Monday, September 18, 2006

Michelangelo, Poetry, and Santorum

I've gone out to a some political events over the past few days but haven't had the time to write them up yet; tonight was parent's night at school and that took precedence. Expect posts later this week on observation of Casey and on the Fitzpatrick / Murphy debate.

For this evening, I leave you with this:

Did you know Michelangelo wrote poetry? I didn’t either until I recently chanced upon “The Complete Poems of Michelangelo,” translated by John Frederick Nims. These are not light happy poems; they have sharp edges. One in particular (#75, p. 59) struck me. It’s sort of a Renaissance precursor of Carly Simon’s “He’s So Vain.” It reminds me of Sen. Rick Santorum, though you may think it fits some other candidate or official better. Here it is:

Too much! The way he flaunts himself around,
knocking folks dead, he’s such a handsome sight.
[missing line]
showing off, gallivanting on the town.
Too much! The way he makes the sun dim down
by batting his brighter eyes, till noon seems night.
And then his song, his laugh! The pure delight
dumbfounds. O he’s a prince! Get out the crown!

2 comments:

ACM said...

yeah, a friend of mine gave me "the sonnets of Michelangelo" for my 30th birthday, and I thought it almost had to be a typo... but he wrote tons of them!

AboveAvgJane said...

I didn't read all of them but the ones I saw were really good. It seems he was an artist in many definitions of the word.