Anthology of Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures & Tracks of a Tramp 2014 (Book) - 12/1/2021 2:12:58 PM
Hi Ron! How are you keeping these days? Just came across your comment on the Bunga Emas anthology. The book contains original work in English and the output of Chinese and Tamil writers and poets - all translated into English. In other words, there's only ENGLISH in the anthology.
Many thanks for your comments.
ALL THE VERY BEST OF THE SEASON AND A VERY PLEASANT NEW YEAR AS WELL !!!
Wignesan
Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies, Vol.XVII,2 (Millenium) Ed. T. W. (Book) - 11/25/2020 9:08:30 AM
CONTENTS: "Message from the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Republic of India", Mr. Chiranjiv Singh -
Contributors:
Editorial by T. Wignesan, pp. ii-xii.
1. "China and International Relations in the New Millennium", Hall. Gardner, Professor of Political Science, American University of Paris, p. 1
2. "Introduction to the Art of Eastern Asia", Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, D. Sc., University of London, Curator Boston Museum, p. 23
3. "Transforming the Trading World of Southeast Asia", Wang Gungwu, Professor and Director of the East Asia Institute, Singapore, p. 47
4. "Chinese Studies in the Age of Globalization: Culture and Literature", Wang Ning, Chair Professor and Director of the Institute of Comparative Literature, Beijing Language and Culture University, p. 55
5 "Verbal and Non-Verbal Symbols: An Investigation into their Role in Self and Group Identification (in Mal aysia)", Asmah Haji Omar, Professor of Linguistics and Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, p. 65
6. "Interview with Alexis Rygaloff on Language, Writing, and Chinese Culture" (Translated. by T. Wignesan), Research Director (CNRS) and Director des Etudes (EHESS), Paris, p. 79
7. "The Art of Living: A Tribute to AKC", Rama P. Coomaraswamy, Professor of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein University, New York, p. 87
8. "Kulothungan, An Evaluation of V.C. Kulandaiswamy's Poetry", V. Murugan, Professor of English, Presidency College, University of Madras, p. 97
9. "Tensions and Balances in Western Cultures", Henry H. H. Remak, Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties & Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Germanic and West European Studies, Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana, p. 109
10. "The Exotic in Aesthetics: A Case Study of Poietics...", T. Wignesan, Chargé de Recherches, 1er Cl., CNRS, Paris, p. 123
11. "Ancient Tamil Coins from Sri Lanka", Iravatham Mahadevan, Indian Administrative Service, p. 147
Contributors, p. 157.
Anthology of Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures & Tracks of a Tramp 2014 (Book) - 11/21/2020 9:41:32 AM
From the review by, I believe Raman, Ikan Perak, Kuala Lumpur, "one can’t help but admire the sheer quality, the ideas, and the craftsmanship. They might have been written half a century ago, but they sound so current." one would think that these poems and stories should be translated in English and widely read like those of famous Russian, French and German writers. But I'm not sure about Robert Curtis and your rebuttal to his reviews.
From my own review of your stories, I find them very and timeless and worth reading by anyone, particularly those interested in cultural stories of the past.
Ron
Etude comparée des littératures...de Malaisie et de Singapour 1941-86 (Book) - 11/14/2020 11:39:29 AM
The BOOK BLURB constitutes a summary of Professor René PASSERON's report on the dissertation whereby he compares the main part of the thesis on the "birth of a literature" (naissance d'une littérature nationale) to a work of art, i.e., the birth of a nation and stresses the candidate's predilection for psychoanalytic theories in elaborating the metaphorical layout of the act of creation.
Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices..in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures (Book) - 11/10/2020 11:55:34 AM
Hello, Ron ! Thanks all the same for the comment. That's really very kind of you. Yes, I didn't post the entire article on the "Poietics of the Pantun" for the simple reason that it appears under the rubrique "Articles" in Authorsden.com. Georges VOISSET, a renowned Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the French University of the West Indies and Guyane, however did, and if you can read French, here are the two links (I must say they are dithyrambic of my efforts not only on the pantun, but also of my other shorter poems, such as the limerick and other shorter French forms): www.pantun-sayang-afp.fr/2017/08/revue-pantouns-numero-20
www.voissetonwignesaninpantouns1820.pdf
Happy reading Ron !
Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices..in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures (Book) - 11/10/2020 7:54:53 AM
When it comes to critiquing the literature of another country or culture, I am not up to the task. I cannot critique what I don't know. Therefore, in commenting or critiquing a book from a brief description and excerpt, with nothing to sink my mind teeth into, I can only wish you good will in getting it read by the right people.
Ron
Ice in My Eyes Smoke in Yours(A novel about postwar student life in Europe (Book) - 11/10/2020 2:27:29 AM
Bonjour, Ron ! You are everywhere, all the time ! Can't get past you even if one dons the Halloween burqa. Just a word about Adam Donaldson Powell since you bring him up in more ways than one. Like you he's an extremely gifted and highly intelligent writer-critic, with the one difference: he's more polyvalent than you are, for the simple reason he's not handicapped, except to say he was a Vietnam War "conscience objector", so he holes out in Norway. The environment also breeds two different kinds of intellectually gifted writers: the mono-lingual and the multi-lingual. The exiled or voluntary expatriate writer might pick up another language or two: Hemingway might be conversant in Italian as an ambulance-driver (Farewell to Arms) or maybe fluent in Cuban Spanish (The Old Man and the Ocean), but the majority of writers, I assume, are mono-lingual (How many African languages does Toni Morrison know and is at home with?), barring those who studied at school or by choice at college level (like T. S. Eliot, Sanskrit at Harvard). It frees them from expending energy in diverse ways, so they are more productive. There is yet another category of very rare writer-poet: the polyvalent type like A.D.Powell. They excel in a number of specialties. Powell is a painter and an accomplished performing musician as well, and of course a very capable and necessarily slightly hampered critic. He doesn't belong in the New Criticism school given to backing up his pronouncements with detail, as you might glean. For instance, with this book under the scalpel, he doesn't see that there are two major shifts in the "points of view" that I employ all along: one, that of the author himself, and the other, that of the protagonist Theson.
Incidentally, for your information, I only very seriously studied "hispanic studies" in Madrid for about two years - not English or American literature. In Germany, I starved most of the time and only attended a few lectures. The rest of the time, I read (no TV distractions) and taught myself.
I do think Powell did the same.
Ice in My Eyes Smoke in Yours(A novel about postwar student life in Europe (Book) - 11/9/2020 10:32:19 AM
OhWhile I wasn't thrown into a South Asian (23 Indians and Pakistanis in our industrial engineering department at the University of Wisconsin in 1966) melieu until graduate school, I was in the midst of the civil rights effort emanating from Madison, along with a huge contingent of New Yorkers following the beat movement, quickly turning into the hippie, and later yippie and yuppie movements.
But nothing like what you experienced in Germany. I'm sure it seemed like nothing short of cultural shock. And, studying English literature, you had a huge treasure chest of knowledge to try to read through in a very short time. Especially what came out of the war… The rise of Christian and atheist existentialism. What I became comfortable with after reading Sartre.
So I can see that your novel is rich in character and certainly rich in your own experience with indigenous Germans and their guilt, black GIs under the Marshall plan money, and Germans who taught "English" literature and therefore were quite English in their thought patterns.
And thinking. I put down Capt. Ahab's ravings after the first chapter of that nonsense. I tried to read James Joyce but it gave me a headache. I have found that I am not comfortable trying to discern the stream of consciousness of another human being and make any sense of it all. I certainly wouldn't want someone to try to make sense of mine, interspersed with all that sexual longing that male psyche is heir to, but the female psyche finds repugnant.
Adam Donaldson Powell has certainly sized up your work quite well. But only gives you four stars for this novel based on its exceptional length. Just stumbling through this excerpt tells me that reading the whole novel would take far too much of my time.
Ron
The Night Soil Man, a Novel by T. Wignesan (Book) - 11/5/2020 11:02:14 AM
Bonsoir, Ron ! How are you faring in near-the-post-Trump era ? Must be nerve-wracking, I guess? I was meaning to get back to you on several occasions, but the exigencies of living under Lord Coronavirus' dictates are quite emasculating, day in and day out.
Thanks a lot for pointing out my lack of sleight of hand with AD strictures, I have since remedied the repetitions with the blurb though I don't happen to have an excerpt handy to post right now.
You do me proud wanting to buy a copy of each of my books while encouraging your friends to do likewise. Unfortunately, with all the goodwill in the world that you manifest, you are, I'm afraid, not going to make a millionaire out of me. I have never earned a penny from my books. Quite the contrary, I have had to shelve out more than a hundred thousand euros at the least to get my books into print even if I have had FIVE books on the market for which I paid no cash. All the same, thanks a million, Ron.
If you really want to read my stuff, just say so and I'll let you have copies and/or files. Right now, posting parcels can take months to arrive, according to the Postal services here.
Every good wish. Wignesan
the smell of piss an'shit in his pants:The Vicarious Memoir of a Vietnam Wa (Book) - 11/5/2020 9:39:59 AM
As a US citizen of that shameful era and finding that the book was written by a Malaysian Tamil educated in Europe, comes as a bit of a surprise. But your two reviews are sterling and makes me want to read this book after all this time.
My experience was as a college student dodging the draft question with an S1 draft status that my twin brother converted nicely by getting a job in a "essential war industry" and getting married. My brother-in-law, caught in the draft, elected to go to Germany instead of Vietnam. A friend, also drafted, spent his two years in the Navy stationed at Alameda Air Station in the San Francisco Bay.
As a hunter who killed animals to eat, knew of the horror of war, and everyone at my college was afraid of the draft. After the war I met a few veterans, but none told me of their experience as much as watching movies like Full Metal Jacket.
Ron
The Night Soil Man, a Novel by T. Wignesan (Book) - 11/5/2020 9:12:07 AM
Your description has piqued my interest in reading further, given the mix of ethnic Indian cultures presented and their various biases to exploit in a humorous way. I am especially interested on what you write about the Untouchables and their role in Hindu Indian society. Unfortunately, the book's description and the excerpt are the same. They should be different.
The reviews by Adam Donaldson Powell are excellent, but they are the only ones you have for your books on Amazon. If you have other reviews like that one of Dr. Deepak Kumar Verma you should ask for them to place their reviews on Amazon as well.
I am certainly interested and if I have the time in the future, I certainly will purchase the book from Amazon, read it and write the best review I can, given the circumstance that I don't come from Indian culture. But I do have friends that might be interested and I could refer about them and will.
Ron
Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes&Tales(not so tall)of Timmy, the(not so v (Book) - 11/3/2020 9:18:19 AM
It appears that you may have posted this book before. And as near as I could gather, the vignettes are not about Victorian literature, but about classmates in Victoria Hall back in Kuala Lumpur. It also appears that Adam Donelson Powell was the only one to give the book a clearly thorough and definitive review.
I like the idea of the tales being humorous and "magic," but unless I have some reading time freed up I will not be able to get to reading them.
Ron
...mere deaths and the mostly dead: Six Long and Four Short Stories (Book) - 11/2/2020 11:10:29 AM
All written in 1993. Similar to my storytelling year, 2012. I like the last review best because it sizes up what I have observed of your stories from the little that I've read.
Congratulations for reposting it here because there is a whole new group of authors here that may be interested in reading the book.
Ron
Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes - I - The day the kukri drew blood (Short Story) - 8/23/2022 10:00:55 PM
You know, Monseigneur Don Ron, "sometimes" you know how to "behave" to make your fellow-beings feel like "gods". That's how I feel, and I really wonder how and where you find the time to read everything on this site and comment at length. I take back ALL the "bad things" [like chiding you here for mistaking the "to-and-fro" of the journey to school: I was going home for lunch and then returned for the F. Daniel edict to "run the mile" for my Heppenstall House] I said to rile you up. "Terimah Kasi, Tuan." (That's Malay for "Thank you, Sir".)
Every word in this story is TRUE. You ask whether Marshall Law was imposed. Absolutely. The word was "EMERGENCY". Why? Because the Malayan Communist Party which cooperated with the British forces in the jungles during WWII against the Japanese, turned against the British in 1948 to drive them out of the region. Tit for Tat, you might say!
Yes, you're right, we, the youngsters, had a Europianised upbringing at this British Public-type School. Fortunately or not, I had only one year in primary school (BRS: Batu Road school) and three years at the Victoria Institution. Each year-level (standards 6 to 9) had about 200 students, and I was the youngest in my year. I dropped out early in the Final Senior Cambridge Year for, by chance, I found a whole bunch of the Haldeman-Julius Blue Books - of all places - in a dustbin and lost interest in the school curricula. I still have these books with me, mainly centered on the Greco-Roman classical period and American thinkers and writers, but they come apart in my hands.
Yes, too, for the well-maintained Victoria Institution site, but then I'm persona non-grata to all Malaysians and Singaporeans, for I have practically nothing in common with the lot !
