I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Thank you for the sanity, dear Atrios.
Or do they change recorded history for having experienced it?
Thanks, pie!
It might be worthwhile to start with Wordsworth here, a fellow who lived through some fascinating historical times, initialy supporting the French Revolution, then recoiling in horror from its excesses--recoiling straight into Victorian British conservatism. I don't think living it helped him much....
CNBC Now: Russert. Krugman vs. O'Reilly. Give 'em hell, Paul.
Rimbaud, bitches!
No.
...dude, I hear one hand clapping...Heisenberg and all...I prefer the Pirsig metaphor of quality...although you have certainly illuminated the human-made line between art and, well, non-art....give me a sophist any day, at least they're honest...
This historian is having a long think about that post A-man. Interesting... I'll get back to you on that. Certainly poetry can form part of the historical record... just look at how Howard Zinn likes to use it.
This historian is having a long think about that post A-man.
P-woman, actually...
I don't know if it's so much poets the people as poetry of the soul. What makes Rimbaud or Dylan Thomas more "accurate" than Bob Dylan or Stephen Jay Gould.
Plus, most modern poets are miserable little fuckers.
Hey, cool! Is this another physics thread?
Oops.
OK, how about this:
Ruth rode on my motorbike
Directly back of me.
I hit a bump at 65
And rode on Ruthlessly.
What.
Burma Shave!
"What makes Rimbaud or Dylan Thomas more "accurate" than Bob Dylan or Stephen Jay Gould."
It's not accuracy, exactly, but a kind of emotional truth. My problem is exactly what Backslider identifies here--why is music not considered poetry? Granted, some lyricists are for shit, but there are smart people out there, too.
Polarities: Predictions on the State of the Union
When you believe in things
you don’t understand, you suffer….
Stevie Wonder
The Earth is just two redwoods old,
we are by certain preachers told.
So fossils and mutation rates
are simply Satan’s sucker-bait.
Others say that Earth’s been here
for something like four billion years;
and some are given doctorates
to study man’s descent from ape.
But the world is round or it is flat --
one view’s foolish and one is fact.
Truth lies not in some golden mean,
a temperate zone between extremes.
Truth, like gold, is where it’s found,
despite what cowardice propounds.
In truth, truth is no moderate,
it is instead cause and effect
linked in autotelic law --
its point is made with fang and claw.
Fools come to grief upon the facts
much like the priests who killed the cats
because they’re minions of the devil,
unlike us and therefore evil.
How did they divine this truth,
how arrive at holy proof?
By throwing felines from church steeples;
the cats survived, unlike good people.
So priests then slaughtered all the cats
and reaped a rising tide of rats.
Soon the rats begat a plague,
which ushered in a long Dark Age.
The President is brave and wise,
or else a windbag stuffed with lies.
Nice people will propound the view
that Truth lies right between the two.
But truth is hard and cold, not nice;
it lies in wait, Titanic’s ice.
Backslider,
We aren't ALL miserable little fuckers.
All poetry after 1920 is silly, except rap.
...I know drawing lines between, say, science and art, makes both more digestible, but again, until someone definitively answers the question why, everything is nothing but somebody's best guess. Based on observation. Communicated as metaphor.
Alan Watts once said, "Separate the cloud from the sky" Try it, I dares ya...
Non-poetic OT thought...
did anybody else see Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly on Russert tonight? God, I have never felt such rage towards O'reilly...I felt like I could strangle him with my bare hands. Through the TV.
In the middle of the day
She is often heard to say:
"I've a pickle up my nose,
and it's dripping on my toes.
Before I put it in my face
it resided in a place
the name of which shall not be uttered!"
And saying this, she goes, unfluttered.
by Little Annie Coulter
in another kinder universe
.
All poetry after 1920 is silly, except rap
What's wrong with pre-1920 rap?
It's not accuracy, exactly, but a kind of emotional truth. My problem is exactly what Backslider identifies here--why is music not considered poetry? Granted, some lyricists are for shit, but there are smart people out there, too.
NYMary | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 8:10 pm | #
Well, that's sorta what I ment and why I put "accuracy" in quotation marks. Emotional truth is the same thing, really. And why isn't someone like Gould a proponent of "emotional truth"?
And music and poetry aren't the same thing. Lyrics don't mean much without the music, being little more the doggerel. The best poetry has it's own fluidity and rhythm, while lyrics lack the same emotional impact without the music. That's why some cover versions flop (like anything Metallica covers): they lose the tie with the music. Conversely, someone can seriously change the meaning of the source with different music and delivery, like an ironic cover by Mr. Bungle.
And, frankly, straight music is totally different from pop music. One of my pet peeves is when someone says "rock & roll is dead because nothing interesting is being done". That's not the point of rock & roll. The point is what's being said and how it's being said. I've long held that songwriters - like Dylan, Vic Chesnutt, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Townes Van Zant, Todd Snider, Robbie Fulks, etc. - have more or less taken the place of poets in society as chronologers of that "emotional truth". Then, there's musicians who just make music from the old-school perspective, where it's the sounds and emotional feeling derived from them that are important. Vocals, if there's indeed any, are just another instrument.
We aren't ALL miserable little fuckers.
Melanie | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 8:10 pm | #
Oh, yes you are.
Okay, I was just being snarky. One of my best friends just happens to be a poet, and he's not a miserable little fucker. But you gotta admit...there's a whole lot of poets that are miserable little fuckers. Almost as many as there are songwriters who are miserable little fuckers.
Born in the USA is the best account of the Reagan years available- and poetry.
The problem is the Republicans never heard the lyrics- in one ear, out the other. If Reagan had listened to it, he wouldn't have tried to use it. Springeteen's slapdown of Ronnie was real history.
Why did WWI get the poetry?
What was wrong with WWII? (Regarding POETRY, I mean).
I know little about literature, but that's my first thought.
For the record,
I am NOT a miserable little fucker.
or do they change history for having wrote about it.
Art should be about beauty not politics!
from Robert Bly, to bush the elder:
To President Bush at the Start of the Gulf War
This thin-lipped king with his helmeted head
Remembers the quirky fits of light
That tempt the cobra. No, the temper of the dove
Does not fit him: and nothing in the world
Can bring him to bless. He will not feed,
Nourish or help; and his rabbity hand
Lifted in the fading light of the hemlocks
Waves to them, gestures to the young to die.
From Monty Python's Flying Circus:
"Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm..."
Tee hee.
Why did WWI get the poetry?
What was wrong with WWII? (Regarding POETRY, I mean).
I sang a beautiful piece based on a poem called "Still falls the rain" by Dame Edith Sitwell, about living through the bombing raids in London. It's called Canticle III by Benjamin Britten, for Tenor, Horn, and Piano. Quite a stunning poem and piece of music. First verse:
Still falls the rain,
Dark as the world of man,
Black as our loss,
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the cross.
But you gotta admit...there's a whole lot of poets that are miserable little fuckers
The miserablest motherfucker I ever knew was a stockbroker. Just a mean, mean son of a bitch.
The WWI, WWII divergence is a good question, and may have more to do with what was going on in literature at that time (beginning of Modernism vs. end of Modernism). Remember that most of the WWI poets came from a pretty small clique, though. WWII gave us Edith Sitwell--not a poet-soldier--and some great prose writers (Heller, Vonnegut). Maybe some wars are just more poetic than others. Now that's a depressing thought.
"great poets live in pots of steaming shit" Buk
just sayin', great analysis of why song lyrics aren't poetry backslider. altho i do remember reading that dylan sort of considered his stuff poetry set to music. or was that ginsburg, trying out a failed experiment?
but for pure abstract symbolism, i gotta go with rimbaud. strange stuff. was he gay? (joke)
Some say History is written by the victors and Poetry is written by the victims.
