There is an illuminating article on his last days (and some before) at:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/08/a-poets-last-stand-frank-mcnally-on-the-death-of-dylan-thomas-70-years-ago/

He may not have consumed 18 straight whiskeys, but he did enough damage, along with the morphine that a doctor injected in him, to kill him.

A quote from his wife (also an alcoholic): "He made himself so important that, like the frog in the fable, he blew himself up till he burst. As pathetic and awful as that. And he left one of us to stew in the wicked juices of his perfectly unnecessary sacrifice – in the name of that confounded poetry.”

On Thursday, 9 November 2023 at 09:35:06 UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> There is an illuminating article on his last days (and some before) at:
> https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/08/a-poets-last-stand-frank-mcnally-on-the-death-of-dylan-thomas-70-years-ago/
>
> He may not have consumed 18 straight whiskeys, but he did enough damage, along with the morphine that a doctor injected in him, to kill him.
>
> A quote from his wife (also an alcoholic): "He made himself so important that, like the frog in the fable, he blew himself up till he burst. As pathetic and awful as that. And he left one of us to stew in the wicked juices of his perfectly unnecessary sacrifice – in the name of that confounded poetry.”

Damn, that’s some really sad legacy.

On Friday, November 10, 2023 at 2:48:01 AM UTC+1, ME wrote:
> On Thursday, 9 November 2023 at 09:35:06 UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > There is an illuminating article on his last days (and some before) at:
> > https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/08/a-poets-last-stand-frank-mcnally-on-the-death-of-dylan-thomas-70-years-ago/
> >
> > He may not have consumed 18 straight whiskeys, but he did enough damage, along with the morphine that a doctor injected in him, to kill him.
> >
> > A quote from his wife (also an alcoholic): "He made himself so important that, like the frog in the fable, he blew himself up till he burst. As pathetic and awful as that. And he left one of us to stew in the wicked juices of his perfectly unnecessary sacrifice – in the name of that confounded poetry.”
> Damn, that’s some really sad legacy.

It is, and he was only 39. He evidently was diabetic, and that wasn't helped by the drinking. One book we saw said that he died of diabetic shock, brought about by morphine and steroid injections (by doctors). In addition to that, he suffered from "asthma, gout, blackouts, anxiety, bouts of delirium tremens."
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12286860.sober-truth-behind-the-liquid-legend/

He had a great speaking voice, but it sounded like the voice of a much older man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w&t=33s
He sounds like he is in his 90s rather than his 30s.

On Friday, November 10, 2023 at 8:27:50 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Friday, November 10, 2023 at 2:48:01 AM UTC+1, ME wrote:
> > On Thursday, 9 November 2023 at 09:35:06 UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > There is an illuminating article on his last days (and some before) at:
> > > https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/08/a-poets-last-stand-frank-mcnally-on-the-death-of-dylan-thomas-70-years-ago/
> > >
> > > He may not have consumed 18 straight whiskeys, but he did enough damage, along with the morphine that a doctor injected in him, to kill him.
> > >
> > > A quote from his wife (also an alcoholic): "He made himself so important that, like the frog in the fable, he blew himself up till he burst. As pathetic and awful as that. And he left one of us to stew in the wicked juices of his perfectly unnecessary sacrifice – in the name of that confounded poetry.”
>

I love that quotation... even more than "Do Not Go Gentle...".

Not that I dislike Mr. Thomas.

I've raised more than one glass in his honor at the White Horse Tavern.

> > Damn, that’s some really sad legacy.
> It is, and he was only 39. He evidently was diabetic, and that wasn't helped by the drinking. One book we saw said that he died of diabetic shock, brought about by morphine and steroid injections (by doctors). In addition to that, he suffered from "asthma, gout, blackouts, anxiety, bouts of delirium tremens."
> https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12286860.sober-truth-behind-the-liquid-legend/
>
> He had a great speaking voice, but it sounded like the voice of a much older man:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w&t=33s
> He sounds like he is in his 90s rather than his 30s.

I don't think he sounds in his 90s, but it's certainly not how I imagined his voice. His accent/delivery remind me of Charles Laughton.

Michael Pendragon
"Generally, East Coast refers to NYC."
-- Will Dockery, village idiot
https://imgur.com/gallery/dpR2ESh
https://imgur.com/gallery/rtvGMMt

So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?

Technically, it was Browning's doctor.

Michael Pendragon
"There is no 'fact' of 'statutory rape'. 'Morality' -- like 'gnosticism', 'god', haKodesh Barukh hu, 'mysticism' -- are NOT definable, and for you to keep transposing your stultifying proto-fascism onto others is not accepted by me."
-- The late, unlamented Stephen "Pickles" Pickering

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> Technically, it was Browning's doctor.

He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.

>
> Michael Pendragon
> "There is no 'fact' of 'statutory rape'. 'Morality' -- like 'gnosticism', 'god', haKodesh Barukh hu, 'mysticism' -- are NOT definable, and for you to keep transposing your stultifying proto-fascism onto others is not accepted by me."
> -- The late, unlamented Stephen "Pickles" Pickering

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
>

Definitely.

Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."

Coco provided the following list:

Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45

I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.

I'm currently working on poem number 657.

-- Michael Pendragon

MMP: As previously noted (do try to get some reading comprehension skills, old man), I have never made an issue of the participants' sex.

DUNCE: Another Pedodragon lie. You've ranted and raved for a month about the group that's done the most to fight the above discrimination.

MMP: NAMBLA??? Are you seriously attempting to argue that NAMBLA is spearheading the fight against sexual discrimination???

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> >
> Definitely.
>
> Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young..

