know much about poetry or read it often) with names that are words, fitting symmetrically (E-W symmetry) in the corners, with a perfect reveal. Bravo. Oh, and it bothered me not at all that only some of them are buried in POETS’ CORNER.
ReplyDeleteAnd lots of nice longer fill since the themers are all short and stuffed in the corners (except the revealer). A few clever clues (for FROST and PIT, for example). Yes, KAMPRAD is hilariously obscure but crosses are all fine. NASIM / MII crossing was a potential natick but I seemed like the best bet.
Thought INKS (“press releases”) would be oils.
Thanks for including the HELGA story, Rex. That’s amazing. All that and she ended up rejected by her community for abandoning the family? She is my new favorite person in history.
Agree with all your points. Shame on the non sponsor
DeleteHad to cheat on NASIM/MII cross, also on ECOLI/CCR. Otherwise the puzzle was very doable, even though I never relied on the parenthetic parts of the clues. Didn't really understand them, anyway.
ReplyDeleteGoogled on the IKEA guy and the SNL alum. Which is bad for a Wednesday. We were just at Westminster Abbey last summer and saw Poets Corner. You can feel an eerie vibe there
ReplyDeleteHelga/Kamprad marks a stunning first in crossword history: The NORDIC NATICK!
ReplyDeleteI like 😆
DeleteI got the theme early on and thought it was pretty clever, although it would have been better if all the poets in the puzzle were actually buried in Westminster Abbey. But maybe that’s too much to ask.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, the puzzle was so filled with obscure proper names crossing each other (how many Naticks can one puzzle have?) that I did a lot of guessing. KAMPRAD? You’ve got to be kidding.
Can someone please explain PIT as the answer to 38D: Place to retire in a hurry? ??
“pit” stop?
DeleteI believe it refers to the pit stop in auto racing.
DeleteIf you quit a car race because your car is broken or something, you retire to the pit. (As in pit lane.)
DeleteI used to watch a lot of racing as a teenager and I didn’t get this answer. It’s pretty flipping obscure.
But pit stop is also an expression people use all the time, say they are on a car trip and "make a pit stop". I do admit I didn't understand the clue till later, so I had to get all the crosses.
DeleteAs in “re-tire,” as in have new tires put on your car. As in something that happens in the pit at auto races
DeleteRe: 48D - Is there anything more delicious than a SOYDOG? Well, in my opinion, yes - everything.
ReplyDeleteSince I don't know a poet from a puta, this puzzle was a long way from my wheelhouse but fun to finally figure out.
I’ve only known and eaten them as “veggie dogs” and they’re actually quite good!
DeletePIT - think NASCAR car race
ReplyDeleteThanks to my wife, a published but not famous poet (though she ought to be!), I so appreciate not only the craft of poetry, but especially how poetry can express the ineffable. Give me a crossword centered on poetry and my thumb turns up. (Your last offering on February 23 – a hoot – was also poetry related, and again, yay poetry!)
ReplyDeleteI also love a crossword that throws obstacles in my path, in today’s case, names I didn’t know and many clues whose answers I couldn’t immediately slap down. I love when this happens in the Times, because the puzzles are so well made and edited, I believe I will overcome these obstacles, if I hang in there. (And I did.)
I found the clue [Not competitive] for ONE SIDED especially tricky, a terrific misdirect, where I was looking for an adjective describing a person who isn’t into winning and losing. Also, I especially loved learning about Adrienne RICH. I didn’t know who she was, but just reading the Wikipedia article about her made me grateful that I do now.
Joe, you’ve already had three NYT puzzles this year – a lot for this space of time, these days in the Times. But the Times team knows a good thing when they see it, and I’m in full agreement. May your run continue, and thank you for an outing I greatly enjoyed!
@JJK: a pit on the side of a racetrack is where a car would have a flat tire changed...or re-tired.
ReplyDeleteCute idea - filled chaotically. With Rex on the straightforward themers - revealer is neat but clearly gives away the game. The disjoint background of the poets doesn’t bother me - I’ll take FROST - keep STEIN.
ReplyDeleteCCR
The overall fill is Monday-like so the unknowns were backed into - KAMPRAD, NASIM etc. Note to the NYT - SNL hasn’t been relevant in years.
The ECOLI - F CLEF pair is visually interesting. Liked some of the non theme longs - KEEP CLOSE, OPERA SOLO, ENCAMPS etc are all solid. Have tried all of the non meat impersonators - SOY DOGS don’t cut it.
Another odd offering this week - but an enjoyable Wednesday solve nonetheless.
POWDERfinger
@JJK - "Can someone please explain PIT as the answer to 38D: Place to retire in a hurry?"
ReplyDeletePIT riled me up too. Only now, after cursing it do I think it means 'a mine (pit) is the place where one can go dig up a bunch of ore/gems/precious metals and thereby quickly make enough money to retire' but I am still not sure about that.