Or is it the Blues that are written by the victims?
No, the Blues are written by the "been done wrongers."
Or maybe the "I done wrongers".
I get confused on that issue.
No wonder they call it the Blues
Wildly OT, but I'm rather surprised that no lefty blogger (as far as I know) has taken on Tom Junod's August 4th entry entitled "The Case for George W. Bush" in Esquire Premium.
Is it that his arguments are unassailable or what? They seem pretty specious and manipulative to me, but no one has spoken (or written) up?
Why is that?
RE: War, Wilfred Owen describes it well. Too bad he was killed the last week of WWI. Poverty & Discrimination, how about "What happens to a dream deferred?" by Langston Hughes.
cuz people stopped caring about esquire thirty years ago
I think a great record of some event is whatever that great rendering happens to be. It could be a diary. It could be poetry. It could be musical. It could be a film. It might even be a 3d adventure game.
I think the idea is not to prejudge anything as being worthy without a sufficiently critical eye, or unworthy without giving something a fair chance.
War is sometimes confused with battle.
-
What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' bull—their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; Which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus must it be according to the laws of aesthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager, and be understood by the swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.
--Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1 (1843).
In addition to my numerous other acquaintances I have still one more intimate friend—my melancholy. In the midst of pleasure, in the midst of work, he beckons to me, calls me aside, even though I remain present bodily. My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had—no wonder that I return the love!
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy—to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily. And who, indeed, could help laughing? What, I wonder, do these busy folks get done? Are they not to be classed with the woman who in her confusion about the house being on fire carried out the firetongs? What things of greater account, do you suppose, will they rescue from life's great conflagration?
Let others complain that the times are wicked. I complain that they are paltry; for they are without passion. The thoughts of men are thin and frail like lace, and they themselves are feeble like girl lace-makers. The thoughts of their hearts are too puny to be sinful. For a worm it might conceivably be regarded a sin to harbor thoughts such as theirs, not for a man who is formed in the image of God. Their lusts are staid and sluggish, their passions sleepy; they do their duty, these sordid minds, but permit themselves, as did the Jews, to trim the coins just the least little bit, thinking that if our Lord keep tab of them ever so carefully one might yet safely venture to fool him a bit. Fye upon them! It is therefore my soul ever returns to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that one is dealing with men and women; t
dms, we did talk about this a little last night, but no one here was buying "Bush's moral clarity" as an argument, nor the parallels to Lincoln, so it was dead in the water.
People Like Us by Robert Bly
There are more like us. All over the world.
There are confused people, who can't remmber
The name of their dog when they wake up and people
Who love God[dess] but can't remember where
[S]he was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk and the thief
Goes back to college. Even to graduate school.
You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.
WWI vs WWII: keep in mind that WWI was the end of civilization, the death of that confidence that keep white conquerers going through the continents like a typhoon. After WWI every single intellectual came away with an awareness of a major flaw, not in some alienable other but in our way of doing things, which had previously been our pride. WWII--which itself can be and is often thought of as a product of WWI, not an independent thing--was a straightforward good and evil thing, the same concerns there but colder so long after their initial breaking upon the world.
just sayin', great analysis of why song lyrics aren't poetry backslider. altho i do remember reading that dylan sort of considered his stuff poetry set to music. or was that ginsburg, trying out a failed experiment?
I don't think His Bobness ever considered his songs poetry. He's got published examples of actual poetry out there (some as liner notes to his first albums), and one band - I forget who - turned his poem "Jack Of Diamonds" into a song, with so-so results.
Couldn't tell you about Ginesburg, though. There's some examples of poets who've made the move successfully to songwriting - Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll - and all of them were poets first. Jim Morrison did the same, but I'd argue what he was saying is much less important to the music as the mood he was sitting. And also, I hate The Doors.
but for pure abstract symbolism, i gotta go with rimbaud. strange stuff. was he gay? (joke)
charley | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 8:31 pm | #
Yep. He was gay, gay, gay. The Georgia Satellites name-drop him in a song called "My Baby": "Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud/Would change their minds if they knew what I know." And that's why I love that band and the main songwriter, Dan Baird. Much more to 'em than "Keep Your Hands To Yourself", which is clever as shit on its own.
Good poets are excellent witnesses. They record the human experience, behind the "dry facts" and in that I believe them to be more accurate.
"Art should be about beauty not politics!"
Art reflects life and part of life is (big) politics, eg the Russian avantgarde. BTW, how do you define beauty anyway?
"Why did WWI get the poetry?
What was wrong with WWII? (Regarding POETRY, I mean)."
Good question. I have no idea, all I know is that after WWI most illusions/dreams about human life were gone (see Dada movement, eg).
Well, crap. Screwed that up. didn't realize I didn't cut the rest off.
Damn.
Let me try that one more time:
What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' bull—their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; Which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus must it be according to the laws of aesthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager,2 and be understood by the swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.
-Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1 (1843).
That's better.
Come on Ozzie, that's crap and you know it.
Screwed up the tags that time.
I give up.
k&y,
I agree completely. The shattering of the mythos was pretty hard to take--but WWII was a different beast altogether.
This is the silliest argument ever. I once attended a lecture about how they "don't build 'em like they used to." The guy's point was that they NEVER built 'em (churches from the late medieval period) like they used to. Most fell down within 100 years. It is only the extreme exceptions that survived. It is Sturgeons law in spades. Most poetry, music painting, sculpture, film, theatre, whatever, is crap. Some we like now because of who we are, but really, will the Hives be remembered 100 years from now? There is this wonderful telescoping effect of hindsight, we forget that the major studios in the 1940's released 52 movies a week, per studio, and don't remember out of the hundreds made each year, only one was Casablanca, only one was Citizen Kane. The rest were transitory, ephemeral crap, which may have been worth the ticket price at the time, but are best forgotten. Even GOOD crap has it's natural life span.
Poetry is no less vulnerable to hindsite-- with anything recent it is nearly impossible to pick out the gold due to the dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.
"Why did WWI get the poetry?
What was wrong with WWII? (Regarding POETRY, I mean).
I know little about literature, but that's my first thought."
The Donkey
Film matured as a medium by WWII, and a lot of artists started using film as a means of expresion, leaving fewer artists writing poetry to write great poetry.
Warren Terra,
A band named Roxy Music sang a song years ago called "Still Falls the Rain"
"They pass you by
Like falling rain
From perfect skies
Still falls the rain"
Not the same as the poem you mention though I reckon.
poets... um, yeah, whatever.
is there a good leftie irc channel? and is there a transcript of the o'reilly/krugman debate? supposedly o'reilly got more words in (while whining he wasn't getting enough of course).
anyway it would be nice to rant about us politics in realtime.
This is the silliest argument ever. I once attended a lecture about how they "don't build 'em like they used to." The guy's point was that they NEVER built 'em (churches from the late medieval period) like they used to. Most fell down within 100 years. It is only the extreme exceptions that survived. It is Sturgeons law in spades. Most poetry, music painting, sculpture, film, theatre, whatever, is crap. Some we like now because of who we are, but really, will the Hives be remembered 100 years from now? There is this wonderful telescoping effect of hindsight, we forget that the major studios in the 1940's released 52 movies a week, per studio, and don't remember out of the hundreds made each year, only one was Casablanca, only one was Citizen Kane. The rest were transitory, ephemeral crap, which may have been worth the ticket price at the time, but are best forgotten. Even GOOD crap has it's natural life span.
Poetry is no less vulnerable to hindsite-- with anything recent it is nearly impossible to pick out the gold due to the dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.
Poetry is no less vulnerable to hindsite-- with anything recent it is nearly impossible to pick out the gold due to the dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.
You, sir, are not a poet.
And you are so wrong.
