When I first posted to this thread
it was already clear that George would continue
with his completely adversarial stance to any and all
questions asked him about his poem.
Another poem of his, which he called "The Trap",
he admitted was complete nonsense.
He said he wrote it while stoned and drunk.
And I asked him how could we tell if he wasn't still drunk.
Or always drunk. And why should we ever trust him again?
And he said - "Ah Well, Greg. I see you have fallen into the poem's title."
If taking 5 seconds to scan down a paragraph before deciding
it's complete nonsense is what he means by falling into
his trap, then I fell. I have never, however, put any effort
into trying to understand his poetry, because my impression
of it has always been that it's pure doggerel, - only lacking
the humor which that word usually implies.
And my observation of George's reactions to the comments he gets
is that, when he likes them, he waxes tangentially mystic and effusively,
almost embarrassingly grateful. Whereas when he doesn't like a
comment, then his reaction is to attack the commenter.
Like I said before, this current poem of his,
which he calls "Little Girl", contains, in every line,
certain catch-phrases and trigger-words which
we can't help but react to. By which I mean
exactly what Cate meant about our reaction to
the gorilla's behavior.
George says of this poem -
Ladies. ladies, everyone is entitled to their style.
I thought the poem was funny yet still carried some message.
Look deeply at the meaning of the poem....
"some message"?
Assuming he didn't mean to say
"I thought the poem was funny yet still carried
a {
ie, my; ie,
his} message".
and botched it, then George is either incredibly pretentious, or else this is another
of his "trap" poems. Or both.
In any case a lot of people apparently missed both the funny of it,
and the deep meaning.
And George's come-back is to try to prolong this shaggy-dog joke.
(Some people (-Jack) were capable of carrying on in this way literally for years.
I have always associate this kind of behavior with alcoholism. )
~~~
So I said
"Controversial" threads like this are attractive
as being low-hanging-junk-food-fruit. It takes very little
thought or effort on our part to respond to the catch-phrases
and trigger words in these threads, with the opinions that
we already happen to have about things.
People, here, somehow do manage to make these threads
more interesting than they intrinsically are...
Which I realize was worded very badly.
But if that's what blond madonna meant by my being patronizing,
then I am sorry. I didn't mean it that way.
First of all, I really did mean it that people here, somehow,
do manage to make these threads more interesting than they
"intrinsically" are. By which I mean that, in my opinion,
George's poetry is not in itself interesting,
and yet somehow virtually all the comments
and questions asked about it here are intelligent,
interesting, appropriate, and well worth asking.
In light of George's responses, however, the poem
is clearly not worth the attention it got.
Which everybody had realized long before I posted.
And some had even said so. So I didn't think I was being
patronizing by pointing it out again. I just thought
I was repeating the observation in slightly different words.
And what I meant by it taking "very little thought
or effort on our part to respond to the catch-phrases
and trigger-words"
--was that that was the only thing
we were left to do with it!
Which I realize I didn't say very well either.
But what I meant was that, -since there
is no logic or structure to the poem to guide us
to a coherent understanding of it,
and since George is not forthcoming
with any help at all, - then all we can
do is respond to isolated phrases in it.
And all we could do with them is respond
to to our own reactions to them,
with the opinions that we already happen
to have about them.
These responses of ours ought to have
been starting points for intelligent dialogues
with George about what
he meant by the
phrases. And had it gone that way,
then the whole thing would have been
an entirely different matter. But absent that,
we were left talking to ourselves.
Which everybody realized.
So I wasn't being patronizing in telling them
what they already knew. I was simply repeating
it in my own words.
Laurie ("Alan Alda") wrote a nice poem a few days later
that could serve as a good response to George's poetry "style" ---
Relentless - Alan Alda
The rhyme it decides the idea on each line
becoming the driver and thinker, combine.
The poet needs only to choose auto-pilot
and the message becomes a rhymin' riot
O rhyme! I bow to thine wisdom and wit
if it doesn't make sense, who gives a shit?
And theme? Well, stick to what never varies
Write in that gutter, the one that you married
To keep saying the same olde thing
But letting the rhyme be the driver and sing.
(I'd kill to find an unpredicitable rhyme
snuck past the sleeping poet, some time).
~~
Now.
I mentioned John McCain's "joke",
-- first of all because it was in the news that very day,
-- and secondly because it happened to involve a gorilla,
-- and thirdly because it is relevant to George's poem.
You (blond madonna) are not in the USA (I take it)
so you probably weren't aware of it from the news.
And you may still not realize its significance.
This is it's significance: - -
This year there is someone named "McCain"
and someone named "Obama", who happen to be
the two major presidential candidates in the USA.
And McCain was in the military service from 1958 to 1981.
(And, in particular, during the extremely critical years,
culturally speaking, from 1967 to 1973,
he was actually a prisoner of war in North Vietnam,
so he missed those years completely. )
The point being that McCain was completely insulated
from all the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s.
So his sense of humor may be excused
for being a throw-back to a pre-1960s state of culture.
Which isn't an excuse that just anyone can make.
Back in the 1930s '40s and '50s
(which I regard as my father's generation)
a lot of otherwise very decent people honestly thought
that if rape is inevitable, then a woman ought to lay back
and try to enjoy it. They really thought that was good wisdom!
Or they thought it was funny anyway.
Of course far fewer people would think so today,
- due largely to events that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s,
- all of which McCain missed.
Still there are people today who think that kind of thing
is real wisdom, or funny, or that it's funny to say
it's funny anyway.
And George, it seems to me, is one of them.
I really think he's a throw-back.