I had NOTDOG instead of SOYDOG for too long.
re--tire
DeleteThe poets were all gettable. Too many other proper names creating Naticks.
ReplyDeleteToday made me fully realize that my particular alley is a cleverly-clued themeless puzzle laden with interesting facts. This puzzle is so far from being up my alley that it’s all the way across town, maybe in the next one over. It felt like one of those that centered the constructor’s craft over the solver’s experience - I truly could not care less about the architecture of a grid, and I’d already clocked that they were poet’s names, so the revealer did nothing but irk me. I would have been much more into the conceit if they all were buried in POETSCORNER. So yes, I’m with Rex, especially as someone who loves and used to write poetry, it feels like what could have been a cool theme underdelivered.
ReplyDeleteI will say that I’m glad if this introduces folks like @Lewis to Adrienne Rich’s work - her work was a revelation to me as a teenager. If folks want to check out a less-known contemporary poet that will absolutely take your breath away, I couldn’t recommend Danez Smith’s book “Homie” more highly.
In addition to the Natick(s), the fill definitely fell a little flat for me. There were absolutely some fair-to-good clues and answers (I also liked WHATTHE), but just as often, it felt a little bit lackluster. And I loathed HADSOME for “didn’t abstain” - it came way too close to green paint for me. On the whole, I guess I can concede that it’s solid enough, the puzzle, just not my cup of tea.
On a personal note, thanks all for the positive thoughts for my interview yesterday - what sweethearts you are! It went well, I think - I should know by end of day tomorrow. Eek!
Natick City.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry but am I the only person who uses Hoo-ha to mean something else?
ReplyDeleteNope
DeleteSome awful crosses for a Wedensday.
ReplyDeleteHELGA/KAMPRAD - well, the 'A' was the only reasonable guess for HELGA.
HEY MR DJ/KAMPRAD - I know (and like) the song, but if I didn't I have no idea what I would have put there.
NASIM/MII was a genuine WoE crossing WoE, and only because of analogy with WII did I go with MII there.
Also, there are an insane number of abbreviations today: UN-P.C., I.P.A., P.S.I., B.C.C.S, U.R.L., HEY MR. D.J., E. COLI, D.E.A., U.R.L., G.P.S., I.R.A., PELS, P.D.T., U.A.E., C.C.R., U.S.A. Ugh.
I echo all the other Natick complaints. Thought I was home free when I saw all the poet/gimmees, but boy was I wrong.
ReplyDeleteHOOHA? Um, uh, ok. And then crossed with KAMPRAD? That was almost as tough as the NASIM and MII cross. I had to look up Ms. Pedrad thinking I had no idea who she was, but then discovered she was just a not-ready player who I recognized but just who's name I didn't know. (Have you tried to sit through the opening credits of SNL without fast forwarding? It's endless.)
ReplyDeleteNot a surprise that KAMPRAD appeared for the first time in a NYT crossword, but I was surprised that yesterday's LUXURY also had that distinction. Nice to see that a constructor can still get that minor claim to fame without having to resort to, oh say, SOYDOG.
HAD SOME great fun with this finding all the poets in the corners. Nice addition of TETRAmeter, too. Looked up POETS’ CORNER at Westminster Abbey and found out that Thomas HARDY is buried there. Or, according to interestingliterature.com, at least most of him. The website says Hardy wished to be buried in Dorset, his birthplace, but those in charge said someone so important to the literature of the land must be in Westminster Abbey. The compromise: His heart was buried in his local parish church in Dorset and the rest of him received “full honours” in the Poets’ Corner. Seems unseemly to disregard the man’s request, though.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Rex about SOY DOG. I’ve mostly heard Smart Dog, a brand name, but my choice would be a Field Roast’s apple & sage sausage, and lots of sauerkraut.
Learned three proper names from the crosses: HELGA Estby, PELS team, Ingvar KAMPRAD. And like @Wanderlust 6:58, appreciated Rex’s sharing of Estby's story.
One woe for a DNF: Chose the wrong vowel for the 66A/62D cross:
NASeM/MeI instead of NASIM/MII.
Especially liked seeing Adrienne Rich (has she ever been in a NYT crossword?) and Gertrude Stein, and Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse,” written in November 1785 when Burns felt a kinship with a mouse for ruined “best laid schemes of mice and men” after his plow (that is, plough) scattered her comfy nest and left her homeless, and in winter! But perhaps she moved inside Burns’s home on the quiet. I hope so. No cat there, I gather, but a beloved border collie. John Steinbeck liked the universality of its theme too, hence Of Mice and Men.
The stanza and its translation (I sure needed the translation when I first read the poem; Scottish dialect is tough but I smiled at Burns’s addressing her as Mousie):
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Thanks, Joe Deeney — your puzzle did not go awry!
No CLUE what was going on here, in the CORNERS or anywhere else, other than a vague sense that it had something to do with poetry. Although I do know significantly more about that subject than about yesterday’s monster movies, I called it a themeless Wednesday and moved on.
