Some really inspiring poetry from the National Review Online. Sample:
We face scheming murderers with calm defiance.
They have soulless evil, we have self-reliance.
They butcher civilians, their cruelty shows.
Our steel, true steel, is tempered by blows.
Let them come and dare face us, or run, if they choose.
In battle or treachery, the wicked shall lose.
For the acts of their madness are in truth their death throes.
They’ll die on our steel that they’ve tempered, with blows.
Isn’t rhyme great? I think it’s clear that only soulless lefties could be moved by the blank free verse (thanks Rachel) so popular with all the modernist kids these last 80 years or so. Give me good, old-fashioned rhyme any day! And moral clarity! The author, one Rob S. Rice, is a classicist, and on behalf of classicists everywhere I’d like to offer a remorseful apology. Sorry about the whole Victor Davis Hanson thing, too. In fact, I’m going to step up to the plate and take full responsibility for both men (N.B. no actual consequences follow from this.)
In further NRO news a pleasantly deafening silence on the subject of one Ahmad Chalabi:
CHALABI [Jonah Goldberg]
A few readers have written to ask what I think about the Chalabi stuff. The fact is I don’t know what to think. I’m not ducking the issue, I justhaven’t gotten my neo-con talking points yetdon’t know what to think about it. When I get further up to speed, I’ll let ya know.
OK, so, I modified that last part. Finally, in the K-Lo solves your moral dilemmas department,
A few people have asked me: Should I give to NRO or the starving kids in Ethiopia? Different levels there, but I’d give to both. I do. I’m not trying to put us on the same plane as a group that puts food in a child’s mouth but I would like to think that we have done a little something to advance some crucial, life-and-death issues.
I hope we’re all clear now. Get out there and give till it hurts!
{ 22 comments }
chris 05.21.04 at 8:07 am
As a sort of ex-Classicist (well, I studied classics to age 18), your apology is unnecessary. If he can’t do it in Sapphic stanzas (and authentic Aeolic dialect), he’s clearly not up to snuff and it ain’t worth a hill of beans.
What? Nobody would understand it in ancient Greek? Well, nobody understands it anyway.
Chris Brooke 05.21.04 at 8:11 am
There’s some entertainingly crap rhyming anti-war poetry, too: UK Liberal Democrat MP Paul Marsden made the mistake of posting his rhymes on his website, though his poems about war aren’t quite as funny as his poems about sex.
Perhaps there should be a bipartisan anthology?
Belle Waring 05.21.04 at 8:32 am
Wow, Chris, that is some incredibly terrible poetry. A bi-partisan anthology it is!
rachelrachel 05.21.04 at 9:24 am
Who’s doing blank verse these days?
The names most often associated with blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) are Bill Shakespeare and John Milton.
An example (from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The dominant trend in poetry of the twentieth centurty has been toward free verse, sometimes known by its French name, vers libre.
David Tiley 05.21.04 at 9:25 am
Rudyard Kipling eat your heart out..
The Member comes down like a wolf on the fold
And his stanzas are gleaming in crap untold…
Strewth.
Seriously, the progressive love for rhyme just moved into music. Let alone the unhearable hip hop which is really a mutation of a very ancient tribal form.
Sadly, I think we left ancient tribes for good reasons.
yabonn 05.21.04 at 9:34 am
I wonder if there’s an history of this mania by so many of u.s. conservatives to implicitly begin and end all of their thoughts and reasonings – and poems – by “because we are better, and the world would be a better place if everyone was like us…”.
There is something more to conservatism that this kind of navel worshipping gimmick -i’m told.
Maybe this new feel-good brand better matches the need of the audience : “My life may be crappy, but boy am i a responsible, morally clear, straight shooting type of guy. The world would be a better place if…” etc.
Kind of weird to so flatly apply marketing reasonings to ideas, but can’t find better for now. Please tell me if you do, this frenzy of self congratulation in conservatism really puzzles me.
bryan 05.21.04 at 9:43 am
Is it me or does it sometimes seem that this war has produced the greates amount of god-awful poetry of any war waged by english-speaking peoples in their history.
liberal japonicus 05.21.04 at 12:07 pm
The author, one Rob S. Rice, is a classicist, and on behalf of classicists everywhere I’d like to offer a remorseful apology. Sorry about the whole Victor Davis Hanson thing, too. In fact, I’m going to step up to the plate and take full responsibility for both men (N.B. no actual consequences follow from this.)