Can you, please, tell me (cinnakk33.gmail.com) if one has to pay an annual sum to post on AD??? Many thanks, Ron.
Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes - I - The day the kukri drew blood (Short Story) - 8/23/2022 1:02:48 PM
What a lovely story! I encourage every reader to go to the website that is so well composed and has the pictures embedded to enhance the story.
I had to look it up because even though you gave us a tour of the way Kuala Lumpur was in 1948 you never mentioned where this place was. Your colorful descriptions of almost every edifice along your daily trek to school was amazing with its mix of traditional British, cosmopolitan worldview and a mix of local and immigrant people's additions to the language and the culture of the place that must've been really wonderful for a young scholar like you. Fortunate to be studying in one of the best British schools in Southeast Asia.
Not only did you describe the place so well and so vividly, you described your teachers, from all over the Empire, so well, as well as some of your classmates. I was particularly interested in Ronnie. Because as a grade schooler, I forbade any of my contemporaries from calling me that sissy name. Although I let my mother and aunts call me Ronnie until they died. That does not diminish your Ronnie, whose picture you kindly provided, from his many feats of athletic skill and superior accomplishment as a student.
As I read, I couldn't help but see how westernized your days there were along with the community. Reminding me of so many major cities in Asia that the Victorian British and even the French built into wonderful towns with everything they had back home and more because of their exotic locations. It makes me wonder if that part of Kuala Lumpur is still the same or if it has deteriorated when locals came in from the countryside and began to occupy the old buildings that no longer function the way they did back then.
I puzzled at why the tent was put up, guards were placed, and barbed wire prevented the students from entering school that day. Finally, I returned to the beginning. Three European planters had been murdered. I believe martial law had been established, the school guarded and all of the students were sent away back home because of fear that someone would, perhaps blow up the school and kill you and your friends. Students who later became very influential, as you described, throughout Southeast Asia. And beloved teachers who also had reputations far beyond the Victorian.
I certainly hope the end of the story was true. But if it was fiction, that's all right. For it is a lifelong bad memory for any young soldier to harm another or attempt to take his/her life. The soldier in this case seemed wise beyond his status and age. And I believe that is the glorious point of the whole story.
Ron
The Schoolmaster and the Hippies, los Curas, and the Boys by T.Wignesan (Short Story) - 6/27/2022 3:39:38 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron! To be brief (for I'm not going to comment point by point on all the "misreading gaffes" in your longest to date comment on my stuff), your last three paragraphs wholly contradict what you had exposed in the first half of your diatribe.
An example: You say you do not know whether I had published this story; yet at the "credits" at the end, I distinctly attest to its publication: title of book, date, etc.
This story is set in Madrid, Spain; so the use of local lingo and expressions, not to mention the sprinkling of French (from which English grows and departs ever since the Norman Conquest) has its legitimate place in a text that features "local colour", and the author is not required to tutor the reader on the meaning of such words as "cura", etc.
Even if one forgives you on this faux-pas" score, one cannot where you obsteperously take the description/delineation of one character (the boy who was "meant" to become a "cura") in a class for the consecration of ALL students in the school absolutely to the Church. Gross mis-reading deserving of chastisement from the Spanish Inquisition, to say the least!!!
The author of the story need not be required to educate the reader on the background (history, race, culture, religion; etc.) of his characters right from the start as you deem necessary. If the reader does not know that "Vasanthan" is Indian-Hindu and "Hiawatha", very probably Native-American, it's not his fault, but that of the reader and the reader only.
Whether or not American linguists, as you say, would re-phrase the dialectical notation system of the author in depicting the way diverse American youths (from different backgrounds: Spanish, Jewish, Anglo-Saxon, Native American, South American, etc.) use speech - corrupted as the speech of the characters in question may sound - is not a valid argument. Who says (You ?) the author is not well-versed in linguistics, himself???
Do you want me to go on, like for instance your comment on the author's use of "dashes" in lieu of "quotation marks" to separate speech from the rest of the text??? Looks like you have not read anything of the "stream of consciousness" style, and so forth...
Enough said so far. All the same, "ta-veri-mooch" for the trouble you have taken to read (or mis-read) my story. Always welcome, though! Wignesan
The Schoolmaster and the Hippies, los Curas, and the Boys by T.Wignesan (Short Story) - 6/27/2022 9:31:06 AM
I will have to admit that I started out very confused, wading through all the description of the schoolmaster and others' clothing. And actually ended up not knowing exactly where this man came from (India? England? It was stated that he was Hindu) and why he was here (turned out to be Madrid but wasn't really stated until much later in the story). The schoolmaster's name, Vasanthan, was delayed as well, when it could've been put in the first sentence.
Why Vasanthan was married to a nameless Spanish woman and had a child that didn't enter into the story, was beyond me to figure out. Eventually, most of the pieces fell in place but only late in the story when I found out why the hippies were there and why Hiawatha was there.
What I can't figure out is why a 45-year-old Indian fellow looking like a choir boy was so attractive to women. He had nothing in common with the women who were attracted to him, except, perhaps, good looks or the assumed power of being a schoolmaster. I had to look up the term cura. From what I read, these were boys that were committed to going into the priesthood. And there was some inclination in the story that they would be either subject to or become a part of homosexuality in the brotherhood of priestly deep secrets.
While returning Vietnam vets going to school, still hooked on drugs, may have assumed the lifestyle of hippies, they were never hippies from all that I ever met. Only Hiawatha, whose name leads me to believe that she may have had some Native American blood or dressed Native American to have that nickname that was not her real name. She certainly was promiscuous, but like many hippies of that day, could always rely on the pursestrings of parents to bail them out whenever they wanted to return to reality. Most Vietnam vets as expatriates had no mommy or daddy back home to bail them out.
Your convention of not using quote marks, but a simple hyphen before any words spoken or thought was confusing at first, especially because these words or thoughts were not separated from the description the way that quote marks do. And I found your attempt at the pronunciation of the vets and Hiawatha almost unable for me to pronounce/read. Were you trying to imitate a southern drawl? Or the way that Americans intone their speech compared with British English? If this were published, and probably already is, someone with a good feel for linguistics could correct those difficult to read phrases correctly in the American dialect. "Yah all." As they say here in Texas.
The story proceeded quite nicely with the schoolmaster trapped in his low-paying job with unruly students and a wife he didn't really love, wanting to go back to a better life, but duty keeping him from doing any of that, including resisting the advances of the signora and Hiawatha.
In the end, it seemed like the school needed him and he needed the school. So leaving for the East with the expatriate vets was out of the question as well as going with Hiawatha to the States. A rather sad ending to a rather interesting tale of colliding personalities, nationalities and ideologies.
All in all, well written and interesting to read. I sensed that some of it was autobiographical. But we all write from our experience.
Ron
The Altar Cloth and the Pope by T Wignesan (Short Story) - 12/21/2020 1:36:50 PM
Bonsoir, Ron ! You have yourself really missed out on your true métier, that of the literary critic. If only you had acquired a more consistent and varied a reading experience (not that of Authorsden, Heaven forbid!), you could have made a name for yourself, I'd wager. For once, you didn't bring up your own experience to illustrate your points. Touché !
The truth is, I don't have an "alien" culture, either. Rather a cosmopolitan one: South and Southeast Asia; then from adulthood in Europe (London, Heidelberg, Berlin, Schwäbisch Hall, Eschenau, Madrid, Paris, etc.) with strong connections over the Atlantic. Here, in the story, I'm in my element with Catholicism and the Irish, too. That's why I'm surprised (and irked sometimes) when Euro-Americans notice only the colour of my skin. Thanks a lot, Ron.
The Altar Cloth and the Pope by T Wignesan (Short Story) - 12/21/2020 8:34:37 AM
That is quite a story. I believe you have to be part Irish or at least Roman Catholic to understand is significance. Such waste to provide such charity!
As far as the director of Schabbys seemed to be concerned, the whole process was commercial, like Christmas. A promotion for what his store could offer.
I admire the way you, from an entirely different culture, seem to have pulled off a right Irish tale with all of the proper drinking rituals included.
Ron
The Day the Immigre/Immigrant Left (Paris) by T. Wignesan (Short Story) - 10/26/2020 9:30:58 AM
Very well written, although my current state of headache made it difficult for me to wade through all of the discussion and description that led up to the final conclusion. As an American, to "run amok," is very familiar to me. That's just what, surprisingly, Tiana did.
And it was a surprise, although not really a surprise, after the way Tiana was treated by apparent friend and family throughout the entire 15 years he spent in France. Finally, snapping when he reached the last straw.
Parallels some of the immigration situation in the United States, although I don't think it is quite as chaotic as in France.
Ron
The (State Doctoral) Viva at the University of Solfege (Short Story) - 7/5/2020 12:00:48 PM
Hello Ron ! Hope you're having a Great Independence Day banquet ! It appears you missed out on the message I put out a couple of days ago in response to your most delectable ego buck-up, so I'm posting it here again. Have a great day, Ron !
"Bonjour Ron! You’re more than over-generous. I feel embarrassed, especially because (as you must have already divined) I don’t believe in reciprocal “back-scratching” commentary that a certain number of poets and writers everywhere on the internet indulge in to excess. Not that I’m averse to mutually “good cheer” promoting bantering or camaraderie, but that those who make this sort of exercise a “pathological need” do not display any appreciable form or stance of critical judgement or well-grounded aesthetic approach in their assessment of one another’s poems or stories, etc. Any piece of writing that purports to assume “literariness” in scope is always difficult to analyse or assess. I’m not saying anything new here, for it should be evident to anyone who has been writing or commenting on writing that one needs time and enormous effort even to strip down to its “haunches” any poem or seriously thought out piece of prose. That said, let me welcome you whole-heartedly into the Pantheon of classical commentators of Tamil works where the exegetes enjoy greater renown than even the poets. That’s the least I can do to thank you for your generosity.
Thanks also for pointing out that the pdf version contains repetitions. I must have sent Jackie a file which wasn’t the original published copy. In fact, I used to store on the “freehosting net” site all the finalized files, but the page keepers suddenly would not even accept renewal payment and scrapped them all.
Yes, the story has been published twice, first by myself (the ISBN you see under the story is mine: after failing to find a literary agent or a traditional publisher, I became my own publisher and typed and bound the copies myself and lodged them at the Library of Congress Copyright Office and the Dépôt légal in Paris), and later with Cyberwit.net, in India, a pay and publish “self-publisher” who may or may not get the texts in English quite right. That’s probably the reason why I take to posting my work on the net, too, after Authorhouse in England diddled me of some 900-odd euros. I do hope that answers your question about “publishing” the story.
Let me also say that it takes courage, impartiality and a hightened sense of justice to comment favourably on such a story which doesn’t quite hold up to praise some (or at least one) of the most valued “institutions” in the West. This shows true “character” in your make-up. Not many would.
Lastly, I’ve not been able to respond in time to your comments simply because some one or other has managed in the last few months to hack through all my computers and put them out of action for good. This computer on which I’m writing is invested with a “blockage system” which prevents me from writing anything at all. I have to persist word after word to get through. Besides, AuthorsDen, too, keeps rejecting my password as “non-verified” and i’m left in the lurch. Looks like some authority wants me snuffed out as a writer-poet in my probably very last days. Thanks again, Ron. Happy July the Fourth Day to you and all over there!. T. Wignesan"
The (State Doctoral) Viva at the University of Solfege (Short Story) - 7/2/2020 10:58:50 AM
T.Wignesan has written a tour de force satire in language encompassing English, French, and Tamil, spiced with appropriate expletives and perhaps, German with his use of "Vant” and "Vhat" for expression by the antagonist, Maniam (Man I am), a thoroughly disgusting example of Eastern privilege who regularly travels west to indulge himself in the wanton desires of European women. Selvan, on the other hand, is a hard-working Malaysian countryman who has spent 10 years getting his doctorate so that he can teach in the vaulted halls of the Solfège, a unique and veiled pseudonym for the Sorbonne.
One will laugh at the subject matter of the dissertation until one realizes that it is a metaphor for the stinky hot air that rises from the ivory tower aristocracy with its private club of plagiarists. For one who had gone through the process of obtaining a doctorate, the detail and revealing of motives is probably the best description of a doctoral program that I've ever read. Memories flood back from almost every line.
Maniam has come to Paris to find a bride for his son, namely, Selvan's daughter. On their journey from the airport in the unlikely transportation of a SEAT 600, they are stopped in heavy traffic by a car lorry unable to make a steep turn up into a main highway. While they wait, Selvan describes, at the urging of Maniam, what it took for him to get his, high prestige, but low paying job in the West when he could have done so much better just staying in the East.
Do not be daunted by the length of this novella. Open the PDF version and read it all the way to the end. The ending does come by surprise, and no surprise. I can see this being made into a play. T.Wignesan, for such an original and entertaining, as well as educational work of literature, should be given kudos all around. Please publish it if you haven't already done so.