ReplyDeleteNot familiar with the Westminster Abbey reference but POETS CORNER makes me think of beatniks wearing black clothing, snapping their fingers instead of applauding at someone reading a poem. I thought it was just the hip thing to do back in the day but a quick Google search indicates it’s apparently still proper etiquette because it’s considered more polite than clapping. And now I’m filing that away with other useless facts I don’t need to remember because I will never – never – attend a poetry reading.
Not a huge poetry person, so this was actually hard for me. Which was probably more fun.
ReplyDeletePretty unremarkable puzzle. I actually never even noticed KAMPRAD, having gotten all the crosses. But it's bad. Not so much for crossing HELGA (which is inferable) but for crossing HEYMRDJ. @Conrad nails it at 6:15am.
Ran into POETSCORNER fairly early in the proceedings and since I had two corners filled in with POETS already it was fun to see who the other four would be.
ReplyDeleteThat was about it for fun. If I cared about streaks and/or solved online I would have done some alphabet running to try to complete the NASSIM/MII cross or the KAMPRAD/HEYMRDJJ cross, but since theses are example of PPP that I no interest in whatsoever I'll take my DNF and say I learned something, although It's something I hope to not see again. I mean, really.
I liked the POETS part of this just fine, JD, but if you're thinking of doing another deep dive into obscurity, Just Don't. Thanks for some fun, anyway.
Retire quickly. As in put new tires on the car in the PIT.
ReplyDeleteNaticks indeed. Too many obscure names and I'm sure several of us had to alphabet whack a couple of squares to get this one over the line!
ReplyDelete@JJK and Cransto
ReplyDelete"Place to retire in a hurry?": in the INDY 500, e.g., all drivers make at least one very quick pit stop to have their shredding tires changed.
Solved as themeless, didn't see the poets until Burns (because I like that poem, and Burns). I think of Hardy as a novelist. Agree that KAMPRAD was a bridge too far, although I did get him, and HELGA, from crosses.
ReplyDeleteSeemed Wednesday-ish.
First the good news. I love the POETS in the CORNER and wish I'd thought of the theme myself. And all of those names at least are names worth knowing and remembering.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there are the Natick-y, crossing other names. HELGA and KAMPRAD and PELS (!!!) and the dooky HEYMRDJ. Also NASIM/MII where I Naticked with NASaM/MaI.
Look, even though I don't construct grids, I do know that the limitations placed on making a grid when the theme answers have to be placed in the corners and can go nowhere else are considerable. This limitation can even bring some of puzzledom's greatest grid makers to their knees. And therefore, would the legitimate answer to "why on earth did you include these arcane names that absolutely no one's going to know?" be "YOU try to accomplish this theme any other way."?
But I'm always wondering if what the constructor is really thinking is: "Heh heh, bet I'll stump you with this answer. And this one! And this one! You'll just have to deal with it, won't you, you poor schmucks."
It wasn't only NASaM/MaI that caused me a DNF. It was also the revolting-sounding SOY nOG which I'm glad to find out is not a drink -- at a cookout or anywhere else. Not that SOY DOG sounds any more delish.
If you gave that wonderful theme the excellent (or at the very least decent) fill it deserved, it might have garnered a POW. This way, it was never gonna happen.
So glad to see STEIN in one corner. Brought to mind my Caedmon recording of her reciting her “If I told him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso.” If you haven’t done so, read it with its immortal line “Shutters shut and open so do queens. “ Quite a treat —and “and this is so because.”
ReplyDeleteWhat would really have been neat is if all the poems referenced had been in TETRAmeter. The Burns is, buy "Something there is that does not love a wall" is penta-. Opportunity lost.
ReplyDeletei actually read a whole article about IKEA and KAMPRAD in the New Yorker, maybe a decade ago, but I still couldn't remember it. And then I had Crop UP for 49-D, and didn't know that song. but I finally saw HOOHA, and it all worked out. NASIM was an almost-pure guess, though.
It was fun to guess the poets down in the bottom with no crosses, I'll say that.
That Helga story just broke my heart !!! Would love to know who that “sponsor” was…just awful !
ReplyDeleteI’m a recovering English teacher 20 years into retirement, so easy peasy around the grid corners! And I CRUISED IKEA’s KAMPRAD with crosses. MII & PIT would remain as WTF correct entries until I was schooled by Professor Parker. Now to Google PROKARYOTIC & enjoy commentariat early postings.
ReplyDeleteThx, Joe, for this chewy, POETic Wednes puz! :)
ReplyDeleteTough; would have worked as a Fri. for MoI (which I considered at 62 D). lol
Got the NW & NE easily. The rest was a POWDER KEG!
Felt fortunate not to have dnf'ed.
