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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3314 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I saw someone here refer to The Present Crisis recently, portions of which were featured in Unsong, and which I since found and enjoyed.

Is there any poetry any of you particularly like? Since I find I don't like most poetry, but find some a lot of fun.

I always highly recommend Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse.

If the size is too daunting, you can dip your toe in with Chesterton's Lepanto. If you like Lepanto, you'll like Ballad of the White Horse.

As with all good poetry, reading it aloud is a must.

Thanks! I've heard portions recited, but I've never read through the first of those.

Lepanto's fun.

I just read Dryden's Aenied and I love it. I kept taking screenshots and texting them to people. I also highly recommend Milton if you've never read him. And Bob Dylan's early lyrics.

Does Eugene Onegin count?

Personal fact: during the marathon from my username, I listened to the audiobook, almost all the way through.

How about Cargoes, by John Masefield?

It has, I think, two interpretations. The first one is fairly boring – taking it "seriously" as a romantic look back at history, where he is describing two past ages filled with fanciful wonders and contrasting it with the dreary modern world

The Straussian reading is IMO vastly superior. Take the first verse, describing a ship in antiquity filled with "ivory, and apes and peacocks, sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine". It's all luxury goods; pure consumption, skimming from the top without improving anything in the long run. It represents a society unwilling (or worse, unable) to reinvest its surplus wealth into growth, to actually improve itself, instead opting to spend it on awful signalling games among the elites that will lead nowhere.

The second verse is similar, but about a cargo of gemstones during the ~17th century. The same critique applies to it – it's all still signalling, with no real productivity involved.

When we get to the third verse about the modern world there is an abrupt change in mood, now ostensibly negative. What are the items the ship is carrying however? "Tyne coal, road-rails, pig-lead, firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays". No more useless bullshit, this is goods from a society that is actually getting its shit together. It symbolizes reinvestment, growth, and actual strength, the kind of strength that will save billions from crippling poverty, eliminate famine, cure diseases plaguing humanity for millennia and bring education to everyone.

The third verse is so overwhelmingly good that it completely destroys the veneer of negative sentiment that it's described with. Consider if the poem instead was about people and not societies: The first describing an extremely rich man hosting an opulent party, and the third about a poor boy studying and working hard to improve his life. Wouldn't it then be completely obvious who you were supposed to think was better, even if the boy was described as dirty and hungry?

What's more is that the Industrial Revolution was real. How many boats in antiquity actually carried things like "apes and peacocks"? It's certainly not representative, and the places mentioned doesn't even make sense (Nineveh wasn't coastal, a Quinquereme is Hellenistic and from the wrong period, and even so you're going to have a hard time rowing it from Iraq to Palestine!). The second verse is more "real" in that there really were treasure galleons, but again not very representative. If you want an actual cargo you'd have to describe tobacco, sugar, or, you know, slaves.

In contrast, in the third verse there really were tons of ships carrying coal and road-rail! Not only is it enormously better, it actually happened.

I used to have Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" memorized. I'll also second Gaashk in recommending T. S. Eliot, particularly Prufrock (which I find ever more meaningful and haunting the older I get) and "The Hollow Men."

I like TS Elliot, especially read out loud. If you haven't, try The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.

Unfortunately, while it's definitely good at a producing the intended effect and capturing something of human experience, it's not an effect I particularly care to voluntarily immerse myself in.

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