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APPROPRIATENESS DELVED
How would the world ever get by without Canadian academic papers?
A Canadian academic paper has delved into the appropriateness of using poetry as a way to grieve after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
We need them! How else we could have found out that the defining moment for the generation before Vietnam was the Holocaust? To me that defining moment was the Korean War 6/25 (1950) and for the generation before it was either 12/7 (1941) or 9/1 (1939). The Holocaust was part of WWII but we knew the details after that war ended.
Posted by ElectronPower on 2007 06 23 at 02:34 PM • permalink“It seems that poetry is not going to do much to discourage terrorism…”
Well, she got that part right.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2007 06 23 at 03:17 PM • permalink#5 - PW, send it me, along with all your personal and banking details (so we can deposit the cheques).
I look after all that stuff in Canada.
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 06 23 at 03:18 PM • permalinkPoetry as catharsis to purge my emotions? Hmmmm. If I could attach one poet per MOAB and he/she would promise to recite really bad verse to Islamonutjobs on the way down so that they could really FEEL my emotions, then I might be satisfied. Or I might run out of poets. I’m willing to give it a try, though.
Posted by SwampWoman on 2007 06 23 at 03:35 PM • permalinkI believe if applied correctly as per #8, poetry CAN discourage terrorism. And poets. Seems like a win/win situation to me.
Posted by SwampWoman on 2007 06 23 at 03:38 PM • permalinkIn the event of the development of a critical shortage of poets (after the first few thousand personal deliveries of verse), I am willing to substitute people who call me on the weekend and wake me up in the morning to offer to refinance my house and provide them with the following script:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Mohammed is dead
and so are you.Posted by SwampWoman on 2007 06 23 at 03:44 PM • permalinkOh, I don’t answer the phone, of course, I just resent the ringing in the morning. I had solved that little problem by turning the volume off on the phone and sending it to voice mail, but then I never listen to my messages because if it is important, the people will call back, which gave some people the impression that I was avoiding them and not returning their calls. Which would be accurate.
Posted by SwampWoman on 2007 06 23 at 06:56 PM • permalinkCanadian academic poets; now we know where the Vogons are.
Frankly my feelings on 9/11 were such that only nukes on several Arab and Iranian cities by noon on 9/12 would have satisfied my grieving. In that regard I think I speak for 95 percent of Americans.
Here is a lesson for Muslims, who are always ranting on about their rage and how it forces them to act like barbarians: adults control their rage. We conrolled ours last time, but I would not count on that happening again.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2007 06 23 at 08:06 PM • permalinkSoftly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.Between the sob and clubbing of gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon their nakedness;And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -‘Unknown seaman’ - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men’s lips,Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.
(Beach Burial, by Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971)Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives at Gallipoli ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.. You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
Kemal AtaturkI’m not against this research.
There are lots of different ways of coping with trauma, and some are better than others. Alcoholism for example, can be a pretty destructive way.
So, they wondered if poetry would help people and checked it out. It’s a fair enough question, as research questions go.
I’ve seen worse.Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 23 at 09:38 PM • permalinkto follow up on blogstrop’s posting of Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor.
Slessor was a Sydney journalist and indisputably, long after his death, still Australia’s greatest poet (I think even Les Murray might agree with me on that).
He went to Europe as a war correspondent in World War II. What he witnessed there…
Beach Burial was his last ever poem. He wrote it, published it, and never wrote another line of poetry for the rest of his life, and never said why.
I guess if you read Beach Burial, the answer’s right in front of you.Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 23 at 09:43 PM • permalink#16 Frankly my feelings on 9/11 were such that only nukes on several Arab and Iranian cities by noon on 9/12 would have satisfied my grieving. In that regard I think I speak for 95 percent of Americans.
Michael, you’ve spoken my feelings exactly.
I googled Canadian poetry, and frankly, I feel about it the same way I feel about all modern-day “academic” poetry. Enough said.
#16
Frankly my feelings on 9/11 were such that only nukes on several Arab and Iranian cities by noon on 9/12 would have satisfied my grieving. In that regard I think I speak for 95 percent of Americans.
Here is a lesson for Muslims, who are always ranting on about their rage and how it forces them to act like barbarians: adults control their rage. We conrolled ours last time, but I would not count on that happening again.
Yep. My rage may be concealed, but it is still there and burning just as hot as ever.
Posted by SwampWoman on 2007 06 24 at 02:14 AM • permalinkKipling: -
For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up, and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate.Our world is passed away
In wantonness o’erthrown.
There is nothing left today
But steel and fire and stone.Though all we have depart,
The old commandments stand:
“With courage keep your heart,
With strength lift up your hand.”Canadian poets of the better sort:
Robert Service
Pauline Johnson
Dr John McCraeNot mentionable: Sharon Lois & Bram, Raffi.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 06 24 at 04:39 PM • permalinkCanucks. They’re just so cute sometimes, kind of like that crazy aunt you keep in the attic.
Posted by rightwingprof on 2007 06 24 at 05:04 PM • permalinkByron -
The Destruction of Sennacherib
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll’d not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 06 25 at 12:27 AM • permalink
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There once was a prof, she’s a Canuck
Who showed that her tenure’s a real shuck
She’d ramble in prose
‘bout how poetry goes
And proved to be really a dumbfuck