OMG.
Sorry, did not mean to blogwhore in my previous post. Typed the wrong thing in the wrong box.
The WWI, WWII divergence is a good question, and may have more to do with what was going on in literature at that time (beginning of Modernism vs. end of Modernism).
The "flower" of the British generation went to WWI. Most of them died. The "Lost Generation" in Britain was literally that: almost an entire generation of young men was decimated. Some villages lost all their 20 year old able-bodied men.
And it was a long, tedious war, giving soldiers time to reflect and meditate and think about war. But that doesn't quite explain it, either.
Eliot's "Four Quartets" come out of WWII, as much as any poetry does. And it's relationship to London in the Blitz is profound. There's also the work of Auden, which is neither to be sneezed at nor overlooked.
Owen, especially, opened our eyes to the horror of war, but then WWI wasn't supposed to happen, and WWII just finished what the Armistice didn't. So maybe the best poets of the war came early, and didn't leave much for the others to say. Or maybe the language was beggered by the horror of modern warfare, and poets have yet to grapple with the truth of what is now, since Own, "that old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
I mean, how do you write war poetry after that?
William Jeffers,
I believe Kierkegaard knew the Blues:
"I have just come back from a party where I was the life and soul. Witticisms flowed from my lips. Everyone laughed and admired me—but, I left, yes, that dash should be as long as the radii of the earth's orbit ——— and wanted to shoot myself."
from his Journal
Can you trust a man like that to write History?
Because there is no other way to follow the profound professor Jeffers:
Youguys! Is this not the most honestly appropriate and honest name for a bar, ever?
Robert M. Jeffers... WWI was such a pointless slaughter of so many for so little. It's hard to concieve of writing anything but poetry about a topic that depressing.
Poetry is no less vulnerable to hindsite-- with anything recent it is nearly impossible to pick out the gold due to the dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.
Oh, maybe.
But in a memorable scene in "Brideshead Revisited" (I don't trust tags anymore!), Waugh has a young Britain at a party standing at the top of the stairs declaiming "The Waste Land" to an appreciative audience.
Shakespeare was widely regarded as a great playwright in his time (how do you think his acting company was appointed to King James' court?).
Raleigh and Marlowe, likewise, were highly regarded, as was Wordsworth in his old age.
The idea that all poetry is despised in its youth is a notion born of the Romantic period, a period of ferocious revolution where the 1960's cliche "never trust anyone over 30!" took root. It became fashionable to proclaim new work "brilliant" and those who hated it "philistines" and "Bourgeois."
But most good work shines as good work early on, and most bad work vanishes rather quickly. So it's an overbroad generalization to say no good work is recognized when it is produced.
Tastes change. And sometimes the "bad" is redubbed "good." But actually, not all that often.
Poetry is dead. And no poet becomes great until he is dead.
OOps. The above by me was for ROBERT M. JEFFERS. Not William
RMJ,
I stand corrected-and can never figure out why I forget poor old Auden, who I love. His "Shield of Achilles" is brilliant--I make my students read it when they read *The Iliad.* Eliot and I have a more complicated relationship--and Pound, who I think I would have kicked in the shins if given a chance (and I'm a Modernist by training, so there you go....).
Owen is by far the cream of the crop of the WWI poets, IMO, but I wonder what Rupert Brooke would have done if he'd lived longer and seen more of the horror. As it is, he functions as the placeholder of the early ideal, but he might have changed his perspective.
Robert M. Jeffers... WWI was such a pointless slaughter of so many for so little. It's hard to concieve of writing anything but poetry about a topic that depressing.
A very true thing said, indeed.
Poetry is no less vulnerable to hindsite-- with anything recent it is nearly impossible to pick out the gold due to the dreadful signal-to-noise ratio.
That's it exactly. There is so much being put out there that it is really hard to find what's really good. I miss my friends that used to filter a lot of rock music for me and play good stuff that they were listening to. Being a freak who writes "art music" isolates me sometimes, because I don't need to hear anything but what I hear in my head. Have to say, though, I don't try to write masterpieces for the ages, just what I hear, something that I enjoy listening to. J.S. Bach wrote tons of music for his jobs, church services, kids, etc., and they spoke to the intended audiences. They may speak to us because of their great craft and beauty, but I don't think he would have cared. (Not that he didn't know how good he was)
Required reading for fans of Rimbaud:
The Time Of The Assassins
by Henry Miller
Okay, you are too depressed, and woot is inexplicably missing, so: is "scorpion porn" (warning: scorpion porn!) an anagram?
"All poetry after 1920 is silly, except rap."
Not entirely true, one example from another language: Garcia Lorca.
Youguys! Is this not the most honestly appropriate and honest name for a bar, ever?
k&y, both as rei's | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 8:50 pm | #
There's a bar in the Boys' Town area of Chicago called "The Man Hole". It has a sign that says "Because not all man holes are made the same". Boys' Town is, of course, the gay area of Chi-town for those who don't know. I laughed like hell when I saw that sign.
I used to work at one bar, and one of my jobs was to come up with stuff to put on the sign every day. They made me quit when I put "Come in, get drunk and try to hook up with a complete stranger" up one day and "Beer: Helping Ugly People Have Sex Since 1869" the next.
Wow, a response from Pie!
I have arrived, no kidding!
Pie, my first book was a book of poetry, and no one bought it, not even my mom.
So maybe you are right, certainly no one else at the time (late 1970's) thought I was a poet.
You see, I am COUNTING on hindsite for redemption!
"...But most good work shines as good work early on, and most bad work vanishes rather quickly. So it's an overbroad generalization to say no good work is recognized when it is produced...."
-Robert M. Jeffers
Then why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?
I stand corrected-and can never figure out why I forget poor old Auden, who I love. His "Shield of Achilles" is brilliant--I make my students read it when they read *The Iliad.* Eliot and I have a more complicated relationship--and Pound, who I think I would have kicked in the shins if given a chance (and I'm a Modernist by training, so there you go....).
Forgot about "Shield." I was thinking of the "Sonnets in Time of War" (later renamed, but I like the original title). Anyone who can end a sonnet with two words, is a brilliant stylist
("And maps can point to places/where life is evil now./Nanking. Dachau.").
I "grew up" on Eliot, so I've always been fascinated with him. Pound was too brilliant for his own good, and went cracked at the end. "il miglior fabbro for others more than maker on his own. His work was, as he admitted at the end, "wrong from the start."
Still, if he'd only left a few early poems and this line, hearing of the death of Eliot, he'd have a place of honor for me: "Who is there for me to share a joke with?"
Then why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?
Just because good stuff gets produced doesn't mean there isn't a high signal-to-noise problem.
Lots of Elizabethan plays produced. How many do we stage today?
With such a literate crowd I have one question:
I need some poetry in my car and I'm a neophyte. Anyone know a good CD of great poems READ by a good reader?
"Then why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?"
Consumerism.
The Peace of Wild Things - Wnedell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives iwth forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of world, and am free.
Which candidate has a better plan to create jobs and improve the economy?
Take the poll
http://special.msn.com/msn/
elect...ection2004.armx
"Then why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?"
Consumerism.
I think Garrison Keillor did an audio version of his "Good Poems."
But there were other readers on that. And I don't know how "good" the selection is.
But it's the only poetry audio I know anything about.
Dylan Thomas would be my recommendation. The man could read a prescription label and make it sound like poetry.
Just because good stuff gets produced doesn't mean there isn't a high signal-to-noise problem.
True. And my apologies on the mistaken identity earlier. Well done pie.
Does anyone know of a US radio station that shows audio-based drama, or at least readings of novels on radio?
I can't think of any, and yet the Beeb has a radio channel more or less devoted to this sort of thing, with not inconsiderable success.
Then why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?