>
> Coco provided the following list:
>
> Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
>
> I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.

When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
>
> I'm currently working on poem number 657.
We should count ours!

Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html

He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
>
>
> -- Michael Pendragon
>
> MMP: As previously noted (do try to get some reading comprehension skills, old man), I have never made an issue of the participants' sex.
>
> DUNCE: Another Pedodragon lie. You've ranted and raved for a month about the group that's done the most to fight the above discrimination.
>
> MMP: NAMBLA??? Are you seriously attempting to argue that NAMBLA is spearheading the fight against sexual discrimination???

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:28:45 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> >
> Definitely.
>
> Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."

I remember this written about Novalis:
"Novalis's diagnosis of tuberculosis, which was known as the white plague, contributed to his romantic reputation. Because Sophie von Kühn was also thought to have died from tuberculosis, Novalis became the poet of the blue flower who was reunited with his beloved through the death of the white plague."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis
> Coco provided the following list:
>
> Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
>
> I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.

Hey, I'm all for having aspirations and goals, but isn't that taking it a 'lil too far?
> I'm currently working on poem number 657.
Damned.
> -- Michael Pendragon
>
> MMP: As previously noted (do try to get some reading comprehension skills, old man), I have never made an issue of the participants' sex.
>
> DUNCE: Another Pedodragon lie. You've ranted and raved for a month about the group that's done the most to fight the above discrimination.
>
> MMP: NAMBLA??? Are you seriously attempting to argue that NAMBLA is spearheading the fight against sexual discrimination???

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > >
> > Definitely.
> >
> > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.

As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.

This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.

> > Coco provided the following list:
> >
> > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> >
> > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.

I already have.

I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.

Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.

> > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> We should count ours!

You should.

You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
>
> By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
>
> He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> >

Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.

Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.

Michael Pendragon
"Not true, when I made a mistake, I correct it."
-- Will Donkey, demonstrating his inability to successfully make corrections.
https://imgur.com/gallery/dpR2ESh
https://imgur.com/gallery/rtvGMMt

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 7:16:53 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:28:45 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > >
> > Definitely.
> >
> > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> I remember this written about Novalis:
> "Novalis's diagnosis of tuberculosis, which was known as the white plague, contributed to his romantic reputation. Because Sophie von Kühn was also thought to have died from tuberculosis, Novalis became the poet of the blue flower who was reunited with his beloved through the death of the white plague."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalis

Dead at 28. Let's add him to the list.

> > Coco provided the following list:
> >
> > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> >
> > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> Hey, I'm all for having aspirations and goals, but isn't that taking it a 'lil too far?

That depends on your point of view.

From another perspective, it means that I'll have to stay alive long enough to complete poem number 1001.

> > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> Damned.

Yes.

Michael Pendragon
"We can discuss either of the three if you want to."
-- Will Donkey
https://imgur.com/gallery/dpR2ESh
https://imgur.com/gallery/rtvGMMt

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > >
> > > Definitely.
> > >
> > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
>
> This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > Coco provided the following list:
> > >
> > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > >
> > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> I already have.
>
> I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
>
> Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > We should count ours!
> You should.
>
> You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> >
> > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> >
> > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > >
> Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.

He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.

"It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
At least he didn't mumble and trail off...

Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/

Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
>
>
> Michael Pendragon
> "Not true, when I made a mistake, I correct it."
> -- Will Donkey, demonstrating his inability to successfully make corrections.
> https://imgur.com/gallery/dpR2ESh
> https://imgur.com/gallery/rtvGMMt

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > >
> > > > Definitely.
> > > >
> > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> >
> > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide..
> > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > >
> > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > >
> > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > I already have.
> >
> > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> >
> > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > We should count ours!
> > You should.
> >
> > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > >
> > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > >
> > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > >
> > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
>
> "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
>
> Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
>
> Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
>

Perhaps... but not as poets.

And, despite Warhol's prediction that we will all experience fifteen minutes of fame, the vast majority of us still end up living wholly anonymous lives.

There are always artists performing examples of various arts for free (or, more correctly, busking for change) in every NYC park. The majority of them are extremely talented, and should by all rights have acquired some level of renown. But they are no more successful in their artistic calling than the crazed pissbum who is competing with them for space, while delivering an impassioned monologue to an invisible audience.

As writers, we like to think that talent will be recognized so long as one takes whatever steps are necessary to place their work before the public eye. But for every successful artist, there are millions of others (of, arguably, equal talent) who will live and die in obscurity.

Thomas and Bryron were right for their respective times. Today, their respective styles would be as out-dated as my own. No, we'd be drinking absinthe together in a Greenwich bar, along with Edgar Poe and Walt Whitman; grumbling about the deplorable state of modern literature while a group of wannabe poets two tables to our left did the same.

Michael Pendragon
"Dockery, everyone knows that you haven't published a single poem in
your life except on your own website. Everyone knows no one will
remember you for your 'poems'. The only thing people will remember
you by is the irritating spamming behavior you expose online which gives
Americans an even worse name than they already have. All spammers I
have seen so far were all without a single exception Americans. Why
do you think that is? I'll tell you why: because they get the idea
spoonfed in their education that it's their godgiven right to pollute
the world with their 'opinions' - bolstered under the flag of
'freedom of speech' without any sort of comprehension or reflection what
'freedom' or what 'speech' would be."
-- M.H. Benders

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Definitely.
> > > > >
> > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > >
> > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > >
> > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > >
> > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > I already have.
> > >
> > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > >
> > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > We should count ours!
> > > You should.
> > >
> > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > >
> > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > >
> > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > >
> > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> >
> > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> >
> > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> >
> > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> >
> Perhaps... but not as poets.
That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died thinking himself a failure. He was a wonderful prose writer, but failed in writing for movies.

