I’m Not Dead (yet)

Recueillement

Is verse a dying technique? How dead is poetry? Who killed poetry? Does anybody care? Is poetry dead? Is poetry dead? Is poetry dead?

Inquiries into the death of poetry comprise a tradition almost as rich and varied as American poetry itself. Earlier this month, a college literary magazine proposed a tidy solution to the evergreen problem: “if you have to keep declaring, over and over, that poetry is dead, it can’t actually be dead.”

Washington Post: Poetry is going extinct, government data show

Evasive Measures

Dec9

You were telling him about Buddha,
you were telling him about Mohammed in the same breath
You never mentioned one time the Man who came
and died a criminal’s death.

Bob Dylan: Precious Angel

If Christ and His gospel are offered you

you squirm — then dredge up the gods of the East.

Your act of avoidance is nothing new;

salvation proposed: evasion increased.

Waxing socialistic (as if on cue)

your blustering is consistent, at least.

you brandish your point of antichrist view,

descending like Darwin: angel to beast.

In Babylon’s gardens you disembark

to deconstruct Noah, the flood, the ark.

On Gilgamesh, Enkidu, in madness

you ramble — and it fills me with sadness.

There is one truth, undiscerned, unadored.

Be still. In silence, acknowledge your Lord.

A Real “Nomadic War-Machine”: ISIS

Dec6

What a sad irony for the deceased philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
After all the Gallic philosophical ranting, it turns out that an Islamo-Fascist army turned his theory into praxis in the name of their murderous moon-god and became what he described. And they probably never even heard of him.

(The I.D.F. also use his stuff – but they give him credit ! )

Churchillian Prose-Poem

Dec4

churchill1

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science — the science against which it had vainly struggled — the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.