Just because good stuff gets produced doesn't mean there isn't a high signal-to-noise problem.
Lots of Elizabethan plays produced. How many do we stage today?
-Robert M. Jeffers
I understand that crap content will outweigh the decent content. That's a given. What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again.
As a Welsh decendent I have a cassete of his reading. Scratchy but remakable.
I'll look into Keilor's cd.
Thanks
Anyone else?
WWII gave us Keith Douglas.
But remember that the Great War was sold as a noble enterprise, with precedents drawn from myth and poetry. That's why Owen et al. had something to kick against: they were taking back the poetic models that had been used to glorify the trenches.
And whatever you say about Pound -- and believe me, there's a lot to say against Pound, who saw in Mussolini's fascism something quite different from what it actually was -- he's good source material right now. The Pisan Cantos, anyone?
No man who has passed a month in the death cells
believes in cages for beasts
Thea,
KIRO is Seattle may still have the KIRO Mystery Theatre on late sunday nites. Bob(?) French is the host and writer, and they have been doing radio plays since the 50's I think. A lot of their shows are available on CD.
Thea,
KIRO is Seattle may still have the KIRO Mystery Theatre on late sunday nites. Bob(?) French is the host and writer, and they have been doing radio plays since the 50's I think. A lot of their shows are available on CD.
Does anyone know of a US radio station that shows audio-based drama, or at least readings of novels on radio?
I can't think of any, and yet the Beeb has a radio channel more or less devoted to this sort of thing, with not inconsiderable success.
That is where Hitchhiker's Guide started.
And it's still best in audio.
thanks, Theo--gotta new broadband connection, and I've been wondering what radio stations to plug into "favorites." BBC didn't even cross my mind, until now.
Dylan Thomas reads brilliantly. And Seamus Heaney has music in his voice as well. On a prose note, I also find William S Burroughs's flat, wry drone absolutely hilarious when he reads parts of Naked Lunch--but if you like his sense of humor as much as I do, it might be dangerous while driving.
TheaLogie,
I have fond memories of novel readings on KPFK in LA in the 70s and 80s. Best was hearing Bud Cort read Catcher in the Rye, which I hadn't liked until then. The local NPR station here in Eugene runs "Selected Shorts" that is quite good, probably a PRI program. I heard "The Dead" from Joyce's Dubliners on there, what a beautiful story.
Dang, forgive the double posts, I am Haloscan challenged today.
Soren Kierkegaard, you cannot be a christian and an existentialist, this is also the problem with Doestoyevsky. but pretty good writers.
somebody mentioned edith sitwell (who i know nothing of) and patti smith. both subjects of mapplethorpes camera. i think some of his photos approach poetry. and the other day i called dante a satanic poet and SWR jumped all over me, but i damn well know a play can be poetry, as a dance, or even just a child riding a bike. poetry is not in the saying but in the seeing. some have that gift to translate.
I understand that crap content will outweigh the decent content. That's a given. What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again.
"A fool and his money are soon parted"?
Oh, and as far as pie's post on the effects of living history when it comes to recording it, this month's print version of The Progressive has an interesting interview with Tim O'Brien (great novelist of the Vietnam War, with "Going after Cacciato" among many others), focusing largely on his take on the present war, including Abu Ghraib.
1066
Historians lust for great events,
the violent one percent,
so nothing happens nearly every year.
Stamford Bridge and Hastings stretched a month;
whatever happened years before
or since that raven glut?
For each combatant, hundreds more
were not involved, as Norseman, Norman, Celt
and Saxon plowed the green
or toiled the cold Atlantic,
gave birth in perishing huts or softly sang
for children alliterative lullabies.
Warren, do you live in Eugene, or someplace nearby?
I understand that crap content will outweigh the decent content. That's a given. What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again.
"A fool and his money are soon parted"?
-Robert M. Jeffers
I'll buy that for a dollar 
Soren Kierkegaard, you cannot be a christian and an existentialist, this is also the problem with Doestoyevsky. but pretty good writers.
Faw, of course you can. Been doing it since high school.
You confuse "existentialism" with Sartre's version. Even he said there was no "definition" of existentialism, certainly not one that limited one to his atheism.
"I understand that crap content will outweigh the decent content. That's a given. What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again."
bannedman, I work in the tv-business and crap sells. TV mostly caters to mass audiences and as long as they keep watching crap, crap will continue to be produced. Aaron Spelling is pretty "safe" when you have to cater to general audiences. And television is pretty expensive, so taking risks with your programming is difficult.
Here in Europe we have the tv-channel Arte, which is absolutely amazing. Loads of interesting documentaries and so-called art films.
"What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again."
Because that crap keeps bringing in audience, and with that, advertisers, and with that, money. Producers like money. cf. "The Producers"
I understand that crap content will outweigh the decent content. That's a given. What I don't get is when the same producers of crap that have never produced anything but crap just hang around producing the same crap over and over and over again.
"A fool and his money are soon parted"?
-Robert M. Jeffers
I'll buy that for a dollar
SOLD!
heh heh heh.... (wait a minute....)
Too many Irish Car Bombs to think about this thread, but this is the poem I always think about:
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power
I might be driven to sell your love for peace
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would
Edna St. Vincent Millay
charley, Dante a satanic poet? I don't know...reading Inferno a few years ago was a real eye opener. His imagination was staggering, but I found the levels of Hell to be somewhat confusing to my modern sensibilities. The story of Francesca da Rimini is still heartbreaking. There is a funny passage, too, about demons marching around with trumpets playing loud fanfares coming out of their butts. Pretty cool.
Soren Kierkegaard, you cannot be a christian and an existentialist, this is also the problem with Doestoyevsky. but pretty good writers.
Faw, of course you can. Been doing it since high school.
You confuse "existentialism" with Sartre's version. Even he said there was no "definition" of existentialism, certainly not one that limited one to his atheism.
I'm with Jeffers on that. Kierkegaard does do it quite thoroughly, as does Miguel de Unamuno, among many others.
(full disclosure: I was raised Catholic, and have since been existentialism, but now am neither.)
Is this not the most honestly appropriate and honest name for a bar, ever?
No, it is not.
"Bottles and Cans", was the bright sign that attracted me and my Chicago neighbors to 25-cent-drafts. I think it's 75 cents today.
And no, I will not tell you where.
I've been existentialist, not existentialism, in case anyone was confused!
IsraelHand, yes, I live in Eugene.
Thucydides was the man. He lived history, and reported it. His account of the Peloponessian War would sound very much like what is going on today.
Have A Nice, Hot Cup O' Joe!
Does anyone know of a US radio station that shows audio-based drama, or at least readings of novels on radio?
I can't think of any, and yet the Beeb has a radio channel more or less devoted to this sort of thing, with not inconsiderable success.
-TheaLogie
Here's an audio book "classic" for you, TheaLogie
Enter Whining
by Fran Drescher
Edition: Audio Cassette
Editorial Reviews
Ingram
The star of the leading CBS TV series The Nanny tells tales of her fascinating life, from her role in the cult classic, This Is Spinal Tap, through starring appearances in movies including Cadillac Man to her pivotal acting and producing role today. Simultaneous hardcover release from ReganBooks. Ship date is December 29, 1995. 2 cassettes.
Book Description
Known and loved by millions around the world as the star of the top-rated CBS TV series The Nanny, Fran Drescher tells her hilarious life story and offers a fresh, funny, and irreverent backstage look at Hollywood and its stars.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obido...950340?
v=glance
i am surrealism.
Selfrighteousness by Donald Macaulay
(translated from Gaelic)
They ask of me only
to weep repentance for a sin
that does not concern me
and I shall get in return an alien
freedom I don't understand:
to be drubbed in one thin,
wounding water after another
of their philosophy--
and confidently they would hang
their washing in the heavens.