@Megafrim (7:08 AM)
"Nordic Natick" 🤣
Still working on grokking the theme. [ok, got it: POETs in the corners; sadly, knew none of the works]
HELGA Estby: what a story!; thx @Rex for posting! :)
As always, love a challenge; and, this was clearly one! :)
Enjoyed the battle! :)
@Weezie (7:57 AM) 🤞
___
@pablo: still working on a very tough Mon. New Yorker. Went into 'incubation mode' overnight. Will resume today with the 9 answers I don't know (all crossing one another in the lower Midwest-Carolina's area).
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Aerulus (8:59) --
ReplyDeleteWhen I see a clunky translation like the one you cite for one of BURNS's "To a Mouse" stanzas, I shudder. If one is translating a poet blessed with one of the greatest poetic "ears" ever, you don't take a sledgehammer to his gorgeous meter. You reproduce that meter perfectly: it's part of your bleeping job. And if the task proves beyond you, then give the task to someone else.
Here's a beautiful translation of that particular stanza:
But little mouse, you’re not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid plans of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us only grief and pain,
For promised joy!
LOL at HOOHA. Big commotion? Sure. Let’s go with that.
ReplyDeleteDidn’t get that there were poets in the corners even after solving the revealer. Even with the poem titles in the clues. I thought the clue was referring to the actual physical appearance of the puzzle, like the shape made by the black and white parts resembled some part of Westminster Abbey. Just call me Amelia Bedelia, I guess. (Aging myself with that reference, I suspect.)
CITI crossing COPAY foreshadowed a clumsy puzzle, and then UNPC showed up. if you’re going to play the name game, then only theme names should appear in the grid.
ReplyDeleteCan't understand your dislike of this one. I looked up and read or reread all of the poems cited and feel enriched going into the rest of the day.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle was challenging to me because of the obvious Natick territory, but doable. The thing I remember most about Robert Burns was what his mother said (apocryphally?) at his grave site. “Aye Bobby, ye asked them for bread and they have given ye a stane”.
ReplyDelete@bocamp-That's EXACTLY where I screeched to a halt and started putting in likely letters, then using the "check" feature. Too much PPP for me. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteOoh...How do I love thee...until a little name hit me with a brick. Will I remember you forever, KAMPRAD?
ReplyDeleteYou made me call home. My wounds healed and I danced joyfully with all the POETS. So creative and in sync. This was very enjoyable.
I'll count the ways: When I figured out the POPE POUND, something popped. A smile and an AHA! I don't read much poetry because half the time I don't understand it but these names were all in the "Must Read" category of my English classes. So there's that.
Then...you did give me names I didn't know but all except KAM, were gettable for me. Forget the names and fill in some bodacious words. I did. A huge pause at HELGA and her PELS. HELGA made more sense and PELS...well they just sat there hoping they exist.
POWDER KEG, for some reason took a while to get as did INDIE and TETRA. Again, I just penned you in and you turned out to be good.
I'll say that this was one of the funnest Wed. puzzles I've done in a while. POETS CORNER deserves an applause.
Zhane? WTF
ReplyDeleteThis was challenging for me due to the obvious Natick territory. The thing I remember most about Robert Burns is what his mother (apocryphally?) said at his grave site. “Aye Bobby, ye asked them for bread and they have given thee a stane (sic).”
ReplyDeleteToo many potential Naticks in this one.
ReplyDeleteI had HEY MRs J/KAMPRAs because why not?
@Nancy. Due to a plethora of vegans, our family drinks soy nog at Christmas. Tastes pretty much like egg nog, but not quite as RICH.
ReplyDeleteI don’t consider ECOLI to be a “model organism” whether Prokaryotic or not. Gigi Hadid is a model organism.
I don’t know if it would be notable as a Puzzle Pair to @Lewis, but HADSOME HOOHA definitely conjures something.
I’m thinking that a nice follow up to this Poets Corner puzz might be Deadman’s Curve.
Pretty fun except for Mr. IKEA. Thanks, Joe Deeney.
I was intrigued by the bio Rex provided since Spokaloo is the next berg over. Here’s a more detailed picture of the expanded HELGA saga.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone open to giving poetry another try (it’s good for the soul) begin with Ogden Nash or Billy Collins and enjoy a giggle. Then move on to any of Joe Deeney’s octet & be surprised and delighted (perhaps even enlightened).
Natick is a city and this puzzle's nickname is Natick City! Ugh.
ReplyDeleteWhen one out of every three answers is a proper noun, I gotta say
ReplyDeleteNames,
and names,
and names,
Oh, dear,
Sorry, crossword.
I’m outta here.
Medium-tough. Hand up for NASIM, RICH and HELGA (as clued), KAMPRAD as WOEs...plus I didn’t catch on until I hit BURNS in the SW corner...so a tad tougher than the typical Wednesday for me. Fortunately, I kinda knew the crosses on the WOEs so I avoided Naticks. Clever, liked it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying anyone should remember the name, but didn't KAMPRAD show up not too long ago? ...or maybe in the NYer
ReplyDelete"partook" seems better as opposite of "abstain", unless of course it isn't actually a word.