Ron
Sweeping Action Skirmishes in Vietnam 1968 (Short Story) - 1/23/2020 1:38:00 AM
"Touché !" Guilty, I admit, Ron. "Slush" is the wrong word. Thanks to you, I have remedied the "slip-up", though "sludge" can contain other lugubrious connotations as well, such as, "sewer sludge" - which is not out-of-place in this context. Difficult to mistake what I meant, though. Take a peek: "oozing clay", "thick glue-like mud", "churned-up river bed", "marshy slope", and "...I sank in the mud up to my knees." That said, let me "bash you around a bit" for taking me to task !
Speaking of "connexes", you say: "...it seems like the enemy can approach, unseen, from three sides..." (though you qualify your statement with the next word: "Unless") My second paragraph and the incident of Percival risking his life to take a pee, amply explains the use of "booby traps" and "wiring" around the connexes to set off "flares" to warn the sleeping soldiers. Okay, Ron ? Gotya !
As always, nice to hear from you. Bonne Année ! Wignesan
Sweeping Action Skirmishes in Vietnam 1968 (Short Story) - 1/22/2020 9:49:22 AM
A quite realistic view of the horror that young men faced in the jungles of Vietnam. From what I read, it seemed like you had not experienced it yourself, but had interviewed veterans. I like it when documentaries use the stories of real people and not made up fictitious ones. But your down and dirty approach with all the piss and shit is not something that those that made it through would want to talk about except among themselves.
Two things bother me. The Connexes appear to be nothing more than death traps. With only the ability to view from the open end, it seems like the enemy can approach, unseen, from three sides… Unless, of course the position of the Connex is unattainable from below or behind. Exposed to attack by RPGs or mortars that the Vietcong were expert at using.
And the word, slush. It is a term used for water soaked crushed ice or snow. Perhaps you meant sludge or some other term. Commonly, in swampy areas there is quicksand, often a misnomer because it is mud or clay that drags one down and there is no sand involved, but the effect of not allowing you to move forward as you sink deeper into the muck is frightening beyond belief unless you know how to extract yourself or have some help like your Ulixes apparently did.
Ron
Ambush at Outpost 2 Bridge, Vietnam 1968 (Short Story) - 11/2/2019 1:09:16 PM
Hi Ron ! Your query's truly pertinent, but my answer must be cryptic for various reasons; in fact, for three reasons: firstly, the subject of the study wishes for anonymity, for, if you read the rest of the book, you would see why; secondly, if I gave the names of the other "players", they might not - quite frankly, they would not - want any kind of exposure, quite likely for the same principal reason as the first; thirdly, if you examine the names I give to each and every one in the. book, there is a covert literary reason, making for yet another "story", a sort of "cliché" to the photo, etc. Thanks very much again for your engagé interest in things that really matter in the long run, even if you are not very consistent with your comments on topics of the same "trempe" by different authors. This's not a criticism, but an observation en passim.
Ambush at Outpost 2 Bridge, Vietnam 1968 (Short Story) - 11/2/2019 10:21:54 AM
This was just a simple outpost and relatively friendly territory from what I read. Still, the horror of war reached them. But it makes me wonder why you used fictitious names. While the character you called Cadmus was a hero, by not giving his name, his heroism goes unknown. And as far as the others, acting cowardly, that is the way war is. War can put the fear in you so that you fail to act. That is no disgrace. That is a fact often overlooked by those who weren't there and think it unpatriotic.
A friend of mine who, because of his small size, was asked to go into tunnels and blow up munitions that the Vietcong left behind. Sometimes there were prisoners held in those tunnels who were killed by those explosions. He was on the scene of Mel Gibson's movie, "We Were Soldiers." Told me that he couldn't watch the movie. Still had nightmares, lost wives, jobs in the years since.
Thank you for this revealing bit of a slice of war that few know about.
Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes-6: A Journey beyond Closed Doors (Short Story) - 8/5/2019 11:40:53 AM
Just for the record, Ron, and for purposes of social or historical research, I'll re-affirm here that, yes, I am/was "Sathasivam" of the story, and every character and narrative event is faithfully reproduced from memory. For most of 1956 and 1957, I slept under trees and bushes in Hyde Park, and during inclement weather, in the waiting rooms of railway stations, always avoiding "the silent dignified and unarmed London Bobbies" who made their rounds after midnight and just before sunrise, barring short periods when I was able to find work like holiday "postal" work. I used to catch up on lost sleep by boarding the Circle Line of the Underground with just one ticket, entering and dropping out at the same station. There were over a million (some said two) unemployed in London then. Thanks very much for commiserating on "Vasudevan" 's plight. No, he didn't marry Fiona, for they separated when he returned to Singapore, and I hitch-hiked to Heidelberg for a while. Just an additional note: he "feared" his authoritarian father no end. Perhaps the root cause of his diffidence in some ways, though with me he was his usual self: given to much fun, pun, and tongue-in-cheek commentary, wit and abandon... Wignesan
Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes-6: A Journey beyond Closed Doors (Short Story) - 8/5/2019 8:57:07 AM
The story was very long. Longer than I had time to read in my slow reading manner. But I couldn't stop reading, so I read all the way to the finish, disgusted with the way that Vasudevan was treated.
It is interesting, but deplorable, that the British required all members of the former colonial empire to study law in the British Isles to be considered legitimate barristers. That certainly put law students from countries like Malaysia in dire financial straits to send their promising lawyers to England to be able to practice under the Bar. What a shame.
And it certainly is shameful that inferior students would gang up on the brilliant Vasudevan to the point where they would deprive him of sleep and then callously allow his only means of fighting back to be used against him so that he is imprisoned in an asylum against his wishes, accused of being violent. It is said that a room full of idiots can can make a genius look like an idiot, and that certainly applies in this case.
If you are Sathasivam in the story, it is obvious that you suffered greatly having to lose your place of residence and work menial jobs all the while trying to help your friend. It is almost unbelievable that he was able to recover at home and then come back to finish his studies. I'm not sure if he stayed with his wife and child. That is not clear.
I found your descriptions of places and characters to be very detailed. If from memory, they are truly an amazing literary accomplishment. Kudos.
Ron
The Avengeress on Long Leave (Short Story) - 7/28/2019 11:48:19 AM
Quite an exposé of the goings-on in the tightknit neighborhoods of Paris. By the use of Marie-Noëlle as the protagonist, a woman filled with all kinds of self-doubt and other maladies bordering on menopause at an early age, you have exposed all of the misdeeds of many observed from the closed curtains of the commune and gossip in streets and hallways. Shady dealings going on.
Marie-Noëlle appeared to be on the course of total destruction during her long leave from sane inducing work, or at least, a complete mental meltdown. I was upset with your assessment of Muriel at the end, but relieved with the final outcome of her mother.
All in all, a grand forte in character development and a slice of Parisiane life.
Ron
ZERO - ZERO (0 - 0 = 1 - 1) (Short Story) - 6/30/2019 8:30:29 AM
Ah, the way that men get excited over sports and politicize them! I'm sure glad I don't participate in that waste of time, hero worship! I really loved your vernacular, but I couldn't write a story like this because my dictation system couldn't pick up all those names. I would have to type them with one finger and grow weary.
There's nothing like the clash of ethnicities to rev up soccer (as we call it) or fuball. Loved the way the boss Afghani changed his tune when he heard who France was playing.
Ron
3rd Letter from Bill GRIFFITHS on the Eric MOTTRAM Archive at King's Co (Article) - 1/9/2024 4:52:03 PM
Mister "T" I'm afraid we all as writers hope that some of our works remain after we're gone. Hopefully our family at least appreciates what we've done, even though it be very little. Personally, I enjoy doing entertaining writing if i can. Maybe someone in the future may get a laugh. i really appreciate you and others that have enjoyed some of my stuff. it's very gratifying and pushes me on, even as my health and eyesight get worse. i don't know what the future holds , but between me and the magnifying glass, i try to continue. sorry for my rough writing my Best to you the Boss sends her good thoughts your way also.
Eric Mottram's letter and recommendation dated Mar. 3, 1958 to T. Wignesan (Article) - 12/16/2023 12:32:06 PM
That certainly was one of the finest letters of recommendation I've ever read. I hope you got the scholarship. In 1958 I was a sophomore in high school, perhaps wrote one poem in one of my English classes and only wrote poems as a lovesick skinny athlete to girls that were much more physically advanced than I was… Alas.
His letter reminded me of Behram, Mahfouz, Vitoon, and Raj: all Asians of considerable intellect and social graces who enamored Americans with their abilities and language skills who I befriended, traveled with and helped with their careers.
Ron
3rd Letter from Bill GRIFFITHS on the Eric MOTTRAM Archive at King's Co (Article) - 12/4/2023 5:25:13 PM
I rejoice, Monseigneur Don Ron, that you have your twin brother and family to take care of your mss and books, but don't kid yourself into thinking archives will be properly constituted and looked after if you or someone else doesn't put up the cash for it.
In Eric Mottram's case, his property and bank balance - according to my reckoning - ran up to over a million pounds sterling (Purchasing-Power-Parity in 1995), and his heirs: elder brother and sister very generously handed it all over to King's College towards making up the archives. The cash which amounted to some [correct me, if I am wrong, somebody] £650,000 - six hundred and fifty thousand - was devoted to employing the poet Bill Griffiths [who was at EM's departure on the dole] to charting out the preliminary spade work at the Hampstead campus, and when the funds petered out, King's took over the rest of the work. His property included his house at Herne Hill and all the books, journals, files and income on his own writing - which were amassed in half-a-century of toil right across the northern hemisphere.
As for my own case - thanks for the kindness - there is no way anyone will bother about my stuff since my son in Paris is in cohorts with the AUTHORITIES who are out to plunder and destroy all I have put together (and watched over under peril): that's what my son says and the theft (even of my hard-earned diplomas) has begun already over the last couple of decades; so all the more reason to thank you warmly for the thought. The rest of my family spread out over the globe wouldn't lose a night's sleep over my archives, but they might make a play for the cash...though !!!
Many thanks for the wishes. Sincerely as ever. TW
3rd Letter from Bill GRIFFITHS on the Eric MOTTRAM Archive at King's Co (Article) - 12/4/2023 12:52:38 PM
Eric indeed must've been a great man of letters in order for King's College to want to accept his archive. And from your perspective, I hope you have carefully maintained your archive of works that may rest in some library or museum in the future.
The gaps in Eric's past may certainly be the result of moving.
I have little or nothing from my early years of moving every two years with all I had in the car. It is only when I acquired a library of old books and wrote a number of published articles in various journals that I started to save what I had written and published. But I stored everything from 1980 until 1989. By that time I couldn't handle sorting through it without help. Fortunately, two hired attendants in the summer of 1992 enabled me to go through the whole load I brought from Atlanta and toss out most of it, but keep the articles in plastic binders and put the books on my bookshelf.
I doubt if my work will be wanted by any library or any institution. I hope that my younger brother who will handle my affairs after I die will maintain what I have archived and pass it down through his daughter, so that at least my family will, in the future, be able to read and know what I've written and published. And even, laugh at how naïve and misunderstood I was writing what I thought was serious business.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 19 Feb 1992 addressed to T. Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 11/20/2023 10:09:42 PM
Monseigneur Ron, for an act of GROSS mis-reading of simple unequivocal English, you carry the CUP !!! Instead of suing you for defamation (and collecting millions from your estate), I'll just let the following passage go for what it's worth (and post a Limerick immediately as a riposte):
"You wanted to steal a concert in India and then sell it? I thought we're taught to give credit to the source of artistic work as academics. That would mean that by recording the concert, with their permission, you would sell it and give them some of the proceeds according to your contract."
To get the text straight, I organized a concert at the UNESCO of the said illustrious performers. A relative (same name) of the woman-in- charge at the UNESCO made an attempt to illegally record the performance, and - at the protestations of the performers - I put a halt to the recording. How contorted can you get ???
Otherwise, as usual, keep plugging. Best. TW
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 19 Feb 1992 addressed to T. Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 11/20/2023 1:01:46 PM
You wanted to steal a concert in India and then sell it? I thought we're taught to give credit to the source of artistic work as academics. That would mean that by recording the concert, with their permission, you would sell it and give them some of the proceeds according to your contract.
EM was lecturing on American technology at the University of Durham without access to technology, like a typewriter that worked? I was using a personal computer with word processing and formatable printing for four years by that time. But I was in a rather poor American university.
I can see there were some troubles between EM and you he eagerly wanted to smooth over and continue with your friendship. You owed each other a lot academically.
EM seemed to work often gratis. And start fellowships? I have to assume that he had some wealth. Although he did mention getting "a good offer" for his next post in the United States. The man sure traveled a lot.
A Google search of Eric Mottram reveals many entries. He was indeed, a great poet, scholar and teacher. You are blessed to have him as a friend and collaborator.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 24 June 1984 addressed to T. Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 11/4/2023 3:52:25 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron: whatever you may ever write or have ever written, let me say - in all kindness - you'll go down in history for this pull-my-pants-down line -
"It came to a head when he got in a fight with Rip Torn and Torn hit him in the head with a hammer."
