Dear Pelly,

Loved your poem.
More please?

I came across this ditty on the web:

"I'm Glad I'm A Woman."
(Denim Sue).

"I won't grab your hooters,
I won't pinch your butt,
My belt buckle's not hidden
beneath my beer gut.

I don't go around readjusting
my crotch,
Or yell like Tarzan as I
mark down each notch.

I don't belch in public,
I don't scratch my behind,
I'm a woman you see,
I'm just not that kind!"

Dear Woulfe,

Thanks for your poem and the link.

"There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket
But his daughter, named Nan
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket."

Dear David F., and Squeers,

Thanks to you both for saying it so
beautifully.

I fear that our world can become so
obsessed with the problems of hatred
and aggression, that it will allow peace
and love to be regarded as soft and weak.
Yet our survival depends on their dominance.
Otherwise, Stephen Vincent Benet's
prophecy will come true:

"Oh where are you coming from soldier,
gaunt soldier
with weapons beyond any reach of my mind
with weapons so deadly
the world must grow older
and die in its tracks if it does not turn kind."

And Christopher Marlowe had this to say:

"... Accursed be he that first invented war,
They knew not, ah, they knew not
simple men,
How those were hit by pelting cannon shot,
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen leaf."
(Tamburlaine the Great. Act 2, Sc.iv.)

John Dryden said it equally well when in,
"Alexander's Feast," he wrote:

"War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If all the world be worth the winning,
Think, oh think, it worth enjoying."

Pericles' namesake, just as poets do, compressed vast ideas and wisdom into few words. Like this:

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

However, criticism is fine. I like what Alexander Pope said about it in An Essay On Criticism:

'Tis with our Judgments as our Watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In Poets as true Genius is but rare,
True Taste as seldom is the Critick's Share;
Both must alike from Heav'n derive their Light,
These born to Judge, as well as those to Write.
Let such teach others who themselves excell,
And censure freely who have written well.
Authors are partial to their Wit, 'tis true,
But are not Criticks to their Judgment too?

I feel compelled to insert some humour; I hope you all don't mind:

Poetry Contest


The National Poetry Contest had come down to two, a Yale graduate and a redneck from Texas. They were given a word, then allowed two minutes to study the word and come up with a poem that contained the word. The word they were given was *Timbuktu*.

First to recite his poem was the Yale graduate. He stepped to the microphone and said:

Slowly across the desert sand
Trekked a lonely caravan;
Men on camels, two by two
Destination Timbuktu.

The crowd went crazy! No way could the redneck top that, they thought. The redneck calmly made his way to the microphone and recited:

Me and Tim a huntin' went.
Met three whores in a pop up tent.
They was three, and we was two,
So I bucked one and Timbuktu.

(I admit to preferring the Yale effort :D)

Dear Pynch,

I've had the best laugh this morning,
Thanks to your redneck poem!
(My husband, appreciated it as well).
I'm going to pass it on to friends.

As for Pericles not liking poetry, well
that's fair enough. It could be due to the
teachers he had as a child. This view often
comes from teachers who don't enjoy poetry
themselves or from disillusioned children
who have been subjected to poor selection of
verse which has been terribly taught.

The "poetry-yuk" syndrome would not appear if
poems and collections of them were well
selected. The "poetry-wow!" syndrome would
take its place.

Anyway, as you pointed out - it's healthy to have
dissenting points of view.

As the old saying goes: " to avoid criticism,
do nothing, say nothing, be nothing!"

Once again - Pynch, Thanks for making me laugh
out loud! Best medicine!

I guess that I had missed that point, Foxy, fair cop.

>>She places them in HER poem at Nagasaki AFTER the bomb drop - I would have thought that it was obvious from the poem.<<

But I think "blame the teacher" is a little simplistic.

>>As for Pericles not liking poetry, well that's fair enough. It could be due to the teachers he had as a child. This view often comes from teachers who don't enjoy poetry themselves or from disillusioned children who have been subjected to poor selection of verse which has been terribly taught.<<

On the contrary, I was pretty much a lone voice in the classroom back then as well.

It just seems to me to be a highly unsatisfactory art form.

>>The result is an extremely powerful expression of living with the consequences of our actions, and the moral choices we are faced with in life<<

All of which is admirably covered, in full and poignant detail, in the opera. What made the poet believe that she could improve upon it?

Yes, the poem is shorter. But is brevity really a virtue?

Which I think gets to the heart of my attitude towards poetry: why?

As in "why poetry?"

>>Just for the sake of argument, Pericles, can you please advise what is not 'ultimately a pointless act"?<<

Rather than get into a discourse on the redeeming virtues of nihilism and the emotional comfort of anomie, I'd suggest that it should be read as "compared to the layered complexity of the original work from which it was derived, writing a poem that condenses deep emotions into a handful of lines is a pointless act"

On reflection, it is probably also the poem's strict one-dimensionalism that irritates me. She uses Cio-cio-san as the focal point of a moral tale that excoriates men...

"If all those hours Were laid end to end, We could have another life Of our own."

...but totally ignores what she went through, emotionally.

It's like using a picture of Einstein's haircut as an object lesson on the need to pay attention to personal grooming.

I like to draw as well as write. sometimes one happens to make exactly the right stroke in the right place and the whole picture seems to pull together on the strength of that one stroke - especially in in a portrait. (Pericles, I can't tell you the "why" as to my need to draw a picture, either.) I liken the "line in the right place" to the feeling you get when you read a poem and it instantly plugs into your emotion.

Pynchme,

Alexander Pope says it very well.