~~~
mat james, in effect, makes one good point,
which I'd put this way:
Whatever you can imagine, however outrageous,
and even if it's from a nightmare, ---then there was
some society, somewhere, some time, which made
it the central tenet of its whole culture!
Another way to put it is that there is no such thing
as intrinsic human nature. We constantly invent
human nature out of our dialogues, - such as we
are engaged in in this very thread!
It really matters what we say here.
~~~
blond madonna - you were the first to change the subject of this thread,
when you responded to Cate's perfectly pertinent comment about the gorilla with:
"However, I am very concerned about this poor gorilla.
Cate, is there anything we can do to help him?"
Which makes your last, extremely sarcastic post,
rather disingenuous.
But while your last post was clearly sarcastic,
I couldn't tell if you were also being sarcastic before,
when you said (after accusing me of being patronizing) -
But thanks for bringing to my attention that George is a real human being
who at least has the courage to post his own words here next to his own name.
I admire him for that. Good onya George, I now feel bad about my ‘Darwin’ remark,
sorry if I got personal in responding to your writing, I'm not perfect either.
However I took it as you wrote it,
and so I
was being sarcastic when I responded to
it with
John McCain is a real human being, too, you know,
who had the courage to tell his own jokes.
And this old 'joke' of his is making the rounds lately.
Perhaps you can figure out a way to appreciate this one too?
You may have missed the point I was making by that.
Or you may have ignored it. I can't tell for sure which,
because you have now implied that McCain's joke
is actually
my "favorite joke"!
Nor do I know what your final
summary judgment is of George's poem.
Is it what you said first? -
What's the excuse this time Georges?
Poteen, pot, paranoia or plain old pedophiliac tendencies?
This is a highly questionable rant, not poetry.
Or is it what you said later? -
But thanks for bringing to my attention that George is a real human being
who at least has the courage to post his own words here next to his own name.
I admire him for that. Good onya George, I now feel bad about my ‘Darwin’ remark,
sorry if I got personal in responding to your writing, I'm not perfect either.
What do you mean by "personal"?
Your first reaction was angry and sarcastic,
which seemed to me to be an almost "personal" reaction.
(- that is, you "took it personally").
And now you disown that reaction?
But why? - Because I was being patronizing?
And that made you realize that George isn't so bad?
That's what you said. But it makes no sense to me.
And now you scold me, and mat james, and George ("for starting it")
for what you call "random avuncular perversions".
I think it's unlikely now, but the question as to "what is perversion?"
would have had to come up at some point in this thread,
if it was to get anywhere.
"random" however is another matter.
mat james' comments are straight cultural anthropology,
However, I really don't get the connection with George's poem,
unless it's simply the comparable shock values.
That however would make them "random".
And if that's it, then I think that mat might dig
the salaciousness of cultural anthropology a bit
too much for purely salaciousness's sake. And
that would be rather immature of him, and not at all
avuncular, as I mean the word.
It may not be possible to read far in cultural anthropology
without running to very shocking things. But either to let
that stop you, or else to become overly enamored of that
kind of thing, would make one miss the best that the subject
has to offer, which is a deeper understanding
of the way people actually are.
~~~~
I said -
"Controversial" threads like this are attractive
as being low-hanging-junk-food-fruit. It takes very little
thought or effort on our part to respond to the catch-phrases
and trigger words in these threads, with the opinions that
we already happen to have about things.
I wasn't at all sure about that when I wrote it.
But you have now proven it prescient, - blond madonna,
- because at this point your reactions have become
almost purely knee-jerk reflexes.
You are bored by this thread - or the way it's gone.
That much is clear. And so now you want to stop it?
If you recall, that's what I tried to do, by suggesting
that others here deserve the attention much more.
(I should not have mentioned names. Sorry about that.)
And then you accused me of being patronizing.
~~~
I think that George's "Little Girl" poem ought to be discussed
in the context of the movie
Hard Candy.
(2005, - dir: David Slade; Ellen Page (as Hayley Stark),
Patrick Wilson (as Jeff Kohlver). )
It's a good movie, - or at least it's well acted,
- or at least it is if you think of it as a play
(which might make a difference.)
I happened to have missed the beginning of it when I first saw it,
which made it appear a little more morally equivocal than
it actually is. But I'm glad I did.
Anyone who has seen any of Dateline's Preditor
series can not doubt that the problem exists.
And as for Hailey's response - this is something
that adults may have a problem believing.
They might think of it as some kind of adult
fantasy, and not anyting that kid would actual do.
However, that's because they've completely
forgotten what it is to be 14. They know it
only through sit-coms. They don't remember
the religious passions. The kind of thing that
makes kids into suicide bombers,- or to submit
to the initiation rites of the Masai or Sambai,
such as mat quoted.
When I was 12 I attacked a group of about 5
garage mechanics, because they had wolf-whistled
at my older sister!
~~
George's idea of a clever closing couplet
-
You begin to see through her eyes
Look at the world with utter despise
reminded me of Jeff's monologue in
Hard Candy --
You don't wanna leave me... do ya? Where are ya?
We've spent too much time only to walk away.
I know you're not gonna leave.Come on! I'll make it good for you,
I promise! Oh, you're good. You're so good. You're so fucking good!
You're just like her!
You're all just fucking like her!
You wanna drive a man fucking crazy, then go ahead, until you
go out of your fucking mind! Then go... Go on your fucking way!
Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!
(He stabs one of the photos on the wall again and again and again
until he leans against the wall, unsatisfied, weak with unanswered rage)
You're right. You're right, Hayley.
Thank you. Thank you.
This is me. This is who I am.
Thank you.
Thank you for helping me see it.