A feat, to say the least, which is even beyond Mailer's wildest dreams of scariness.
I found the excerpt of Maidstone (not trying just to differ for scoring a point) in the URL you provided extremely film-worthy: arresting, cataclysmic and shocking, the kind no cinéma-verité can pull-off without being poo-poo-ed !
But the anecdote of your front-desk experience in the class-room was really hilarious.... you seem to be everywhere where the real news gets to happen. How's that !!!
Incidentally, that's what Eric Mottram said: he wasn't in the Burroughs film - he was quite simply overlooked and glad about it all at that.
As always, only the very best. TW
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 24 June 1984 addressed to T. Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 11/4/2023 11:36:10 AM
Another letter from the US. I didn't know what the Burroughs film was, so I looked it up. It appeared to be a documentary of William S Burroughs life containing many well-known characters. But EM was not listed as part of the top cast. Perhaps he was seen briefly in the film.
Another bad film from that time was Maidstone. As far as I know it was Norman Mailer's only attempt at filmmaking. I believe it was when I was at Atlanta University in 1980 when he came promoting Maidstone and we were in a small classroom with me sitting in the front row student desk. From that vantage point I was subject to the barrage of belches that emitted from him from having apparently eaten the wrong thing or over eaten before coming to talk to us.
He hired Gardner's Island and brought a number of his friends and their wives and girlfriends so that he could play the lech throughout the movie with a license to chase other men's wives and girlfriends. It came to a head when he got in a fight with Rip Torn and Torn hit him in the head with a hammer. The blood was not makeup. It was real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzmhorISf4
Mailer said that he had directed and edited the film and it showed. Probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 26 March 1991 addressed to T.Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 10/23/2023 11:03:56 AM
What do you mean, Monseigneur, "another interesting" article from EM ?
You could have - at least - wanted to know (out of sheer curiosity) what the menu was at the dinner party and who the "host of gals" were from Shakespeare & Co. there present (that I added to make the likes of you salivate just wondering) !!! Just for your info: the menu was an Indo-Chinese mix - just spicy enough to make the Black Label, Champagne and Saint-Emilion rouge send them all rocking and reeling and a bloody noise nuissance which caused the hard-working neighbours call the gendarmerie to close the "joint" down!!! Happy, No? Best. TW
Eric Mottram's letter dated 2 Sept. 1993 addressed to T. Wignesan in Paris (Article) - 10/19/2023 10:44:12 AM
EM's letter discourse with you continues. Unfortunately, since it covers his activities in England and his planned trip to Paris, there is no longer reference to people or places in the United States that I was familiar with at the time.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated December 17,1962 to T.Wignesan in Kuala Lumpur (Article) - 10/13/2023 11:56:40 AM
EM returned to Britain with a flurry of activity. But I wonder why he passed up a professorship at Rutgers? And I see that you had a bit of time with your sponsorship by the CCF. Recalcitrant, huh?
Reminds me of my three quarters at Stanford where I was more interested in what the hippies were doing and what was happening at our apartment Olympic size pool, than pay attention to my studies.
And, there was my nephew who went to my alma mater and received a term at Manchester on an international exchange with UW Stout. Unfortunately, he blew the whole time there touring England and Scotland and even spending some time on the continent while neglecting his studies. I believe 'tis the downfall of those of us from Hull. We tend to be good shipbuilders, navigators and travelers (great-great-grandfather a blacksmith, great-grandfather, Milwaukee beer wagon driver, retired to mailman between two towns 30 miles apart, grandfather factory worker, farmhand retired to driving for a wealthy man as his chauffeur and my father, a truck driver for 55 years.) but lousy students. I just drove myself over 500,000 miles and traveled around the world only once. Slacking the whole time.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated March 4,1966 addressed to T.Wignesan in London (Article) - 10/12/2023 5:55:24 PM
Monseigneur, I picked this missile up from "Messages":
"TW,
One year, Cary and I both made presentations at the TSU English department's McCleary Symposium. The theme was, The Roaring 20s… Also the title of the poem I read. For a couple of years after, the poem received many reads both on AD and my website.
https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewpoetry.asp?AuthorID=3918&id=274620
Ron"
I checked the net to look for McCluhan's poems: Neaeriii a souffle...Do you have that one on "Trains" handy. Would like to sample his poems. Probably as saucy as his doctoral subject: Thomas Nashe's !
Your own celibratory poem there in 2013 livens up in a way your late productions don't seem to -- more juicy meat then than dried meat nowadays... Best. Thanks. TW
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated March 4,1966 addressed to T.Wignesan in London (Article) - 10/12/2023 11:33:25 AM
EM traveled in some great circles while at New York University. I have a good friend and author of several history books, Cary Wintz. His most notable work is on the Harlem Renaissance. He is white and from Oklahoma, but has established himself well as a black history author, among other authors and is an emeritus professor from Texas Southern University where I worked with him for 30 years. He encouraged me to write my first novel, telling me that he could write fiction.
https://www.blackpast.org/author/wintzcaryd/
You also touched greatness with your interview of Malcolm X. But I'm surprised when EM called you a Negro. I shouldn't be, because in the summer of 1966 when my nonpracticing Zoroastrian Persian roommate from Bombay and I went to a local junkyard to get a spring for my 1957 Desoto, the owner cast some epithet about black people that rolled right off Behram's broad shoulders. Something he probably heard more often than not… Always an easy going guy. Changed his name to Ron at work because the idiots couldn't pronounce it.
I was so glad that EM interviewed Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan was the only poet that I read anything of during 1966-67 or after. I recall hearing his poem on Trains recited by him on the radio. Believe it or not, I tried to look him up recently on the Internet and didn't have his name spelled correctly and couldn't find him. ;-)
EM hobnobed with Ginsberg, Herman Kahn and Buckminster Fuller? When I was at Expo 67 in Montréal, the US pavilion was a geodesic dome that leaked with wet carpet here and there. In 1979-80, I taught public policy and private enterprise at Atlanta University using Herman Kahn's book, The Next 200 Years. And then, when I traveled to Toronto to lead a panel of five that I put together, I attended a lively discussion between Kahn and Timothy Leary. Leary was very lucid and his brains weren't, at all, "fried."
EM had an "anti-human" feeling from the wilderness? The wilderness is where I feel most human.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated Oct. 31,1965 addressed to T. Wignesan in London (Article) - 10/8/2023 11:08:37 AM
An interesting read. I believe you have lawyer credentials. Perhaps needed for that court case mentioned.
I understood what he meant about not having a schedule. I felt the same way with my fellowship at Stanford in 1966. I ended up making some wrong choices and my studies suffered as a result of taking in all that was going on around rather than focusing what I was there for.
For that time it was perfectly normal to use the word Negro to describe African-American work. Eric read some of the greats. I too, took advantage of the wealth of movies I could view for free at universities and in festivals, including many movie theaters offering foreign films subtitled in English that I enjoyed watching greatly.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 3 Apr. 1962 to T. Wignesan in Kuala Lumpur (Article) - 10/4/2023 8:41:43 PM
Excuse me, Monseigneur the Poet-Laureate of Houston-Texas, I'm hard put to divine whether you got your Ph.D. for your knowledge of Literature - with a Capital "L" - or for your "Autobiography": I mean it's so insuperable to disentangle what you have to say, given my own abysmally retarded mental state, whether the gaping doubt in my "mind" (???) is due to your habitual rants on your own "memory-escapades" or the subject matter of the piece upon which you happily void your misgivings ! Be that as it may, I'd say in my defence, Your Lordship, I have already, under due oath and sermon, answered this query on your comment on 7/08/23. If Eric Mottram were alive, I don't know - or rather wouldn't like to imagine - what he would do to you under the circumstances. Thank Heavens, he is not around: I met EM a decade after I started writing seriously!!! Just imagine that. Best. TW
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 3 Apr. 1962 to T. Wignesan in Kuala Lumpur (Article) - 10/4/2023 11:08:54 AM
It appears you were as cantankerous back then as you are today. And you started writing poetry seriously in 1948. I didn't start writing poetry until about 1956, writing silly poems to girls and literally throwing them away. It wasn't until I got to my doctoral program in 1971 and putting poems in newsletters and letters that I kept any of them, published any in anthologies, and most of them are gone, one way or another.
Eric Mottram apparently was not only your professor, but a true friend, putting up with your shenanigans because he really liked your work, like I do--some of it--especially that story of your schooldays. Your poetry? Not so much. But he did and shared your work with others. I always wrote poetry for fun and never took a poetry class--it shows. You however, have made poetry part of your life, so it was far more important for you and for Eric. What he said in these letters, for you to keep them all these years, you have treasured.
I may have mentioned that one of the members of my doctoral committee didn't have a doctorate, only an MA in English, but he was editor of the prestigious New England Review and a full professor at West Virginia University. While he was reviewing part of my dissertation, I gave him, I believe, three of the poems that I had written. I arrived at his house to pick up what he had noted and he was getting ready to go to a party while downing two martinis before he and his wife left. Apparently so that he could stomach what was going to be going on at the party and probably needed to be inebriated before he arrived, poor guy.
After he handed me the corrected paper, I asked him what he thought of the poems that I gave him. He only said one word, "cynical." As I thought about it, the only poem that I remember, The Multiversity (the land-grant university attempting to be all things to all people) certainly was a bit cynical. In retrospect, I wish he had taken time to remove all the errors from my typed dissertation. My typist was good, but she didn't catch everything… Nor did I. I guess the technical nature of the content flew over the heads of most of my committee members and they just gave me carte blanche approval with very few questions during my final presentation.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated 19 March 1960 to T. Wignesan in Schwäbisch Hall (Article) - 9/27/2023 11:13:59 AM
An interesting letter. Eric delved into a number of issues related to your letters and poetry. Saul Bellow and Ginsberg! He hobnobed with some of the most famous. I can imagine you starving for three months in London and having a son while young and unestablished. Are you still in touch with him?
I didn't get to San Francisco until 1966, but if you had gone there in 1960, you would have been on the ground floor and probably may have become famous, if not just locally, beyond. And in 1966 you could get a good newspaper wrapped fish and chips for a dollar that would last for the whole day's meal and was delicious. And there were other soup kitchens that were even less expensive. Crashing with many others was a way to get off the streets at night. But escaping the drug scene would be nearly impossible.
He wrote that one word titles for poems was uninteresting. Most of my poems have one word titles. He was right about relating your coming-of-age in Malaysia. What I read of it is very interesting a combination of colonialism and breaking out of that cultural realm to the larger world of literature in Europe (and briefly in the United States?).
I appreciated seeing his detailed comments on your work. A dedicated teacher.
Ron
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated Oct.22, 1960 to T. Wignesan in ??? (Article) - 9/24/2023 3:42:53 AM
As usual, many thanks for your compassion, Monseigneur Don Ron. Your rhetorical question: "What do women want, anyway?" answers it all, but permit me to let you know why - the least I can do for your "folly" in asking me to write my autobiography unless you wish me to be crushed for good, bad as it already is right now - why I turned down the Fullbright offer.
Just before the Maryland teaching job, I was the "courrier" at the USREUR HQ in Heidelberg where I delivered mail, under the "protection" of two armed military guards in a jeep, to the entire camp complex - including the 5-star general's office. I got to know a whole lot of American soldiers who kept spoiling me with carton gifts of Malborough cigarettes and bottles of whiskey which they obtained from the PX as weekly rations. I made many German friends with the handouts !
I had to commute to the Karlsruhe Smiley Barracks for the Maryland classes where the Education Officer was an African-American, named Coffey, married to a very contented-looking Chicana lady with 11 children whose table manners were simply exemplary, and whom I really liked. Like all the other African-Americans I frequented, they all affirmed they were never returning to the States after their term of duty, for - for the first time in their lives - they felt like "human beings" there in Europe.
When Coffey knew about the Fullbright grant, he said: "Back there in the States, if you walked into a restaurant - like as it is over here - you'd get beaten up and flung out into the street, and if you - even accidentally - spoke to a White girl on a street corner, expect to find your mashed-up body in some back alley!" Others corroborated what he said.
Add to this the Eva Cassirer fiasco with my doctoral dissertation in West Berlin, and you might gauge why a repeat-performance could very well recurr in Maryland State-side, too.
There were also other reasons,but the above explanation ought to suffice.
Every good wish. Best. TW
Eric MOTTRAM's letter dated Oct.22, 1960 to T. Wignesan in ??? (Article) - 9/23/2023 12:27:54 PM
Not taking that five-year Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Maryland probably was a mistake. But I don't know the circumstances surrounding your decision.
And your brief marriage is a mystery from this letter. It sounds like a very bad lesson learned. Like my "ideal" marriage to my high school classmate after 20 years apart, came apart. "What do women want, anyway?"