Dylan Thomas would have gotten on the talk shows, inevitably. He would have been somewhat like Oscar Levant. With appearances on all the talk shows, he could have pushed his latest works and they would have sold. People would read of his drinking exploits, his affairs, his outrageous behavior, and not be surprised when he died.
>
> And, despite Warhol's prediction that we will all experience fifteen minutes of fame, the vast majority of us still end up living wholly anonymous lives.

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > >
> > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > I already have.
> > > >
> > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > >
> > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > You should.
> > > >
> > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > >
> > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > >
> > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > >
> > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > >
> > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > >
> > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > >
> > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
>

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 4:13:15 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > >
> > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > I already have.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > >
> > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > You should.
> > > > >
> > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > >
> > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good.. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > >
> > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > >
> > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > >
> > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public..
> > > >
> > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> >
> Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
>
> With all that competition (and sensationalistic royal gossip), a lowly Lord hasn't got a chance -- unless he were to write a tell-all memoir about how he bedded Princesses Kate and Meghan on the same night... but that would still be a far cry from his "closet dramas" "Manfred," "Cain," and "Heaven and Earth."

On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > >
> > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > I already have.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > >
> > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > You should.
> > > > >
> > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > >
> > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good.. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > >
> > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > >
> > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > >
> > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public..
> > > >
> > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> >
> Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on.

On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 3:50:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease.."
> > > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > > I already have.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > > You should.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > > >
> > > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > > >
> > > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > > >
> > > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > > > >
> > > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> > >
> > Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
> But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on.
>

On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 8:52:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 3:50:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > > > I already have.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck..
> > > > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > > > You should.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > > > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> > > >
> > > Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
> > But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on.
> >
> The problem is that he'd be writing his own material -- and his own material would be "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Giaour" (the two works that established him as a successful writer). Both were extremely popular in their day, but I can't believe there'd be much of an audience for either of them today.

On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 2:15:45 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 8:52:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 3:50:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > > > > I already have.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > > > > You should.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > > > > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> > > > >
> > > > Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
> > > But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on.
> > >
> > The problem is that he'd be writing his own material -- and his own material would be "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Giaour" (the two works that established him as a successful writer). Both were extremely popular in their day, but I can't believe there'd be much of an audience for either of them today.
> True, but George Gordon, Lord Byron, would be writing his own material with the benefit of a 20th/21st century education and sensibilities. He would have updated his focus. If he was a genius, which he was, he would have adapted to the present very well. How would Leonardo da Vinci have fared in 2023? He would have certainly benefited from the inventions that had already been made and been able to concentrate on, maybe, space travel, medicine, and innovative transportation.
> >

On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 11:39:12 PM UTC+3, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 2:15:45 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 8:52:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 3:50:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons....
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > > > > > I already have.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > > > > > You should.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition.. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > > > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > > > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > > > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > > > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > > > > > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
> > > > But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on..
> > > >
> > > The problem is that he'd be writing his own material -- and his own material would be "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Giaour" (the two works that established him as a successful writer). Both were extremely popular in their day, but I can't believe there'd be much of an audience for either of them today.
> > True, but George Gordon, Lord Byron, would be writing his own material with the benefit of a 20th/21st century education and sensibilities. He would have updated his focus. If he was a genius, which he was, he would have adapted to the present very well. How would Leonardo da Vinci have fared in 2023? He would have certainly benefited from the inventions that had already been made and been able to concentrate on, maybe, space travel, medicine, and innovative transportation.
> > >
> Okay. It's possible that GG,LB could have become famous in 2023.
Do you think Michelangelo would be doing caricatures on the River Walk today? Would it be more advantageous to have today's man/woman go back two centuries, with their current knowledge, or would it be better for the 19th century person to come to the 21st century, bringing with them their talents, and doing a quick learning course?
>
> However, if GG,LB had a 20th C. education and sensibilities, he'd be churning post-Hemingwayesque, dumbed-down pablum for a mass-market audience of functionally illiterate moderns.
Talent wills out (maybe). Don Juan might have become a hard-boiled detective.
>
> He would still be a genius, and he would still be as much the same person as is possible for someone having been born two hundred years later... but his writing would not be the same.

