Randall Jarrell reads The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
May 2, 2018 6:49 AM Subscribe
Is this what's known as a shallow fake?
posted by windowbr8r at 7:30 AM on May 2, 2018
posted by windowbr8r at 7:30 AM on May 2, 2018
Somewhat related, my wife has a song about her great uncle, a tail gunner.
posted by bonehead at 7:37 AM on May 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 7:37 AM on May 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Is this what's known as a shallow fake?
Perhaps.
"Welcome to poetryreincarnations a channel dedicated to reincarnating great figures from poetry and literature via the wonders of computer animation.
I hope you may enjoy these glimpses at some of the long gone poets and Literary figures etc in the form of scratchy old movies as if they had been filmed by candle light."
So I think it's a real recording of Jarrell reading, combined with "the wonders of computer animation".
Here's a related deep fake.
posted by thelonius at 7:39 AM on May 2, 2018
Perhaps.
"Welcome to poetryreincarnations a channel dedicated to reincarnating great figures from poetry and literature via the wonders of computer animation.
I hope you may enjoy these glimpses at some of the long gone poets and Literary figures etc in the form of scratchy old movies as if they had been filmed by candle light."
So I think it's a real recording of Jarrell reading, combined with "the wonders of computer animation".
Here's a related deep fake.
posted by thelonius at 7:39 AM on May 2, 2018
This is one of the first poems I ever read in High School English class. My teacher at the time was...weird and intense, and I clearly remember the discussion about this poem. How complex it is, how nuanced and intense the language.
She pushed the abortion interpretation (which some quick googling does not make obvious), which has stayed with me to this day, and is what I think of whenever someone says the name of the poem.
I've never heard him read it, which adds another layer to it. Thanks for posting!
posted by Gorgik at 8:08 AM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
She pushed the abortion interpretation (which some quick googling does not make obvious), which has stayed with me to this day, and is what I think of whenever someone says the name of the poem.
I've never heard him read it, which adds another layer to it. Thanks for posting!
posted by Gorgik at 8:08 AM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Or stillbirth -- but we bring our own luggage to any poem.
posted by y2karl at 8:13 AM on May 2, 2018
posted by y2karl at 8:13 AM on May 2, 2018
As one can see here, opinions differ. For me it is a deep meditation on the horrors of war.
posted by y2karl at 8:24 AM on May 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 8:24 AM on May 2, 2018 [5 favorites]
I remember this poem from middle school or high school. It was one of the first things that knocked the romance of of WWII for me.
Then about ten years ago, the Collings Foundation brought their warbirds -- including a fully-restored B-17 -- to a local airport, and I paid my ten bucks to walk through them. As I walked heel-to-toe along the hand-wide catwalk over the open bomb bay, I also glanced down on the top of the ball turret (which they had to raise just to land the plane) and...I just stopped. JFC, who ever got into that thing and expected to get out again alive?
posted by wenestvedt at 9:28 AM on May 2, 2018
Then about ten years ago, the Collings Foundation brought their warbirds -- including a fully-restored B-17 -- to a local airport, and I paid my ten bucks to walk through them. As I walked heel-to-toe along the hand-wide catwalk over the open bomb bay, I also glanced down on the top of the ball turret (which they had to raise just to land the plane) and...I just stopped. JFC, who ever got into that thing and expected to get out again alive?
posted by wenestvedt at 9:28 AM on May 2, 2018
Also, that's not exacly WETA-quality, but very cool nonetheless.