Ezra Pound. So many complaints in this blog about not wanting see the names of terrible human beings - EP was terrible & this is his 2nd recent appearance. If he’s ok, it’s time to stop pretending it matters whether a name entry belongs to a decent human being.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely with you. Just so tired of shouting into the wind about that kind of thing.
Delete"I don't read much poetry because half the time I don't understand it but these names were all in the "Must Read" category of my English classes. So there's that." -- @GILL
ReplyDeleteI'd maintain that the best poetry isn't obscure at all, @GILL. It's pretentious poetry that's [quite deliberately] obscure. And there's so damn much of it. Teachers do their students a huge disservice by assigning poems that are great big "Huhs?" (I'm looking at you, "The Wasteland"!) The less talented practitioners of the art confuse obscurity with depth. But to me, really great poetry is comprised of clear, strong thoughts and ideas -- beautifully, evocatively and musically written.
When I get back home later today, I'll send you a recommended reading list off-blog -- comprised of my lifelong faves. There won't be a soupcon of obscurity or pretentiousness in any of them. What your teachers did to you by making you hate and fear poetry is a real shame.
Of course it might have easily happened to all of us -- but, blessed with an early love of the form, I sought out the poets and works that most appealed to me without waiting for the often dreaded assignment. ("The Wasteland," I'm still looking at you.)
This is a terrible, shamefully anti-intellectual take on poetry. Just because a poem is dense or difficult doesn’t make it bad (or “obscure” or “pretentious”). Eliot is justly famous. It is possible to talk about poems you love without sneering at poems you don’t care for. Your smug self-certainty seems deeply anti-poetic.
Delete+1.
DeleteWHAT THE? POET SCORNER? Who is this lowbrow who would SCORN a POET?
ReplyDeleteHad a DNF (but DNC) because of KAMPRA_, NAS_M, _EFF, and MI_. As for the last one, I see at xwordinfo that MII has appeared in a NYTXW 26 times during the Shortz era, 24 times clued as a Roman numeral. My favorite was as a YEAR in the reign of POPE Sylvester II. I would have gotten that one right away.
WHAT THE heck are PELS? (No peeking!)
I did enjoy noticing that "this puzzle's architecture" was a dead ringer for "Westminster Abbey".
M&A is not very knowledgable about poets, but did recognize some of the cornered rhymemeisters. Kinda cool theme idea, tho. Haven't had a "cornered themers" puz in quite a spell, far as I can recall.
ReplyDeletePrimo E-W puzgrid symmetry, btw.
staff weeject pick: PIT. Luved the clue.
no-knows: HELGA/KAMPRAD. NASIM/MII.
fave stuff included: HEYMRDJ. POWDERKEG. ONESIDED. JEFF/FCLEF.
KAMPRAD had a superbly apt, symmetric(al) partner entry of WHATTHE. Tough entry to suss out … felt over-ENKAMP-ed. Lost precious nanoseconds.
M&A is, probably to his loss, not much of a poetry or literature reader. I blame it on my school system, I guess. Havin to spend endless crucial youthful spare time readin looong, borin books as home-Work assignment duty really turned M&A off to delvin into further readin material, when later given his own choice.
[Exception: Did enjoy the "Tale of Two Cities" book assignment.]
Young M&A did read lotsa sci-fi short story anthologies, when between the school's borin book assignments, tho. He also managed to absorb every single Sherlock Holmes story, long or short. And any Carl Barks (Disney ducks) comic book was also a must. Rest of the time, Lil M&A would draw his own comic books.
Nowadays in spare times, M&A sorta prefers creatin stuff, like artworks and runtpuzs, rather than readin stuff. Just m&e. Don't begrudge other folks' [like my PuzEatinSpouse's] luv of readin, at all. De Bustagut.
Thanx for the Deeney-esque fun, Joe D dude. But, I kinda digressed.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
schlock vs. schlock:
**gruntz**
I think anyone under 30 has an entirely different definition of HOOHA. I LOLed that clue. I'm not under 30 but, my kids are.
ReplyDelete@Nancy 10:15 – Thank you! I thought that translation was off, too (particularly the jarring “often” for “oft”), but hadn’t time to search for better. The one you chose is certainly that, and more. As you say, beautiful to read, the rhythm wonderful. Do you know who the translator is? I’d love to see the whole poem translated by this person.
ReplyDeleteWay too many obscure names here. Should never have seen the light of day as is. Editorial fail.
ReplyDeleteYUP, I also had HEY, MRS. J! "A radio staple" for Rex... but not for this non-American who was negative 5 years old when the song was released. As such I spent 41D - EONs looking for my mistake. Luckily MII was a gimme. I still would've achieved a slow time for a Wednesday, but with aaaall the time it took to spot that one square, my result was in hard Saturday territory.