On Friday, November 17, 2023 at 3:00:20 AM UTC+3, NancyGene wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 11:39:12 PM UTC+3, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 2:15:45 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 8:52:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 3:50:20 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 11:13:15 AM UTC+14, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 3:16:42 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:04:26 AM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 8:05:38 AM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:13:30 PM UTC-9, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:47:24 PM UTC-5, NancyGene wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:28:45 PM UTC-2, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:00:22 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:42:38 PM UTC-5, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 5:03:18 PM UTC-5, Ash Wurthing wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > So tragic, this fate of one of Wales' own sons...
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Could he have been one of the doomed poets that you spoke of in regards to Browning, was it?
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > Technically, it was Browning's doctor.
> > > > > > > > > > > > > He was the one who wrote about it, right. But I got the impression that you all felt that there was something to it, with how poets seem to perish before their time.
> > > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > Definitely.
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > Consumption was commonly referred to as the "poets' disease."
> > > > > > > > > > > Also technically, killing one's self or getting killed in war isn't a disease. Maybe it's an all-encompassing but varied poets' mantle of dying young.
> > > > > > > > > > As noted in the previous discussion: Scientific studies have proven that poets die younger than other writers, and that writers die younger than people in other professions.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > This doesn't preclude suicide, war casualty, auto accidents, or murder. I would even go so far as to propose that poetry is a slow form of suicide.
> > > > > > > > > > > > Coco provided the following list:
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678, age 57
> > > > > > > > > > > > Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, age 17
> > > > > > > > > > > > Phillis Wheatley, ca.1753-1784, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > > > Robert Burns, 1759-1796, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > > > Mary Robinson, 1757-1800, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > > > Christian Milne, 1773-1816, age 43
> > > > > > > > > > > > John Keats, 1795-1821, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > > > Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > > > Jane Taylor, 1783-1824, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > > George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Richardson, 1775-1825, age 50
> > > > > > > > > > > > L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), 1802-1838, age 36
> > > > > > > > > > > > Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > > > Emily Brontë, 1818-1838, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > > > Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > > > Anne Brontë, 1820-1849, age 29
> > > > > > > > > > > > Edgar A. Poe, 1809-1849, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > > Frances Sargent Osgood, 1811-1850, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > > > Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855, age 38
> > > > > > > > > > > > Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > > > Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > > > Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > > > Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, age 55
> > > > > > > > > > > > Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > > Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891, age 37
> > > > > > > > > > > > Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > > Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > > > Stephen Crane, 1871-1900, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > > > Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, age 46
> > > > > > > > > > > > William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, age 53
> > > > > > > > > > > > Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915, age 27
> > > > > > > > > > > > Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918, age 31
> > > > > > > > > > > > Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, age 25
> > > > > > > > > > > > Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918, age 28
> > > > > > > > > > > > Amy Lowell, 1874-1925, age 51
> > > > > > > > > > > > Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928, age, 43
> > > > > > > > > > > > Hart Crane, 1899-1932, age 32
> > > > > > > > > > > > Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943, age 44
> > > > > > > > > > > > Keith Douglas, 1920-1944, age 24
> > > > > > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953, age 39
> > > > > > > > > > > > Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, age 30
> > > > > > > > > > > > Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966, age 40
> > > > > > > > > > > > Jack Kerouac, 1922-1969, age 47
> > > > > > > > > > > > Rosario Castellanos, 1925-1974, age 49
> > > > > > > > > > > > Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, age 45
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > I personally plan on dying after having written my 1001st poem.
> > > > > > > > > > > When you get to 1000, hesitate and think very carefully about your next move.
> > > > > > > > > > I already have.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I'm formatting/editing my poetry collections as I write them. When I hit poem number 1001, I'll send it off to Amazon/Kindle and wait for the book to publish.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Then I'll go for a walk and get run over by yet another truck.
> > > > > > > > > > > > I'm currently working on poem number 657.
> > > > > > > > > > > We should count ours!
> > > > > > > > > > You should.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > You should also keep a record of the dates of composition. Many of my early-to-mid career poems are undated, and their date of composition can only be roughly guestimated.
> > > > > > > > > > > Back to Dylan Thomas, his early pictures showed him as curly-haired and cherubic looking:
> > > > > > > > > > > https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/24/dylan-thomas-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > By his late 30s, he was bloated and more than round:
> > > > > > > > > > > https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-dylan-thomas-1914-1953-portrait-of-the-welsh-poet-and-playwright-by-172202372.html
> > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > He was a small man, so the drinking didn't do his body any good. Such a waste of a fine mind and talent. As we have said about Byron and others, today he would have had a great and varied career.
> > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Unfortunately, I suspect otherwise. Today's world is overrun with semi-literate morons (a.k.a., consumers), who celebrate... for lack of a better word... shit.