I wonder whether they need more images of one person moving to make a good fake, or just more points mapped on the image that they do posses? I would love to have a Girl's Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" that could tell me stories in the author's voice, or use it to turn old BBC or Mercury Theater of the Air radio plays into movies!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:31 AM on May 2, 2018
I wonder whether they need more images of one person moving to make a good fake, or just more points mapped on the image that they do posses? I would love to have a Girl's Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" that could tell me stories in the author's voice, or use it to turn old BBC or Mercury Theater of the Air radio plays into movies!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:31 AM on May 2, 2018
Oh, Wikipedia, never change:
posted by wenestvedt at 9:50 AM on May 2, 2018
The Sperry ball turret was very small [clarification needed]Maybe the image just to the right of those very words would help -- the one where the guy is snaking his way through that tiny hatch?!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:50 AM on May 2, 2018
I had a high school teacher, a gnarled little wizened man, who flew as a ball turret gunner over Europe. He had the PTSD real hard. Mr B always had his war rosary in his tiny twitchy hand. He'd rubbed the beads flat during the war. That talisman was how he tried to share the stress.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:45 AM on May 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:45 AM on May 2, 2018 [4 favorites]
You know, WWI gets all the attention for poetry, but there must have been plenty in WWII as well. There's this one, which is, perhaps, the most famous. And, uh......I can think of one more, "Sea Burial" by John Ciardi. Which I think is about the war, but maybe not. The Poetry Foundation has this list of WWII poets.
posted by thelonius at 11:23 AM on May 2, 2018
posted by thelonius at 11:23 AM on May 2, 2018
As one can see here, opinions differ. For me it is a deep meditation on the horrors of war.
It's so weird to me that that people would try to claim it's using war as a metaphor for abortion, rather than abortion as a metaphor for war (or really just as one image in a poem that is straightforwardly about war).
posted by atoxyl at 11:31 AM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's so weird to me that that people would try to claim it's using war as a metaphor for abortion, rather than abortion as a metaphor for war (or really just as one image in a poem that is straightforwardly about war).
posted by atoxyl at 11:31 AM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
the pages linked above link forward as well to the rest of A Front, Losses, The Angels at Hamburg, and The Sick Nought.
posted by mwhybark at 11:58 AM on May 2, 2018
posted by mwhybark at 11:58 AM on May 2, 2018
I haven't thought about this in years but I'm certain my father quoted this poem to me from memory at an impressionable age.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:03 PM on May 2, 2018
posted by Wretch729 at 12:03 PM on May 2, 2018
Looking at those pictures, another thing just occurred to me from having fired machine guns from enclosed spaces in a past life -- the smell and fumes from the guns in there must have been awful. I'm guessing there was good ventilation due to moving fast and being outside the hull, but it had to be a greasy, cramped, smelly hell.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:22 PM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:22 PM on May 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Whenever I think of Jarrell, I think of this exchange between him and his mother:
Mom: Maybe you wouldn't be so depressed if you stopped making mountains out of molehills.
Randall: When you're depressed, there are no molehills.
posted by dobbs at 2:23 PM on May 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Mom: Maybe you wouldn't be so depressed if you stopped making mountains out of molehills.
Randall: When you're depressed, there are no molehills.
posted by dobbs at 2:23 PM on May 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
This poem must be in every poetry collection in every classroom in the land. I saw it everywhere, as a long-time English teacher. I don't know that I ever mentioned it to my students, but the last line breaks one of those cardinal rules in writing: Do not write a piece in which the narrator/speaker dies. That's even worse than starting a story with the narrator waking up to an alarm clock. It's such a great poem that I gave the poet a pass on that one. There's a lot packed into those five lines.
The idea that it's about abortion never once occurred to me or any of my students, nor to the poet, I'm pretty sure. However, if that's what you get from it, fine. Art is like that.
posted by kozad at 3:25 PM on May 2, 2018
The idea that it's about abortion never once occurred to me or any of my students, nor to the poet, I'm pretty sure. However, if that's what you get from it, fine. Art is like that.
posted by kozad at 3:25 PM on May 2, 2018
It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make.)
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, 'Our casualties were low.'
They said, 'Here are the maps'; we burned the cities.
It was not dying --no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: 'Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?'
Losses
by Randall Jarrell
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM on May 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make.)
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, 'Our casualties were low.'
They said, 'Here are the maps'; we burned the cities.
It was not dying --no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: 'Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?'
Losses
by Randall Jarrell
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM on May 2, 2018 [3 favorites]
A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose.-- Randall Jarrell
posted by kirkaracha at 8:55 AM on May 4, 2018
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posted by y2karl at 7:25 AM on May 2, 2018