Contemplate serenely, people
Mark Shea posted a Tom Tomorrow strip over on his blog, but I'm not concerned with the content of that, nor any metadata for that matter. What caught my eye was this "poem" in the comment box.
THE STRONG AND FEARLESS
While the dying fighters
bleed to death all over
In Syria,
Afghanistan
A heavy bee hangs
swaying on a stalk of clover
In the sunny garden
Contemplate serenely
the size and scale of it
The little to the
big
Maybe I should cut down on the amount of mockery I engage in, but stuff like this doesn't make it easy. I have produced a lot of similar material, but it was mostly in high school. Mostly, I say. Some of it was in junior high.
Just remembered a similar post.
UPDATE: Tom just pointed out that I didn't click the SEE MORE link to see the "Rrrrrrrrrrrest of the poem" as Paul Harvey might say. I think the poets lack of punctuation is at least partly to blame for my missing this. So here it is the rest so you can read it in all it's glory:
And if some grave misfortune troubles you a bit
Feed it to the pigs
For nothing is a bother or too serious
Until it reaches where you are
There may be spreading and malignant crisis
But it is afternoon and it is far
But I say watch and listen if you come awake
From your late June sleep
You may think a false alarm is only a mistake
But the strong and fearless weep
Pavel
June 19, 2013
I think it's really hard to write a great anti-war poem, because, unless you're a gifted artist (and first and foremost an artist), you're going to come across as preachy and annoying. Kind of like writing a great feminist novel. George Eliot could do it, because she was an artist, not a preacher, and she had gobs of talent. But no one else. (Ever try to wade through The Yellow Wallpaper? Ugh.)
ReplyDeleteHere is my idea of a great anti-war poem. Well, I don't know whether it is really anti-war. I don't know what it is, except beautiful:
http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/namingofparts.html
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Delete1. To write a great anti-war poem, one has to write a great poem first. If it has an anti-war idea, then it is a great anti-war poem.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the anti-war part too often comes first, and the poem part is an afterthought.
Barbie thought math was hard. Poetry is what's hard.
2. I bet Pauli's Jr. High poems made more sense than the one he reposted above. I'm still wondering what the bee has to do with the title of the poem, or with the dying fighters. The only image I get from that poem is pretentiousness.
3. If it is an anti-war poem, maybe he was trying to say what this poem says. Excerpt:
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Clearly the bee is Mark Shea.
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DeleteYep, Pik. That is what I was trying to say. You said it far better.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think of it, The Iliad is a damned good anti-war poem. Not sure it was meant to be. But it is.
ReplyDeleteDeclining an Invitation to a Picnic
ReplyDeleteI took a trip on a zeppelin to Zzyzx
And oh I had a most wonderful day.
My friends and I had a lush picnic
On the shores of Soda Lake by a bay.
Now the lake was as dry as a cinder
And the sun scorched us all til we burnt,
Nor were the scorpians any kinder —
This much and more of Zzyzx we learnt.
Still, in Zzyzx there's so much to see
You can bet on tortoise races all day.
There's no worry about weather being icy
The dust devils there all swirl and play.
So if you catch the very next zeppelin
To Zzyzx, go friends but do not delay;
Send my love to the cacti and scorpians —
On second thought, I think I'll just stay.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you OENGUS MOONBONES!! Poet Laureate of Est Quod Est!!
ReplyDeleteHere's my favorite war poem:
ReplyDeleteWar is hell.
I won't comment on "The Strong and Fearless" as poetry -- if there's such a thing as poetry-blindness, I have it -- but Pauli has only quoted part of it. If you read the whole thing, the message is pretty clear. It's not an anti-war poem, but yeah, I can see Mark as the bee.
ReplyDeleteTom, thanks for pointing that out. It's a little bit "Disqusting" that the entire poem wasn't showing. It makes more sense now.
DeleteFocusing on the NSA thing only distracts people from the much larger and more problematic IRS thing.
The NSA thing is troubling to me because of the IRS thing. After learning how utterly out of control the government is, I think it is unwise to assume that they're doing only those things that they say they're doing.
DeleteI have mixed feelings about it now. The political animal part of me is happy that Obama's poll numbers took a hit from this, but I wonder if the revelation of the program is going to make the 1984-ish aspects of this even worse. They'll know about the next Showden for weeks and meet him at the airport. You'll never even hear about him.
DeleteBut speaking of troubling... uh, what's with the new profile picture, buddy?
DeleteTime for an update from Nick Nolte's mug shot (I had been told that I resemble Nick Nolte).
DeleteGot a bow tie for Father's Day, and I was sportin' it one day last week at the office. So I thought I'd put an actual profile pic up, while still retaining anonymity.
And if its composition is "troubling", that's a bonus.
And if its composition is "troubling", that's a bonus.
DeleteHey, I can't argue with that.
It's not just the bee that's heavy. It's the poem. Heavy-handed, I mean. Beats you over the head with a 2x4. That's not poetry. It's propaganda.
ReplyDeleteYikes! Pavel wrote that tripe? he is sort of the Poet-in-Residence at Mark's blog. I believe he is a for-real published poet. I have never read any of his stuff. Until now. I am glad I've been spared hitherto.
ReplyDeleteI kind of wondered whether the thing about the bee was a rip-off of "Naming of Parts," the (pretty famous) poem I linked to above. But no. It's just a random thing about a bee.
In my personal dealings with Pavel, he has come across as an obnoxious know-it-all. But maybe I just bring out the worst in people. ;)