Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
quote by Samuel Butler
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Telephone Conversation
Wednesday, January 23,2008
Week 10: Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka
Week 10 Dividing lines: Differences in Class, race, Gender and Ideology
Telephone Conversation
by Wole Soyinka
The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. 'Madam, ' I warned,
'I hate a wasted journey—I am African.'
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.
'HOW DARK? '... I had not misheard... 'ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK? ' Button B, Button A.* Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis-
'ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT? ' Revelation came.
'You mean-like plain or milk chocolate? '
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. 'West African sepia'-and as afterthought,
'Down in my passport.' Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. 'WHAT'S THAT? ' conceding
'DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.' 'Like brunette.'
'THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT? ' 'Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused-
[...] Read more
poem by Tamilarasi Shalu
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The Irony of Love
Irony is a literary or rhetorical device.
The essayist Henry Watson Fowler wrote:
“any definition of irony
—though hundreds might be given,
and very few of them would be accepted—
must include this,
that the surface meaning
and the underlying meaning of
what is said are not the same.'
He left out that any definition of
Irony must include that it is cruel.
I never understood
The meaning of irony
Or how cruel it can be,
Until you told me,
That though you may love me,
You find it difficult to
Hear the words
“I love you” from me.
You see, some three years ago
You jokingly said
'I love you' to me,
And I begged you
Never to utter those words again.
Not because I did not want to hear them,
But because they were difficult for me.
They carried heart-felt consequences
That I did not want to face.
So, I shut out my heart and followed my head.
And in life filled with so many regrets,
It was the biggest mistake I ever made.
The irony,
After some thousand days have past,
You uttered the same
Imprudent sentiment to me.
This sentiment is the definition of irony –
The surface meaning
And underlying meaning are not the same.
Because although I asked you not to say
“I love you”,
It is all I wanted to hear.
The cruelty,
That now that heaven has at last
Blessed, cursed me with
Clarity of the heart,
And I want to say what I mean
[...] Read more
poem by Hal Caufield
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VIII. Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator
Ah, my Giacinto, he's no ruddy rogue,
Is not Cinone? What, to-day we're eight?
Seven and one's eight, I hope, old curly-pate!
—Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate,
Amo-as-avi-atum-are-ans,
Up to -aturus, person, tense, and mood,
Quies me cum subjunctivo (I could cry)
And chews Corderius with his morning crust!
Look eight years onward, and he's perched, he's perched
Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair,
Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he?
—Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case
Like this, papa shall triturate full soon
To smooth Papinianian pulp!
It trots
Already through my head, though noon be now,
Does supper-time and what belongs to eve.
Dispose, O Don, o' the day, first work then play!
—The proverb bids. And "then" means, won't we hold
Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast,
Cinuolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own,
That makes gruff January grin perforce!
For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth
Escaping from so many hearts at once—
When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet,
Jokes the hale grandsire,—such are just the sort
To go off suddenly,—he who hides the key
O' the box beneath his pillow every night,—
Which box may hold a parchment (someone thinks)
Will show a scribbled something like a name
"Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end,
"To whom I give and I bequeath my lands,
"Estates, tenements, hereditaments,
"When I decease as honest grandsire ought."
Wherefore—yet this one time again perhaps—
Shan't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose!
Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the world,
May—drop in, merely?—trudge through rain and wind,
Rather! The smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There's cookery in a certain dwelling-place!
Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke,
Will pick the way, thrid lane by lantern-light,
And so find door, put galligaskin off
At entry of a decent domicile
Cornered in snug Condotti,—all for love,
All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo!
Well,
Let others climb the heights o' the court, the camp!
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Prejudice
IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
There, in the left-hand parlour, all in state,
Sit he and she, on either side the grate.
But though their goods and chattels, sound and new,
Bespeak the owners very well to do,
His worship's wig and morning suit betray
Slight indications of an humbler day
That long, low shop, where still the name appears,
Some doors below, they kept for forty years :
And there, with various fortunes, smooth and rough,
They sold tobacco, coffee, tea, and snuff.
There labelled drawers display their spicy row--
Clove, mace, and nutmeg : from the ceiling low
Dangle long twelves and eights , and slender rush,
Mix'd with the varied forms of genus brush ;
Cask, firkin, bag, and barrel, crowd the floor,
And piles of country cheeses guard the door.