If you haven't written it, I think an autobiography is in order for your amazing life as Eric Mottram referred to. That tale you wrote about your experience in the school in Kuala Lumpur attests to your ability to write about the colorful passage of your life from your forced work for the Japanese to your predicament in Paris today.
Ron
Eric Mottram's letter dated Jan 3,1993 to T. Wignesan in Paris, France (Article) - 9/17/2023 3:15:00 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, I have just replied your message on the same article or rather on the same topic. I have half-a-mind to copy and post my response here, for it might dispel further misunderstandings. For instance, I had already on a previous occasion re Eric Mottram explained to you (as I have in the texts themselves: cf. "A word or 2 on Eric Mottram...") that I was never a student of EM nor had I ever met EM in Malaysia. I didn't even know he was teaching in Singapore during 1952-55 during which period I was, myself, teaching in vernacular schools and worked as a reporter in the English-language national daily before going to London to keep my dining-terms in person as an external student of the Inns of Court School of Law. Oddly enough, I knew some of his students and colleagues in the University of Malaya in Singapore.
Anyway, this is of no interest to anyone. EM and I became friends in London almost immediately after meeting up in early 1957.
No offence meant. Every good wish. TW
Eric Mottram's letter dated Jan 3,1993 to T. Wignesan in Paris, France (Article) - 9/17/2023 11:49:18 AM
It was obvious from the letter that Eric Mottram considered you not only a former student, but a confident and collaborator as well. He was probably more well-known in Europe than in the United States, but having the designation as a visiting professor quite an honor. In spite of the new campus at SUNY Buffalo, I'm sure that he found the city quite depressing. It still is, though gradually recovering.
While I detest professors who are readers or lecturers rather than good teachers, assuming by their oration or droning from the pulpit that the students in the audience will assume by osmosis the greatness in the reader's words of wisdom. Without student participation at the ground level, apparently what you had in working with Mottram in Malaysia those many years before, sealed your friendship.
Ron
A Final Word or 2 on Eric MOTTRAM to set the record straight by T. Wignesan (Article) - 8/21/2023 8:24:13 PM
Very many thanks, Monseigneur Don Ron, for taking the trouble to read this rather long and detailed piece, but I must take very particular exception to the use of one word on your part which - unfortunately - maligns my long lost friend. You say he was "demented" at a young age. No such thing, I'm afraid.
He was "arraigned" by the ruling committee of the Poetry Society on some charge that is not particularly clear, and it was while waiting to be interviewed that he underwent "memory erasures", according to EM: the "erasures" happened to include yours truly as well, for by that time we had not met again for a decade, and by the time we did in 1989, he had completely mistaken me for a student of his in Singapore. This is not "dementia". I wasn't his doctor, but I'd say that was some sort of "Alzeimer's" creeping in at some early stage perhaps.
If he were alive, I'd demand an apology from you for the. "faux pas" to be published in three of the foremost newspapers at your expense.
Have a Great Day, my engineering friend ! Best as always. TW
A Final Word or 2 on Eric MOTTRAM to set the record straight by T. Wignesan (Article) - 8/21/2023 11:27:44 AM
Thank you for filling me in on Eric Mottram. A man of great many talents and a wonderful mentor for you, another man of many talents, as you have been. It is really sad that he became demented at such a young age. From the letter you provided, his mind was all over the place when he and you were working on many literary projects when I was simply a beginning engineering struggling with the mathematics involved. Writing a silly little poem once in a while just to let off steam from my sad love life during that time.
I'm glad you have lived long enough to begin posting the letters here where they may be seen by thousands. It was sad to see that Eric was unable to get to San Francisco in late 1966 when I arrived there to find the hippie renaissance forming before my very eyes with some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century and the lyrics songwriters wrote during those few short years to Woodstock.
Ron
Eric Mottram's Introduction in Bunga Emas and Tracks of a Tramp, 2nd Editio (Article) - 7/8/2023 6:29:32 PM
Monseigneur, you are indeed most kind to comment and pose a question, and as is wont, I'll reciprocate likewise. No, Eric Mottram was never my professor though - during 1952 and 1955 - he was a lecturer in English Literature (unknown to me then) at the University of Malaya in Singapore. I had just then finished my school-leaving exams (under the British educational system, our exam papers were flown out to Cambridge University for evaluation, and I continued as an external student of the Inns of Court School of Law in London while teaching at primary and secondary schools in Malaya. In 1954, I was a journalist).
In 1955, I had to go to London to keep my "dining terms" at Lincoln's Inn, and I sat for the Bar Finals in 1956 (though I was cheated of my diploma from practising Law). It was then that the famous sinologist and ex-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong: Wang Gung-wu - handed him a copy of my poems and our first meeting took place. Since then, Eric and I became very good friends and our correspondance lasting right up to his passing in January 16, 1995 makes up a véritable book of literary production. Excerpts were published in the festscrift for Eric in December 1994: "Alive in Parts of this Century: Eric Mottram at 70" by North & South Publishers, U.K. (ANY PUBLISHER INTERESTED IN BRINGING OUR CORRESPONDANCE OUT, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH SOON ?)
Eric wrote the article in English and it was translated into German by Horst Taubmann (later a famous theatre producer and critic).
Thanks a million, Ron. TW
Limerick: Sleep well all you guys in Authorsden (Poetry) - 11/21/2023 2:02:54 PM
That's alright, Ron. Don't fret. We all make mistakes whether we like it or not. Here, we are concerned with a man of letters in the English language who should enjoy a very illustrious station, but I knew early in the budding friendship, he was not going to make it there where he belonged unless he had friends who were willing to promote his talent, critical sense and extraordinary energy, for the simple reason he was to some extent his own enemy.
As I had already remarked elsewhere, the breaks in his career came from the States: Spiller, Fiedler, Cleanth Brooks...and the Beat generation poets, etc.
But, most of all, because his "temperament" (which required the support and loyalty of unquestioning progeny) made him in a way quite "destitute" and vulnerable in later life.
As a result, I did what I could for him, but didn't count on his health giving way far too soon.
Not to worry. You have explained in your own way your own reasons for your misunderstanding. Many thanks on behalf of Eric Mottram.
As always, all the best. TW
Limerick: Sleep well all you guys in Authorsden (Poetry) - 11/21/2023 9:48:49 AM
Sorry that you're not resting well. Your life is probably one of the most interesting that I've ever read. And you write about it beautifully. I'm sorry but I don't find poetry a way of life for me but I try to read and interpret as best I can others's poetry. And if I misread what it was intended I don't mind you telling me what it was. The key to good writing is understanding. I'm a simple straightforward reader and often miss the hidden innuendo in someone's masterpiece. That's my fault not yours. Just let it be my mistake
Ron
Limerick: How to hit Ol' Mailer in Head with Hammer (Poetry) - 11/11/2023 7:38:45 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, with all allowances - mental or factual - made in your favour (I was going to say psychological, as well), how do we know if Mailer - indeed a good writer by all accounts - didn't precipitate the "veridical" incidents intentionally. I don't see how he could have borne the hammer-hit which produced the sight of blood streaming down his skull (I grant rugby players suffer similar damage and yet continue playing unless required by the referees to quit the terrain), if he didn't want/provoke the high-voltage tension and drama to take effect before our eyes ! That's probably a stroke of genius, wouldn't you agree ?
The truth most probably is to be found in your suppressed wiliness in planning a film of similar authenticity by side-tracking the issues at stake: namely, using my "limerick" (who says it's not one ?) as a SCENARIO for an OSCAR-winning film of your own !!!
We can settle the endless nit-picking debates in court once and for all if you paid me a "lump-sum", say, a couple of million (I let you choose: euros, greenbacks or 2025-digital non-cash) right away. Failing which, I let you guess your fate.... Best, as usual. TW
Limerick: How to hit Ol' Mailer in Head with Hammer (Poetry) - 11/11/2023 9:40:48 AM
Glad I gave you inspiration to write a poem (limerick?) again.
What I like about the whole affair was that it was not a staged fight with stunt people but a real one between one very angry Rip Torn when he found old Norman Mailer hitting on his wife like he did with every other woman on the retreat. Captive targets for his movie and his lust.
But if you ever read the dual meaning in, A Fire on the Moon, old Norm was a very good writer. Lousy director and film editor.
Ron
Unquotable quotes: Gals, Dolls, Bitches and Broads - XXXVII (Poetry) - 10/10/2023 6:22:17 PM
How astonishingly flabbergasting, Monseigneur Don Ron !!! These "quotes" which are all "unquotable" were - while you were not looking, for you were, I believe, looking the other way at gals or was it broads - stolen from your own memorably mindboggling archives by you know WHO !!! My eternal gratitude, of course, to your Lordship. Best, as always. TW
Unquotable quotes: Gals, Dolls, Bitches and Broads - XXXVII (Poetry) - 10/10/2023 11:26:42 AM
You claim these are quotes but I have no way of knowing who first wrote or stated them.
And I'm unable to understand the relevance of some of the statements offered.
While many women accept the word, gal, with no particular reference, I found out the hard way, that southern black women resent the word very much because it was equivalent to boy when referring to black women, generally considered, as owned, as willing to have sex with their masters at any time the master required, or else!
Ron
Unquotable quotes: Beggars - XXX (Poetry) - 10/4/2023 8:05:54 PM
Again, you're indeed right, Monseigneur, to place the accent on tourism as the mainstay of the French economy. Imagine a situation where, say, the inter-stellar galactic inspection committee wer
e to shift the lattitudes of the country a few degrees westward, then it would be the State which would hang around at street corners with the begging bowl.
I do think you should have also placed the accent on the elected leaders and the style of French hedonism to blame migrants who flock there to partake of the "cérise on the cake".
And what about refugee or migrant intellectuals: aren't they squeezed dry of their know-how to "feather French nests" ?
Thanks for the comment but Paris is NOT Houston! One swallow doesn't make a summer!
Best. TW
r
Unquotable quotes: Beggars - XXX (Poetry) - 10/4/2023 8:25:59 AM
I have not been to Paris, but I can imagine. Paris, particularly in the summer, derives most of its income from tourism. From your poem, Paris also attracts many migrants from various parts of Europe and even Haiti, because the people there speak French and have a French heritage.
Many of these migrants are poor and quickly take advantage of the beggar scene. I would assume it's rather difficult for migrants to find work in the city. But with all the tourists, there's much money to be had from begging and all beggars, as you pointed out, are not what they seem.
I have read of "professional" beggars, mostly young men, in San Francisco and here in Houston where I see very little begging, there was a guy that would stand at major intersections with a sign that said, "Will work for food" or "My family is hungry" collecting money from passing cars. When followed home to his very nice suburban house and family every evening, it was learned that he was making a very good living by begging. But it's not easy, in the hot sun on hard pavement chasing cars with a cup held out to catch dollars in coins.
Ron
And Some Day A Woman by Florent PAGNY and Christophe MAE, a French Elegy (Poetry) - 9/28/2023 6:53:27 PM
Well, in that case, let me oust you out of the dedication, Monseigneur ! Not just I but every able-bodied Man must have thought you were the guy to rely on to put "women" in their proper places - Alas !!!
What d'you mean Pagny and Maé were surrounded by a bevy of bombshells: if they were "belles", they could ONLY be French - savvy ?
Now, I made it very plain that the guys were belting out their threnody in an informal studio recording - unshaved, with no makeup besides. Just copy and paste the URL on to your browser to hit the recording I was talking about. Why ? Because Christophe Maé added his wailing soul-bashing harmonica to this performance. Not to be missed. The harmonica makes ALL the difference... Hurry. Best. TW
P.S. I have changed the wording in places, if you care to check.
And Some Day A Woman by Florent PAGNY and Christophe MAE, a French Elegy (Poetry) - 9/27/2023 8:35:02 AM
Beautiful words. Both while sung by those two talented men and from your translation of the lyrics. The version I saw had photos of many beautiful (French?) women in beautiful tranquil settings, many of them near water.
That statement was made by my Lutheran minister marriage counselor, not me.
Ron
Eric Mottram's letter and poem from Gröningen to Wignesan in Berlin,4/2/58 (Poetry) - 9/3/2023 8:16:45 AM
I have read Eric's poem and it reads like what I have called my "nonsense" poems. Merely strings of words that go together well in the poet's mind, but cannot be interpreted except by those steeped in this kind of very abstract poetry, similar to paintings or music that also have no other purpose than insider critical review.
The essence of greatness is communicating something. The letter he wrote to you communicated well. Maybe just a thought or line is an epic poem. But if the poet only writes to his or her own ego or ardent followers, what good is it?
Based on his poem, I would hate to attend one of his off-the-wall, in the cave, lectures. Going away from the lecture shaking my head and saying to myself, another hour listening to an idiot rant and waste my time.
