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Dec. 16th, 2013
e. e. monk
Dec. 16th, 2013 11:43 amI often used to feel that there was a budding poet inside of me dying to get out, but I was never able to find him and dig him out and free him, and he sort of died there. Yet, I can sometimes feel a stirring.
~ ~ ~
What is a poem?
A few choice lines,
a handful of rhymes,
a child can write one -
so why shouldn’t I?
“But,” Daimon says, “kids are growing, stretching
emerging beasts, like puppies and kittens, fetching
or learning how to climb a tree or a fence;
but, you, my friend, are not a growing thing,
but look more like a creepy, crawling thing.
So what’s the point here?, I mean no offense.”
To this fair question I can only say,
“I am not trying to be Robert Frost;
I’m not shoving Shakespeare out of the way;
in my twenties I had such wild thoughts,
but they flew away in my middle-age.
Poems give me something to think about:
what phrase should fill the next line on my page?
Which helps to fill the little spaces in my day,
when I’m away from my books and the Net,
twiddling words and locking in that phrase,
and amusing notions can come from such play.
And let’s be fair: I am not quite dead yet!”
~ ~ ~
I know it is lame. Rhymes don’t exactly fly off me like my dandruff, and I have about as much rhythm on the page as I do on the dance floor. But I kind of like it.
~ ~ ~
What is a poem?
A few choice lines,
a handful of rhymes,
a child can write one -
so why shouldn’t I?
“But,” Daimon says, “kids are growing, stretching
emerging beasts, like puppies and kittens, fetching
or learning how to climb a tree or a fence;
but, you, my friend, are not a growing thing,
but look more like a creepy, crawling thing.
So what’s the point here?, I mean no offense.”
To this fair question I can only say,
“I am not trying to be Robert Frost;
I’m not shoving Shakespeare out of the way;
in my twenties I had such wild thoughts,
but they flew away in my middle-age.
Poems give me something to think about:
what phrase should fill the next line on my page?
Which helps to fill the little spaces in my day,
when I’m away from my books and the Net,
twiddling words and locking in that phrase,
and amusing notions can come from such play.
And let’s be fair: I am not quite dead yet!”
~ ~ ~
I know it is lame. Rhymes don’t exactly fly off me like my dandruff, and I have about as much rhythm on the page as I do on the dance floor. But I kind of like it.
Orwell for Christmas
Dec. 16th, 2013 08:49 pmPop said that I can order a book for my Christmas present. I ordered Orwell’s essays, getting the cadillac edition that is put out in the Everyman’s Library line, a hardcover, and over a thousand pages. Twenty-five dollars, which probably as high as I should go. It is a somewhat hefty price for a book, and it is a big help for my meager budget. It definitely beats Pop picking out a book for me at the dollar store.
Resolved: Men are Obsolete
Dec. 16th, 2013 09:09 pmCamille Paglia and Maureen Dowd were on opposite sides of a debate in Toronto over whether men are obsolete. Dowd was on the pro side and Paglia on the con side.
~ ~ ~
“So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know we need you in the way we need ice cream — you’ll be more ornamental.’ ”
-- Maureen Dowd
“Feminism was always wrong to pretend that women could ‘have it all.’ It is not male society but mother nature who lays the heaviest burden on woman.”
-- Camille Paglia
~ ~ ~
I don't have access to the debate, but the article gives us a nice statement by Paglia:
A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.
Personally, I go with the argument that was made in Plato's "Symposium". Each of us is but half a being, and we will always have to pair up and come together to become the one whole beast with two backs. That is love, and it is love that makes the world go round.
[Source: American Enterprise Institute]
~ ~ ~
“So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know we need you in the way we need ice cream — you’ll be more ornamental.’ ”
-- Maureen Dowd
“Feminism was always wrong to pretend that women could ‘have it all.’ It is not male society but mother nature who lays the heaviest burden on woman.”
-- Camille Paglia
~ ~ ~
I don't have access to the debate, but the article gives us a nice statement by Paglia:
A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.
Personally, I go with the argument that was made in Plato's "Symposium". Each of us is but half a being, and we will always have to pair up and come together to become the one whole beast with two backs. That is love, and it is love that makes the world go round.
[Source: American Enterprise Institute]