You are right of course, Max and Doug. I just felt I should try for a version less flip than last week, after Pat's digs. The cut can happen in the first half, Doug, which is really only last week's version with a bit added. The idea was to to explore episodes of public grief so perhaps I'll cut to that chase more immediately. Thing is it does alienate me when I see this sort of stuff going on. Not that I feel I should join in, be similarly moved, more What the hell is happening to humankind that I thought I had membership of. The cowboy stuff was partly prompted by your Hobsbawm article, Max, but as you say, may come across a bit swervy.
Bill
> On 29 Jan 2015, at 6:44 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I can agree with Max, here, Bill, that you’ve covered a lot of ground, but I felt that a little too much sermonizing crept it.
>
> I really liked
> At stopwork meetings,
> never voted for the resolution.
> Supported forlorn amendments.
>
> But one of the other stanzas argued a point rather than displaying how ‘you’ & your reactions meant a particular way. I think you might be able to cut some of this down, & still get to that conclusion…?
>
> Doug
>> On Jan 28, 2015, at 8:34 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Lordy, Bill,
>>
>> you cover so much!
>>
>> and the transitions can feel like sleight of hand.
>>
>> [As a longtime practicer/practitioner of the swerve and the non sequitur,
>>
>> who am I to bring this up?]
>>
>> I almost feel it’s sprawling its way into separate topics or a numbered sequence.
>>
>> M in Seattle
>>
>>> On Jan 27, 2015, at 13:23, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> A companion piece to last week's 'Offshooting':
>>>
>>> Scarcely tilting at windmills,
>>> but when my mates downed
>>> Coke, I sipped Fanta or Leed.
>>>
>>> Banana Splits oiled
>>> my gums with gloop,
>>> not icy Choc Wedges.
>>>
>>> Such choices pepper
>>> my life, the most popular
>>> so eschewable.
>>>
>>> Neither Holden nor Ford;
>>> my first car, a front-
>>> wheel drive Morris 1100.
>>>
>>> Football? Cricket?
>>> I settled for volleyball.
>>> School team even.
>>>
>>> Until jeans got under
>>> my defences. Couldn't wait
>>> to get legs out of Amcos,
>>>
>>> into Levi's or Wranglers
>>> or Lees. The big three.
>>> Western gear garnered me.
>>>
>>> Not sure why. Perhaps
>>> the unpretensiousness
>>> of screen cowboys appealed.
>>>
>>> The way they arrived
>>> at their own codes and stuck
>>> by them, under starry skies.
>>>
>>> Today's soup of commercial TV,
>>> Radio with ads, talkback,
>>> how can this attract?
>>>
>>> At stopwork meetings,
>>> never voted for the resolution.
>>> Supported forlorn amendments.
>>>
>>> Floating with the current
>>> provides false momentum.
>>> I value my tributariness.
>>>
>>> But how much difference
>>> are we talking about?
>>> How wide my preferential arc?
>>>
>>> Am I just another trimmer
>>> of tall poppies? Espousing
>>> an illusion of superior taste,
>>>
>>> my nuanced selections
>>> riding proud over roughshod
>>> popular addictions?
>>>
>>> Trouble is the mainstream
>>> tends to obliterate
>>> independence of thought.
>>>
>>> Consent so easily
>>> manufactured nowadays
>>> that objectors seem stolid,
>>>
>>> predictable, naysayers. But
>>> what passes for positive
>>> so often protects privilege.
>>>
>>> Polls would have us believe
>>> harsh asylum seeker
>>> policies keep us all safe.
>>>
>>> Why can't we forget the taste
>>> of fear? Back ourselves in?
>>> The gushing middle deserve
>>>
>>> to be regarded with wariness.
>>> Who loads those bouquets
>>> at Sydney's Martin Place,
>>>
>>> by roadside death spots?
>>> Why was remote Diana mourned
>>> as a breeze-blown candle
>>>
>>> when Boko Haram snuffs
>>> out lives by the hundred?
>>> Mass outpourings of grief,
>>>
>>> apparent hunger for rampant
>>> public mourning rituals must
>>> spring from somewhere.
>>>
>>> Or do such displays
>>> only reveal the vacuum
>>> at the heart of the centre?
>>>
>>> bw
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> that we are only
> as we find out we are
>
> Charles Olson
>
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