I wrote trying to please the critics Only to realize it is not what I know I skied the Cascades and the cold left me skittish Once I finished fighting with my brothers in the snow I surfed the streamline in an unfed village My game inspired orphans up and down the coast I swam the channel seperating France and Britain I don't remember how I made it to the shore I observed the antics of unloved children They can't recognize compassion anymore I saw empty stomachs near the Nile so I filled them They dreamt of diamonds dwindling to just another stone I went to Mecca to pretend I was a pilgrim I saw multicolored Muslims kneeling towards the throne I've never rid adventure from my system But the place I love most is my own home
You should read "Shame", by Salmon Rushdie. I'm reading it right now, and it's very good. I just read a part that has simalar themes to the ones you addressed... well, vaguely, but I get the impression that you would draw at least as much as I did from it. Not least the fact that "Pakistan" is actually an anacronym thought up my Muslim intellectuals in England. Is that not a gem of a fact?
An acronym is like... NATO, or laser (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation). A word made up of other words, usually the initials. Pakistan: Punjabis, Afghans, Kashmiris , Sind, and Baluchistan. Wow, I've managed to teach two new things with one fact. Go me. Weaselpop becomes the teacher.
oh i just wasnt sure because of your spelling i know what an acronym means haha, does pakistan then spell paksb in another language? because that acronym is not right, but what is this book Shame about completely, is it a novel?
It took the "istan" from the last one, and I think must have filled the first "i" in. Yeah, it's a novel. "There can seldom have been so robust and baroque an incarnation of the political novel as Shame. It can be read as a fable, polemic or excoriation; as history or as fiction... This is the novel as myth and as satire." "It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperitives."
Some of this has a really nice flow to it, and there are some unexpected lines which were pretty solid and also nice to read, but I suppose I'm still left wondering what the point is. I've read some of your other poems as well and they all had a kind of well-read feel to them, or at least a sense of how language works in verse (as opposed to just jotting down some random bullshit about your life and spacing it out so it looks cool). BUT while your use of language is interesting, I'm not entirely sure what your point is, in this one at least. I guess I'm reminded (I think I also saw it in someone's sig pic recently so that could be it) of the final words of Roy Batty in Blade Runner, albeit with a kind of 'Howl' bent to them... but at the same time, I have no idea who is talking or what they're trying to say or if it's all just a bunch of random nonsense. I mean, none of what is happening here seems to have much relevance to anything, and if there's some kind of allegory in it then it totally flew over my head. Is it just about a guy who did some unreal things? Or did you just like the way that everything sounded?
well, i did write it mostly thinking about the way it sounded.. a lot of alliteration and vowel rhyming with a good flow.. but it is also many short compilations of stories that my dad has told me over the years about his teenage years through his thirties. he is an incredible guy. and he always assures me that there is no better place than home with his children and wife.
hmm..If one can harmoniously coexist that would be true. I wonder if Leo Tolstoy's exile from his home for the last ten years of his life was an effort to preserve peace at the homeplace.
considering that being chaordic is a natural occurence everyday between evolution and nature, it is possible. That is a very valid explanation of Leo Tolstoy's exile. Governemnts then were all based upon religion, and with the Tolstoyian community growing larger, they viewed this as a threat to the state. It was an exile beginning with fear and ending in political repression.
I am not so sure I can say that I loved it, but it definitely captivated me from the start. It wasn't so long that I got bored with it. Both of those are rarities in and of themselves.
As an example of Metaphysical Justice, I think Tolstoy is a good study. Altho he was the author of what has been named the greatest novel ever written, and was a major contributor or 'Saviour' to an ethnic group, (the Dukhobors ) When it came to peace at home, Tolstoy had to go.
so my second line said only to realize it is now what i know.. that was a typo it was supposed to be Not what i know. sorry, that kind of changes things. haha
