A metaphor for a poem or a book might be a hothouse.
Enclosed, fecund, allergenic, exotic, artificed, arranged, out of control, otherworldly, dimly lit, musky, inhabitable for a period of time, protected, preserved, gathering together things that would not appear in nature together, organic but formal and deliberate, stuffy, hazy.
Big major peeve:
autohagiography.
I’ve said it before.
Recently heard that a friend poet had described another friend poet as “the gateway drug to Nada.”
Wondering to whom I may be the gateway drug.
Speaking of “flate,” why must people conflate irony with harshness?
If you can’t be ironic, you can’t swing.
Irony is necessary to the potency of a cadence because it is backed up by a furious unreleased laughter.
I should have said “identi-flation.” Sounds better.
Talking on the phone with a friend about the “pride” word.
He said he’d experienced a kind of working-class pride when considering the dubious successes of some more privileged peers. I said that he was feeling proud of his own accomplishments despite not being so privileged. And that what he had been feeling in terms of being working class was resentment.
Now, no matter what semantic difficulties I may have with “pride,” I am totally down with resentment, whether it be ethnic, national, or just plain quotidian. Long live resentment!
Even though that appears to be the only road to successsssss.
What I earlier termed “group identi-inflation” makes me ill in poetry contexts, too.
More thoughts on pride.
“Pride” seems to me entirely appropriate when applied to accomplishments. That is, I am proud of having learned to speak Japanese.
I am proud of Gary for working hard on his comics.
But I don’t think it is right to say I’m proud of something given. That is to say, I’m VAIN about my hair, not PROUD of it.
Vanity is another matter altogether.
It can be annoying but to me it is not abhorrent. It is too clownish.
Thinking lately about how abhorrent is the notion of “ethnic pride”, regardless of the ethnicity of the people who exhibit it. “National pride” is equally objectionable. We all need to have a sufficient presence of personal dignity and self-love. But group identi-inflation makes me ill. Is this because I as a Jew am too wholly (by some people’s estimations) assimilated? Or because it is very difficult for me to think of identity as other than costume?
At the same time I can’t deny that sex and race are more or less givens.
Or that one ought to struggle for justice and fair representation for one’s group(s). Just… can we not do it out of “pride”? It’s perhaps just a question of semantics — I think I just don’t like the word.
The context I perhaps most like it in is “gay pride” — because there “pride” sounds like an ellided cockney pronunciation of “parade” — and I LOVE a parade.
Otohime 