War Servant

FinsburyParkCarrots

You gnarl like Oswald, fawning to command
from one who'd ban all fathers from the land
you plunder. Let true sons who crawl and starve
impale you on the crooked path you carve.

dunkman

I think this is beautiful... emotive and effectively short.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Thanks, dunkman.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Languid paling jade, unnatural,
each eye blur-fixes on faint hierogylphs
no mortal eye might read upon the cracks
of buckling ceilings. Where your home is rent,
torn, and reckless paving blocks the damp
damp course about your shambling wall of brute
mute confidence in vague longevity,
you read deep ciphers no-one else might see,
calling indolence the seer's peace
that knows of gods in fast destruction.

Pale eye, false eye, look on this looking glass
for dusty uselessness you brought to pass.

ISN

both of them are exemplary Fins, I commend your talent which is manifold.....:)

(excuse my stilted gibberish, but I'm reading a novel from the 19th Century which has infected me with a twisted arcane grammar and vocabulary)...

FinsburyParkCarrots

Thanks, but the last one was only an exemplar of a ninety second improv.

ISN

exemplary - 'fit to be imitated; outstandingly good'.......;)

DopeBeastie

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Thanks, but the last one was only an exemplar of a ninety second improv.

hey there, finsbury... the ninety second improv yeilds so much... but is in itself, so incredibly vague and cryptific ...

regardless, i know this emotive... someone screening all the chaff for truth, absolute truth ~ that may not even be there. a lunacy best dealt with on copious amounts of lsd, lol


these are intimate writings, it would seem. curious letters to some unknown recipient. were they not, their meaning would be so much more clear, yes?

FinsburyParkCarrots

PastaNazi wrote:

hey there, finsbury... the ninety second improv yeilds so much... but is in itself, so incredibly vague and cryptific ...

regardless, i know this emotive... someone screening all the chaff for truth, absolute truth ~ that may not even be there. a lunacy best dealt with on copious amounts of lsd, lol


these are intimate writings, it would seem. curious letters to some unknown recipient. were they not, their meaning would be so much more clear, yes?

Nah, they're about Tony Blair.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Er, in the second ditty the house is crumbling but yer man is fixing his eyes on the cracks for ciphers, or some hidden mystery of things to tell him of his importance as one of history's visionaries. I reckon.

DopeBeastie

reckon that's self importance in history's in that line with that word indolence in it? i'm-a-have to find me a dictionary 'round here. still quite cryptic, yes? how's come? how's come you don't just say it all out loud and stuff?

they ain't gonna 'rest you, are they?

DopeBeastie

oh... lol... and could i have been further off?

:^)

FinsburyParkCarrots

PastaNazi wrote:

reckon that's self importance in history's in that line with that word indolence in it? i'm-a-have to find me a dictionary 'round here. still quite cryptic, yes? how's come? how's come you don't just say it all out loud and stuff?

they ain't gonna 'rest you, are they?

I'm re-reading loadsa Yeats at the moment and, funnily enough, William empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity".

http://bitsofnews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=832

DopeBeastie

lol...

you are a highly impressionable young man


(and I tease )

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

You gnarl like Oswald, fawning to command
from one who'd ban all fathers from the land
you plunder. Let true sons who crawl and starve
impale you on the crooked path you carve.

I was once the mother of a true son
who crawled and starved for a chance at you.
I sharpened the knives behind his father's back.
Instead of one I gave him two.
I heard the story of his last plunge.
Torn from his shirt he screamed in rage.
The knives pocketed by a good friend.
His gold tooth like new whereabouts unknown.

ISN

what are the seven types of ambiguity....let me try to guess

one......lies
two......sophistry
three......obfuscation
four.......semantics
five.......games
six.......obscurity
seven......cleverness

FinsburyParkCarrots

http://www.nurturingpotential.net/Issue8/Language8.htm

FinsburyParkCarrots

That's not a bad little link explaining ambiguity but it means Sonnet 16 when it says 18.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 16

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unset
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

ISN

Finsbury, apart from the novel that I'm reading right now, and my constant obession with my son's future education, this is probably a thing that is going to occupy my mind for some time......it's just so crazy......how ambiguity is so mutable, and can convey so much more than if you said something straight - it has a lot to do with tact......I have to read that book!!!!! I must.....well, if there's something I discovered today.....then that's quite fortunate for me.......I think he's really hit the nail on the head with his seven types, and I have to re-read that link, and get the book!!!!

ISN

obsession.....EDIT button!!!!!!!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Well, I was reading Jeff's comments on Ed's approach to songwriting today. Jeff was saying something to the effect that Ed's writing uses natural symbolism and allegories of family intercommunication to make broader political points. I think a political songwriter has to do that - to place themselves at a distance from overt political commitment - otherwise they run the risk of writing songs that make you cringe a few years down the line. Ever heard Lennon and Ono's "Sometime in New York City"? Ouch, it lacks all subtlety. But a lyric like, say, "Cropduster" (which doesn't get the praise it diserves) is rather protean and can be read on multiple levels.
People argue whether Ed's a good songwriter but I think he has a gift that a lot of songwriters in the music scene haven't, and that's one of communicating on many different levels: natural, familial and sociopolitical.

