The War Takes Shape by Colin Dodd
May 3rd 2007 17:14
Browsing through the net I stumbled upon this Poetry for the War section of the Wall Street journal website. I know I am four years too late but some of these poems are very fine, to say the least. During Iraq War and much of the subsequent period, I was shut up in myself.It also did not help that I was not connected to the internet or glued to television and that, coupled with my traditional troglodytic existence meant that I was three or four years behind the world. It is only in the last year or so that I could put away my personal cares adequately enough to read and understand the world. It is a hard task to come out of your cave.
So, you must understand my pleasure at discovering the cache of these fine poems. They are written by amateurs mostly and are on the same scale of my intelligence. (I consider myself an amateur too; never been exposed to the sturm and drang of the art circles or the universities.) Many are good but what affected me most were not the sentiments expressed here ( although I agree with a lot of them) but rather a surprise that they express thoughts in the same metaphors that I've tried hard to acquire myself (Oh, my solipsism !)
Consider this poem by Colin Dodds :
I was never much of a smoker,
but it was all so thick in the air.
The gods were aroused, desirous.
Their pheromones of fire and screaming
overtook our plans.
The stink below Canal Street
makes us mad for retribution.
The race of airplanes
unleashes its warrior caste.
Bloodlust is no weaker,
nor more complicated to arouse
than any other lust.
In the bars, the restaurants,
we talk war until we love each other.
Our conversations begin in diplomatic morass
and end in nuclear consummation,
tasting every permutation of horror in between.
And we hurry to the final explosion
just to be over with it, just to stop
wanting such things for a moment.
History and the old animal gods
squeeze us close.
We do all we can
to escape their embrace
and end up doing all that they ask.
I was thrilled to read this. You will my find my blog littered with commentary on mythologies. My interest in the ancient world developed when I began to read the Bible and the Beowulf, Odyssey and the Mahabharata and somehow I read in their arcane twisted interplay of gods and men a drama that is more germane to our existence. When we have banished myths and gods from our midst, we also have banished the only concepts that allowed man to perceive things bigger than himself and I do not mean abstract nonsense like eternity and but palpable entities like war, revolution, loyalty, insurrection and peace.
In ordinary times, we may scratch our heads at silly stuff like God, rituals and church attendance but only in times of stress, do we realise that gods and myths and epics are the secret language of a restless ming grappling with the world, not the "hereafter."
I called this blog Cenacle, primarily to talk about such forces, not just review books.
Then there is an ode to the Cowboy as well and you will find in the comment section my own take on what it means to be a cowboy!
So, you must understand my pleasure at discovering the cache of these fine poems. They are written by amateurs mostly and are on the same scale of my intelligence. (I consider myself an amateur too; never been exposed to the sturm and drang of the art circles or the universities.) Many are good but what affected me most were not the sentiments expressed here ( although I agree with a lot of them) but rather a surprise that they express thoughts in the same metaphors that I've tried hard to acquire myself (Oh, my solipsism !)
Consider this poem by Colin Dodds :
I was never much of a smoker,
but it was all so thick in the air.
The gods were aroused, desirous.
Their pheromones of fire and screaming
overtook our plans.
The stink below Canal Street
makes us mad for retribution.
The race of airplanes
unleashes its warrior caste.
Bloodlust is no weaker,
nor more complicated to arouse
than any other lust.
In the bars, the restaurants,
we talk war until we love each other.
Our conversations begin in diplomatic morass
and end in nuclear consummation,
tasting every permutation of horror in between.
And we hurry to the final explosion
just to be over with it, just to stop
wanting such things for a moment.
History and the old animal gods
squeeze us close.
We do all we can
to escape their embrace
and end up doing all that they ask.
I was thrilled to read this. You will my find my blog littered with commentary on mythologies. My interest in the ancient world developed when I began to read the Bible and the Beowulf, Odyssey and the Mahabharata and somehow I read in their arcane twisted interplay of gods and men a drama that is more germane to our existence. When we have banished myths and gods from our midst, we also have banished the only concepts that allowed man to perceive things bigger than himself and I do not mean abstract nonsense like eternity and but palpable entities like war, revolution, loyalty, insurrection and peace.
In ordinary times, we may scratch our heads at silly stuff like God, rituals and church attendance but only in times of stress, do we realise that gods and myths and epics are the secret language of a restless ming grappling with the world, not the "hereafter."
I called this blog Cenacle, primarily to talk about such forces, not just review books.
Then there is an ode to the Cowboy as well and you will find in the comment section my own take on what it means to be a cowboy!
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