Ron
Radically Chinese, dedicated to Eric Mottram, not because of any debt... (Poetry) - 8/5/2023 3:59:47 AM
Monseigneur, once again you are RIGHT for the WRONG reasons. No-one will blâme you for NOT understanding the words, though the TITLE explains it all. You have to know CHINESE and know something about Chinese characters, that is, RADICALS, etc. to be able to make any sense of the poem at all. In any case, it is NOT RAP: an "inside" poem, maybe. Tough luck, Ron, but thanks all the same. Best. TW.
Villanelle: Is there ever a moment when reason reigns (Poetry) - 7/30/2023 9:26:32 AM
Trust you, Monseigneur Ron, to say the RIGHT thing WRONG or ererrrrer...the WRONG thing RIGHT ! You're indeed one of the most intelligent anywhere and no-one will grudge you their sympathy-empathy whether they can see straight or not, but I can never understand (pardon the intrusion in your private life) WHY you don't live with your family and enjoy the rustic calm of the backwoods (your 19th Century immigrant family were/are farmers, you say) in the midst of moos and cackles and gobbledigooks (fresh milk and eggs and cheese) every morn ? Everybody will be glad - most of all your own kin-folk - even if strangers, as you say, are most kind.
Right now you are in sévère trouble: your HEART-THROB - ROSALIA in a fresh video is mis-behaving with a tattooed-over fella, kissing him all over the place - even posing naked (backside-view) in the bed-room ! I know why. She's trying hard to let you know she won't stand for being neglected by you any longer; that's why she's flirting with her new suitor openly. His name RAUW ALEJANDRO. The way to win her back is to get yourself tattooed all over. including you know where. Hurry up! Best. TW
Villanelle: Is there ever a moment when reason reigns (Poetry) - 7/29/2023 9:05:38 AM
The world may be going to hell in a hand basket. But most of my friends and especially, strangers, have treated me well throughout life. It is only when belonging to organizations, like where one works, where conditions can come up that are untenable, but endured if one wants to get a reasonable pension and retire.
Ron
Villanelle: When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide (Poetry) - 7/16/2023 3:55:06 AM
Monseigneur Don Ron, you got your teeth into the meat of the poem even if other aims and concepts like Master Kung's authoritarian infra-structure were targetted. Never mind, and thanks very much for the willingness to emphasise the uselessness of shoring-up national territories, etc. Let the fanatics rave while they still can: their final resting place will be the rotting-rusting dung heap of history ! Best. TW
Villanelle: When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide (Poetry) - 7/15/2023 8:58:41 AM
You are so right. War is nothing other than sanctioned murder. And when little children and women are involved, we simply and conveniently call it, "collateral damage," as though some property had been inadvertently damaged, rather than human lives taken or maimed.
Quite often, the death of a loved one, results in an attempt at revenge. Evidence shows that throughout history and even prehistory, human beings have warred either from revenge or territory, well described in the book, The Territorial Imperative. It is hard to break that cycle we have have been in since before recorded history. And we are now in possession of weapons of mass killing. Like the baseball field, if we have them, will we use them?
Is not capital punishment, but revenge? Should we just kill war criminals like we are Islamic terrorist leaders? Who knows when the violence will stop.
Your poem illustrates well how we honor and elevate our hired killers.
Ron
Rule One by Eric Mottram: 'Stop writing LITERATURE, you garrulous Indian!' (Poetry) - 7/11/2023 6:12:15 PM
Monseigneur Ron, looks like I missed this comment of yours, so I feel I should add a word or two to make up for your sense of concern for others. Yes, Eric was a man way out of the ordinary, and yet he was appreciated mostly in the United States. He was the recipient of the American Learned Society's Award in 1965, that is for a year lecturing and meeting up with poets, writers and academics from coast to coast - though he was not required to do any teaching - and he returned later to tech at Kent State University in 1968.
Just before he passed away, I started a campaign to have him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the secretary of the Nobel Committee informed me - without hesitation - that the nomination was recorded for the very year in which he passed away. Nominations are fixed and finalised in the month of January, so you see how unlucky he was !
Yet, he was a man of drastic contradictions, and any Chinese face-reader would place him in a special category: his Fa-ling lines were the "Flying Serpent entering the Mouth" ! Thanks. TW
Villanelle : Everything’s just much too much and fudge far too far (Poetry) - 7/7/2023 7:37:47 PM
No, not right, Monseigneur Senor Don Ron ! But since Your Lordship says so, it must be RIGHT by hook or by crook !!! At the least, it gave you an unique opportunity to run your country down. Hope the Powers-that-Be over there will let the lave go by considering the yeoman's service you are rendering forlorn poets. Just a hint: my villanelle's about the immutable laws propounded by the Yi Jing...Never mind, just carry on. As usual my heartfelt thanks (and lest I forget, hope you had a rollicking time during July-the-Fourth festivities) for the time you take to bother about others. Every good wish. TW
Villanelle : Everything’s just much too much and fudge far too far (Poetry) - 7/7/2023 8:56:52 AM
Yes, things have certainly been fudged too far. Especially in France where occasional riots are becoming commonplace while here in the good old US we just stare at one another across the aisle and never get anything done, right.
Ron
Translation of René Char's Jeu Muet by TW (Poetry) - 5/27/2023 8:30:16 PM
"Leaving me a legacy of crooked teeth and multiple neck fractures I saw in a 1990 x-ray, leading to a growth on my spine of excess bone impinging on my esophagus. " - Truely, Monseigneur, I've never read of such a FATE in the hands of LIFE ! Since 1990 at that !!!! What happened to ALL the helpers: family members, boarders, paid servers, faithful woman, neighbours, etc. ???
Each of US thinks he has it bad, WORSE than the others, but your case béats it ALL !!! Yes, Monseigneur, you deserve to be remembered a thousand years from hence - though that seems unlikely for technical reasons: climate change due to NATIONAL human avarice (or better still ALIEN interference out of intergalactic chastisement over Man's inhumanity to the MASSES) and what else: PRIDE of SUPREMACY of the PATRIE/MY COUNTRY/MY RACE/MY ETHNIE over ALL others and so on and on... and of course the PRIMAL CAUSE: "MY (only)GOD superior to your
IMPOSTER god", etc., etc.
And just so that you don't get away with MURDER over trans-gendering language: DENTS means
"teeth" and LEVRES means "lips" alright. Watch out, you too might have to use your lips sooner or later for the lip-service you render AD poets!!! Best. TW
Translation of René Char's Jeu Muet by TW (Poetry) - 5/27/2023 10:45:24 AM
Thanks for the translation. René begins with, "With my teeth…" And then ends the stanza with, "Only with, my lips." Unless something was lost in translation those two phrases contradict one another.
One time, in 1967, I tried to buy a Facel Vega advertised in the San Francisco Chronicle. But I wasn't able to reach the seller.
Incidentally, with my hands unable to grip, I often "seized life" with my teeth… Opening stubborn bottle tops, lifting 50 pounds bags of soil or mulch from the ground or my car trunk so that I could grasp them with my arms. Leaving me a legacy of crooked teeth and multiple neck fractures I saw in a 1990 x-ray, leading to a growth on my spine of excess bone impinging on my esophagus.
Thank you for introducing me to René Char.
Ron
Is the Exile a traditional un-simplified Chinese Pictogram hanging on an u (Poetry) - 4/19/2023 7:46:08 AM
Hey, Lady-Liz, whadya mean "short poem": it's the longest single poem on AD running North-South, but not like the Chinese, from the Equator down. The wise Chinese go North-South-East-West, while the rest go West-East-Mid-Down. You are forgiven for the rest of your remarks. Thanks. Hope you get the fella you found to reciprocate - the blind-bat hanging down-up!
As for Monseigneur, ever since I. sent you Rosalia's beach tantrums with her over-sized nothing-much-to-do but eat family, your neurones must be in the right places; now she has another message for in "I like you love me!" (She sings it in English). Hurry and tune in. You're still the mostest IQ performer on AD ("Mine seems to have waned a bit." - only a bit, after all the lecherous horsing around...As usual, your comments hit right into the dart board of high scoring milli-metred sense. Cheer up, Monseigneur - not everybody can reach out so far and wide and yet keep their equilibrium in pain. Keep plowing, Ol' Man( -as Rosalia says: it's all in the "Otro la(d)o"! Best. TW
Is the Exile a traditional un-simplified Chinese Pictogram hanging on an u (Poetry) - 4/18/2023 1:16:58 PM
I much enjoy the images created by your long line of not often used words describing what exile means to you, like a ship to nowhere. And your perfect illustration of the loss of Chinese pictograms. Perhaps referring to centering that takes place when literature does not meet the required state norm. Exiled pieces of literature tend to thrive in underground places.
A lot to ponder from your prodigious brain. Do you still have it in 2023? Mine seems to have waned a bit.
Ron
Is the Exile a traditional un-simplified Chinese Pictogram hanging on an u (Poetry) - 4/18/2023 1:18:47 AM
Good to see something of yours posted again Sir T. I enjoyed this short poem in a long, sleek form. Influence pedaling. That’s a great phrase. We mostly use that kind of manipulation in love and war, for whatever reason it is not a good feeling to be subjected to it, but we all use it.
COPLA TREINTA Y TRES: This Bad Guy World - in all seriousness - 33 (Poetry) - 3/27/2023 11:40:29 PM
Hi Tom ! I just came across your comment by chance. That's the question, WHY? There's no way any HU-MAN/WOMAN can tell, but "WE" are good at justifying the CREATION since WE have brains. Like the BUDDHA did: LIFE on earth is full of suffering, so he devised the "WHY" - the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS and the EIGHT-FOLD PATH leading to its extinction, but then there's no fun in living... He himself a Prince left a dutiful princess of a wife and son and donned beggars' garments to die of trichinosis having eaten a pork dish prepared by his followers. Worst still, his followers made a God of him centuries after his passing and reduced his teachings (mainly reforming Hinduist ideals and aims) - all to no avail in the end. Best to Madame as well. TW
Villanelle: Whose condition is the worst everyone asks, for John McCormick (Poetry) - 2/23/2023 7:43:28 PM
Hi Guys, you give me goose pimples. No, really, you do. "Ta' veri mooch !" (That's East-London Cockney in the fifties.) I've just added an anecdote on encountering Professor McCormick for the very last time. If you care to, do please take a peek. Thanks a lot. Best. TW
Villanelle: Whose condition is the worst everyone asks, for John McCormick (Poetry) - 2/22/2023 9:04:20 AM
Yes, it is really unfortunate when those with power hold it so tightly they have no compassion to understand why someone may be disenfranchised and in need of help to move on. You have me wondering where you would be now had you allowed Prof. McCormick to help you.
I have experienced both, but only in later years. It seemed the more disabled I became, the sharper the teeth were that demanded my blood.
In contrast, I can think of many professors and superiors in industry and academia who valued me for what I was worth and mentored me a great deal. I recall a situation similar to yours where I declined the offer to stay with a man, who within three years after I left him to go back to my alma mater and teach, became vice president of international marketing for GTE and I would've been traveling many countries with him and learning so much more about the world.
Ron
Villanelle: Whose condition is the worst everyone asks, for John McCormick (Poetry) - 2/22/2023 1:36:31 AM
That is a good question. Machiavellian leadership is a thankful research area because of the fact that these personalities are at the top of all organisations where they manipulate and trample on others to look better themselfes. Well written.
Too late for making amends, for T. Ganesan,1931-1985 (Poetry) - 2/20/2023 11:37:38 PM
I know how and why you thought T. Ganesan was me in my younger days. Naughty, Naughty Monseigneur !!! He was my elder brother by a year and nine months which in Adlerian psychological terms of the constellation of siblings spells doom for the 'older' brother for the younger will butt and overtake the elder brother. This is what happened at the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur. But then, I looked up to him in the absence of a father killed by the invading Japanese, and we were the best of friends even if he found himself in a disabused and untenable situation while I shouldered all along a guilt-complex. What made things more difficult for him was the lack of sponsorship of gifted sportsmen/women - unlike in America - in the British system. As every sportsman was aware, one had to make it big in his teens or at the latest during his twenties. He had to support himself in menial jobs: cook, building-construction worker, swimming-pool attendant, driver of trains in the bowels of the London Underground, etc., while finding time to keep up some kind of field activity. Gradually, depression took over his hopes at becoming a full-time professional sportsman: he would not seek medical aid for his injuries or failing eyesight soon enough. Just before turning fifty, he said: "If only someone had put a tennis raquet in my hands when I was a teen..." All Malaysians instead played badminton, for we were the Champions of the World in the postwar years. Tough luck, Ganesh !!!
Too late for making amends, for T. Ganesan,1931-1985 (Poetry) - 2/20/2023 10:34:52 AM
You are fantastic at writing obituaries of the great. What a sportsman, T. Genevan was. At first I thought that picture was of you in younger years.