Anyone know that Pound was a composer? I heard a bit of an opera he wrote while he was in Paris, and, man, it blew chunks.
Warren--- I went to OSU and lived in Corvallis for many years. Eugene is quite too-hip, and so is the scene in Corvallis. Plenty of poetry readings at coffee shops while I was there in th 80's-- can't be much worse now.
Enjoy the college town scene, I now live in Tacoma, with probably the worst level of hipness west of the mountains.
My poetic offering, directed at Jenna and notJenna:
They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.
--Philip Larkin
Nowadays it's more anarchist gatherings at the vegan organic solar-powered co-op. Not that that's a bad thing.
"-Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1 (1843). That's better."- Robert M. Jeffers | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 8:38 pm | #
Robert, now, I know why I come here. Awesome quote. Anybody for William Blake? Songs of Innocence and Experience?
Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land
Babes reduced to misery
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor/
It is a land of poverty.
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak and bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e’er the sun does shine.
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there.
Nor poverty the mind appall."- William Blake, 1794
Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch
He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick
Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on Highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run
Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me
At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true
She said "Baby I'll work for you every day and bring my money home to you"
One day he up and left her and ever since that
She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back
Struck me kinda funny seemed kind of funny sir to me
How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
Take a baby to the river Kyle William they called him
Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away
Take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray
Lord won't you tell us tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
Congregation gathers down by the riverside
Preacher stands with his Bible groom stands waitin' for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly
Lord and he's wonderin' where can his baby be
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
it's because that is the nature of poetry. example: heinrich schliemann. all the "experts" of his day said that troy was (a) a myth, or, if real, (b) to be found in this marshland far from the coast of turkey. schliemann read homer, found land that resembled what homer described, dug down, and discovered seven cities, each one richer in gold and artefacts than the others. trust the poet.
Shut the fuck up you shamelessly self-promoting fad addicted product placement guru fascist-tolerant t-shirt, you are not surrealism! You are the A&E set's one-image illustration of surrealism!
Dali-the Don King of surrealism!
You confuse "existentialism" with Sartre's version. Even he said there was no "definition" of existentialism, certainly not one that limited one to his atheism.
, frankly i am not well versed enuf to know but i have read them all. and i was a born again, could never get the two to mesh. but i recognize that might be a special case. i still say poetry is in the seeing, not the saying, in the end it's all like reading the bible to me, you think the answer is in there but it isn't.
"screaming into the silence of the universe" camus
"thinking, thinking, stupid thoughts" doestoyevsky
"thought is your enemy, death is your only freind" krishnamurti
that all seems sort of bleak, but im ok with it. still, i can't understand why we have to have a dumb bastard, idiot son of an asshole as the most powerful man in the world.
In 1969
XXXX Coloradoans
were killed in Vietnam.
In 1978
XXXX Coloradoans
were killed on the highways.
In 1864,
there were no Indians killed.
Remember My Lai.
In fifty years,
nobody knew
what happened.
It wasn't only the Senators.
Remember Sand Creek.
from collection entitled
*From Sand Creek*
by Simon Ortiz, Acoma Pueblo
The First Hard Core
A Story of How a Wall Stands
More Info
My poetic offering, directed at Jenna and notJenna:
They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.
--Philip Larkin
I am eelism, sir.
Oops. Apparently I think it's good enough to double post the thing.
Apologies. Too many windows open just now...
kelley b.,
Thanks for proving my point. "Reason To Believe" is an awesome song, but its power just doesn't come across without either Springsteen's lonesome light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel hope from the Nebraska version, or the rollicking, "hell with it" take The Beat Farmers did on their debut (and still best album) Tales Of The New West. Two takes on the song, two ways to look at the world.
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says, "Son if it was up to me."
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said, "Son, don't you understand now."
Had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there he's all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Now here to run ain't got nowhere to go
I rest my case.
A hundred years from now, these words will ring truer than the words of Tweety or Pumpkinhead.
Poetry to me.
Kelly B.
How the fuck did you know I'm listening to Nebraska right now?
"Nowadays it's more anarchist gatherings at the vegan organic solar-powered co-op. Not that that's a bad thing."
-Warren Terra
Grrrr... I have to deal with them on a day-to-day basis. You try dealing with them when they walk out of organizational meetings because Robert's Rules of Order are the tools of "the man."
Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me."
The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' downhere in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad
Poets.
Do those who write it record history more accurately because they experience it?
War? Poverty? Discrimination?
A. anger, strength, resiliency, hope
Euripides, "The Trojan Women"
Rise, stricken head from the dust;
Lift up the throat. This is Troy, but Troy
and we, Troy's kings, are perished.
Stoop to the changing fortune.
Steer for the crossing and the death-god,
hold not life's prow on the course against wave beat and accident.
Ah me,
What need I further for tears' occasion,
state perished, my sons, and my husband?
O massive pride that my fathers heaped to magnificence, you meant nothing.
-Hecuba's first speech
bannedmann, my heart goes out to you...
Boy, sure am getting some wonderful poetry on this thread. Hey trolls, why so quiet?
*Sigh*...
"Born In The U.S.A." is a powerful piece of art, but it just doesn't feel right without the crashing music behind it, or the slowed-down, wistful take on the Live In NYC album. The music makes it punch, the words make it stick, and that, celestials, is how you write a good pop song.
The war poems of two poets of WWII, Keith Douglas and Sorley Maclean (who wrote in Scottish Gaelic and translated it himself), are equal to the best of the WWI poets.Douglas was killed in action. MacLean survived to become with Hugh MacDiarmid, one of the leaders of the Scottish Renaissance. In America, there is of course Randall Jarrell.
Tim Harris
The war poems of two poets of WWII, Keith Douglas and Sorley Maclean (who wrote in Scottish Gaelic and translated it himself), are equal to the best of the WWI poets.Douglas was killed in action. MacLean survived to become with Hugh MacDiarmid, one of the leaders of the Scottish Renaissance. In America, there is of course Randall Jarrell.
Tim Harris
It's true there's plenty of onanistic navel-gazing, tenure-track crap being written these days, but there's plenty of not-silly, even brilliant, poetry since the 20's. Try Alan Dugan, Craig Raine, the above-quoted Larkin, Brad Leithauser, Lisa Zeidner. There's a small audience and it's a hard dollar, but some people keep doing it.
Anyone know a good CD of great poems READ by a good reader?
—carsick at 9:01pm
Seamus Heaney reading his translation of Beowulf .
Poetry has to be heard to be seen.
al dente Dante:
Men che dramma
dì sangue me’è rimaso che non tremi:
conosco i segni dell ’antica fiamma.
Less than a drop
of my blood remains which does not tremble:
I know the signs of the ancient flame.
As for WWI, read Paul Fussell's Great War and Modern Memory. He discusses why it produced so many poets and novelists in Britain. Briefly, it did so because more and more people were getting an education, and the education had a strong literary basis in English poetry of preceding ages. Also, as others have remarked upthread, youngsters with this literary education idealistically went off to war with notions of glory in their heads, only to be disillusioned by the slaughter and waste of modern war.
Developments in technology (machine guns, barbed wire) strengthened the defense against attack, so troops remained stationary for months and years at a time, favoring reading, and then writing, to pass the time.
In addition to Owen, I like Siegried Sassoon. I like Graves, too, but I prefer his memoir, Gooodbye to All That to his poetry, which I would definitely put after Owen's and Sassoon's. Edmund Blunden's memoir, Undertones to War is also good; I don't know his war poetry as well as I do the memoir, but the poetry is also worth checking out.
I'm not sure if those who experience history write it more accurately for that reason, but they do write it more vividly.
