We present the field narrowed down to 32 after first round play.
The Sublime March Madness Tournament was bent in a certain direction when Homer advanced in the Classical bracket and Plato did not.
Will spectacle prevail over thought?
Perhaps not. Two critics did advance. Leonardo da Vinci and G. E. Lessing.
Painting is chiaroscuro. Poetry is actions. Leave it to the classical age to leave us with what is what.
Thomas Gray, 16th seed winner in the Classical Bracket, from the early 18th century, already sounds Romantic, and come to think of it, so does Shakespeare.
Sophocles has the first detective story—“Thou Art The Man” is a title of a lesser-known Edgar Poe crime story. Homer rolls out Man Unsentimental.
Ovid’s icy “It is art to conceal art.” What does it mean? Would Socrates approve of the sentiment? Is “The Republic” art? What, then, is “art?”
Unable to answer this question, Ovid proves too much for the rest of the competition, and advances to the Final Four.
CLASSICAL
Homer “Friend, you will die”
Sophocles “Thou art the man”
Ovid “It is art to conceal art”
Dante “Death had undone so many”
Shakespeare “When I waked, I cried to dream again”
da Vinci “Painting is crowned by chiaroscuro”
G.E. Lessing “Actions are the subjects of poetry”
Thomas Gray “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day”
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Goethe seems to sum up the Romantic, “feeling is all,” but the Romantics could be accurate and lurid painters: “The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream.” “Green dells that into silence stretch away” “Down to a sunless sea.” “Tyger, tyger, burning bright.”
Shelley’s “I wield the flail of the lashing hail” is Romantic as hell.
The unknown Cornelius Matthews wins with “Green dells that into silence stretch away”
ROMANTIC
Blake “Tyger, tyger, burning bright”
Goethe “Feeling is all”
Coleridge “Down to a sunless sea”
Shelley “I wield the flail of the lashing hail”
Horne “The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream”
Barrett “In sorrowful complaint which trailed along the gorges”
Byron “They slept on the abyss without a surge”
Cornelius Matthews “Green dells that into silence stretch away”
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In the Modern bracket, expressions of ennui and entropy: “Man slowly slipping back to all fours” “…borne back” “I am not Prince Hamlet” “…vaguely life leaks away” “All quiet”
Virginia Woolf has the intriguing “It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex.”
Conrad’s hearty “yell for yell to a westerly gale” is definitely Homeric.
But an age defines itself. The winner of the Modern bracket has to represent the modern. This is the understanding.
Emerging as the winner in the Modern Bracket is “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”
MODERN
Conrad “yell for yell to a westerly gale”
Remarque “All quiet on the western front”
Thurber “Man slowly slipping back to all fours”
Woolf “It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex”
Fitzgerald “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”
Eberhart “In June, amid the golden fields, I saw a groundhog lying dead”
Eliot “No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”
Auden “In headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks away”
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The Post-Modern Bracket has not had time to be immortalized; it is too recent.
The lineup is amazing. Sean Harvey’s heart-breaking memoir, Carolyn Forche’s harrowing tale of terrorism, Brian Rihlmann’s hopeless family crisis, Jeff Callaway’s paean to poetry, Stephen Cole’s mystical warning, Philp Nikolayev’s chemical intrigue, Dan Sociu’s introspective on the poet, and Mary Angela Douglas’ “until the sorrows”
The winner in the Post-Modern?
Dan Sociu
“the quakes moving for nothing, under uninhabited regions”
POST-MODERN
Sean Harvey “I can sing it. I can sing “Eleanor Rigby” for you.”
Carolyn Forche “Something for your poetry, no?”
Brian Rihlmann “The crackle of the crematory flames told you nothing”
Jeff Callaway “The greatest poems are never written down”
Stephen Cole “In the high mystical arch where the pigeons blur”
Nikolayev “Music turned itself on and wouldn’t quit, that bizarre non-quitter music.”
Sociu “the quakes moving for nothing, under uninhabited regions.”
Douglas “until the sorrows ransacked you”
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Congratulations to the Bracket Winners!
On to the Final Four!