41 replies to this topic

[caltrek]

 

(William) Dunlap's long career as an important and productive playwright of the Republic opened in 1789 with a drama entitled The Father; or American Shandy-ism, in which he presented his view of the "contrast" in the following lines:

 

 

Now I see in this world

A resting spot for man, if he can stand

Firm in his place, while Europe howls around him...

Then might, perhaps, one land on earth be found,

Free from the extremes of poverty and riches;

Where ne'er a scepter'd tyrant should be known,

Or tyrant lordling, curses of creation.

 

 

FromThe Beards' New Basic History of the United States, page 152.

[Alislaws]

Its interesting how admired this poem is, despite the fact that the vast majority of people don't really agree with it. 

 

 

Do not go gentle into that good night

 

Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Maybe it will still have a chance to help change the world as longevity research continues 

[caltrek]

Mission Haiku: the Poetry of Mission Statements

 

https://nonprofitqua...ion-statements/

 

Introduction:

 

(Nonprofit Quarterly) The mission statement is a cornerstone of both external communications and internal vision, and deserves your attention whether you are a grassroots startup or a generations-old foundation. Because mission statements represent the reduction of a complex vision into a few carefully chosen words, they are similar to Japanese Haiku, poems that capture concrete images with metaphysical implications in just 17 syllables.

 

Why Focus on the Mission Statement?

Your organization’s mission statement deserves to be elegant, precise, and even poetic because these words embody the reason your nonprofit exists. The mission statement will be your north star when sailing stormy boardroom seas; when discussion gets contentious, we look to the mission statement for clarity. These few words will guide future generations of our organizations’ leaders. Outside the organization, we can use a strong mission statement to communicate the core of our work in just a few lines. To serve these purposes, mission statements must be carefully crafted. History has seen few more exacting wordsmiths than the great haiku poets, and nonprofits can learn much from them.

 

Haiku

Poetry is reductionism at its most powerful, cutting away everything from an image except the content of a few words, but leaving its complexity intact. Haiku, the Japanese form consisting of only 3 short lines (totaling just 17 total syllables) exemplifies this reductionism. Consider the following haiku by Matsuo Basho, one of the form’s preeminent authors, translated by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass.

 

The old pond—       furuike ya

a frog jumps in,       kawazu tobikomu

sound of water        mizu no oto

 

 

With remarkable precision (the original Japanese poem includes only seven words), Basho establishes not only a concrete image, but also a sense of our fleeting impact before the immensity of the universe. Without diving too deeply into the pond of literary interpretation, we can see that Basho uses his 17 syllables fully, presenting multiple meanings. In fact, the Buddhist priest Moran wrote in 1765 that this poem “is indescribably mysterious, emancipated, profound and delicate. One can understand it only with years of experience.”

 

[caltrek]

Monitored by government spies, friend of Coleridge and fellow poet John Thelwall was determined to renounce public life and wrote a poem, in about 1797, that includes these passages:

 

 

 

Ah! let me then, far from the strifeful scenes

Of public life (where Reason's warning voice

Is heard no longer, and the trump of Truth

Who blows but wakes The Ruffian Crew of Power

To deeds of maddest anarchy and blood).

Ah, let me, far in some sequester'd dell

Build my low cot; most happy might it prove,

My Samuel! near to thine, that I might oft

Share thy sweet converse, best-belov'd of friends!

 

 

 

From The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson, page 165

[caltrek]

What is the price of Experience?

 

https://www.goodread...e-do-men-buy-it

 

 

 

“What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song? 
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain 

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs 

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear sounds of love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field and the sickness that cuts off his children 
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door and our children bring fruits and flowers 

Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten and the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison and the soldier in the field 
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.”

 

William Blake

[caltrek]

 

It is neither poverty nor disease but work itself which casts the blackest shadow over the years of the Industrial Revolution.  Is is Blake, himself a craftsman by training, who gives us the experience:

 

Then left the sons of Urizen the plow & harrow, the loom,

The hammer & the chisel & the rule & the compasses...

And all the arts of life they chang'd into the arts of death.

The hour glass contemn'd because its simple workmanship

Was as the workmanship of the plowman & the water wheel

That raises water into Cistrerns, broken & burn'd in fire

Because its workmanship was like the workmanship of the shepherds

And in their stead intricate wheels invented, Wheel without wheel,

To perplex youth in their outgoings & to bind to labours

of day & night the myriads of Eternity, that they might file

And polish brass & iron after hour, laborious workmanship,

Kept ignorant of the use that they might spend the days of wisdom

in sorrowful drudgery to obtain a scanty pittance of bread,

In ignorance to view a small portion & think that All,

And call it demonstration, blind to all the simple rules of life.

 

From  The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson, page 446.

[caltrek]

Musician and poet Yehuda Poliker composed a poetic song entitled The Little Station Treblinka.  It told the story of the death train to the camp at Treblinka, where an estimated 750,000 Jews were sent to their death in the gas chambers there.  A verse from the poem is as follows:

 

 

Sometimes the journey takes

five hours and forty-five minutes.

And sometimes the journey lasts

your whole life until your death.

 

 

Found in From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. page 281.

[caltrek]

 

Hopes are but the dreams of those who are awake.

 

Pindar circa 474 B.C.

[caltrek]

Pindar composed lyric odes in celebration of the Olympic Games:

 

 

If ever a man strives

With all his soul's endeavour, sparing himself

Neither expense nor labour to attain

True excellence,

then must we give to those

Who have achieved the goal,

 a proud tribute

Of lordly praise,

and shun

All thoughts of envious jealousy.