The frugal dames came in from far and near,
To buy their ounces and their quarterns here.
Hard was the toil, the profits slow to count,
And yet the mole-hill was at last a mount.
Those petty gains were hoarded day by day,
With little cost, for not a child had they ;
Till, long proceeding on the saving plan,
He found himself a warm, fore-handed man :
And being now arrived at life's decline,
Both he and she, they formed the bold design,
(Although it touched their prudence to the quick)
To turn their savings into stone and brick.
How many an ounce of tea and ounce of snuff,
There must have been consumed to make enough !
At length, with paint and paper, bright and gay,
The box was finished, and they went away.
But when their faces were no longer seen
Amongst the canisters of black and green ,
--Those well-known faces, all the country round--
'Twas said that had they levelled to the ground
The two old walnut trees before the door,
The customers would not have missed them more.
Now, like a pair of parrots in a cage,
They live, and civic honours crown their age :
Thrice, since the Whitsuntide they settled there,
Seven years ago, has he been chosen mayor ;
And now you'd scarcely know they were the same ;
Conscious he struts, of power, and wealth, and fame ;
[...] Read more
poem by Jane Taylor
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The Prisoner
A misfit who is old before his time
Poverty has turned him to crime
Boredom gives him too much time to think
He pours another drink.
(chorus)
A burning, bitter taste of irony
A prisoner in the land of the free.
He wonders why his landscape looks so strange
Burger bars are home on the range
An empty bottle falling from his hand
He does'nt understand.
(chorus)
A burning, bitter taste of irony
A prisoner in the land of the free.
A cork unlocks the door to other lands
Of battles won and destinies in hand
A half-remembered state of liquid dreams
Where things aren't what they seem.
(chorus)
A burning, bitter taste of irony
A prisoner in the land of the free.
A naked savage dressed in shirt and jeans
A burning, bitter taste of irony
A prisoner in the land of the free.
(chorus)
A burning, bitter taste of irony
A prisoner in the land of the free.
song performed by Ub40
Added by Lucian Velea
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Blazing Through All Precedents
Blazing through all precedents,
Supreme Court Justices have customarily abused
omnipotence until as decedents
they are compelled by death, an act of God, to be recused.
Of corporate money there’s no dearth
in politics, said John Paul Stevens, arguing in dissent;
decisions with some moral worth
are lacking in the Highest Court, should have been his lament.
Inspired by a comment by Justice John Paul Stevens, cited by Adam Liptak in an article on him in the NYT, January 25,2010 (“After 34 Years, a Plainspoken Justice Gets Louder”) :
The Supreme Court announced its big campaign finance decision at 10 in the morning last Thursday. By 10: 30 a.m., after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had offered a brisk summary of the majority opinion and Justice John Paul Stevens labored through a 20-minute rebuttal, a sort of twilight had settled over the courtroom. It seemed the Stevens era was ending. Justice Stevens, who will turn 90 in April, joined the court in 1975 and is the longest-serving current justice by more than a decade. He has given signals that he intends to retire at the end of this term, and his dissent on Thursday was shot through with disappointment, frustration and uncharacteristic sarcasm.He seemed weary, and more than once he stumbled over and mispronounced ordinary words in the lawyer’s lexicon — corruption, corporation, allegation. Sometimes he would take a second or third run at the word, sometimes not. But there was no mistaking his basic message. “The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law, ” he said from the bench. “The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of Americans.”..
“It is difficult to convey how thoroughly egregious counsel’s closing argument was, ” Justice Stevens wrote of a defense lawyer’s work. “Suffice it to say that the argument shares far more in common with a prosecutor’s closing than with a criminal defense attorney’s. Indeed, the argument was so outrageous that it would have rightly subjected a prosecutor to charges of misconduct.” In the second case, Justice Stevens did vote to uphold the death sentence, saying that even a closing argument worthy of Clarence Darrow would not have spared the defendant. That carefully calibrated distinction was of a piece with the view he announced in 2008 in Baze v. Rees, when he said he had come to the conclusion that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment. But he went on to say that his conclusion did not justify “a refusal to respect precedents that remain a part of our law.”