ReplyDeleteI was already worried when the 1A clue looked theme-related. Themers on the edge tend to lead to subpar fill and this grid delivered IN SPADES. UNPC made me think of Rex immediately. And then HELGA NASIM KAMPRAD CCR(?) FCLEF. And the only fill I liked besides the revealer itself was POWDERKEG (KAPOW!) and learning about SOYDOG.
Adding to the chorus here. Too many obscure names. Never heard of Helga Estby, Ingvar Kamprad, Jeff Probst, or Nasim Pedrad. Hey Mr. DJ was released 28 years ago and apparently peaked at number 6 in the US. Is that really what we’re going for in a crossword? They were all borderline inferable, but not great to have 4 of these 5 crossing each other in some way. I don’t know why this wasn’t polished more to get that stuff out, or at least minimized to avoid the crosses. More than a little frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI never complain about PPP no matter how much I detest it, particularly the categories of PPP that pass for modern or hip. The NYT puzzle is beautifully edited, as someone else said, so those obscure references are always inferable.
DeleteThis was true today, though just barely -- it was close. This was almost too far.
Almost DNF, but I guessed the Nintendo avatar must be a Wii MII. (Hi @kitshef) Funny. There’ve definitely been Worse Wednesdays. And then the Wiki expedition - from Ezra (and Joyce and Hemingway, et al) to the Rothschilds to one of their decendents’ inlaws, Amartya Kumar Sen, an Indian economist and philosopher, to Indian atheism. Gotta love puzzles.
ReplyDeleteHELGA's story was heartbreaking - including the longer version with her family burning her story.
ReplyDeleteWholehearted agree with you @Nancy re pretentiousness of obscure poetry.
I finished this puzzle, but guessing the naticks doesn’t leave a satisfying feeling.
PIT had a good clue.
@Aerulus: Here's the link to that entire translation. Glad you like it!
ReplyDeleteIf they had just given HELGA a suitable Wednesday-level clue via Hagar the Horrible, that would have made that area a lot smoother. I don’t remember Hey Mr. DJ, but at least I was able to infer the D by running the alphabet.
ReplyDeleteAn appropriate puzzle for April - Poetry Month. I appreciate the positive comments on this one, without feeling quite so positive myself, what with the familiar poets pushed off into the CORNERs and the middle occupied by a throng of strangers: HELGA, PELS, KAMPRAD, NASIM, MII, CCR, JEFF, and MR. DJ. Very nice central concept and reveal, though, gotta give it that.
ReplyDeleteThis week I've been reading poems by the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. Here's one I like, The Raincoat.
Loved the poem.
Delete(In regards to Nancy 's comment, not obscure either)
Initially, the clue "this puzzle's architecture" threw me off. I was staring at how the puzzle was built (white and black), not it's word fill. It seems like architecture is the wrong word to use.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the “architecture” part is a piece of the design …. The layout of Westminster Abbey has a double arch (viewed from above) similar to the layout of the central black squares. It’s not letting me attach a picture here but google it and see if that’s relevant.
ReplyDelete@Nancy, I agree with you about poetry and would love to see your list. Would you put it in the comments for all of us to enjoy?
ReplyDeleteKind of weird to say that Swift is out of place here because he’s “an Irishman.” Swift was an Anglican priest, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (where he’s buried.) Other Irish poets are buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey— Sheridan, for instance.
ReplyDeleteNo one said he was “out of place.”
DeleteI’m a bit surprised that no confusion over PDT has been mentioned. These time zone fills are usually a gimme, but Sonoma is in the Central time zone. Arizona does not observe daylight savings time so I think, technically, they remain in CST which, conveniently for us west coasters, is the same as PDT.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 2:40pm:
DeleteSonoma, California
Sonoma is in California. Sedona is in Arizona.
DeleteYes this was terrible. Unknown name after unknown name crossing each other.
ReplyDelete[Spelling Bee: also terrible; yd didn't even try to finish. Just a bad week all around.]
Well, I have no beef with long and complex poems and am quite an admirer of T.S. Eliot ... but as a poet he does not come close to Walt Kelley, of POGO fame:
ReplyDelete“The little frog was colored pink,
What does a pinkie froggie think?
I’ll tell you what the froggie thunk...
He thunk: ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk...”
Now THAT'S A POEM!!!
Dear Amiga @Nancy; I knew you liked poetry; you're one yourself.
ReplyDeleteYes...I had teachers that would foist the obscure into my brain...nothing clicked. My brother was a lover of poetry and was determined to get me hooked as well. He gave me W.H.AUDEN's collection of poems hoping I would change my mind. It did - but only for Auden. I still have the book and at times I'll open it up to "Funeral Blues." I loved that one and understood it well.
I agree with @MJB....you should post you poetry list here. I'm sure the moderators won't mind since today's topic is poetry.