Ron
Poems Omega Minus: Parts One to Five (Poetry) - 2/9/2023 11:52:24 AM
Oh dear. This seems to be the tale of a regretfull man, ashamed of his actions, that finally come to the conclusion that all he wants in life is what he can’t have, or at least haven’t gotten yet. Or maybe I’m just projecting, wide open as I am in my writing, turning myself inside out for all to see, when I really don’t want to be seen at all. Anyways, a fantastic poem! It had me by the throath from the first line, to the last. And it’s not just flattering. I sincerely think that you are the best poet I’ve read this far here on AD. 🫶
Now you are put to rest, for Jean Franco - 1907 - 1992 (Poetry) - 2/8/2023 11:00:15 PM
Many thanks to both you "un-repentable" flatterers ! There's just an anecdote I'd like to add for your greater edification:
Franco's wife, a tall beautiful Nordic-looking distinguished and dignified lady, had come looking for me some years later for she wanted me to find a gardener to work her cloistered back-garden for it had become infested with wildly-growing weeds. I happened to cross the street just before nearing the old medieval Church (in the pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostella in Spain) in the centre of Fresnes-94.
I actually saw Franco striving on his rickety old bicycle up the gradient, and no sooner I gained the sidewalk opposite, I bumped into Madame Franco. She said she saw Franco, too, on the bicycle in his dark pullover and black gym-longs. Not for the first time, though!
The typescript of the poem was allowed to be placed on Franco's casket. She wanted a translation into French that I never got round to doing (miserable me), so years later I went looking for her and to my great surprise, no member of her family (her son(-in-law ?) a police inspector at Bordeaux, his wife and Franco's grand-daughter - a replica of her grand-mother) were alive ! [Franco had a family on the sly (whom I got to know on visits at the sick-bed, and the present owner of the residence said they had gone to live in the Swiss-French Alps.]
Just a word about the A.A.S. Fresnes Tennis Club. A wholly reserved and self-taught Algerian ranked some 200 on the ATP, and what's worse, he beat Carlos Moya ranked 30. Likewise an under-eighteen: Moreau (I think by name), living close by in Rungis, was the Champion - at seventeen - of the World in her category; yet her professional career ended then and there. Freak out, Ladies and Gentlemen, s'il vous plaît !!! Best. TW
Now you are put to rest, for Jean Franco - 1907 - 1992 (Poetry) - 2/8/2023 3:21:26 PM
You are very adept at writing poetic obituaries. This one is a brilliant example of how you made a man much greater than the man he was.
You are bringing back these death stories to share with us perhaps because you think that your time is coming. Which makes me wonder if there is someone that you know that knows you well enough to write such brilliant words about you that you have done for others.
Ron
Villanelle: Is this a Sport or some kind of psychotic hoax (Poetry) - 2/8/2023 1:30:39 AM
All play for the Love of sport, sometimes it's lost, but always will find it's way back. As usual, with just a few words you paint a big picture that I can see within.
Now you are put to rest, for Jean Franco - 1907 - 1992 (Poetry) - 2/7/2023 12:34:05 PM
I've come back to read this several times, and it keeps growing on me. I like the dreamy quality of it. I don't know if that is your meaning with it, but none the less I can see the surroundings, the characters, their display of body language and facial expressions before my minds eye sort of like I see things I dream about. You have made the life of Jean Franco, as it was lived when you knew him and his character visible for me. Great work! When will we get to read some recent poetry from you?
Brahman Nemesis: Dedicated to the most humble of all Humanists D. Barenboim (Poetry) - 2/3/2023 10:31:15 PM
It's a privilege to have you guys drop by to empty your bags on my clean sheet. Now I have work to do disinfecting the terrain with bleach and
reinforced elbow greese...
Hi Tom/Hi Ron, don't blame you for not getting it all in in one sweep. If the original layout were perceptible, I guess you would have had less trouble holding on to the chaff...
It's the old story - as old as the Story of Man - of the "blessed few" (read as the "Chosen Few" in their own reckoning) who have managed to usurp power while the Divine Lord was taking a nap (of course) to rule the World (and may be the Uni/Multi-Verse), the case of the tiny minority lording it over the vast majority, as always.
Thank you ever so much, Tom and Monseigneur Ron. TW
Brahman Nemesis: Dedicated to the most humble of all Humanists D. Barenboim (Poetry) - 2/3/2023 11:25:51 AM
If I'm reading you right, you are showing the power of superstitious religion over the people who are true believers based on the mantra and continual repetition of the tenets of faith. The hypocrisy of the Brahmans in the subcontinent and the hypocrisy of the nouveau riche and the rest of the world claiming the religion of self-centered conspicuous consumption.
Oh, how the untouchables have suffered down through the ages!
Ron
On hearing that Ronnie - for Ronald Hindmarsh 1930-1992 (Poetry) - 2/2/2023 4:28:17 AM
I can see before me your friend Ronnie letting in the warm wind from the street, I can see you dreaming back in time, writing this lovely eulogy to keep the memory alive.
For Old Star-Gazer Master Khayyam - a name like Shakespeare's for some othe (Poetry) - 1/29/2023 10:20:19 PM
So good to hear from you both very brainy poets. I was about to prolong the conversations at the station-messages while waiting for the "toot-toot ALL aboard" signal when I realized the destination remains just where we are at. All the same, here's the inchoate response I projected as an "hair-brained" retort:
"There's nothing really to thank me about, Lady! We are ALL in the same rocking boat. Those who panic capsize the boat, and no-one can blame them for behaving berserk. If only the "boat" were a raft, ALL might cling to one another for the danger would be more evident with sharks and piranas swiveling around."
Monseigneur Ron, I did deal with the destruction of possible "great works" during wars if you care to check. As usual, your comments do you proud. Muchissimos gracias, Liz and Ron. TW
For Old Star-Gazer Master Khayyam - a name like Shakespeare's for some othe (Poetry) - 1/29/2023 5:05:34 AM
Dark, haunting and beautiful. Oh might we ask of the lost text of Aristotle cast in a hard disk? :) I much enjoyed reading this, because it manages to make me rethink choices, ponder upon my intentions and also made me chuckle once in a while out of the pure cleverness and irony in the symbols you choose to convey your message.
For Old Star-Gazer Master Khayyam - a name like Shakespeare's for some othe (Poetry) - 1/28/2023 11:35:26 AM
Oh esteemed poet, you doth write omni potent pieces worth remembering! Like your reminding us of the giants upon which all of our literature is standing, based on writing from cuneiform all the way down to the present, preserved in ancient texts, some of which haven't been discovered yet, to reveal their stories.
But, those are stories of the elite, either from kings or conquerors, or their chosen scribes. Who knows what the common people thought or wrote. Most were destroyed by constant wars and pillage. And most were merely bragging, exaggerated tales of little or no consequence when compared with what actually happened from other sources.
But they are worth the read, especially Khayyam. Thanks for shedding new light on him and many others that have influenced your body of work, still producing after that prediction of your bodily death way back in 1996.
Ron
And the Best of the Night to you, too, Bala... (Poetry) - 1/25/2023 11:40:08 AM
Oh, poet, you sure know how to write an obituary that rings true with your linguistic talents for the reader to savor. He died young, but your words immortalized him.
Ron
On hearing that Ronnie - for Ronald Hindmarsh 1930-1992 (Poetry) - 1/5/2023 11:54:20 AM
From what I've read, you made me feel like I knew the man in all of his nuances and settings. It makes for great reading at great literature at the same time. I'm glad that you resurrected this memory that you have of him from so long ago.
Best wishes for the New Year!
Ron
On hearing that Ronnie - for Ronald Hindmarsh 1930-1992 (Poetry) - 1/3/2023 8:01:15 PM
Hi Tom, it's embarrassingly difficult to refrain from commenting on your remarks but even more self-deprecating to respond at all: the dilemma is too finely-cut to be worth contemplating.
I know you mean well just as your own takes on the viscissitudes of the failings in "human nature" reveal so often. At your best - now and then - you cannot be rivaled or equaled. Now, I have said a mouthful. I do hope you'll keep posting your gems.
The VERY Best of the YEAR to the BOSS-LADY (best to let her take the BIGGER portion) and to yourself as well. Yours, TW
Villanelle: Is this a Sport or some kind of psychotic hoax (Poetry) - 12/11/2022 3:09:38 PM
This's the upteenth time you say how repetition in the lilting lines of villanelles annoys you, and yet your comment on Sattler's poem this week says...
'and in the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel, repetition works on the brain nicely to embed the feeling in long-term memory.
Ron'
And what's the difference, Monseigneur, between "soccer" and "futball", if I might ask. TW
Villanelle: Is this a Sport or some kind of psychotic hoax (Poetry) - 12/11/2022 10:00:00 AM
Your poem is part of the culture of most of the world except the United States. American style football is king here with soccer rather than fútbol. But fútbol is growing in popularity especially when the United States ranks high among the FIFA.
While soccer is a simpler game, I'm not really familiar with the rules and find the low-scoring matches boring.
I know you seem to favor the Villanelle format, I find the reputation annoying to read.
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - XII Part One (Poetry) - 12/6/2022 9:18:47 AM
So that's where you've been! Caught up in the World Cup for days and days. Do not understand all the fanatical frenzy. But I guess it's a bit safer than war unless you happen to be caught in the middle of one of those angry mobs that once in a while burst into action causing great mayhem. Sometimes, even death among crazy loyal fans.
Probably making time stand still. I don'a know.
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - XI (Poetry) - 11/15/2022 9:51:46 AM
Probably not. Thanks to your little hint, I finally figured out what this is all about. You have drawn from great literature some quotes that refer to events involving time. The effect is because they capture a moment in time, they delay time from moving on and if they are great, they are timeless.
Just as Orson Welles, seems to be. With his work, delaying for a moment the loss of the 20th century in time.
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - X (Poetry) - 10/19/2022 8:00:24 PM
Monseigneur, here's a link to Rosalia's "Despecha": hope the viewing will keep the neurons in their proper places and dispel ill-conceived "piques".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g2hT4GmAGU
Incidentally, it's a crime to infiltrate other peoples' computers and contribute to their malfunction - without permission. Best. TW
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - X (Poetry) - 10/16/2022 10:05:16 AM
How many fairies dance on the tip of Occam's razor? It is time for the Master to snuff them all out. "Out damn spot!" Enough of this nonsense. Time is just a tool. A simple tool and all of this gobbledygook about it as some kind of philosophy does not change the science. Period.
BTW, pro wrestling is timeless. While repeatedly proven to be fake, it's avid fans have only grown down through the centuries of its existence to the point where former wrassler Dewayne Johnson is favored to become president. Isn't that just peachy?
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - IX (Poetry) - 10/12/2022 7:41:06 AM
Many thanks, Monseigneur, for the comment, but not for the Chambers Brothers 1968 "noise" performance. I have booked a rendez-vous with my Ear-Nose-and-Throat specialist to find ways to repair the damage to my inner-ear tympans. Expect to receive the bill soon. Hope you are doing as well as you did before 1968. Every good wish. TW
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - IX (Poetry) - 10/11/2022 9:11:19 AM
I spotted a whole bunch of my favorite phrases like, "You can check out all you want, but you can never leave!" How's that for being caught in a time warp!
But perhaps the best song that I've heard about catching time while it's hot is this one By the Chambers Brothers… Got to see them perform it live and the Pleasanton California fairgrounds in August 1968.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLlown9_G3w
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - VIII (Poetry) - 10/9/2022 9:26:15 AM
The US Congress finally realized that switching to daylight savings time DST every year and then changing back was idiotic because it actually caused a lot of turmoil in business losing lots of money for the economy. Farmers and their cows are very grateful that we are on DST year-round now I don't have to do that idiotic change twice a year, throwing everything off.
Time runs the wheels of commerce. So there's nothing really idiotic about time. Except of course those obsessed with time like the Mad Hatter
You slipped a few chuckles into this one. But your humor is a little dry and British centered.
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - VII (Poetry) - 10/6/2022 11:33:22 AM
I was confused about what time had to do with East or West until I read M-D 11. As far as the rest of it goes…
I love Salvador Dali's work for the way that he reshapes familiar objects and always includes a drooping watch here or there giving the impression that time has been warped. Insane?
Likewise, while I haven't read a lot of his more than 100 books, I have read Opus 100. It appears to me that he did have a frantic ability to write numerous books depicting our past and future that may or may not become true. Robots are certainly here and are much better at being prompt and efficient when it comes to time on the assembly line. Never miss a beat.
As for Picasso, that's another story.
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Questioin - VI (Poetry) - 10/2/2022 8:56:19 AM
I got a kick out of M-D 6 and 7 responses. Since we measure time basically based on the rotation of the earth on its axis, time might theoretically end when the sun growing into a red giant would consume us in approximately 5 billion years from now. By that time, we should have figured out a lifeboat to get us off of our doomed planet to some other planet that is younger in the universe where there are countless planets to serve us.
But all of this philosophical mumbo-jumbo from the Master, except for astrophysics, is meaningless for us right now to ponder with our short lifespan of less than 125 years (our time).
Since the Master's response at the end of this presentation is the same as the first, I assume that this thread of discussion has ended. Thank goodness!