1/25/10
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Because of You
Because of you
I’m angry all the freakin’ time
Because of you
I’m always wary
Because of you
I lost my virtue
Because of you
I am broken
Chorus
Now we’re here
And no way
Will I give in to you
Now we’re here
My only weapon
Is sarcasm
Now we’re here
And I don’t want
What you started with me that day
Now we’re here
And I think
Who gives a crap anyway
End chorus
To you
I’m exposed
To you
I’m a quick target
But you will see
I’m not that easy
There’s more complications
That come with this confident girl
Now we’re here
And no way
Will I give in to you
Now we’re here
My only weapon
Is sarcasm
Now we’re here
And I don’t want
What you started with me that day
Now we’re here
And I think
Who gives a crap anyway
And I stand by and think
What’s the deal here
I never bothered you then
I don’t bother you now
And you started it
And all your friends laugh
Like no one’s watching
And I realize they aren’t
[...] Read more
IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus
Had I God's leave, how I would alter things!
If I might read instead of print my speech,—
Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower
Refuses obstinate to blow in print,
As wildings planted in a prim parterre,—
This scurvy room were turned an immense hall;
Opposite, fifty judges in a row;
This side and that of me, for audience—Rome:
And, where yon window is, the Pope should hide—
Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough.
A buzz of expectation! Through the crowd,
Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff,
Up comes an usher, louts him low, "The Court
"Requires the allocution of the Fisc!"
I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause
O'er the hushed multitude: I count—One, two—
Have ye seen, Judges, have ye, lights of law,—
When it may hap some painter, much in vogue
Throughout our city nutritive of arts,
Ye summon to a task shall test his worth,
And manufacture, as he knows and can,
A work may decorate a palace-wall,
Afford my lords their Holy Family,—
Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court
How such a painter sets himself to paint?
Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe
A-journeying to Egypt, prove the piece:
Why, first he sedulously practiseth,
This painter,—girding loin and lighting lamp,—
On what may nourish eye, make facile hand;
Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so)
From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk
Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves,—
This Luca or this Carlo or the like.
To him the bones their inmost secret yield,
Each notch and nodule signify their use:
On him the muscles turn, in triple tier,
And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man
"Familiarize thee with our play that lifts
"Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and foot!"
—Ensuring due correctness in the nude.
Which done, is all done? Not a whit, ye know!
He,—to art's surface rising from her depth,—
If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found,
May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance!)—
Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow,
Loseth no involution, cheek or chap,
Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives!
Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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The Ghost - Book IV
Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
'Bove other men, and, gravely wise,
Affect those pleasures to despise,
Which, merely to the eye confined,
Bring no improvement to the mind,
Rail at all pomp; they would not go
For millions to a puppet-show,
Nor can forgive the mighty crime
Of countenancing pantomime;
No, not at Covent Garden, where,
Without a head for play or player,
Or, could a head be found most fit,
Without one player to second it,
They must, obeying Folly's call,
Thrive by mere show, or not at all
With these grave fops, who, (bless their brains!)
Most cruel to themselves, take pains
For wretchedness, and would be thought
Much wiser than a wise man ought,
For his own happiness, to be;
Who what they hear, and what they see,
And what they smell, and taste, and feel,
Distrust, till Reason sets her seal,
And, by long trains of consequences
Insured, gives sanction to the senses;
Who would not (Heaven forbid it!) waste
One hour in what the world calls Taste,
Nor fondly deign to laugh or cry,
Unless they know some reason why;
With these grave fops, whose system seems
To give up certainty for dreams,
The eye of man is understood
As for no other purpose good
Than as a door, through which, of course,
Their passage crowding, objects force,
A downright usher, to admit
New-comers to the court of Wit:
(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen;
When I say Wit, I Wisdom mean)
Where (such the practice of the court,
Which legal precedents support)
Not one idea is allow'd
To pass unquestion'd in the crowd,
But ere it can obtain the grace
Of holding in the brain a place,
Before the chief in congregation
Must stand a strict examination.