> > > > > > > > > He might have had better medical care and an intervention or two. We read an informative article written by someone who saw Thomas perform: "My father and I found our way to the front of the audience and we sat down directly beneath a small, plump man with curly auburn hair, a raffish bow-tie, loud checkered tweeds and a shining face who stood patiently behind a wooden lectern a few feet above us." We didn't know that he had red hair, but he was Irish. Thomas was also drunk.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > "It was not a wholly Welsh voice. It was certainly Welsh in its impassioned soaring, but it was a voice that had by now mutated into a highly stylized theatrical projection housed within what’s called ‘Received Pronunciation’, or more frequently ‘BBC English’."
> > > > > > > > > At least he didn't mumble and trail off...
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Leon Atkin, a friend of Dylan Thomas, "said that Dylan had called his own poems 'statements on the way to the grave.' " Atkin also said, "He always struck me as a man whose soul was so much alive that he suffered. He suffered a lot, I think. But every action he seemed to make was, according to my unorthodox view, a religious action. It was an attempt to evaluate and appreciate and express beauty and something that was lovely… He was a perfectionist… poor old Dylan, he did just explode… you could almost say that he died in childbirth.”
> > > > > > > > > https://internationaltimes.it/of-dylan-and-his-deaths/
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Dylan Thomas might also have tried to join the 27 Club.
> > > > > > > > > > Dylan, Lord George, and I would be drinking ourselves unconscious in Greenwich Village, and working at inauspicious desk jobs to support our poetic habit.
> > > > > > > > > Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Perhaps... but not as poets.
> > > > > > > That is something to consider. We don't know what George Gordon's speaking voice was like, but we have read that he exceled at oratory at Harrow and his maiden speech in the House of Lords created a sensation. With a title, he would (today), have a foot in the door to fame. He would have his foot fixed and be at the Met Gala. We think that he would have pushed himself to fame, through maybe acting and then writing. We read that he was the first celebrity who was "famous for being famous." Affairs would not hurt him.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Even relying on his title for access to the literary world, he'd be competing with the likes of Prince Harry ("Spare") and Princess Meghan ("The Bench"), as well as books about them, Prince William, Princess Kate, Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Diana, and Queen Camilla.
> > > > > But George Gordon would be writing his own material, unlike the people you mention above. We tried to read Prince Harry's book, which was ghost-written, and it was bad. It definitely wasn't written in his voice. Bad choice of a writer. Duchess Meghan writes children's books, which would not be in the category that George Gordon's works would be in. In quality, tone and subject. William, Kate, Elizabeth, Charles, Diana and Camilla would not write books. With George Gordon's upper class connections, he could easily find a publisher (since he was such a good speaker and story teller). People Magazine would put him on the cover. He would need to keep his shoes on.
> > > > >
> > > > The problem is that he'd be writing his own material -- and his own material would be "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "The Giaour" (the two works that established him as a successful writer). Both were extremely popular in their day, but I can't believe there'd be much of an audience for either of them today.
> > > True, but George Gordon, Lord Byron, would be writing his own material with the benefit of a 20th/21st century education and sensibilities. He would have updated his focus. If he was a genius, which he was, he would have adapted to the present very well. How would Leonardo da Vinci have fared in 2023? He would have certainly benefited from the inventions that had already been made and been able to concentrate on, maybe, space travel, medicine, and innovative transportation.
> > > >
> > Okay. It's possible that GG,LB could have become famous in 2023.
> Do you think Michelangelo would be doing caricatures on the River Walk today? Would it be more advantageous to have today's man/woman go back two centuries, with their current knowledge, or would it be better for the 19th century person to come to the 21st century, bringing with them their talents, and doing a quick learning course?
> >
> > However, if GG,LB had a 20th C. education and sensibilities, he'd be churning post-Hemingwayesque, dumbed-down pablum for a mass-market audience of functionally illiterate moderns.
> Talent wills out (maybe). Don Juan might have become a hard-boiled detective.
> >
> > He would still be a genius, and he would still be as much the same person as is possible for someone having been born two hundred years later... but his writing would not be the same.
> It might have been even better. After all, with a computer, he could have easily revised and written when the Muse came to him, not needing to wait for pen and paper, candlelight, and friends to read to.
> >
> > LORD BYRON, 2023
> >
> > "There was no breath of air.
> > The waves
> > of the Aegean Sea
> > flowed unbroken
> > below
> > the Athenian's grave.
> > His tomb
> > was gleaming
> > on top of the cliff
> > that greets
> > the homeward bound sailors
> > in their skiff.
> > His tomb stands high
> > above the land
> > he saved in vain.
> > Will the world ever see
> > such a hero again?"
> Did you put that into AYoS for November? GG, LB, might have written today of Churchill or the astronauts.
> > > > For Byron to succeed today, he'd have to write in an entirely different style, on entirely different topics. In short, he would have to become someone else.
> Would you be the same person in 1823 as you are in 2023? It would be different for a woman to go either back or forward in time.
> > > No, he would have been the 2023 version of Lord Byron, probably matured and improved. He would also have 200 more years of history from which to draw.
> > "She walks in beauty,
> > like
> > the cloudless night
> > when stars
> > shine
> > in the skies;
> > and all that's best
> > of darkness and light
> > meet
> > in her expression
> > and her eyes.
> > Mellowed
> > by
> > the moon's
> > tender light
> > which heaven
> > denies
> > to gaudy day."
> Okay, but the skies are clearer today than they were in the 19th century... Maybe he would have said something about that? However, women still walk in beauty, so his version is perfectly acceptable today.
> > > > > On the other hand, Charles, Earl Spencer, has written a number of history books that have been well-received. He has a memoir about his time at boarding school coming out in 2024 ("A Very Private School").
> > > > > >
> > > > > > With all that competition (and sensationalistic royal gossip), a lowly Lord hasn't got a chance -- unless he were to write a tell-all memoir about how he bedded Princesses Kate and Meghan on the same night... but that would still be a far cry from his "closet dramas" "Manfred," "Cain," and "Heaven and Earth."
> > > > > America is impressed by royalty and would have welcomed him. He could have moved to California.
> > > > America is impressed by princes, princesses, kings and queens. I doubt there are many Americans who could name a Baron, past or present; nor would they know that Charles, William, and Andrew also hold that title.
> > > Those kinds of royalty always hold multiple titles. There's the Red Baron and Baron Münchhausen (and by proxy).
> > How many Americans think the Red Baron is Snoopy's fictional nemesis? How man Americans think that Baron Münchhausen (assuming that they've heard of him at all) is the fictional hero of a fantasy film by Terry Gilliam?
