07-23-2023, 01:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-23-2023, 01:46 PM by RiverNotch.)
Who knows
From the earth we came.
Into the earth we go.
Neither Plato nor Socrates
knew more about it than we know.
Nor the quaint aboriginal elder, -- better "Not", I think.
the Sentinelese with his bow,
nor the PhD from Boston,
the book writing Igbo, -- I suppose "bow" and "Igbo" are supposed to slant rhyme in the same way "Boston" and "Catalan" do, but because "Igbo" isn't really a word I expect a lot of readers to be familiar with, it's a choice that might teach a generation or two how to annoy a bunch of Nigerians.
the bullfighting Catalan
who wears it on his shoulder
as the bullring’s air grows colder
know.
I like the thought behind the piece. Forgive me for going pop, but this reminds me of one of my favourite songs:
https://youtu.be/yHCQ6Pgfk28
That said, that song works, if not as poetry-philosophy then at least as a bunch of words, because of its sense of shared wonder. It's democratic -- "this is something we all don't know; ain't that wonderful?" -- whereas this is more of a put down -- "this is something we all don't know, because we're all gonna die".
Only the choice of examples here makes the put down feel a little more patronizing, even sinister. "Plato" and "Socrates" are named authorities....the nameless aborigine is called "quaint". The person from Boston is identified by their Ph. D.....the person with a bow is identified by his ethnicity (and imagine if the line instead went "the Chinese with his bow"). The Catalan gets three lines evoking, say, Hemingway....the Igbo gets one, and with that note I wrote on pronunciation too.
Overall, "hastily dashed off" indeed -- the more I considered this, the less I liked it. It's good practice, though.
From the earth we came.
Into the earth we go.
Neither Plato nor Socrates
knew more about it than we know.
Nor the quaint aboriginal elder, -- better "Not", I think.
the Sentinelese with his bow,
nor the PhD from Boston,
the book writing Igbo, -- I suppose "bow" and "Igbo" are supposed to slant rhyme in the same way "Boston" and "Catalan" do, but because "Igbo" isn't really a word I expect a lot of readers to be familiar with, it's a choice that might teach a generation or two how to annoy a bunch of Nigerians.
the bullfighting Catalan
who wears it on his shoulder
as the bullring’s air grows colder
know.
I like the thought behind the piece. Forgive me for going pop, but this reminds me of one of my favourite songs:
https://youtu.be/yHCQ6Pgfk28
That said, that song works, if not as poetry-philosophy then at least as a bunch of words, because of its sense of shared wonder. It's democratic -- "this is something we all don't know; ain't that wonderful?" -- whereas this is more of a put down -- "this is something we all don't know, because we're all gonna die".
Only the choice of examples here makes the put down feel a little more patronizing, even sinister. "Plato" and "Socrates" are named authorities....the nameless aborigine is called "quaint". The person from Boston is identified by their Ph. D.....the person with a bow is identified by his ethnicity (and imagine if the line instead went "the Chinese with his bow"). The Catalan gets three lines evoking, say, Hemingway....the Igbo gets one, and with that note I wrote on pronunciation too.
Overall, "hastily dashed off" indeed -- the more I considered this, the less I liked it. It's good practice, though.