Not such as those, who physic twirl,
Full fraught with death, from every curl;
[...] Read more
poem by Charles Churchill
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Real art is without irony. Irony distances the author from his material. Irony is a product of something. It's not the reason for doing something. Irony is a cheap shot.
quote by Robert Altman
Added by Lucian Velea
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Justify
To add justice,
I did not scream nor cry,
I instead called,
“Irony.”
Yes,
Irony.
The strange noun that bites and slaps when least expected.
So, to justify,
I called Irony.
I would like it to be shown, to the court at least, that I did nothing wrong,
nor nothing right.
I called his name,
when he was gone from sight.
I whispered my wisdom,
to a deaf and blind old fool,
I gave my only love,
To one who would never love at all.
So,
To justify,
I believe I did not lose,
I just didn't win.
That is often the case with irony.
poem by Kaitey Cat
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In Days to Come
IN DAYS TO COME
In days to come when, dumb, I’ll strum no more
rhymed witness to timed world where butterflies
still dance rare marbled patterns through fair skies -
when I’ll have sunk to rest unblessed before
enchantment fades – who’ll feel one penny poor?
Most, wor[l]dy-wise, ignore one poor demise,
for life continues as before - here lies
our irony, reflections poet pours
in [l]ink think themes on pixel pages’ scores
fade with ambitions one can’t realize,
when hopes unmet forget joy’s first surprise.
Self is both root and cause of fatal flaws.
My memory, wax candle w[e]aned from flame,
may shadow search vain answers to Life’s game.
20 May 2005 revised 16 November 2006 and 25 March 2009
robi03_1257_robi03_0000 SXX_DIZ
for previous versions see below variant of Unjaded Sparkle 6 July 1991
In Days to Come
In days to come when, dumb, I’ll bear no more
to Time rhymed witness, world where butterflies
still dance rare marbled patterns through fair skies -
when I’ll have sunk to rest twice blessed before
enchantment fades – who’ll feel one penny poor?
Most, wor[l]dy-wise, ignore one poor demise,
for life continues as before - here lies
our irony, reflections one would pour
in [l]ink think themes on pixel pages’ score
fade with ambitions one can’t realize,
when hopes unmet forget joy’s first surprise.
Within oneself is found the fatal flaw.
My memory - wax candle w[e]aned from flame,
while others, vain, search answers to Life’s game.
20 May 2005 and 16 November 2006 revised 23 November 2008
- for previous versions see below
In Days to Come
[...] Read more
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Withitness
Some people love the experimental in poetry
Poetry, in the experimental, love some people
Love poetry, experimental people. Some
Lovesome
Challenging all preconceptions
Preconceptions all challenging…
Preconceptions challenging all
All-challenging
Playing with outmoded language
Language playing outmoded
With playing language
Language-playing
But with an implicit social critique
Critique but social
An implicit but
Critique-implicit
In the spirit of post modern irony
Irony modern in spirit
Spirit in modern
Post-irony
Look Ma I can stand on my head
Stand Ma on head
Stand on my Ma I can
Can-head
All-challenging language-playing
Post-irony
Critique-implic it
Lovesome?
poem by Michael Shepherd
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L'Héautontimorouménos (The Man Who Tortures Himself)
L'Héautontimorouménos
Je te frapperai sans colère
Et sans haine, comme un boucher,
Comme Moïse le rocher
Et je ferai de ta paupière,
Pour abreuver mon Saharah
Jaillir les eaux de la souffrance.
Mon désir gonflé d'espérance
Sur tes pleurs salés nagera
Comme un vaisseau qui prend le large,
Et dans mon coeur qu'ils soûleront
Tes chers sanglots retentiront
Comme un tambour qui bat la charge!
Ne suis-je pas un faux accord
Dans la divine symphonie,
Grâce à la vorace Ironie
Qui me secoue et qui me mord
Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde!
C'est tout mon sang ce poison noir!
Je suis le sinistre miroir
Où la mégère se regarde.
Je suis la plaie et le couteau!
Je suis le soufflet et la joue!
Je suis les membres et la roue,
Et la victime et le bourreau!
Je suis de mon coeur le vampire,
— Un de ces grands abandonnés
Au rire éternel condamnés
Et qui ne peuvent plus sourire!