> Well, we do. We cannot know what others know.
> > > > > > > F. Scott Fitzgerald died thinking himself a failure. He was a wonderful prose writer, but failed in writing for movies.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Dylan Thomas would have gotten on the talk shows, inevitably. He would have been somewhat like Oscar Levant. With appearances on all the talk shows, he could have pushed his latest works and they would have sold.. People would read of his drinking exploits, his affairs, his outrageous behavior, and not be surprised when he died.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > Oscar Levant and Dylan Thomas were contemporaries. Oscar Levant was already a well-known radio, film and television personality at the time of Thomas' death. If Thomas were to have gone a similar route, the opportunities were there.
> > > > > We remember Levant from frequent appearances on talk shows. He was witty, and George Gordon would have filled a similar niche. Maybe read/recite his own works, rather than play the piano as Levant did.
> > > > >
> > > > I'm afraid that I've only heard about his talk show appearances. I know him from movies like "Rhapsody in Blue," "Humoresque," "An American in Paris," "The Band Wagon," & co.
> > > We wonder what was wrong with Oscar Levant, with the blinking a grimacing. Other than drinking, drugs, smoking, a heart attack, and nervousness, Dr. NancyGene believes that he had chronic motor tic disorder, exacerbated by doing all of the above actions.
> > >
> > I don't recall him having any facial tics -- not even when playing a mental patient in "The Cobweb." I guess those came later in his career.
> Evidently his heart attack affected him greatly. Look at him playing the piano in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8fA8j5JpHI
> Something is definitely wrong with him (but doesn't read to his fingers).
> > > > > > I've read a similar speculation about Edgar Poe (which I'm currently unable to locate). They present tantalizing possibilities for the imagination, but let's face it: publishers today would be telling Poe to "dumb" down his tales and to write more like Stephen King.
> This article? https://justinbienvenue.medium.com/if-poe-lived-in-this-era-668be3cf4a06
> > > > > We tried to read the latest Stephen King book ("Holly"), but it was not good. It was about an older couple (cannibals) who kidnap people and do them in (literally). We disliked the tone, writing and theme. We don't read murder porn.
> > > > >
> > > > When I was in high school, my father bought a copy of his short story collection,m "Night Shift," which I read many times. I found his writing style pedestrian, and noted his tendency to have his characters express emotion by saying "Sh*t!," "Damn!," and "F*ck!" Most of his plots reminded me of wannabe "Twilight Zone" episodes, only lacking the social commentary.
> > > The first Stephen King book we read was "Salem's Lot," which was scary. We tried to read "The Stand," which was awful/boring. He does write entertaining movie reviews.
> > I didn't know he wrote movie reviews. I'll have to look some of those up.
> He evidently writes some on X now, but used to write them often:
> https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/movies-stephen-king-likes-favorite-movies-good-reviews/duel-dennis-weaver-1971-2/
> > > > On the positive side, "Quitters, Inc." was a brilliant idea, and most of the stories contained several laugh out loud examples of decidedly black humor. The novella, "Jerusalem's Lot," also in the collection, was a huge disappointment, thoroughly devoid of humor, and a chore to read through. I avoided his novels, despite having had them recommended to me numerous times. I just couldn't work up the interest to read 600 page books, which would provide a handful of laughs at best.
> > > We generally don't like to read short stories. Stephen King's last couple of books have not been the length that previous ones were (~1000 pages). That mantle has been taken up by J. K. Rowling.
> > I prefer short stories. Much as with poetry, they can be read in a single sitting, thus creating an unbroken, dreamlike spell that engulfs the reader in their world, mood, and tone.
> We want a longer story, good for a few days of immersal into the plot.
> > > > I did, however, read 11/22/63 a few years ago. It started out entertainingly enough, with the protagonist journeying back in time in an attempt to prevent a girl from getting cripple due to a hunting accident, followed by an attempt to stop a man from murdering his family. Unfortunately, these were just experiments he was making, as his real goal was to stop the assassination of JFK. At that point, the book got bogged down in its attempt to reconstruct the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. It was very unevenly written, and while not as boring as "Jerusalem's Lot," it's not something that I'd recommend.
> > > We haven't read that book and are not currently very high on reading more of Mr. King's work.
> > > >
> > > > I'll always remember a quote from an interview with Mr. King that I'd read in a newspaper back in the early 1980s. He'd been asked how he was able to write so many novels in such a short period of time. His reply was something along the lines of, "Hey, it's not like I'm writing anything like Edgar Allan Poe." IOW: he openly admitted that he was churning out junk for money.
> > > We have read that he has a regular writing schedule every day, like he would if he had a 9-5 job.
> > I think a lot of writers designate a certain time of day, every day, to writing. It's a good way to ensure productivity -- and publishers are most interested in series that can be franchised.
> Perhaps Lord Byron could write "Stranger Things," season 5?
> >
> > As a Muse poet/writer, I write when my Muse cracks Her whip... which can be any place and any time. I always carry some blank sheets of paper and a pen in my pocket, and have written poetry on beaches and in bars. I wrote some of today's poem while walking along 47th Street on my lunch break.
> That's evidently a safe area for you. We wouldn't want you to be cooped.
> > > > > > > > And, despite Warhol's prediction that we will all experience fifteen minutes of fame, the vast majority of us still end up living wholly anonymous lives.
> > > > > > > Does everyone want to be famous? We don't. Some people do.
> > > > > > No. But I was responding to the observation you'd made above:
> > > > > > "Don't you think that, at least with Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, that they would have to be in the spotlight, no matter if they were born in the 1700s or the 1900s? Some people need to express themselves and in public."
> > > > > True, but we think that if George Gordon wanted to be famous today, he could make it so.
> > > > It's possible... but he would no longer be George Gordon, Lord Byron.
> > > Sure, he would--the new and improved, 2023 version.
> > You have a much higher estimation of 2023 than I do. I'll take a 1957 Studebaker over *any* 2023 car.
> If you had a Stutz Beatcat, that would be better than a 57 Studebaker.
> > > > > > > > There are always artists performing examples of various arts for free (or, more correctly, busking for change) in every NYC park. The majority of them are extremely talented, and should by all rights have acquired some level of renown. But they are no more successful in their artistic calling than the crazed pissbum who is competing with them for space, while delivering an impassioned monologue to an invisible audience.
> > > > > > > They are fooling themselves, looking for self assurance and validation from others, on the basis of their perceived talents.