Hey, it don’t mean a thing unless you can do it in front of all those Senators like good ole’ Rummy did. That was courage (or was it chutzpah?)
bob mcmanus 05.21.04 at 4:35 pm
“They’ll die on our steel that they’ve tempered, with blows.”
What does this mean? Does he understand what tempering is?
“They’ll die on steel they’ve tempered
With flows
Of blood.”
Nah, can’t be repaired. May try later. I have always wanted to use “ichor” somewhere.
I don’t understand people. If you have read enough to have a clue what poetry is, how do you put your name in public on such as this?
Course, don’t understand reality TV, or Jerry Springer, or overconfidant commenters.
jdw 05.21.04 at 4:36 pm
Saddam Hussein wrote worse.
DJW 05.21.04 at 5:56 pm
Great, Vogons have infiltrated the GOP. My small intestine was starting to stir as I was reading that, it should come with a clearer warning.
Matt Weiner 05.21.04 at 7:56 pm
I’ve heared that “temper” can mean either harden or soften. Do you temper steel by banging on it while holding it over an anvil? However…
They say though I’m
a rhyming man
from time to time
my verse don’t scan.
But even worse
from time to time
they say my verse
don’t even rhyme.
megapotamus 05.21.04 at 8:58 pm
I was a Spenser scholar, HAH. Oh well, hasn’t hurt me. All that mentioned above would have to improve quite a bit to be dogerrel. A rhyme is a terrible thing to waste.
bob mcmanus 05.21.04 at 9:38 pm
“Do you temper steel by banging on it while holding it over an anvil?”
With no further research than what I have seen on the History Channel, “tempering steel” involves making it harder and less brittle, or more flexible.
You temper steel by mixing carbon into it on the anvil, or by quick-cooling it in a liquid, usually water, or for the sake of his poem, blood.
Matt Weiner 05.21.04 at 10:27 pm
“tempering steel†involves making it harder and less brittle, or more flexible.
Yeah, that hasn’t happened.
Lance Boyle 05.22.04 at 12:55 am
Aliens. With enough language skills to communicate and blend in in a crowd whose publicly displayed intellectual age-quotient is now down to around 10.
We have better poetry, better music, better plays, better novels, better art, better cartoons, better food and more interesting friends, and our kids play harder and have more fun than theirs.
Their best commercial messages use our music and our design sensibilities.
So why are we even dealing with these creatures?
Because they have powers.
Alien powers.
John Kozak 05.22.04 at 7:25 am
I’m sure the Rice poem calls for a closer reading. What’s going on with the repeated allusion to a classic of socialist realism, for a start?
Anatoly 05.22.04 at 8:00 pm
Ugh, no, Lance, you guys have the Ted Ralls and the Michael Moores of the world.
You have shitty poetry, shitty music, shitty cartoons, and shitty art. More pretentious than the shit on the other side, of course, but just as stinky.
*We* have all the best poetry, art, novels, music, architecture and food. “We” are the ones who are non-partisan about all this stuff, and just enjoy the best of what’s out there.
Nat Whilk 05.22.04 at 9:25 pm
Belle Waring wrote:
“In further NRO news a pleasantly deafening silence on the subject of one Ahmad Chalabi”
Your link is to NRO’s Corner, where I get 46 hits on the word “Chalabi”. Talk about silence! Of course, there’s not a lot of substance to those hits, but there hasn’t been a lot of information about the raid that would permit substantive commentary. If it’s, nevertheless, commentary you demand, check out the front page of NRO, where there are 3 1000+ word articles on Chalabi.
jdw 05.22.04 at 10:03 pm
_We have all the best poetry, art, novels, music, architecture and food. “We†are the ones who are non-partisan about all this stuff, and just enjoy the best of what’s out there._
Yeah, but we get laid more.
pepi 05.22.04 at 11:06 pm
Yeah, there’s thousands of words on Chalabi in the NRO, and they’re all in such adoring tones it’s embarassing. They even get to blame the US forces and Bremer for daring to break into his house. As if Chalabi wasn’t a respectable reliable guy, how dare they suspect him…
Unbelievable.
…
T.V. 05.23.04 at 5:55 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. Frederick Turner.
http://www.n2hos.com/acm/turnerto5000.html
Why do they hate America?
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