Pretty Good Year: Issa's Sunday Service, #119

Today's selection on the Sunday Service is a Tori Amos song, "Pretty Good Year," that was suggested by a reader for which he got two free issues of Lilliput Review. The Amos song lifts a phrase - "the eternal Footman" - from T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the line in question being "And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker".

"Prufrock" also provided a line for this previous Sunday Service song. There are lots more in allusions to Eliot in popular music and, no doubt, they will provide future songs for the Sunday Service. For the moment, how's about we settle in and listen to the poet take a turn himself:





If you'd like your Eliot ready with animation rather than stagnant pictures, here you are:





Perhaps your version would have shoeboxes for hats ... I know mine does. Shoeboxes and mighty plosives and a, um, broader interpretation.






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This week's featured poem from the archive of Lilliput Review comes from #69, June 1995, by the master poet, Patrick Sweeney. Enjoy.

An 'anybody home?' afternoon silence

Patrick Sweeney

quite a feat--
in utter silence
the plum tree blooms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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