 

To a poet's mind the gift is slight,

to speak

A kind word for unnumbered toils,

and build

For all to share a monument of beauty. (Isthmian I, antistrophe 3)

[caltrek]

https://nonprofitqua...olarized-world/

 

 

 

The small man builds cages for everyone he knows,

while the sage, who has to duck his head

when the moon is low,

keeps dropping keys all night long

for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners.

 

-Hafiz (Sufi mystic poet)

[caltrek]

Although the extract I have cited (see below) is more forward looking than what I had in mind, it very much captures the spirit in which I created this thread:

 

 

Ecology: The Keystone Science

 

https://www.counterp...ystone-science/

 

Extract:

 

(Counterpunch) “Every revolution has been born in poetry, has first of all been made with the force of poetry. This phenomenon continues to escape theorists of revolution — indeed, it cannot be understood if one still clings to the old conception of revolution or of poetry — but it has generally been sensed by counterrevolutionaries. Poetry terrifies them. Whenever it appears they do their best to get rid of it by every kind of exorcism, from auto-da-fé to pure stylistic research. Real poetry, which has “world enough and time,” seeks to reorient the entire world and the entire future to its own ends. As long as it lasts, its demands admit of no compromise. It brings back into play all the unsettled debts of history.”

 

Part of poetic resistance simply is awareness. We are not going to save the world without learning how to actually live in the world. Here words fall far short, they “float”, are too abstract...Communal living will be a big part of this, especially as the world economy seems very likely to fall into depression or outright collapse within a couple decades at most.

 

 

…All major religions hold ecological balance, love of your neighbor, and conservation as a core truth. Teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, Hindu concepts of ahimsa and karma, Buddhist right livelihood, Islam’s tawhid, khilafa, and akhirah all have shown this, as well as indigenous mythology.

 

 

Sadly, most of the dissenters in our culture have been totally marginalized. The best minds of our generation have no longer fallen to madness; they are ignored, imprisoned, killed, or shipped off to a permanent “Desolation Row”. Consider the great works of Gary Snyder, Arne Naess, Robinson Jeffers, Wendell Barry, as well as environmentalists such as Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva, Sylvia Earle: the collective brilliance is astounding, yet industrialism allows no avenues for a praxis, for their ideas to be put to work or play.

 

Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters | 

CC BY 2.0

[caltrek]

I think the following speaks more to our collective psychology than to anything of political significance.

 

 

From  The Darkling Thrush

 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

 

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen to fling his soul

Upon the glowing gloom.

 

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terresstrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, wherof he knew

And I was unaware.

 

 

- Thomas Hardy, December 30, 1900

[caltrek]

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And auld lang syne?

 

- Robert Burns, 1796

[caltrek]

"And everybody praised the Duke

Who this great fight did win."

 

"But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin.

 

"Why that I cannot tell," said he

"But twas a famous victory."  

 

Robert Southy

[PhoenixRu2020]

Not that this short amateur poem from the net "might have changed the world", but so far the best i ever read about Donbass war:

 

Spoiler

 

And since you don't know Russian, that's the short summary:

 

The frontline, night, two hours before dawn. A young guy in Ukrainian uniform was suddenly awakened by beautiful girl in black dress: "Wake up, it's time for us to go... no, without your friends, their time will come later... why am i in black? Such is my working clothes... and now come here, look at this ruined village... these were the "terrorists" you've fought with.. no, they will never return, i know... this is my job to know... who killed them? It was you who killed... you didn't know? It's too late to apologize... you were a good guy, but with empty soul... and now just sit down and think about what you have done with your life. We still have a little time... I need to sharpen my scythe"

 

PS i'm not sure about western mythological background, but i think you can guess who was the beautiful girl with scythe. Each of us will meet her, sooner or later.

[caltrek]

Men of action may make history, but it is often the poets who have the last say in how history is remembered.  Consider:

 

 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

 

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

 

…You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

 

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

[caltrek]

Perhaps, I got it all wrong.  Perhaps it is not that songs and  poems make history, but simply that they help us to better understand what has transpired:

 

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you're older must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game 

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

- Joni Mitchell

 

See also: https://jonimitchell.../song.cfm?id=39

[caltrek]

Speaking of looking back from where we came:

 

There is an appointed time for everything,

    and a time for every affair under the

        heavens.

A time to be born, and a time to die;

        a time to plant, and a time to uproot the 

            plant.

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

        a time to tear down, and a time to build.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

       a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to scatter stones, and a time to 

         gather them;

       a time to embrace, and a time to be far

          from embraces.

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

       a time to keep and a time to cast away.

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

      a time to be silent, and a time to speak.

A time to love, and a time to hate;

      a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

-Ecclesiastes 3

[caltrek]

Or, from a favored science fiction epic:

 

 

This has all happened before,

this will all happen again.

[caltrek]

Well, this one, already set to music, certainly has the potential to change the world.

 

Barbra Streisand Lyrics

 

"Don't Lie To Me"
 

Why can't you just tell me the truth?
Hard to believe the things you say
Why can't you feel the tears I cried today
Cried today, cried today

How do you win if we all lose?
You change the facts to justify
Your lips move but your words get in the way
In the way, in the way

Kings and Queens, crooks and thieves
You don't see the forest for the trees
Head and heart, on our knees
You can't see what we all see

How do you sleep when the world keeps turning?
All that we built has come undone
How do you sleep when the world is burning?
Everyone answers to someone...

 

 

For the complete song:  https://www.azlyrics...ontlietome.html