The Man Who Tortures Himself
I shall strike you without anger
And without hate, like a butcher,
As Moses struck the rock!
And from your eyelids I shall make
The waters of suffering gush forth
To inundate my Sahara.
My desire swollen with hope
Will float upon your salty tears
Like a vessel which puts to sea,
And in my heart that they'll make drunk
Your beloved sobs will resound
Like a drum beating the charge!
[...] Read more
poem by Charles Baudelaire
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Irony of Things
It is an irony to believe that Ayothya
Is the birth place of Rama, as by the time
When Rama lived around 1450 B.C.,
Aryans never crossed Punjab or beyond.
It is an irony to say that Mathura
Is the birth place of Krishna, as by the time
When Krishna lived around 900 B.C.,
Aryans never reached up to Mathura.
It is an irony to establish that Durga,
A Dravidian origin, fostered later by Aryans,
Is the destroyer of Sura padman,
An asura, a co-dravidian, among Dravidians.
It is an irony that the very Dravidian
Movement has landed in the hand of a Brahmin
And then at a hand who too had mortgaged the interest
To Aryan for sake of his dynasty.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Song: Spell Out The Blues
There's no-one who's better,
Better than you!
No ruthless go-getter,
With the dumb luck of youth.
There's no-one who's better,
Better than you!
A fashion trend setter,
Who's never uncouth.
My life's such a clutter,
But what can I do?
I've pulled down the shutters,
And choked off the view.
The world is a gutter,
A foul smelling brew.
And my writings still stutter,
To spell out the blues.
Spell out the blues!
They spell out the blues!
All the words that I splutter,
Spell out the blues!
There's no-one who's better,
Better than you!
I'm your prisoner in fetters,
Though you're never cruel.
There's no-one that's better,
Better than you!
No grudge or vendetta,
To play me the fool.
There's no-one who's better,
Better than you!
I am dry cheddar,
While you are just smooth.
There's no-one that's better,
Better than you!
You sent me those letters,
So I'd walk in your shoes.
Walk in your shoes!
Walk in your shoes!
I'd pound out the leather,
And walk in your shoes.
My fragile self shatters,
Yet you flatter me.
My attention is scattered,
I fall to my knee.
How can it matter,
If satyr I be?
[...] Read more
poem by David SmithWhite
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Irony And Unthinkability
Just like football helmets that create
illusions of invulnerability
irony can’t truly mitigate
the trauma of unthinkability.
Lacking helmets football would not be
the game it is, but they do not protect
the wearer any more than irony
protects politically the incorrect.
The trauma that’s inflicted when a skull
is fractured is no less than the concussion
that’s suffered by those people who are dull,
but miss the irony of a discussion.
Inspired by an article in the WSJ on November 11,2009 (Is It Time to Retire the Football Helmet? New Research Says Small Hits Do Major Damage—and There's Not Much Headgear Can Do About It, by Reed Albergotti and Shirley S. Wang) :
This football season, the debate about head injuries has reached a critical mass. Startling research has been unveiled. Maudlin headlines have been written. Congress called a hearing on the subject last month. As obvious as the problem may seem (wait, you mean football is dangerous?) , continuing revelations about the troubling mental declines of some retired players—and the ongoing parade of concussions during games—have created a sense of inevitability. Pretty soon, something will have to be done. But before the debate goes any further, there's a fundamental question that needs to be investigated. Why do football players wear helmets in the first place? And more important, could the helmets be part of the problem? 'Some people have advocated for years to take the helmet off, take the face mask off. That'll change the game dramatically, ' says Fred Mueller, a University of North Carolina professor who studies head injuries. 'Maybe that's better than brain damage.'