> > > > > > Partly, perhaps. They're also hoping that an influential critic, publisher, producer, etc., might be strolling through the park, chance upon their performance, and give them the break that they need.
> > > > > Ah, the old "discovered at the soda shop" myth.
> > > > > > > > As writers, we like to think that talent will be recognized so long as one takes whatever steps are necessary to place their work before the public eye. But for every successful artist, there are millions of others (of, arguably, equal talent) who will live and die in obscurity.
> > > > > > > There are a lot of books being published each year that are written by people who have little writing talent.
> > > > > > Exactly!
> > > > > Many are on the best seller list, which is not a guarantee of quality writing.
> > > > Agreed. In fact, I'd say that it usually signifies the exact opposite.
> > > If you didn't like the writing style of Janet Evanovich, you should sample Debbie Macomber (you won't like it).
> > I don't care for the writing style of most modern writers ("Modern" meaning 20th Century). Even those I consider the best only break into occasional flights of well-written prose.
> Some of the authors run out of good ideas after the first or second book.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Our culture has been dumbed down to such a point that virtually every book being published by the bigger publishing houses is written on a sixth grade level (albeit with obligatory expletives and sex scenes thrown in to make it feel "adult").
> > > > > Yes, we have noticed that too.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Prince Harry can write a best-seller dishing the dirt on the royal family, but were Byron alive today (and writing Byronic verses), he'd have a collection of rejections letters from every publisher and agent in the business.
> > > > > He would have to be a personality first to get the public's attention, and then get his writings out there.
> > > > Definitely. But even with fame/notoriety to get his foot in the literary door, there'd be no market for "The Bride of Abydos," "Lara," or even "Don Juan."
> > > He would release those after gaining fame with a detective series.
> > Nope. Publishing companies wouldn't touch long, rhymed-metered poetry, and the public couldn't read them no matter how much they worship Byron.
> Then he would do stadium readings!
> > > > Poetry journals won't touch rhymed/metered verse, publishing companies are certainly not going to publish book length rhymed/metered poems, and the public isn't going to have any interest in them whatsoever.
> > > Maybe an innovative take on the subjects would gather interest (after being on the cover of People Magazine).
> > He'd write romantic aphorisms like the Drake. (Hate the Drake!)
> We haven't read anything by him and don't intend to. We have standards.
> > > >
> > > > I've read nearly all of Byron's works. I know that Ash also shares my admiration of "Manfred"... but Ash and I are not a big enough audience to put Byron on the Best Seller list.
> > > He would have a subscription website!
> > There'd be too much competition from OnlyFans, and related self-porn.
> We would think he would be classier than that.
> > > > > > > > Thomas and Byron were right for their respective times. Today, their respective styles would be as out-dated as my own. No, we'd be drinking absinthe together in a Greenwich bar, along with Edgar Poe and Walt Whitman; grumbling about the deplorable state of modern literature while a group of wannabe poets two tables to our left did the same.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Yes. right for their times. In listening to the 50s music, we wonder if those "hits" would be hits today. Probably not. We hear songs by people we have never heard of, and then Elvis songs. The tempos, right for "dancing to it," were of that era. The 60s people had a so-called cause. The 70s people all had that southern/western twang and sincerity in their songs. 80s disco, 90 rap. Silent film actors lost jobs when sound film was introduced. Great beauties of the 19th century look old and fat to us.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > The following is an excerpt from the current #1 Best Seller:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm Stephanie Plum. Jersey girl. Rutgers graduate. Successful underachiever working for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds as a recovery agent, hunting down losers who've skipped out on their bond.
> > > > > We defend Stephanie Plum and the thirty books about her adventures! We have read all of them--the first was in 1994, "One for the Money." The series is immensely popular with women readers--equivalent to the Jack Reacher books, which appeal to men. (We think that the Jack Reacher series is not well-written, but we are not the author's audience.)
> > > > > >
> > > > I must confess that I'd never heard of Stephanie Plum before I googled the current Best Seller list. I've never heard of Jack Reacher, either.
> > > The popular Jack Reacher book series is written by Lee Child. There was a Tom Cruise movie on the series a few years ago (which bombed). Jack Reacher is supposed to be about 6'5" and 250 lbs. In each book, Reacher moseys into a town and finds trouble, which he fixes. Fights ensue.
> > >
> > Tom Cruise played 6'5"? That's something I've got to see.
> He was not believable as Jack Reacher, according to those who liked the book character. We didn't see the movie, but it is probably on Netflix. It was supposed to be the start of a franchise, but bombed.
> > > > > > A half hour ago, I heard police chatter about Duncan Dugan exhibiting erratic behavior in an office building downtown. Dugan is a big-ticket bond who failed to show for his court appearance. He's been accused of robbing a jewelry store on King Street at gunpoint, almost running over a crossing guard in his effort to leave the area, and leading seven police cars on a high- speed chase before running out of gas. Since I'd been assigned the task of finding Dugan and dragging his sorry butt back into the legal system, I rushed to the scene with my coworker Lula. Dugan was standing on a fourth-floor ledge. He was a little chubby with short brown hair and his eyes were hidden behind aviator shades. I knew from his arrest sheet that he was five foot ten and thirty-six years old, but he looked younger up there on the ledge. He looked like Charlie Brown, possibly because he was wearing a yellow and black Charlie Brown–style three-button knit shirt. He was flattened against the front of the building, and he was looking down at the crowd that had gathered below him.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "He's gonna jump," Lula said to me. "I got him pegged for a jumper."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There was a large police presence in the area. There were fire trucks and ambulances, and a satellite news truck was parked not far away. It was lunchtime, and the outdoor eating area attached to the building's café had been cleared of diners.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "I'm thinking this might be partly your fault on account of he knows you're after him," Lula said to me. "He probably don't want to go to jail. You should yell up to him and tell him jail isn't so bad. Tell him he'll get free room and board and he'll have a chance to make new friends."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "I'm not yelling that up to him," I said. "That's crazy talk." "Yeah, but is it true?" Lula asked.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Technically, yes."