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Edgar Allen Poe called poetry "the rhythmical creation of Beauty". Is that not lovely?

But sometimes, Beauty can be a real beast, and I mean that in two senses:

First off, a poem need not be about something attractive in order to be a thing of beauty.

Read, for instance, this beautiful poem by Jack Gilbert about grief following the loss of his wife, Michiko. You will notice that he never mentions grief by name, and that this poem begins with a simile that turns into an extended metaphor. And I predict that you will love this poem as it breaks your heart, and as you feel its weight settle into the box you already carry, and that you will see its beauty, even though it is not about something most people would deem beautiful


Michiko Dead
by Jack Gilbert

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
Read the rest here.

Poems can be about loss and fear, about war and rape, about horror and shame, just as they can be about love and hope, about flowers and clouds, about joy and pride. When done well, however, they are a form of Beauty, just as Poe said.

Second, it can be a bear to achieve "rhythmical creation of Beauty."

I have spent the past three days in false starts and erasures of a poem intended for the Shakespeare poems. I haven't given up on this poem yet, but I'm stepping away from it for now because it's to the point where I am working so hard to shove the poem together that it will never become a thing of Beauty; the poem and I are too angry with each other, I think it best for us both to cool down for a bit and start again. Perhaps she and I will get along better after we take a break from one another.

Most everyone I know seems to acknowledge that first drafts of novels aren't usually pretty. But neither are first drafts of poems - even metrical poems. Want proof? Go to the Manuscripts section of this page about Visual Aids for Jonathan C. Glance's English class and have a look at William Blake's page. Or Byron's. Or Keats. Or even Elizabeth Barret Browning, and hers is pretty clean. Sometimes getting things in order is a beastly undertaking. But when it is done, what a thing of Beauty it can be. Read, for instance, the final version of Blake's poem, "The Tyger" from Songs of Experience, with its wonderful trochaic metre and end rhymes, and ask yourself "Is this not Beauty, rhythmically created?":

The Tyger
by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I've posted about epigrams before, including this one by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

But I was feeling the need for something short and to the point today, so epigrams seem just the thing. An epigram need not rhyme, although poetic ones often do. An epigram is a short, clever, usually witty statement that is memorable. Here is an epigram from Benjamin Franklin, writing as Poor Richard:

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise

Franklin used repetition (early to), internal rhyme (healthy and wealthy) and alliteration (wealthy and wise) as well as end-rhyme, virtually guaranteeing that this would be memorable after only one hearing.

For those of you who read Latin, here's quite an old one:

Admiror, O paries, te non cecidisse ruinis
qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas.

For those of you who don't read Latin, here's a translation: "I'm astonished, wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins,/since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets." Funny, yes?

William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" is composed almost entirely of phrases that can be pulled out as epigrams.

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider said these, the first four lines of the poem:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Hannibal Lecter quoted the next two lines in Red Dragon:

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

Small sentences, small words - but mighty in their content and staying power.

Got a favorite epigram?

(thanks to Ms. Fuse )

online until September 21st

Blake Carver has launched his new site LISWire this week. Working with Robin “birdie” Blum they are creating a site where businesses and individuals can send news releases and get them online and subscribable/linkable. I am looking forward to being able to send this URL to all the nice well-meaning people who send me press releases in email. I always write back to them, “this sounds great, do you have a URL where I can link to this information?” and now I can give them someplace to send it so it can be linkable by them and readable by others. Blake is inviting feedback on the new site, if you have a second, drop by and give him some critique.

We take our politics seriously here at Summer Friend. The best president ever was Dana Carvey's George Bush, as seen in this historic moment:


I also like Phil Hartman's Clinton and his Reagan.

Darrell Hammond's Clinton is a write-in candidate. (I couldn't find any clips.)

David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here. In the article below Domke and Coe commemorate the bombing of Pearl Harbor (12-7-1941) by comparing it to our modern tragedy, 9/11.

Sixty-six years ago today America was attacked at Pearl Harbor. In responding, President Franklin Roosevelt did the expected: he addressed the nation to explain what had happened, to describe plans for retaliation and, of course, to comfort the American people.

But Roosevelt did one thing that, by today’s standards, was entirely unexpected: he didn’t say much about God. In fact, Roosevelt addressed the nation only once in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor—a fireside chat on the evening of December 9—and mentioned God only one time. That reference was the concluding word of the speech:

We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. And in the difficult hours of this day—through dark days that be yet to come—we will know that the vast majority of the members of the human race are on our side. Many of them are fighting with us. All of them are praying for us. For in representing our cause, we represent theirs as well—our hope and their hope for liberty under God.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was the worst by a foreign entity in America’s history, and in comforting and rallying the nation Roosevelt overtly invoked God one time. FDR did not formally address the nation again until his annual State of the Union in early January 1942.

Today we face an entirely different era of religious politics. Politicians look for any opportunity to talk about God and faith, and crises present just such an opportunity.

Consider that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001, George W. Bush formally addressed the nation via live television three times in the space of nine days: from the Oval Office on the evening of September 11, at the National Cathedral as part of a memorial service on September 14, and before a joint session of Congress on September 20. In these three addresses Bush invoked God more than 20 times.

Bush concluded the September 20 address—which was watched by 82 million Americans, the largest audience for a political event in U.S. history—with these words: “The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” He then added, “Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.”

The striking contrast between Bush’s and Roosevelt’s approaches provides two useful reminders.

The first is that the extent to which religion infuses American politics today is historically uncommon. Those who say there is nothing new under the sun with respect to religion and politics are flat wrong.

The second reminder is that presidents can do the job of comforting the nation in times of crisis without saturating their language with religious references. No one would argue that FDR failed in this important task where Bush succeeded. Roosevelt simply took a different approach. And, given the serious dangers that arise when politics and religion become too intertwined, Roosevelt’s approach might be just what we need today.

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

Now that we’re in November, it is only 12 months until the next American Presidential Election. With this in mind, I am thrilled to bring you this month’s VSI column on The American Presidency: A Very Short Introduction. Author Charles O. Jones is Hawkins Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. He is an expert on the American presidency, and has written or edited some 18 books.

OUP: The US has a President separately elected by the people and who does not necessarily come from the ruling Party. The political leader in the UK, the Prime Minister, is not chosen by the general electorate and does come from the Party in power. How would you compare the two systems? (more…)

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James B. Rule, author of Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience is Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley and a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a winner of the C. Wright Mills Award. Privacy in Peril looks at the legal ways in which our private data is used by the government and private industry. In the original article below Rule looks at a seemingly innocuous effort to track schoolchildren and the issues it raises.

If you increasingly feel that information about your life is taking on a life of its own—collected, monitored, transmitted and used by interests outside your control—you’re probably not paranoid.

A recent story in Information Week tells of a school in Edenthorpe, England, that is experimenting with electronic tracking of its pupils. The idea is to fit their clothing with RFID tags—tiny radio transmitters—that can enable school authorities to monitor people’s whereabouts throughout the school day. RFID technology is already widely in use by retailers to track merchandise within shops and, some suspect, after purchase by customers. (more…)

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