I think many of us - who have been laboring at this poetry making business
for a chunk of our lives - can think of more than once when this sweet
obsession has been a "damnable liability" - financial, familial, friends,
social and otherwise! The honey in the pot is good, but a pot without legs,
damn!
Thanks for providing the quote!
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Currently paying most of its attention to
A series of "Letters to Jack" (Spicer)
A work in progress
> yeah, innit.
>
> On 11/8/06, Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Derivatives of the root dap- (which yields such English words as
>> damage and damn) furnish a useful window on the nature of reciprocal
>> exchange relationships, which were central to the ancient
>> Indo-European peoples. In their societies, and in Proto-Indo-European
>> society itself, a gift entailed the payment of recompense. The root
>> dap- embodies the notion of apportionment in reciprocal exchange
>> relationships of either sort. In Latin, the word damnum, from a
>> suffixed form *dap-no-, meant "damage entailing liability." Its Old
>> Norse cognate duan (also from *dap-no-), however, meant "poem." How
>> the same Indo-European form can can come to mean "damage entailing
>> liability" in one language and "poem" in another makes perfect sense
>> in light of the relationship obtaining between the Indo-European poet
>> and his patron (typically a king): the poet sang the patron's fame,
>> and in return the patron bestowed largesse on the poet. The
>> relationship was vital to both parties: the king's livelihood
>> depended on the poet's singing his praises (in Ireland, for example, a
>> "king without poets" was proverbial for "nothing"), and the poet lived
>> off the largess bestowed by the king. The poem therefore was a
>> vehicle of this reciprocal exchange relationship; it was a gift
>> entailing a countergift just as surely as damages entail reparation.
>>
>> Calvert Watkins, The
>> American Heritage Dictionary
>> of
>> Indo-European Roots
>> --
>> ===================================
>>
>> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
>>
>> ===================================
>>
>
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