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Hunh," Lula said. "There you have it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > It was a nice October day in Trenton, New Jersey. The sky was as blue as sky gets in Trenton and the sun was shining. I was wearing jeans and sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt over my V-neck, fitted T-shirt. Lula was wearing spike-heeled, thigh-high boots, and as usual she'd managed to squeeze her plus-size body into a spandex dress designed to fit a much smaller person. Her hair was frizzed out into a big puffball and her fake lashes were furry black caterpillar quality. Lula is a person of color and I'm a person of less color.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > My eyes are blue. My hair is brown, naturally curly, and shoulder length. I'm lacking the patience to iron my hair into straightness or blow-dry it into luxurious waves, so it's almost always in a ponytail. I make up for this by wearing lip gloss and smiling. Lula justifies the small dress and large lashes by being Lula. The fact is that it all works for her, and on a good day, she's spectacular.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > A woman pushed her way through the crowd and stepped out onto the street. I was guessing that she was in her midthirties, and if Duncan was Charlie Brown, then this woman was Charlie Brown's friend Lucy. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and cut into a simple bob with short bangs. She was wearing a blue shirtwaist dress and blue running shoes.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Duncan, you moron!" she yelled up to Dugan. "What the heck are you doing?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "I'm gonna jump," Dugan said. "I screwed up. It's over. I'm jumping to my death."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Well, you better take a header then, because you're only on the fourth floor. If you don't fall right, you could just end up with a bunch of broken bones or maybe paralyzed."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "I don't like heights. Four is as high as I can go."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "You need to crawl through that window next to you and get down here," the woman yelled up to him.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "I'll go to jail."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Big deal. My uncle Fritz went to jail, and he said it wasn't so bad. He got free room and board and he got to make a bunch of new friends.."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Fritz said that?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "More or less. Anyway, it won't be for so long, and in the meantime we can talk."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "What would we talk about?" "Stuff."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > He looked over at the window. "I don't want to get broken bones.."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "You see?" Lula said to me. "You could have been the hero if you'd been the first one to tell him about making friends in jail. Although the business about broken bones was a good addition." Dugan turned to get to the window, his foot slipped, and he fell off the ledge. There was a collective gasp from everyone watching as Dugan crashed through the yellow and white awning that stretched over the sidewalk café and landed like a sack of wet cement on the pavement.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm not normally a fainter, but I came close to fainting when I heard him hit. I bent at the waist, sucked in air, and fought the nausea. When I straightened up, Dugan was surrounded by paramedics and police.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Do you think he's okay?" Lula asked. "Not even a little," I said.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "They're bringing a stretcher over," Lula said. "That might be a good sign."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > One of Dugan's arms came up and he did a little finger wave. "I'm okay," he said. "Sort of."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The crowd dispersed after the wave and message from Dugan, but Lula and I stayed. The woman who had shouted up to Dugan approached the outer rim of the first responders, hung there for a couple minutes, and left.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The paramedics finally lifted Dugan onto the stretcher and rolled him off to the ambulance. I knew one of the men. Jerry Fisher.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Where are you taking him?" I yelled to Jerry.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > He turned and waved at me. "The medical center."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I gave him a thumbs-up, and Lula and I walked down the street to my car.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Excerpted from DIRTY THIRTY, Copyright © 2023 by Janet Evanovich, published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
> > > > > We are almost done with "Dirty Thirty." It is funny, the characters are familiar and lovable, and it is an enjoyable read. It is evident that Janet Evanovich has a good time writing these books, and her audience loves to read the adventures of Stephanie, her grandma, Lula, her two boyfriends, Bob the dog, and various goofballs of Trenton, NJ. It's not great literature, and is not meant to be, but it is fun. There are always clever lines and references included in the book, and at least a couple of laugh-out-loud situations that Stephanie gets herself into. She is an inept bringer-in of FTAs (failure to appear for their court date), always gets her car demolished, and is perpetually early 30s, with a pet hamster (Rex), who is still alive after 30 books.
> > > > > >
> > > > I'm sure it's all very amusing. I don't limit my reading strictly to literary classics, either. I enjoyed reading Eddie Fisher's autobio, "Been There, Done Her," for instance. I also watch of lot of movies that aren't exactly cinematic masterpieces. But judging from the quoted selection, it's written on a sixth grade level at best.
> > > The Stephanie Plum books are written in first person, which doesn't lend itself to philosophical phrases in a book that is supposed to be funny.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > See Dick run. Run, Dick, run!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > See Jane play. Play, Jane, play!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Dylan, George, Eddy, Walt and I are presently engaged in a contest to see which of us can drink themself to death first.
> > > > > If you were a woman reader, you might enjoy the series.
> > > > I wouldn't require a sex change to enjoy a book written by, and about, a woman. Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" is one of my all-time favorites.
> > > > > > Cheers!
> > > > > À votre santé!
> > > We did finish the book, and it was exactly what we have come to expect in a Stephanie Plum novel. We will start the 1000 page Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) book today. She needs a good editor (but doesn't want George Dance).
> > >
> > Not even after what he did for the Donkey's career?
> Maybe Ms. Evanovich would like to write a book about an inept publisher? George Dance doesn't seem to be in demand as an editor or critic. Will Donkey buys his own books.
> >
> > Will's book is on Walmart.com!
> A lot of things are on Walmart.com.
> >
> > Michael Pendragon
> > “You constantly accuse others of having gay fantasies about YOU despite
> > the fact that you look unwashed, uncoordinated, overweight and slightly
> > confused on camera. And you say you're not narcissistic?”
> > -- Rob Evans to Will “Giggling at Gays” Dockery