6 posts tagged “poetry”
I saw this this on THE FORUM 4 Ayn Rand Fans, posted by Paul's Here. It really hits home.
I need a job where I can earn enough money to pay my bills, so that I can spend the rest of my time studying. I have such a job, in fact I make enough at this job that I can even think about investing ~$150-$200/month. However, I recently discovered that the government is taking damn near 25% of my paycheck in taxes! That's over $200 per month! The government is actually stealing a week out of four from me! I'm so pissed I actually cursed loudly on the job in front of customers when I found out. So now I have to waste even more time that could be dedicated to my studies in order to find a way to suplement my income. Rat bastards.
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's fed.Tax his tractor,
tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
are the ruleTax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries, then
Tax his tears.Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his assTax all he has
then let him know
that you won't be done
till he has no dough.When he screams and hollers,
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
he's good and sore.Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid.Put these words
upon his tomb,
"Taxes drove me
to my doom..."When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.-----------------------------------------
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax,
Fuel permit tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Interest expense
Inventory tax
IRS Interest Charges
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road usage taxes
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax(SUTA)
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
-----------------------------------------Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world....
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
Profound kudos go to Bruno T. Raymundo at The Simplest Thing for identifying this:
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
My 7th grade English teacher had this posted on a wall near my desk and I read it every day, but she didn't include a title or author. So, thank you Bruno, for reintroducing me to something I thought was lost.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
This is something that I love for very personal reasons. I'm posting it so that I can have it on hand and, secondarily, to share it because it's beautiful.
Woman by Nikki Giovanni
she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn't agree
to be the dandelion
she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree
she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner
she tried to be a book
but he wouldn't read
she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn't let her grow
she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right
So, now comes the hard part.
First, let me restate (in order to make very clear) that every individual thing has many characteristics. The task of identifying a differentiae consists of identifying the causal (defining) characteristic (or combination of characteristics, as the case may be), i.e. that (those) which make the individual a part of this concept and not that.
The class and the professor named a few characteristics which seem to follow poetry; emotion, structure (form), metaphors or any image (a metaphor being an image which means something other than it's literal definition), to name a few. While considering which one defines poetry I asked myself: which one is in all poetry, which one can poetry not do without. Of course, I came to the conclusion of emotion. But later it occurred to me that all art is created from emotion. It must be, because an emotion is experienced in response to a value and art is idealized values. So an artist would have an emotional response to his art because it is his values which are being idealized. So, not emotion, that is already implicit in that poetry is an art.
The professor gave some examples of experimental forms of 'poetry' in class which were confusing in that they had some of the characteristics of poetry, yet still did not seem like poetry. The first was a paragraph of prose that was very beautiful, elaborate, and eloquent in it's use of metaphor. The second, a sentence vividly describing an image. While they were emotional and descriptive, they were not poetry in a strict sense, though unnervingly alike to poetry. They were examples of art with characteristics of poetry, undefining characteristics. An example of an undefining characteristic is a human hand. Humans generally have two hands; hands (with 8 fingers and 2 opposable thumbs) are considered to be human. But losing a hand or not being born with any does not preclude one from being human. Conversely, by randomly attaching a human hand to a dog a la Frankenstein or through genetic modification does not create a human, only a weird dog. Similarly, poetry has characteristics which, though common, are not causal in defining poetry. Such things that have some of the undefining characteristics of poetry are called poetic. The examples of experimental 'poetry' were poetic, but not actually poetry in nature. The one thing that neither contained was a structure of poetry, they were both written in the form of prose rather than poetry.
The definition of poetry is art with a repetitive structure. A repeating structure is the one thing poetry can claim that no other language art can. Not, I should point out, simply repetition; anything redundant can accomplish that. No, poetry must be repetitious in it's form, in how it is produced rather than the content that is produced.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
-
From CLCS 330 on Thursday:
Enemies of the ancient book (on papyrus):
time, fire, water, weather, vermin
Repository libraries: Alexandria (later), Pergamum, at temples, Bodleian (modern)
What is literacy (the bar could be set anywhere, really) vs functional literacy (enough to get through a normal day)
[This is probably the most important stuff, or at least the stuff he's most likely to quiz us on.]
Ancient VERSE: Semiotically MARKED language
--meter
--diction [special vocabulary, sometimes archaic]
--[sometimes] music [e.g. epos; tragic songs; melos] and dance
KV: Semiotics: the study of semiosis, Semiosis: the phenomenon and function of signs and signifying (or "signs at work") C.S.Peirce: "A sign is something that stands for something else to someone in some respect or capacity."
RR
W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy
Thomas Gray, 'elegy in a County Churchyard' (modern "elegy")
[Though I guess this could be quizzed also...I don't know...]
Genres of VERSE:
the choral lyric:
Stanzaic form--the 'stanza' or strophe
--can be MONOSTROPHIC or TRIADIC [i.e. strophe, antistrophe, epode]
--RESPONSION for TRIADS--same scan for each type (all strophes have same scan, etc.)
Roman elegists: Catullus, Ovid...
