Skimming through PoemHunter

Reading Robert Frost On PoemHunter.com

“This,” wrote Risha Ahmed (nine years old)
“is one of the best poems I have come across!”
while Viraj Bhanshaly (V. J.) confessed
“I love the road not taken, i lyk the rhyming …,
can u read my poems pleaz and tell me if theyre good
… thanks.”

Ronnell Warren Alman writes
“I had to recite this poem … in the eighth grade.
I received an A+.
… still remember the first five lines! ! ! !

This truly states you don't have to be like everyone else
and take the same path. Because you take the other path
does not mean you are lost. You are just different.
It shows you are creative and that you are courageous
to see just what that other path holds.”

But Shaun Delgado disagrees

“This,” he wrote, “is not a poem about choosing a road
less traveled. The poem specifically states
that at the time of the decision, both roads had been worn
and appeared nearly identical.
It's only years later, when details have succumbed
to a fading, sentimental memory,
he says the roads differed. This poem has no intent
to try and persuade people to take an original path.
It is, instead, a humorous analysis of the speaker's
sentimentality
and the ways he will change the story in a fit of nostalgia.”

I think of Billy Collins’ students
beating poetry “with a hose
to find out what it really means”
but hope I stand, enthusiastically,
with Viraj Bhanshaly and Risha Ahmed (nine years old)
before divergent roads; exultant and unsure.

That'll do

Scotland 2 - Georgia 1

NSW State Election

The defeat of ANY Tory party in a democratic election is no bad thing, so well done the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party. Today's election was the first in which we voted (citizens since 16th November 2006). Now, I guess, the challenge is to see if one can influence the course of this (so far) unambitious Labor Government. One has to try.

We call it bed-rest

It's not everyone that's forced to spend a Saturday in bed because a 4 millimetres-long cut in the skin of one's penis runs the risk of worsening because of pressure created by a plastic sheath pressing against one's scrotum when you sit upright. Such is the life of a quad.

Rusalka

Three hours of Dvorak … there were wood nymphs, a water sprite and his daughter Rusalka, a water nymph, an evil witch (naturally), a handsome (if unreliable) prince who was, in keeping with the genre … how can I put this delicately … fat, an even fatter beautiful (if sexually precocious) princess all of which ended in death. Not to mention it was sung in Czech.
Loved it.

Opera Australia








Rusalkas (1877), by Witold Pruszkowski

How good is this man?

Scores the only (winning) goal against Lille in the Champions League then heads back to Helsinborg to honour his contract there.

What if ...

"One of the hardest things to is to realise that your fantasies are just that — fantasies. And before we all get too excited let me clarify that I’m not talking here about imagining Hillary Clinton dressed in Highway Patrol leathers and swinging a night-stick, or any such run-of-the-mill sexual reverie. I’m talking about what we imagine without clear evidence to be true, such as the causes of our illnesses or what might have happened if it hadn’t been for X or Y."

Read all David Aaronovitch's article in The Times

Reading David's piece (some of which I'm persuaded by, some of which I'm not) I was struck by the force of the vitriol directed at David personally. I wrote the brief contribution below. It was posted to the comment response section of the original article. I believe we need to re-discover constructive debate if the nihilists and adventurists are to be resisted successfully.

I have exchanged views with David about the invasion of Iraq for all the years it has been a live issue. We share an anti-Saddam past (going back over 25 years) but we disagree about the war.

I do agree with David, however, about the redundancy of 'what-if' or 'if-only' analyses of histories that never actually took place. I would rather contribute to debate that seeks a progressive and hopeful way forward through the most difficult period of my fifty years on the planet. It seems to me the world is complex enough in its real form.

I'm about as opposed to Dick Cheney's world view as I can imagine but I truly don't want to subscribe to poisonous polemics based on the arithmetic of his death and my life's too short to speculate now on what might have happened four years ago in Iraq if something different had happened six years ago in Florida. That's the politics of luxurious delusion.

Don't those of us with opinions for or against the war need to engage with questions such as those David poses? In the real world, what do we do now and next?

Reading Billy Collins in search of inspiration

The infuriating former Poet Laureate of America

I suppose if I could write like Billy Collins,
Poet Laureate of the United States
of America
and a Professor of English Literature
(all of which need their capital letters)

I suppose I'd worry more than Billy Collins
about the lack of worth of these few lines
of poetry
and maybe mind the way they neither rhyme
nor scan as one might hope or fear.

But none of us can be like Billy Collins
as we try to read or write or speak
of imagery
and of ideas we thought to capture or profess
in such, not wholly vain, attempts as these.

But the truth is simply this; that Billy Collins,
poet laureate, American professor
of English
and a guiding light in my creative darkness,
is one of a kind: as all of us must strive to be.

Hillary and Barak visit Selma

Am I alone in thinking that if you alter your plans at less than a week's notice and bring your husband out of campaigning retirement you must be more worried about the other guy than you claim?

Read the BBC web site story: Clinton and Obama woo black votes

Jumpers

Arthur Miller wrote:

"And yet one cannot forever stand on the shore; at some point, filled with indecision, scepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere."

I jump in.