07-17-2011, 04:59 AM
The scene depicting young people following the directives of one man, to eschew the beliefs of another, before proceeding to tell them how he felt they should think is a little dismaying, as I suspect few young folk would refuse, and we have that with 'radical' Imams and others poisoning the minds of the impressionable young.
In order to measure, one needs a miniature building-block, defined in relation to other things, even though it begin by being arbitrary. In Paris, there is a metal rod, which at a given temperature, represented the metre. Once one has this, other measurements flow. Rather ironically, there is no such metre in poetry-- not for measurement. Appraisals are fine; the idea of an accepted canon is fine. Yet over time, items which were immensely revered fade, and vanish: one only has to look at different editions of the Oxford Book of English Verse to find that people who once were thought giants, are now represented by scarcely anything.
In order to measure, one needs a miniature building-block, defined in relation to other things, even though it begin by being arbitrary. In Paris, there is a metal rod, which at a given temperature, represented the metre. Once one has this, other measurements flow. Rather ironically, there is no such metre in poetry-- not for measurement. Appraisals are fine; the idea of an accepted canon is fine. Yet over time, items which were immensely revered fade, and vanish: one only has to look at different editions of the Oxford Book of English Verse to find that people who once were thought giants, are now represented by scarcely anything.