Glad Andrew Marvell is still being taught!
ReplyDeleteEzra Pound left us with great poetry. Funny that I just recently started reading him—-because of a scene in the new series Spy Among Friends.
ReplyDeleteAs a guy having a minor in English lit. and never having been introduced to such a great poet, I feel a little bit , well, betrayed.I can only assume that he was not taught becase like many people like you all thought he was a terrible man, without reading one line of his magnificent oeuvre.
What a lousy, unfun puzzle. I did about a 1/3 of it and just stopped. I’m glad I didn’t waste more time with it.
ReplyDeleteLiked the puzzle overall. Agree that it pushed the limits of name crosses. Thought the last letter would be an I as in NASIM but left it blank by accident (dead tree edition).
ReplyDeleteI actually like reading poetry in high school but never buy poetry. Only read them in book reviews. However, I do like the opening, April is the cruelest month....in the Waste Land. Don't think I ever read the whole thing. To be fair to crossword favorite T.S. Eliot the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a great poem. Wonder if Nancy likes it.
KAMPRAD was apparently a Nazi sympathizer. You’d think they’d try to edit him out.
ReplyDeleteMore than a sympathizer. An enthusiastic fascist even after the end of WWII. Auschwitz didn’t phase him, apparently.
DeleteAnd Ezra Pound in the same puzzle.
Maybe I’m too new to this, or maybe I’m not thinking clearly since I’m on the train, but this puzzle has way more than 78 clues. Can some explain what I’m not getting with that clue?
ReplyDeleteYou can count, yes?
Delete@dgd (4:39) Ah, yes. Prufrock. "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?" Yecch. No, I hate that poem!
ReplyDeleteBut while I'm not at all an Eliot fan, of the poems of his that I do know -- and there are surely a great many more that I don't know -- there are some lines from "The Hollow Men" that I absolutely love.
That are way up there in my pantheon of great poetic lines:
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
I'm gratified that more than a few of you here are interested in my thoughts on poetry. I promise that I will post my list of favorites right here on the blog. I just walked in the front door -- so if I can't do it by 10 or so tonight, I'll do it tomorrow morning.
I don’t come here often. for April is the cruelest month for me but I was quite interested in comments by @nancy about The Wasteland which I have always , how should I put it, held in high esteem, , enjoyed immensely, , been actually thrilled to read . Love to get her list as @Gilli suggests. To sorta push aside a work that many consider a true English great needs some comparisons to other works. I guess Pound is out.
ReplyDelete@Anon 2:40
ReplyDeleteSonoma is in CA, Sedona is in AZ.
@Carola,
ReplyDeleteThanks VERY much for the link to the Ada Limón poem. I'd heard of her but had never read any of her poems. I really liked this one and may look for more.
@Nancy 12:36, @Gill I. 4:10 –
ReplyDeleteNancy, Thank you for the link to Stewart Everett’s translation. It’s lovely and clear and has a nice cadence. I bookmarked it.
T S Eliot’s The Waste Land is a tough poem, obscure in parts, long, and difficult. It’s so long it gets italics! Some revere it, some don’t, and that’s the way it’ll always be (and thank goodness, right?). Words have different shadings for different people. Like colors and painting. Like singing and songs (i.e., poetry, really, as you certainly know). Of course this isn’t news, though often there’s a consensus about what’s good. The Waste Land isn’t a favorite of mine. I’m with Gill about “Funeral Blues” by Auden. I thought the actor (John Hannah) who read the poem at the funeral in Four Weddings and a Funeral of his character's friend – his mate, really – did it so well.
In a completely different way, I also think A A Milne’s poem “Forgiven” is wonderful.
Good prose, too, has a euphonic rhythm, and you can sense when something’s not quite right. Reading has a silent sound of tone and emphasis and length of pause. Reading aloud is just not silent, but same thing. A change in any of those three components changes the meaning.
Have you seen the recent documentary Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb? In case you haven’t, I recommend it. Truly wonderful. Erudite, humorous, enlightening. Fun. Though I don’t think I’d circle the wagons for every punctuation mark because sometimes a comma just sounds better than a semicolon and maybe you can’t explain why.
I’m also with Gill and @MJB 1:52 – If it’s workable, can you post your poetry list here?
Am I missing something? The clue for 12 down says "this puzzle has 78 of them" and the answer is "clues". There are 71 across clues and 65 down clues. How does that add up to 78?
ReplyDeleteCOUNT THE CLUES FOR GOD’S SAKE
DeleteNatick history was set on this day, April 19, 2023.
ReplyDelete@Aelurus 6:57. Thank you for posting "Funeral Blues." I had seen Four Weddings and a Funeral and that part made me cry. When my brother died way too soon, This poem was read at his funeral.
ReplyDeleteSo there are poems that I not only love, but that I understand.
My favourite book of "poetry" is A Box of Rain by Robert Hunter.
