Contra Ayn Rand - Edit3

[Thunderembargo]

I like the use of Ayn Rand as a false icon and over-rated, one-time controversy turned into industrial print capital, her story of escape from eastern europe, apparently, giving her no insight into many of the pitfalls and problems of western style .   She brought no peace here, only favored an alternate form of machine terror, inhumanity and corporate fear aggrandizement.   

Yet the poem takes this for granted, and places her on the back shelves of literary history, as a has been, a useless and empty prophet of a brave new world that never came to be.  It accomplishes this extraordinary rating and judgment by revealing the essential superficiality of Rand's incomplete and convenient political fiction. 

That's how I understand the poem.   Let me know if that's incorrect.   I will laugh whole-heartedly.   

Contra Ayn Rand


Origami teaches more
   than skillful fingers, memory,    I don't like the comma after 'memory' and don't see that it is                                           grammatically correct
   and seeing possibilities               Elaborate perhaps on possibilities, 
   implicit in unformed material;

one also learns–
   having folded labor, time,           The accomplishment of these lines translates the method that you                                          are describing as the discovery of the verse:         
   and vision intricately
   through mute matter, owning it–     

to loose it freely                         An incredible conclusion; which you developed through                                                    carefully and precisely placed folds of gentle verse.   
   into river, wind or fire
   without regret.

edit2;

Origami teaches more
    than skillful fingers, memory,
    and seeing possibilities
    implicit in material unformed;

one also learns–
    having folded labor, time
    and vision intricately
    through mute matter, owning it–

to loose it freely
    into river, wind or fire
    without regret.



edit1;

Origami teaches more
    than dextrous fingers, memory,
    and seeing possibilities
    implicit in material unformed–

one also learns,
    having folded labor, time
    and vision intricately
    into matter, owning it–

to loose it freely
    into river, wind or fire
    without regret.


original version;

One thing
origami teaches,
    more than skill of fingers,
    memory, and seeing in a thing
    itself turned inside-out,
    implicit possibilities
    of material unformed

is,
    having folded one’s own labor,
    time, and vision intricately
    into matter, making it one’s own–

to loose it freely
onto river, wind or fire,
dispossessed without regret.

---

This started simpler, and I have the sense that it's become over-elaborated.  Advice on how/where to cut or simplify particularly welcome.