I would also say a word for the great diarists, such as Samuel Pepys. They may not write what would formally be described as history, considered as a literary genre or intellectual discipline, but they do portray history as it is lived.
There's a small audience and it's a hard dollar, but some people keep doing it.
-Kalkaino
I disagree. Russell Simmons produces "Def Poetry" on HBO. There was a show on Broadway that resulted from that show.
Poetry may have the biggest audience it's had in decades right now.
Does anyone know of a US radio station that shows audio-based drama, or at least readings of novels on radio?
No. You need the BBC. Radio 3 does classical music and drama; Radio 4 does drama; and the online/digital BBC7 brings out the best of the archives.
Radio plays are completely overlooked by most critics, but they receive a higher audience than any serious stage drama, and are the home of some great new and experimental stuff.
Wile-- speaking of diarists, have you read Casanova? We remember him for his amoristic exploits, but during the time he lived he was famous for his amazing prison escape, his books on mathematics, and his plays. The man was a professional guest, and went everywhere, and wrote about everything, from scullery maids' outfits, to heads of states' dietary quirks, sometimes quite well, and always with that touch of Venitian poetry.
I find myself remebering this poem these days--
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending , we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Wordsworth
Melanie wrote "One of my pet peeves is when someone says "rock & roll is dead because nothing interesting is being done".
When someone says that, I tell them to listen to The Darkness.
Russell Simmons produces "Def Poetry" on HBO.
It's pure shit, though. Wankery.
Hey, Let's not forget Ginsberg:
"Well, while I am here I'll do the work — And what is the work? To ease the pain of living… everything else, drunken dumb show."
The hillsides ring with "Free the people"
Or can I hear the echo from the days of '39?
With trenches full of poets
The ragged army, fixin' bayonets to fight the other line
Spanish bombs rock the province
I'm hearing music from another time
Spanish bombs on the Costa Brava
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight
Spanish songs in Andalucia, Mandolina, oh mi corazon
Spanish songs in Granada, oh mi corazon
Melanie wrote "One of my pet peeves is when someone says "rock & roll is dead because nothing interesting is being done".
When someone says that, I tell them to listen to The Darkness.
agentalbert | Email | Homepage | 08.07.04 - 10:25 pm | #
She didn't write that; I wrote that. As for The Darkness, who needs 'em when you've got The Wildhearts?
Russell Simmons produces "Def Poetry" on HBO.
It's pure shit, though. Wankery.
-agentalbert
Everyone has their right to having or not having an opinion.
Personally, I've gotten tired of the post-post modern attraction of those in the Los Angeles MOCA scene's attraction to bodily wastes as a medium/material for artistic expression.
You've seen one shit painter, you've seen them all.
the clash, 'spanish bombs'
So many good comments, all worth comment themselves. Wordsworth did recoil and the reaction was, to say the least, unfortunate. More generally, generalizations can't be made because every poet and sometimes every poem is sui generis. Unless they are garbage. A good, though not infallable, indication is the extent to which a poet is full of himself. While ego is inescapable ego-mania is a real drag.
Wordsworth's recoiling over the excesses of the terror gave way to excuses for what he wanted to believe was a more benevolent establishment. But it wasn't true. The Victorian Empire and the other empires of the next two centuries probably killed a thousand percent more people than the French Revoloution did. Probably this estimate could be multiplied. Look at the Belgian Empire in Africa. Yet they get let off in popular history. Why? Because it's safer and more convienient that way. Cowardace is a mortal sin in art.
The refusal to become a part of an establishement is a good practice. Blake is a good example in poetry(Michael Tippet, despite the sound of his work, is a good example in music.) There are many others. Giving into an establishment, corporate, governmental or educational is the beginning of death.
It's always a balancing act, the ego that can't be denied but the conscience that is more important, the formal and the individual. The refusal to ever be type cast, ever.
Radio plays can be wonderful, a medium meant for this kind of exploration when it is freed from the American form of LCD programming. Don't expect it to come back until there has been a complete flushing of the federal pipes. Kerry's campaign has been making some noise in this area.
Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deep
Deep in the veins of the great rivers
That form the base Of Eden
And the tree The tree of knowledge
Held up its arms To the sky
All the branches of knowledge All the branches of knowledge
Cradling Cradling
Civilization In the realm of peace
All the world revolved Around a perfect circle
Oh Baghdad Center of the world
City of ashes With its great mosques
Erupting from the mouth of god Rising from the ashes like
a speckled bird Splayed against the mosaic sky
Oh, clouds around We created the zero
But we mean nothing to you You would believe
That we are just some mystical tale We are just a swollen belly
That gave birth to Sinbad, Scheherazade We gave birth
Oh, oh, to the zero The perfect number
We invented the zero And we mean nothing to you
Our children run through the streets
And you sent your flames Your shooting stars
Shock and awe Shock and awe
Like some, some Imagined warrior production
Twenty-first century No chivalry involved
No Bushido...
Patti Smith
To Wile E.at 10:05
'Goodbye To All That'-wow, that book is the most amazing thing Graves ever wrote. It's a crime that it's out of print in this country! But I love his poetry too.
Howard Zinn once said that Dickens and Steinbeck were good sources for understanding history. Who am I to argue with Howard Zinn? Frank Norris taught me more about the early twentieth century than most of the official history of the period. It was damned mean back then.
War and poetry?
The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Homer.
IsraelHand,
Yes, I have read Casanova, but only in the old-fashioned Machen translation from about a hundred years ago. I'd like to reread him in the newer Trask version. I suppose I could pick nits and call Casanova a memoirist instead of a diarist, since he wrote it in old age as a librarian on a noble's estate in what is now the Czech Republic, IIRC, and not as it occurred, day by day, but I heartily second your recommendation. I especially liked his portrayal of the 18th century demi-monde, with the dabbling in the occult, andhis activities as a con man.
Hectate -- That's my favorite Wendell Berry poem. It makes my spine relax every time I read it.
About poets as historians. Ed Sanders is one of my favorites. I gave my kids his "1968" to read because I thought it captured that year of almost revolution better than any academic or historical work I'd read. I strongly recommend it for taking you into the horrific and glorious tumult of that year. Truly bard's art.
Eyes
Focused not on a great truth
Or the face of a kind god
Fearing not the fury of the high sun
Or ashamed of nakedness
Wanting not laughter
Or satisfaction of lust
Needing not bread
Or sweet taste of rain
Seeking not beauty
Or joy of companionship
Wanting not the sanctuary of sleep
Or loving caress
The eyes of the dead
In stillness silent smoking ruins
Under the indifferent blue skies
Seeing the stars beyond
After the long, dark winter of the Bushies, this was poetry to me:
If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper - that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
--Barack Obama
Karin,
I didn't know Goodbye to All That was out of print in this country nowadays. Only a couple of years ago I got a recent reprinting in hardcover of the original edition from Amazon. I'm more familiar with Graves' war poetry than I am with his later stuff, and his war poetry, though good, I wouldn't call as good as Owen's or Sassoon's. YMMV.
I also like his historical novels, I, Claudius, Claudius the God, and Count Belisarius, but I have a special liking for historical novels.
shawk,
Nobody named Wile E. Odysseus can reject the recommendation of the Iliad and Odyssey. War and poetry, indeed. The first and perhaps greatest portrayal of war and its aftermath in poetry in Western literature.
Poets record it more accurately because we feel emotions in the extremes - we allow ourselves to know War, Poverty, and Discrimination because we have been taught not to think, only to feel.
< /pretension>
rorschach -- Have you ever heard Burroughs reading "A Junkie's Christmas"?
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine from New York sent me a copy of The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis. I guess I need to give it a try. I haven't read Homer since college.
I like The Darkness. Super cute lead singer.
and back to Poetry - Leonard Cohen, from his 'Selected Poems - 1956-1968".