The first hard-shell helmets, which became popular in the 1940s, weren't designed to prevent concussions but to prevent players in that rough-and-tumble era from suffering catastrophic injuries like fractured skulls. But while these helmets reduced the chances of death on the field, they also created a sense of invulnerability that encouraged players to collide more forcefully and more often. 'Almost every single play, you're going to get hit in the head, ' says Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jake Long. What nobody knew at the time is that these small collisions may be just as damaging. The growing body of research on former football players suggests that brain damage isn't necessarily the result of any one trauma, but the accumulation of thousands of seemingly innocuous blows to the head…
Nonetheless, the strongest argument for the helmet may turn out to be an economic one. The NFL is shaped around the notion that players can run into each other at high speeds without consequence. It's the same sort of idea that has made Nascar the nation's most popular form of motorsport. And beyond all this, there's the very real question of whether the prospect of serious mental impairment later in life will ever discourage people from playing the game—let alone watching. 'Without the helmet, they wouldn't hit their head in stupid plays, ' says P. David Halstead, technical director for the Nocsae, the group that sets helmet-safety standards. But without helmets, the game 'wouldn't be football, ' he says.
11/11/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Napoleon
I
Cannon his name,
Cannon his voice, he came.
Who heard of him heard shaken hills,
An earth at quake, to quiet stamped;
Who looked on him beheld the will of wills,
The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped:
Beheld War's liveries flee him, like lumped grass
Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm;
While laurelled over his Imperial form,
Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,
Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame.
Incarnate Victory, Power manifest,
Infernal or God-given to mankind,
On the quenched volcano's cusp did he take stand,
A conquering army's height above the land,
Which calls that army offspring of its breast,
And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined;
His eye the cannon's flame,
The cannon's cave his mind.
II
To weld the nation in a name of dread,
And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed,
The Necessitated came, as comes from out
Electric ebon lightning's javelin-head,
Threatening agitation in the revealed
Founts of our being; terrible with doubt,
With radiance restorative. At one stride
Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway.
That Soliform made featureless beside
His brilliancy who neighboured: vapour they;
Vapour what postured statues barred his tread.
On high in amphitheatre field on field,
Italian, Egyptian, Austrian,
Far heard and of the carnage discord clear,
Bells of his escalading triumphs pealed
In crashes on a choral chant severe,
Heraldic of the authentic Charlemagne,
Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite,
Make unity of the mass,
Coherent or refractory, by his might.
Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,
Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees
Rebellious or submissive; his decrees
Were thunder in those heavens and compelled:
Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars,
[...] Read more
poem by George Meredith
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0017 The ironic, the sarcastic, the sardonic...
These weapons of literary abuse
so prevalent in the 17th and 18th century days
of literary gents in coffee-houses
have fallen into desuetude
these amicable days
but for the sake of Eng. Lit. studies
it might be useful
to run them through:
they have Greek roots
which we should know; it keeps them tidy
in the first-aid box of the literary mind:
there’s irony: that’s from the Greek
meaning ‘simulated innocence’;
in practice, saying the opposite
of what you mean; the Greeks
used it in tragedy – the man who says all’s fine and dandy
as the black cloud of disaster gathers;
we use it more for humour; as in
‘ you’re a right barrel of laughs, Mona..’
then there’s sarcasm: in Greek, wow,
to tear the flesh; gnash the teeth,
or simply to speak bitterly;
using irony (as above) , to express contempt:
‘that meant to be funny, then…? ’
and the sardonic: Homer used it
to describe bitter, mocking laughter,
which for undisclosed reasons
was associated with the people of Sardinia..
Imagine, perhaps, a tinful
of no-head-to-no-tail sardines
able to read their label..
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Midnight Thunderstorm
Thunderstorm at midnight
Is like the lord’s laughter at our plight
Raising an alarm
Defeating a scream
Endless roar into the horizon’s reach
Coming from the heart that hears every fall
Be it the proverbial slip or a crashing fortune that stood tall
A new sense awakens in the dark
While the rain drops keep bleeding the breeze
A wink from above
Shows the way to them with ease
White painting the dark streets with streaks
It keeps coming down till the souls are clean
Generous sarcasm directed from above
Saying how long you can be ignorant about the dirt
The one we keep adding to the layers within our shirt
Irony fails, Irony prevails
We sleep and he mocks our travails
Thunder beats every now and then
We are deaf till eternity
Avoiding what is already on offer
Living on the illusion of totality
Disentangle, wake up and breathe
From the middle of this mind’s wreck less dream
-A thunderstorm sweeps my midnight don’t know how it got out of my mind…
13/5/2011
poem by Kunal Seth
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