Just spring
Windy, chilly, rainy, time for some reflection. A blog on my beloved spouse's roll had a bold-faced adjuration against other bloggers making more political observations, that it wasn't worth it, they'd never change anybody's mind, blahblah. Well, I left this post on his site:
CHILDREN OF OUR AGE
We are children of our age,
it's a political age.
All day long, all through the night,
all affairs - yours, ours, theirs -
are political affairs.
Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.
Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.
Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.
Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it trouble the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.
To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil.
or a conference table whose shape
was quarreled over for months:
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one.
Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.
Another fine one by Wislawa Szymborska.
Fine, if you're weary of political rants, comments, observations, articles, analyses, then don't read them. Go hide under the bed. However, the issue of dust bunnies is a highly charged one, so don't think you're completely safe under there...
CHILDREN OF OUR AGE
We are children of our age,
it's a political age.
All day long, all through the night,
all affairs - yours, ours, theirs -
are political affairs.
Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.
Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.
Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.
Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it trouble the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.
To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil.
or a conference table whose shape
was quarreled over for months:
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one.
Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.
Another fine one by Wislawa Szymborska.
Fine, if you're weary of political rants, comments, observations, articles, analyses, then don't read them. Go hide under the bed. However, the issue of dust bunnies is a highly charged one, so don't think you're completely safe under there...
posted by isabelita at 11:25 AM
11 Comments:
That is lovely. What an accomplished spinner of images.
I really appreciate her distllation of the language, too. She packs a good deal of meaning into her lines.
Hello Isabelita, nice poem, but you seem to have missed the point of Language Guy's adjuration, to use your word. Since his is, ostensibly, a linguistics blog, posts having nothing to do with linguistics or language are a bit out of place. One or two is one thing, but constant and consistent political diatribes having no relation to language seemingly got the best of LG. This seems understandable. Your point is well taken, politics are unavoidable, but I certainly never got the impression that LG was looking to exclude them, only to keep posts within the framework of the forum. I’m not sure if you didn’t see the whole picture there, or just disagree with him on some level. Your self-righteous tone points to a bit of both. So, good point, but off the mark.
Well, well, a trollish sort of remark there, Sean. "Self-righteous", eh? Well, you are young, and evidently full of yourself.
I've got lots of those damn political dust bunnies around here too. Gosh, if I could just keep my posts within the framework of the forum!
A post is what the owner of that post wants it to be, and he or she should have the right to post whatever the hell they want from day to day. That's the beauty of choice. YOu can read and comment, read it and leave, or start it and say the hell with it. See, easy. Why upset the rain bucket? But the poem, real cool.
This poem seems to apply to Blogesphere,esp.
I spend my whole life trying to stay out of the frustrating relm of politics only to find myself immeshed in it.
absolutely awesome
Dismiss me how ever you want; as a troll, as too young to know anything, etc. But it still remains that you missed the point of LG's post asking that responses have at least something to do with language, as his is a language based blog. Whatever politics come into play can stem from there, and they always do, usually to good results. I would think that it is his right to make that request as it is his blog. Instead of voicing your concern or disagreement, you posted a poem, and then made self righteous and misdirected comments about it on your blog. So, I’m trying to voice my concern and disagreement; I felt that he was completely within his right to make that request, and after reading his blog for some time I have to agree with the request. And your comment was self righteous, no one needs to be full of themselves to make that observation. It had the spirit of “I know better than this guy,” if that isn’t self-righteous I don’t know what is. Passive aggressive self-righteousness is doubly deplorable. Why not have made your comments on his blog directly? I would venture to guess it’s because you knew they were flippant and self-righteous, and it’s much easier to make those kinds of comments behind someone’s back than to their face. I may be young, but I’ve never been stupid, hun. If you want to debate any of these points, I’d be happy to, but leave the ad hominem attacks out, they’re cheap and insulting.
Oh for crying out loud, sean. You're overreacting, and actually, you made an ad hominem move initially by calling me self righteous. Now you're compounding it by calling me passive aggressive. Irony is lost on you.
I posted a POEM on that blog. Could there be any form more dependent upon language than a poem?
Try not surfing around to sites, finding things to blow up about, and leaving critical remarks.
My post of that poem was certainly not an attack upon that fellow. We've been acquainted with him for some time, and i'm sure he got the point of the poem's intent. It wasn't dire at all, that's your bizarre take.
If you don't like what you read on other people's blogs, then go somewhere else.
I said your comment sounded self-righteous and was passive aggressive, not that you were a self-righteous passive aggressive person, and while the distinction may seem fine, it's an important and large one. I’m sorry that you took it personally, I don’t know you and wouldn’t presume to make personal attacks about you. Your comment was self-righteous and passive aggressive though, and I didn’t like it.
Irony is hardly lost on me, and I find it ironic that you complain about me overreacting when instead of a calm response to my posts you come out swinging with insults and “oh for crying out loud.” I also find it interesting that you tell me to go somewhere else if I don’t like what I read on other people’s blogs when you have yet to take that advice yourself. You didn’t like LG’s request, and you said something. I think I have the same right that you do. And never once did I say I had a problem with you posting your poem, in fact I said it was a nice poem. You seem to have confused the issue. Your self-righteous comments about the poem you posted are what I took issue with.
There is nothing dire about any of this, certainly, the world will keep turning one way or another. But frankly the low level of discourse I find on the web is desturbing, and I find myself unable to keep my mouth shut about it from time to time. If I don’t like what I read on other people’s blogs, I’ll say something, just like you did, and I’ll go someplace else when I choose to, THAT is the beauty of choice. If someone wants to actually have a discussion about a disagreement, I would welcome that fully. I was under the impression that that is what this blog thing was for; discussion. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong.
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