The Least of My Brethren/The Border/feastin'

(P1) Philosophical

"For what you've done to the least of my brethren..."












(P2) Political

























(P3) Poetical

Feastin’ On Steinbeck’s Fruit


“I wonder what  they is...
 for a fella that 
 don’t preach
 no more.”

Well,
they is
listenin’
watchin’
learnin’
singin’ 
dancin’
sportin’
readin’
writin’
suffrin’
drinkin’
cryin’
sittin’
fishin’
feelin’
breathin’
smellin’
tastin’
lovin’
and them’s just
the start of things
for a fella
like the preacher
who seen the light
and who
don’t preach
no more.

(coletti-2000)

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Free Speech?/Auden in Reno/Emptiness

(P1) Political

"Hell" and "Damn" and "Reno"

Reno Gazette-Journal (April 13, 2006)

"A 14-year-old boy seeking a restraining order that would allow him to recite a poem with the words "hell" and "damn" during a state competition must wait for a judge's decision.

U.S. District Judge Brian Sandoval, the former Nevada attorney general, said Wednesday he would study the case before making judgment.

Sandoval, sworn into office Oct. 31, said "time is of the essence," because the state Poetry Out Loud competition is scheduled April 22 at the Governor's Mansion in Carson City.

The Coral Academy of Science, a charter school in Washoe County, is trying to bar freshman Jacob Behymer-Smith from reciting the W.H. Auden classic, "The More Loving One," at the competition because the school does not allow students to use profanity."

Here a link to the full article. Do you believe this?

Flash...Upddate

Judge says student can recite poem at state competition

April 13, 2006 07:40 PM

A federal judge Thursday gave a Reno ninth-grader permission to recite a poem at a state competition that administrators at his charter school sought to block because they said it contained profanity.

In his ruling, US District Judge Brian Sandoval said "hell" and "damn" in W.H. Auden's, "The More Loving One," does not constitute vulgar, lewd or offensive language that could disrupt the Coral Academy of Science's educational priorities.

(P2) Poetical

Here is the "controversial" ? W.H. Auden Poem referenced above

The More Loving by W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

1957

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(P3) Philosophical

Immigrants/Kaminksy/"Answers"?

(P1) Political


(P2) Poetical

From Ilya Kaminsky's poem "American Tourist,"

... When Moses
broke the sacred tablets on Sinai, the rich
picked the pieces carved with
"adultery" and "kill" and "theft,"
and the poor got only "No" "No" "No."


(P3) Philosophical

"That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false."

- Paul Valery (1871-1945), French poet, "Tel quel I,"1943

"The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity."

- Carl Van Doren (1885-1950) , American editor and writer, "Why I Am an Unbeliever."

"There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."

- Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American writer.

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Global Warming - Raise Your Voice/Where Poetry Counted/Nuthatch

(Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova - see (P2) Philosophical- "Where Poetry Counted"- below)






(P1) Political

Global Warming is Not a Joke

Sometimes I feel like Michael Corleone, "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. Just when, on "60 Minutes," we've received irrefutable brave evidence from the government's top climate scientist (who yanked off his muzzle to courageously and calmly vent his conscience) that we've got, maybe, 10 years, not to reverse things, but hold them where they are, out come the right wing pundits led by George Will with their paragraphs of question marks and straw man "controversies." There is no controversy. Face it, the only reason Bush doesn't sign the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming is to pander to the greedy corporate bottom line. This all-too-obviously short sighted approach contains what can only be termed an environmental death wish.

Mr. Bush, if Global Warming is not a catastrophic threat to the planet and our way of life, why then does your own Environmental Protection Agency instruct the Insurance Industry in the best ways to protect their pocket books against the effects of -yes- "Global Warming"? It's easy for any reader to follow the money to the truth.

Here's the E.P.A.'s Advice to Insurance Companies on Global Warming. Hit the link and go down about 22 lines or so to the words "Global Warming."

For a really good site about Climate Science, go to RealClimate.org.

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(P2) Philosophical

Where Expression Trumped Death and Torture

That wonderful Russian poet Osip Mandelstam once told his wife, What are you complaining about, only in our country is poetry truly respected: people are even killed because of it. That happens nowhere else.

Mandelstam was imprisoned for a poem he'd written about Stalin, but the following "perfect" poem is one of Mandelstam's last. He wrote it shortly before his death in prison in 1937.

If our antagonists take me
And people stop talking with me;
If they confiscate the whole world-
The right to breathe & open doors
And affirm that existence will exist
And that the people, like a judge, will judge;
If they dare to keep me like an animal
And fling my food on the floor-
I won't fall silent or deaden the agony,
But will write what I am free to write,
And yoking ten oxen to my voice
Will move my hand in the darkness like a plough
And fall with the full heaviness of the harvest...

Imprisoned under similar circumstances, Anna Akhmatova relates a sadly touching and uplifting story from 1957:

Instead of a Preface

In the terrible years of Yezhovism I spent seventeen months standing in line in front of the Leningrad prisons. One day someone thought he recognized me. Then, a woman with bluish lips who was behind me and to whom my name meant nothing, came out of the torpor to which we were all accustomed and said, softly (for we spoke only in whispers),

"--And that, could you describe that?"
And I said, "Yes, I can."
And then a sort of smile slid across what had been her face.


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(P3) Poetical

Nuthatch

I've yet to see
a nuthatch
hatch a nut
but
a nuthatch
hatching
nuts would
surely also be
a nut.


- Edward Coletti -In Light Year '87, (Bits Press, Robert Wallace, Ed.)