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It's Percy Bysshe Shelley's birthday. You read about his shenanigans and they're far OUT, man. Mark Twain felt so outraged by a Shelley bio in his day he wrote an entire piece defending poor Harriet Shelley who was blamed for everything. Post on my site: sheilaomalley.com/?p=39450 
I knew Stan from MAD MEN was my long lost husband when he said "You better read the whole poem" to Ginsberg, who quoted "look on my mighty works," and etc. from Ozymandias, completely missing the meaning that it's an inscription on a RUIN, the civilization is DEAD.
On 9/14/01 I was unloading stuff at the Salvation Army on 14th st., wearing a mask, w/an Irishman I had just met (and made out with - it was a stressful day) -and there was a banner quoting that Ozymandias inscription and I said to my Irishman, "yeah, but the rest of it... Hm."
Ozymandias is probably his most well-known but you haven't lived until you have tried to do a scene from CENCI in acting class and make it work. He sunk us. We must have looked like asssssholes. But it's a good - if cray-cray - read.
and bless my Irishman, he knew the poem and understood my point. He said, behind his mask, lugging a crate of bottled water inside, "No shit, right?"
I never did get his name.
In the post on my site - I quote an excerpt from a Robert Graves essay where he compares Keats and Shelley - there seems to be a reluctance to compare/contrast these days - has anyone else noticed that? They think you're throwing out one to praise the other. At any rate:
I love Robert Grave's words a/b the two poets reactions to pleasure, to nature, to sex ... I was always more into Keats, although Ozymandias is one of the poems that initially got me into poetry in the first place.