I have two bars of soap,
the fragrance of almond,
one for you and one for me.
Draw the bath,
we will wash each other.
I have no money,
I murdered the pharmacist.
And here's a jar of oil,
just like in the Bible.
Lie in my arms,
I'll make your flesh glisten.
I have no money,
I murdered the perfumer.
Look through the window
at the shops and people.
Tell me what you desire,
you'll have it by the hour.
I have no money,
I have no money.
___________
so then he started recording and didn't have to murder anyone to buy the soap anymore...
*
Forget the movie, if anyone hasn't read "The Last Temptation of Christ" by Nikos Kazantzakis, well, you're missing a lot.
*
See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape -
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.
It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.
One religion or another -
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another -
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in a grimace
of erotic ecstacy.
Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood draw crowds?
Has compassion ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse a rabble?
Only hatred has just what it takes.
Gifted, diligent, hard-working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread over countless city squares and football fields?
Let's face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.
Hatred is a master of contrast -
between explosions and dead quiet,
red blood and white snow.
Above all, it never tires
of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner
towering over its soiled victim.
It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.
Wislawa Szymborska.
Katie Dingo -
Yes. Yes. Yes.
*
Thus did the two great bodies sleep, nude, merged in one,
and in a long sweet dream it seemed to him night smiled
as though she also dreamt of light, a golden egg
that in her brooding darkness hatched the sun to spring
like a great cock with crimson crest and beat its wings
while the serene earth cackled like a dappled hen.
from Book Fourteen
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Nikos Kazantzakis
When I taught the epic last semester, we did a lot of reflection on the nature of nationalism and violence, who gets to speak/write history, etc. It helped that we started The Aeneid just as Fallujah exploded--interesting parallels.
Mother by mother taught, their wives had knelt like slaves
to wash the hairy knees of their task weary lords
who rested and rejoiced like gods in their own yards.
But as the plowman sat that night on his low wall
and watched his plucky wife kneel down to wash his feet,
he suddenly kicked the tub and sent the water splashing.
"Dear wife," he cried, "you're not a slave to kneel before me!
Know that from this time forth I'll wash my feet myself."
He spoke, and with his words slew an ancestral ghost.
From Book Six
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Nikos Kazantzakis
I saw this poem shortly after 9/11,
so I somehow associate it with that
To Praise The Mutilated World
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
By Adam Zagajewski
Image of Light, Adieu—
Thanks for the interview—
So long—so short—
Preceptor of the whole—
Coeval Cardinal—
Impart—Depart—
Emily Dickinson
With that I bid you all goodnight.
NYMary,
Yes, the Aeneid has special poignance when read in wartime. Aeneas is a hero who becomes great through loss: his city, his wife, his father, Dido, Palinurus, Pallas. I find the ending especially haunting, and I don't think anybody has satisfactorily explained it yet. I find Vergil very sensitive to the costs of war and of empire.
Wile,
And Vergil, like Homer before him, can't quite bring himself to trash the enemy--they have something to fight for, too. We maybe should learn something from this about the nature of warfare. Oh, no, wait... they're terrorists or al Qaeda or Saddam loyalists. They can't have anything to fight for....
She's not a poet but is a damn good writer and certainly records more accurately because she experiences it. Riverbend is back.
Tapaz, Utah*?
The desert must have claimed its own
Now that the wayfarers are gone,
And silence has replaced voices
Except for intermittent noises,
Like windy footsteps through the dust,
Or gliding of a snake that must
Escape the sun or sage rustling,
Or soft brush or a quickened wrong
Against the air, -Stillness is change
For this abandoned place, where strange
and foreign tongues had routed peace
Until the refugee's release
Restored calm to the wilderness,
And prairie dogs no longer fear
When shadows shift and disappear
The crows fly straight through setting dusk,
The desert like an empty husk
Holding the small swift sounds that run
To cover when the day is done.
?
Tojo Suyemoto Kawakami
*a Japanese-American Internment Camp.
Don't know where those question marks came from...
As I get older, poetry has more of a pull, but I remain deeply ignorant of it in general- this fragment of Pound I found in a biography of Hemingway:
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.
Yes, Homer makes Hector more human, in some ways, than Achilles--Hector is the guy with the wife and kid at home, after all--and Vergil gives Turnus many admirable qualities. And, as you say, the Trojans and the Latins are fighting for their homes, and neither poet demonizes them.
Some folks try to read the Aeneid as propaganda, but it never comes off that way to me, not at least if one's measure for propaganda is something like Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. It's too sophisticated and too subtle to be propaganda, IMHO.
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
ROBERT BROWNING from "Memorabilia," 1855.
*
And in these times no one's mentioned Yeats ??
I count those feathered balls of soot the moorhen guides upon the stream
To silence the envy in my thought and turn toward my chambers caught....
In the cold snows of a dream..
We who are but weasels fighting in a hole...
One of the things you don't mention is that, in 1914-1918, you didn't have popular music available, certainly not like you do now. I think that a number of ace songwriters count as poets, from 60s stalwarts like Bob Dylan and (later) Lou Reed up to indie rockers like Greg Dulli and Robert Pollard.
One of my favorites is Ray Davies of The Kinks.
Some Mother's Son
(I can't figure out how to use italics w/Haloscan using Safari)
Some mother's son is in a field
Someone has killed some mother's son today
Head blown up by some solider's gun
While all the mothers stand and wait
Some mother's son ain't coming home today
Some mother's son ain't got no grave
Two soliders fighting in a trench
One solider glances up to see the sun
And dreams of games he played when he was young
And then his friend calls out his name
It stops his dream and as he turns his head
A second later he is dead
Some mother's son lies in a field
Back home they put his picture in a frame
But all dead soldiers look the same
While all the parents stand and wait
To meet their children coming home from school
Some mother's son is lying dead
Somewhere someone is crying
Someone is trying to be so brave
But still the world keeps turning
Though all the children have gone away
Some mother's son lies in a field
But in his mother's eyes he looks the same
As on the day he went away
They put his picture on the wall
They put flowers in the picture frame
Some mother's memory remains
Personally, I've gotten tired of the post-post modern attraction of those in the Los Angeles MOCA scene's attraction to bodily wastes as a medium/material for artistic expression.
Don't know where you're hanging out but that's not the current art scene in Los Angeles by a long shot.
The recent MOCA show was a retrospective of 20th century minimalism.
If I had to label current painting themes prevalent in the galleries these days, 'fable-istic' Paintings that seem to tell the stories of their subjects seemingly caught between real life and the imagination of the artist. Lots of different painting styles, but there's definitely a trend there in regards to what artists are trying to capture.
Now I know I'm going to get shouted down and flamed like mad for liking this guy, but Rudyard Kipling, of all the unlikely people, had some interesting things to say in wartime. Yes, his poetry was jingle-jangle hackwork, and he was a fierce Imperialist -- but underneath that he was a human being, and a sharply observant one at that. I think by the time he wrote "Recessional" he was feeling the weight of Empire and wondering what his beloved country had gotten itself into.
Is there anyone writing like that for us today?
another Brautigan, a closer,dedicated
to all the trolls that hate poetry.
San Francisco
(this poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco)
By accident,
You put your
Money in my
Machine (#4)
By accident,i put
My money in another
Machine (#6)
On purpose, i put
your clothes in the
Empty machine full
Of water and no
Clothes
It was lonely.
G.M. Hopkins
why is Aaron Spelling still polluting the airwaves with drek after a history of producing nothing but drek for decades? And why is Survivor still on?
bannedmann
Because in some fields, Sturgeon's Law needs to be applied twice.
My favorite poem is "The Golden Wings" by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. It is the only poem I have ever instinctively understood.
