----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 5:48 AM
Subject: Re: revised "Keep On Keeping On," and "Amends"
I enjoyed this poem, however I worry about the capitalisation of He; i
know who he refers to, but I also think the capitalisation kinda plays
up to the conceit that "god is in the whitehouse", not a conceit I
would wish to reinforce. I don't think the he needs to be capitalised,
the blue and white Marine choppers are enough, I think, to announce
his dull presence.
Roger
Good objection. I worried about that; I don't like it either. But without
it the line could be read as saying one can't be sure he, i.e., oneself, is
aboard. I decided on "He," rather than reworking the whole stanza, just
because W *doesn't deserve it. Same effect as Pope's "Dulness exalted sat."
Just as he, Cheney, Rice, the flunkeys don't deserve the psychologizing in
stanza 2. It's a poem about impotent resentment, criticism vs. insulation
from criticism, culminating with the boss in st. 3 *not understanding* the
point about the memo - perceiving it not as a logical statement but a
meaningless, "idiosyncratic" cavil of the speaker's. It occurred to me that
"Amends" also is about languages that can't connect or overlap.
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