ReplyDelete@Aelurus and @Gill -- Auden is one of my favorite poets and "Funeral Blues" is one of my favorite poems. I'd forgotten that incredibly moving scene from the movie, so many thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite poems are the those that fall into at least one of two categories:
1) At least one stanza in the poem makes me cry
2) The poem has gorgeous sonority
If they manage to possess both, then wow.
What I personally don't care about are metaphors. I never met a metaphor I would cross the street for. "Like a patient etherized upon a table." Yes, I suppose the sky can look like that if you squint, but the line does absolutely nothing for me emotionally. When there are too many metaphors in a poem, I can hear the wheels turning in the poet's head. The effort shows. The perspiration drips. And I do feel that so much modern poetry has replaced gorgeous sound and exquisite form with wall-to-wall metaphors.
So now you know some of my biases. But I've also been careful to fulfill my promise to @GILL in making up a list -- i.e. that she would understand every single poem that was in it. I was, for example, going to put "Kubla Khan" in my list -- such glorious sound! -- but when I reread it, I realized that some of Coleridge's drug-induced visions were sort of, well, off-the-wall and that while the poem has many virtues, complete clarity may not be one of them.
So here's my list. It includes a number of poems universally thought of as "chestnuts" -- and that's okay with me. Things tend to become chestnuts because people love them so much.
1. "In Memoriam" by Tennyson. It's very, VERY long and it's also very wonderful. There's one stanza I can never read without crying: The "Behold we know not anything" quatrain.
"Crossing the Bar" by Tennyson (very chestnut-ty, yes I know.)
"The Lamb" by Blake
"Jerusalem" by Blake
"The Road Not Taken" by Frost
"Do Not Go Gentle" by Dylan Thomas
"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
"Ozymandias" by Shelley
"Tommy" by Kipling
"I Have a Rendezvous With Death" by Alan Seeger
"Eros Turannos" by E.A. Robinson
"Love Among the Ruins" by Browning
"A Psalm of Life" by Longfellow
"The Second Coming" by Yeats (It lacks music, but it has so much to say...)
"My father moved through dooms of love" by cummings
"In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by Auden
"The Hollow Men" by Eliot (the only poem of his I like)
And then there are the poems I like exclusively for their sound since none of them really seem to have a great deal to say. (Well, maybe "Gunga Din" -- except it says the wrong, unenlightened, colonialist thing.) But the sound of each of these poems is exquisite; Tennyson, Poe and Kipling had such extraordinary poetic ears:
"The River" and "The Splendor Falls" by Tennyson
"The Raven", "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee" by Poe
"Gunga Din" and "Mandalay" by Kipling
I'm sure I've left out dozens of poems I love and that have meant a lot to me over the years. But these were the ones that came most readily to mind.
If anyone here has poems that they especially love, please share them with me and with everyone else.
White
Delete@Anonymous (5:20). Puzzle has a total of 78 clues - 39 acrosses and 39 downs.
ReplyDeleteThank you, @Fearless One, for your last-second PS, for otherwise I was primed to ask what on EARTH the word PIT had to do with that clue.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of several guesses that I made...all of them fortunately correct. The one in the SW (HAS_M/M_I) was a pure natick.
A neat idea, having all those POETs in the CORNERs, but boy, did we ever stretch things to make it work! Somebody named RICH who apparently wrote something called "Diving Into the Wreck?" If you say so. The unpronounceable name of a foreign company CEO? Gimme a break. Some foreign-born suffragist NEVER mentioned in ANY history class that I know of? Come ON! Oh, and that guy from SNL...I guess that's my fault. I just never got into that. Other things were happening on Saturday night, as I recall...somewhat foggily.
Theme nice, execution not so much, fill...Yecch. Bogey.
Wordle birdie.
NO DOG
ReplyDeleteHEY, SOME MALES ARENOT miffed
AT THE ONESIDED allure,
they SAW WHAT Taylor SWIFT
HAD COMEUP with on TOUR.
--- MR. OWEN BURNS-STEIN
did not see SHAVE in a POET'SCORNER
Loved the theme but I did not like the Natick at 62D and 66A (MII-NASIM). Learned about HELGA Estby today. Challenging for a Wednesday. Overall, quite good.
ReplyDeleteAs I filled in 58A, I said to myself, it's going to be Hey Mr DJ, but my mind had wandered over to Van Morrison, not the song in the clue.
ReplyDelete3 words - KAMPRAD, MRDJ, and JEFF. Names, I tell ya. Names.
ReplyDeleteyou know the rest.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
I've mostly kept up with SNL over the years so I knew NASIM Perdad who did a hilarious impression of Kim Kardashian. She gets a yeah baby in my book.
ReplyDeleteWordle par.
ReplyDeleteNO POKE
SOME MALES ARE now miffed
AT NOT geting SOME,
they SAW Taylor SWIFT
HAD already COME.
--- HELGA KAMPRAD