I read it to my father the day the woman my sister shot died.
It made perfect sense.
I actually heard John Kerry read this poem at an anti-war rally in 1972.
GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
(the poem is from Brecht's War Primer)
Kerry likes Langston Hughes AND Brecht? It will be so wonderful to have a literate president again.
Please don't forget Muriel Rukeyser. Coincidentally, I just posted this one elsewhere:
Poem
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.
Muriel Rukeyser, The Collected Poems. NY: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1978
There’s an old blues song called “Big Boss Man” that I think is pretty compelling. If you can listen to Mance Lipscomb sing this, it’s definitely worth it.
I got a big boss man just won't treat me right.
Works me hard all day long, I can't sleep at night.
He's standing on the turn road with his pistol in his hand.
He done whipped a woman, gonna kill that man.
He's a big boss man, just won't treat me right.
Works me hard all day, I can't sleep at night.
I told my wife last night, let's pack up our things and go.
I ain't gonna work for that mean boss man no more.
Cause he's a big boss man, knows when he hears me call.
Well you ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
Standing on his corner, with his hat on his head.
Gets mad with you and you can't understand what he said.
Cause he's a mean boss man, just won't treat me right.
Work me hard all day, I can't sleep at night.
Next boss I get, going to be right to me.
When I go to him, he's gonna let me be.
Cause he's a mean boss man, just won't treat me right.
Work me hard all day long, people. I can't sleep at night.
Well you ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
Next boss man I work for, he's got to treat me right.
Work me all day, and let me sleep at night.
Cause he's a big boss man, don't you hear me call?
You ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
POLITICAL ELEPHANTS
I was a Congressman, serving
as the Chairman for the Committee
to Preserve the Natural Behavior of Pachyderms
and the Study of Packsaddles. We were
fully funded. But when they counted
the ballots, I was disenfranchised, booted
from the rostrum of functionaries. Time
is not on my side, not the amendment, not
the page tapping on my desk. I'd hoped
to save the beast from its tamed acceptance
of the whip, the plumed wand, the pink balloon.
I'm sorry for my fingers exploring his veined ears,
and for the unbudgeted junket to his trunk,
annulated in crevasses. I encouraged his trumpeting.
Everyone knows a defeat when it's broadcast
in the gallery, when the ayes have had it, all
the pretty whispers behind a hand . I've finished
with inquiries, buried my peroration in a field of bones.
--Joanne Kelley
The poet is haunted by the ghosts around them. They can put themselves in anothers soul. Perspective. They adopt another perspective and communicate it.
"The sentance existing inside of a rhyme
Is only a token
That's spoken
In time." - Residents
Soren Kierkegaard, you cannot be a christian and an existentialist, this is also the problem with Doestoyevsky. but pretty good writers.
Why not? Existentialism is just a back-door defense of Christianity. "We can't really know anything, so if we're taking everything on faith anyway we might as well go whole hog."
Why did WWI get the poetry?
What was wrong with WWII? (Regarding POETRY, I mean).
A think that WWI was more romanticized, at least in England, and a lot of very educated people enlisted. Those who survived were more apt to write about it.
One WWII poem does stand out in my mind:
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Poetry humor from: http://www.greyowltutor.com/essa...says/
burns.html
The Burns Unit
Tony Blair is being shown round a hospital, and towards the end of his visit he is taken to a ward to meet some of the patients.
He approaches one man, who has no obvious signs of injury, and asks him how he feels. The man replies: `Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!'
Perplexed, the PM approaches the man in the next bed and asks him why he is in hospital. `Some hae meat, and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit,' says the man.
A third patient tells him: `Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie...'
Embarrassed, Mr Blair turns to the doctor accompanying him and whispers: `What's the matter with them? Is this the psychiatric ward?'
`No,' replies the doctor. `It's the Burns unit.'
A soldier he cheered for freedom's cry
then he shot kids in the back
and burned houses down
then he felt sorry, after he did it,
so sorry he went back and filmed it again.
A soldier he cheered for freedom's cry
then threw out his medals
and protested the war
then he felt sorry, after he did it,
so sorry again
A senator he cheered for freedom's cry
then voted to let Saddam go unchecked
and protested the war
then he felt sorry, after he did it,
so sorry again
A candidate he cheered for freedom's cry
the voted this time for a war,
but he felt sorry again,
and voted against it,
when our troops needed more.
Liberals love Kerry,
they say that he's strong
says he is wise,
to say that he's sorry,
but conservatives know
the truth is more simple,
You can't elect Kerry because
he's always wrong!
There’s an old blues song called “Big Boss Man” that I think is pretty compelling. If you can listen to Mance Lipscomb sing this, it’s definitely worth it.
I got a big boss man just won't treat me right.
Works me hard all day long, I can't sleep at night.
He's standing on the turn road with his pistol in his hand.
He done whipped a woman, gonna kill that man.
He's a big boss man, just won't treat me right.
Works me hard all day, I can't sleep at night.
I told my wife last night, let's pack up our things and go.
I ain't gonna work for that mean boss man no more.
Cause he's a big boss man, knows when he hears me call.
Well you ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
Standing on his corner, with his hat on his head.
Gets mad with you and you can't understand what he said.
Cause he's a mean boss man, just won't treat me right.
Work me hard all day, I can't sleep at night.
Next boss I get, going to be right to me.
When I go to him, he's gonna let me be.
Cause he's a mean boss man, just won't treat me right.
Work me hard all day long, people. I can't sleep at night.
Well you ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
Next boss man I work for, he's got to treat me right.
Work me all day, and let me sleep at night.
Cause he's a big boss man, don't you hear me call?
You ain't so big, you just tall that's all.
cory,
That's my favorite Randall Jarrell poem.
I also liked his academic novel, Pictures from an Institution. IIRC, it was based on his experiences at Bennington.
I humbly nominate Warren Zevon and (of all people) John Cale, specifically "Paris 1919"
Pound has some training in music, and with the composer George Antheil(the 'Bad Boy of Music') wrote some stuff under the pen name William Atheling, including a work called The Treatise on Harmony.
Here is a page about Pound's dabbling in operatic form.
He also played the drums in the first performance of Antheils' 2nd Violin Sonata, Antheil at the piano and Pounds' mistress at the time played the violin part.
The best source is Antheils' autobiography, Bad Boy of Music.
Auden didn't see all that much war -- a little footling around on the sidelines in Spain -- but he wrote The Shield of Achilles.
I used to think only people who had suffered through something had the moral authority to write about it, but then I discovered from a lot of work in poverty law that when people are actually in the middle of suffering official abuse or simply bad fortune, they accept conditions as normal that simply mustn't be accepted as normal if human dignity is to be maintained.
For a while in the mid-'90s I had a job bringing completely naive middle-class law students into Los Angeles district welfare offices for afternoons of volunteer advocacy work. I was always impressed by the way the better-hearted newbies would get offended at small official cruelties that just seemed normal both to welfare recipients and to long-term advocates like me.
In chronically bad situations, there's always a need for a fresh eye -- the eye of someone who can still get indignant.
As the old proverb has it, "May God preserve us from what we can get used to."
There's also that weird snobbery/Stockholm Syndrome mentality you find among some victimized people who actually praise a heavy hand because they're coping psychologically by identifying with the powerful folks who are hurting them. It's captured well in the speech of the enthusiastic prisoner in "The Life of Brian."
To put it another way, sometimes you need someone to speak about an injustice whose mind hasn't been damaged by the injustice itself.
To enjoy politics and poetry combined, head over to The Nation for your weekly shot of the Deadline Poet, Calvin Trillin. Guaranteed ROTFLYAO.
The old ones said it so well.
"Be kind to everyone you meet, because they are engaged in a great battle."
Philo of Alexandria
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