Dec 12, 2019
#apocalypse, #dread, #election, #fear, #George Eliot, #helpless, #hope, #hopeless, #Middlemarch, #nightmare, #poem, #poetry, #politicians, #politics, #terror, #The Second Coming, #unease, #Yeats
by Lucy Crispin
For me, it’s got to be ‘The Second Coming‘ as poem of the day today (hear Dominic West read it here). Election day in the UK, and a sense of no good news ahead, whether nationally or globally… The poem’s cascade of nightmarish images strikes fear into me; or rather, makes visible the fear that is already there. Bits of the poem have echoed round my mind often over these last few years, offering a sort of grimly reassuring sense that dread is, if nothing else, a shared experience. Doom has impended before; feels impending now; and seems likely to continue to impend until it breaks, or cracks, or whatever it is that doom does when it’s no longer future but present tense.
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