FinsburyParkCarrots

*deserves*

ISN

I understand what you're saying, and if I knew more about it, I would probably agree, but at the same time, I take most things very personally....ie....pearl jam songs, bob dylan songs, the odd poem written by you guys, because I'm delusional and schizo-effective......but at the same time, I really think these songs are personal to people without the mental problems that I have......they transcend categorization and definition, and that's what makes them art......they are interpreted by different people according to their lives, they become a personal canon......like for me, that's easy.....I'm delusional....so anything vaguely resembling my life.....like that little haiku you wrote about a baby in its pram and small garden beads.......speaks directly to me.....but I think others experience the songs similarly.....and that's how ambiguity is apparent, although I'm no expert on music......

ISN

one of history's visionaries

is the peom about Yeats?

FinsburyParkCarrots

ISN wrote:

they transcend categorization and definition, and that's what makes them art......they are interpreted by different people according to their lives, they become a personal canon.......

Yes, they have the power to keep an artistic autonomy from being categorized as political polemic. And I think what you say is vital to appreciating art, wherever it rates on anyone's canon. We personally construct the meaning of an artistic work, and the ambiguous nature of artistic theme and form makes us interpret it according to our lives and our linguistic/perceptive memories, associations and maybe above all, feelings. All poetry, if it's successful, makes use of ambiguity or at least some kind of transformation in language from an original idea to a novel way of describing and seeing it. That transformation or multi-facetedness brings us back to the work over and over again to find all kinds of responses to it, whatever they may be.

That old chestnut "The personal is the political" is important to art that can through the skilled use of ambiguity, tropes, images, metaphors and similes, explore personal themes and issues to make broader social points and observations.

FinsburyParkCarrots

ISN wrote:

is the peom about Yeats?

I believe that the reader writes the poem so if you say it's about Yeats, it is!

ISN

well, this is great - I've learned something today.....even if it's only small, and I don't remember it.....I know how to use ambiguity and how to place words and phrases in poems and prose, so as to maximise the multiplicity of their meanings, connotations and interpretations, but I have never read anything academic about this.....and now that you mention it, I suppose that's exactly what lyricists are doing......I don't normally do that with poems......only with what I say.....written or verbal, and this whole idea of different levels of ambiguity strikes me as being very clever indeed, and makes me wonder what a sap I am to be manipulated so.....when I thought I was so clever with words and manipulation......and all the while I am the victim of it.....!!!!!! (or the beneficiary)

DopeBeastie

good convo. in here. i suppose that personally, i wish ambiguity were just plain ole outmoded for a little bit. i feel personally betrayed by it in others, but especially by it in my self (see new song lyrics).


"gimme some truth"... as it were


yes. art overflows in ambiguity where words are concerned. and generally I am a huge fan of putting the puzzle of someone else's emotive together. today, though... i'm tired, lol. as for politics, specifically, I say let 'em have it, bold and true... don't fight glad hands with glad hands. they're ass holes and they deserve nothing but the most open accusation. (did i say I was tired?... lol)


peace, yo!

FinsburyParkCarrots

PastaNazi wrote:

good convo. in here. i suppose that personally, i wish ambiguity were just plain ole outmoded for a little bit. i feel personally betrayed by it in others, but especially by it in my self (see new song lyrics).


"gimme some truth"... as it were


yes. art overflows in ambiguity where words are concerned. and generally I am a huge fan of putting the puzzle of someone else's emotive together. today, though... i'm tired, lol. as for politics, specifically, I say let 'em have it, bold and true... don't fight glad hands with glad hands. they're ass holes and they deserve nothing but the most open accusation. (did i say I was tired?... lol)


peace, yo!

But isn't truth impossible in language?

I'm not a Nietzschean but this is a good essay by him:

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/tls.htm

Right, I'm off to feed my budgie a tomato.

DopeBeastie

before reading that article... my first reaction is to say NO... as in NO WAY

photographs tell the truth and hopefully, poetry tells at the very least the truth, albiet in the given moment, yes?

i understand that my conveyance of truth only speaks to the reader's (or listener's) ability to find their own truth within it... BUT... i do believe that if I perservere, the listener can and WILL understand what I mean... what my truth is. which has an amazing effect of allowing them to convey thier truth and to also have it heard and understood


and all of a sudden, we evolve, don't you think?

FinsburyParkCarrots

PastaNazi wrote:

before reading that article... my first reaction is to say NO... as in NO WAY

photographs tell the truth and hopefully, poetry tells at the very least the truth, albiet in the given moment, yes?

i understand that my conveyance of truth only speaks to the reader's (or listener's) ability to find their own truth within it... BUT... i do believe that if I perservere, the listener can and WILL understand what I mean... what my truth is. which has an amazing effect of allowing them to convey thier truth and to also have it heard and understood


and all of a sudden, we evolve, don't you think?

I don't think photos tell the truth. They're art, which is arbitrary from truth. If photography was truth it wouldn't be art. I don't think we can ever know what truth is. It's something outside language and all we have to apprehend a truth is language, which isn't truth.