Elegy: [written in COUPLETS--i.e. 'elegiac couplets'] not same as modern definition of elegy
--used for political verse, amatory verse, didactic verse, sometimes for ribald
--for the 'normal' scan of the 1st and 2nd lines of the couplet, you'll have to look at the notes...
iambos: [especially used for erotic/ribald verse, lampooning others]fd
- Amanda Carlson said...
-
Thank you, Lisa!
I'll copy it down with my notes from Tuesday, then read through it all.
See you tomarrow.
- Agmini said...
-
Hey, sorry I didn't make it to the meeting tonight. This is the entry that my Disney survey is in, if you want to take it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ladyisla/20401.html
- Amanda Carlson said...
-
Thanks, I'll check out your journal tonight when I'm working at the library.
Don't worry about the meeting. Nick was taking a test so Coire did the presentation/moderated discussion. He's a philosophy major, he has a tendancy to unintentionally go over people's heads. And it didn't help that the topic, ethics, is quite large.
- John Stark said...
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Jason Rheines had a good course on Poetry this summer. The Ayn Rand Bookstore just put it up for sale: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/store/prodinfo.asp?number=MR01M
I found it very informative, especially his definition of poetry and his thoughts on simile and metaphor.
- Amanda Carlson said...
-
That sounds wonderful; thank you, John! I wanted to reason it out myself first. But I'm not entirely satisfied with my final definition, and I'd like to know wht the professional philosophers think. Though, for $70, it'll have to wait.
I began with calling poetry an art, in that poetry is an idealized creation of man. The definition of art is: a selective recreation of reality. A recreation of reality because art is not reality itself, yet reality is it's only subject. Selective because the artist does not portray reality exactly, he chooses which aspects to portray depending upon his values and idealizes those values. Please, don't ask me to define value, I thought about it and I can't do that yet. I have a working definition which I use to judge a value, for now, but I don't understand it well enough to defend the definition. Art is judged good to the extent of the artist's ability to idealize the value(s), and it is appreciated by an individual to the extent that that individual agrees with the value(s).
Then it occurred to me that I can narrow the genus further, poetry is expressed only in one particular medium. You can't paint or sculpt a poem: if you tried, what you'd end up with is a painting or a sculpture based upon a poem, but not a poem itself. At first I wanted to call this medium 'literature', and it's definition was: language arts. In other words, art which is expressed in language (written or oral). But after consulting a great friend, I think this is the wrong concept for this definition. Literature can include history/science/technical textbooks which aren't art, though it's written. But, whatever the label, the definition is correct; so poetry is a language art.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
-
Hey, Amanda. This is Lisa (from class). I'd really love to discuss some of this stuff with you sometime outside of class. It appears we have some other common interests (some movies and stuff you have listed). Would you be interested in getting together to talk about stuff sometime?
- Agmini said...
-
Oh, I have an account here but I don't use it much. You can email me, or go to my "blog" at LiveJournal, under the same name (ladyisla). I'm not going to post my AIM or anything else here, but if you want it, I can give it to you in class or something.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I'd love to! Do you have time after class on Tuesday? We could go to the Starbuck's in the Union, I'm addicted to good coffee and good conversation. Or we could hang out at one of the malls if it's a nice day.
See you in class. ^_^
- Agmini said...
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I have a 2-hour lab at 3:30 on Tuesday, so I don't think I could make it then. Today (Monday) I am free between 11:30 and 2:30, and from 3:30 until about 7. Could you make it anytime around there? I'm not sure what my Wednesday will look like yet.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I have free time from 11:30-3:30. It's pretty late right now, so I don't know if you'll read this in time. But I will have lunch at noon tomarrow downstairs in the Union between Pappy's and the Grant Street entrance.
- Agmini said...
-
I will see you there!
I am taking a class in Greek Literature this semester and we had a very interesting discussion in class recently about poetry. We were asked to define it. The professor wanted us to talk about it, and then think about it over the next fifty-years or so. But ... Lets do this now.
So, what is a definition, what are we being asked to do with poetry? A definition is simply identification, it means stating explicitly that this is this as opposed to that. So in defining something we first need to narrow down what we're talking about, and then we need to state how it is different than everything else. That is why I think Aristotle is correct in saying that a definition is both a genus and a differentiae. For example, when you ask 'what is man, how do you define it?' you first narrow down what you're talking about from everything that exists to a specific category of things that exist of which man is a part (similar/related to, but not wholly compromising). This is the genus, and in this case the genus is 'animal'. Man is an animal, but not the animal. I don't see why you couldn't use a more or less specific genus, why this is the certain level of genus that one must use, but it would take a more thorough study of concepts than is necessary now to answer that.
Anyway, now the important part is stating what it is that makes this animal, man, different than any other animal. This is called the differentiae, and I think it is the most important, most difficult part of a definition because you must identify the causal trait, or as I call it 'defining characteristic', that makes it this and not that. For every individual object there are many numerous ways to describe it, characteristics, but it is the job of the definer to identify which one causes it to be a part of this concept and not another. For the concept 'man' the defining characteristic is reason, ergo --> man is the reasoning animal, it is an animal which reasons as opposed to any other animal.
So far this is my understanding of definitions and I do not think it is yet complete.
I'm glad you liked, Amanda. It's my favorite poem now. Must have been great for you to know such beautiful poetry in the 7th grade!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006 1:29:00 PM