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - V (Poetry) - 10/1/2022 12:38:46 PM
It is either time to stop reading or time for reading. I'm beginning to prefer the former as their string of questions and idiotic answers continues on and on and on… To infinity?
Ron
The ZEN-KOAN as Poem - The Same Question - IV (Poetry) - 9/29/2022 9:37:48 AM
Like a river, time does not repeat, but flows on continuously. However, as your disciples clearly point out, repetition seems still have a life of its own largely because life itself is mostly repetitive rhythms based on the travels of our close in celestial bodies. Our rotation around the sun, our rotation on our access, and the rotation and phases of the moon rotating around us.
Some very clever references like to succor and feet-ball.
Ron
The Zen-Koan as Poem - The Same Question - III (Poetry) - 9/28/2022 11:08:48 PM
Thank you very, very much, Lady and Gents, for taking the trouble to read and comment on what is really "nothing". Much obliged. Come again, you're more than welcome ! Best. Wignesan
The Zen-Koan as Poem - The Same Question - III (Poetry) - 9/28/2022 3:37:21 PM
ahahaha i can relate to answer number 1 and that is true for me. answer number 5 was mindblowing. looking forward on the next set of answers to the master's question.
The Zen-Koan as Poem - The Same Question - III (Poetry) - 9/28/2022 9:58:49 AM
I had to laugh at some of these solutions to the question.
How about this one? Time's running because it is needed to determine how long it takes runners to run a race seeking first place.
Runny (my alternate name when I'm running)
Ron
The Zen-Koan as Poem - The Same Question - II (Poetry) - 9/27/2022 8:40:23 AM
There have been a couple of times in my life when time stood still. So all of those other stupid disciple answers are wrong. Your Zen Master, like all masters, is followed by idiots. So what does the Zen Master do about all the idiots answers? He asks another question, never giving an answer to the previous question.
Ron
The Zen-Koan as Poem - The Same Question - II (Poetry) - 9/26/2022 11:34:01 PM
i most especially loved monk disciple 11. he made me chuckle with his superb answer. he has an awesome point.
The ZEN-KOAN as poem - Same Question - I (Poetry) - 9/25/2022 8:51:55 AM
I guess that's why I'm not into Zen. The master asked a stupid question and got stupid answers. So he followed with three more stupid questions?
How do you stop time from running? First, go to sleep. While you were sleeping time was not running. Only when you wake up and look at the clock, do you find out that time changed. But for a final answer. You stop time running when you die. After you die, time means nothing.
Ron
Career for Nachiketas born 1968 in the year of upheavals (Poetry) - 9/24/2022 11:47:23 PM
Thank you very much, Ron, but what have you and the Kuala Lumpur Victoria Institution page-keeper "owners" of the school in common??? Perhaps a common interest in taking me for a ride ?
Unquotable Quotes: FRIENDS - XV - XVI (Poetry) - 9/23/2022 7:03:46 AM
Thank you very much, Friends, for your friendly comments on my most un-friendly quotable quotes on friends.
Could some friend kindly advice me on what Monseigneur Don Ron is warbling about ? Would be much obliged for the friendly gesture. Thanks in advance. Wignesan
On the Beach - Translation of Etiemble's Sur la plage by T. Wignesan (Poetry) - 9/22/2022 9:37:39 AM
An interesting read Mister 'T"- I'd have to say after reading. it's stark realism not comforting to read, but real . you always put things in a slam at your senses and generates some interesting thinking.
Unquotable Quotes: FRIENDS - XV - XVI (Poetry) - 9/21/2022 10:38:01 AM
That last one was a zinger! I see why some of these are un-quotable some of them are just plain un-understandable. Some are deplorable and some are adorable. I better quit warbling while I'm ahead.
Ron
Unquotable Quotes: FRIENDS - XV - XVI (Poetry) - 9/20/2022 7:00:56 AM
I like the friends and presents quote. it made me laugh. reminded me that when friends give you one on your birthday or christmas, it is kinda expected that you reciprocate.
Translation of René Etiemble's poem: Narration française (Poetry) - 9/18/2022 4:14:32 PM
Nature has made you the plaything of her desires, simply loved this line from a character of strength and power. thank you for sharing this.
Translation of René Etiemble's poem: Narration française (Poetry) - 9/17/2022 12:34:22 PM
You are absolutely right, René had remarkable majority for only being 12 years old. Makes one wonder what was in all those other burned pages lost to humanity.
Ron
Akbar, the Great 1542 - 1605 (Poetry) - 9/15/2022 8:06:30 PM
wow. i'm fairly new to this and that was quite an introduction. i feel like a lil' child hearing a new story, made me curious abt diff tales and stories of him. thank you for this piece.
The Rhine Salmon Complaint, Transl of Etiemble’s Complainte d’un salmon (Poetry) - 9/12/2022 3:57:33 PM
Neither of us, Alexander Shaumyan, are quite right in the translation of "complainte" from the French, to be quite frank. Frankly nor is Etiemble in having chosen this word for the biological inner compulsion of salmons in their indomitable urge to reach their spawning grounds. The choice of lieu - the Rhine - seemingly only serves to illustrate the obstacles salmons have to face in their upstream struggle; "amont" as opposed to "aval". LAMENT, your choice, according to the Oxford ALD: "A song, poem or other expression of great sadness for somebody who has died or for somethinhg that has ended" wouldn't fit the cap, nor my almost literal translation of "complainte" with its juridical overtones. Etiemble in fact (verifiable in tone in the text) adjusts his words to the trials and tribulations (to use a handy cliché) encountered by the salmons in their "amont" (up-mountain) climb to fulfill the culmination of probably their ingrained ADN codes, a struggle which is accentuated by the Lorelei's wail of enticing distraction. His poem is in fact a PAEAN. Ron here stresses the point I make though. Thanks to both.
The Partitioned Wailing Wall for Alain Painter (Poetry) - 9/8/2022 10:24:02 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, this time you put your foot in your mouth alright.
Is "catfish" another "surnom" for the "siluroid", the largest freshwater fish in Europe ? You may after all be right calling me a "madman", especially imputing to my persona the glory of having waged war on Hitler !!!
Am I that old? Yes, indeed, for I remember well my maternal grandmother in the South-Asian sub-continent relating/describing the surreal psychedelic colours on the skies over a prolonged period of time after the Krakatua eruption. No fear, it will erupt again. The Malaysian-Indonesian archipelago have for a long time now - decades - been clouded over/stifled periodically with illegal forest fires the way the Amazon lungs of the World have been punctured by big-time tree-tumblers with burgeoning bank balances - with hefty sums finding their way into the pockets of thugs.
Thanks a lot, Shaumyan, for the cheery line!
The Partitioned Wailing Wall for Alain Painter (Poetry) - 9/8/2022 11:01:21 AM
That was quite a poem! Either by a madman or a genius. I didn't know you fought Hitler. But there's a lot I don't know. I believe that all, even the image of the huge catfish, like the ones I saw in the midst of bustling, uncaring Bangkok where I saw them breathing air from a bridge over one of the many canals that were soon to be covered over for the convenience of traffic and necessary land for building on to ruin the city the way it once was, beautiful and clean.
Only one thing. Krakatoa does not lie in rest. It is rebuilding and will blow again putting all of Malaysia and that part of the world in great danger. It's only a matter of time. No use wailing at the wall. Just built high out of the tsunami.
Ron
Unquotable quotes - XXII (22) (Poetry) - 8/30/2022 2:29:16 AM
"If philosophy is the underpinning of all Western culture, then why are philosophy courses given so little stature in universities?" Eminently the right question to ask from your native standpoint.
The answer may be gleaned, Monseigneur Don Ron, from the refusal of a people - to stretch a point - to use their brains to the hilt. Let's admit it, human beings are the most cuddled, protected and spoilt of all of the living species so much so that laziness and stupor easily set in when they have to fend for themselves. And if a culture imputes greater importance to brawn rather than "a sound mind in a sound body" (mens sana in corpore sano - did I get that right?), the result is what you get: imbalance in the "two culture conundrum". Elsewhere "philosophy" (logical thinking) has always been rated as an ultimate aim in life, a pursuit that goes on without end.The two cultures are equally and evenly balanced: If "astrophysics" is the "King" of all science subjects, "Philosophy" is the "Queen" of all the Arts.
Unquotable quotes - XXII (22) (Poetry) - 8/29/2022 10:44:12 AM
Quite a few gems in these. How many philosophers' brains did you have to pick to acquire them all?
If philosophy is the underpinning of all Western culture, then why are philosophy courses given so little stature in universities? Those that teach philosophy courses are the lowest paid professors in the United States. Their salaries generally mean living in their cars, if they have one, or on University property in housing meant for students. While next to the CEOs of universities, chancellors (a highfalutin corporate name), the athletic directors and coaches (teachers?) make the most money, followed by professors of medicine, pharmacy, law engineering, etc. All of whom have consultancies and book deals to keep them rolling in dough.
Ron
Soul Genocide (Poetry) - 8/25/2022 12:16:18 AM
I thought I'd be doing myself a favour if I drew your attention to this quatrain in the poem:
The last wise man who stood apart
...for four noble truths in eight paths
...for what may he have gone away
If prophets rain and never depart
Somehow the Buddha failed to see that the Sangha (the organization of his followers into a whole would somehow turn into a body centuries later to make of him a "God") he created or allowed to grow would eventually perpetuate his teachings as God-given when, in my view, they were the workings of a mind without vanity or wilfullness, and which the Christian Church appropriated centuries later as their own God-given Gospel.
I had the privilege to see the exposition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the British Museum, during 1963/64, placing both Buddhist and Christian teachings side by side. I wish you (not Ron) had had that singular opportunity.
What a World in which we live !!! Not trying to be clever though. Best to all. Wignesan
Soul Genocide (Poetry) - 8/24/2022 9:28:54 AM
You ask a lot of questions in this deeply philosophical poem without question marks. But the answers seem quite clear. All of the religions down through the ages have claimed souls as their own with often brutal, cultish rituals of naught. We cannot predict the future the way the religions of the world have simplified it for the masses. But we do know, from science, how this world will end eventually and we may actually know the precise time in the near future. That is the scary part that isn't really philosophical at all.
Ron
Soul Genocide (Poetry) - 8/24/2022 12:42:06 AM
if prophets rain and never depart, i love this line. Iam a self proclaimed prophet, but only in my own life. thank you for letting us read this piece, much enjoyed.
The Frog, Transl. of Etiemble's La Grenouille by T. Wignesan (Poetry) - 8/22/2022 10:02:35 PM
"Perhaps it is better in the original French?" Monseigneur Don Ron, you are asking for trouble...badly, aren't you? You are implying (snidely) that my French is not good enough to translate a man I had known from February 1973 (I was nominated to the National Centre for Scientific Research on his recommandation, for your info), and even if I had added the original French quintet, would you have been able to judge whether I got the translation right???
Besides, you got something mixed-up, for which you deserve to be called by your other title bestowed by me: "Miss-Reade-Ron". Etiemble, his second wife Jeannine Kohn and her son from a previous marriage have long passed away. Only the adopted Vietnamese daughter is alive.
I have half a mind to post the original poem in French, but I can't do that without permission, so you'll have to trust in my ability to translate French into English, even if I merely "picked up" the language - never studied it!!! Okay, Ron.
The Frog, Transl. of Etiemble's La Grenouille by T. Wignesan (Poetry) - 8/22/2022 11:10:52 AM
I must admit that I do not see the connection between the frog and the son and daughter of the original poet. Perhaps it is better in the original French?
It is toads that have a kind of antifreeze in their blood that they use while they are frozen in water or mud throughout the winter to keep alive. Frogs, however, do not have that protection and rely on eggs and tadpoles from those eggs to repopulate ponds every year after the winter freeze.
Perhaps he thinks his daughter will come back from the dead. I don't know.
Ron
Bikku under the Bodhi Tree (Poetry) - 8/20/2022 10:35:35 AM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don Ron ! Top of the morning to you. You'll gratefully note I've added some notes for your greater Enlightenment.
The curious question here: Aren't you taking grave chances with your furious followers splitting their spleen on my comment to your "splendid" almost one breathless-sentence poem, "Reaching the Top"???
I fear for you, Friend, for one or the other might sneak up on you with their bull-dozers climbing sky-piercing MOUNTAINS to dislodge you from your safe-meditative perch.
Many thanks for your inestimable courage. Now, re-read my poem, Don Ron.
Bikku under the Bodhi Tree (Poetry) - 8/20/2022 9:33:36 AM
I really like this one. You were at your peak in 1992. The plight of the religious man with a large family and nowhere to go but death, eventually. So tragic but true. Cool. I could identify.
Ron
Letter to a professional friend on the Net discovered 16 years later yester (Poetry) - 8/16/2022 12:39:16 PM
Well, Monseigneur Don Ron, you're prying. It's alright. Just a personal conviction. Once bitten, twice bitten, thrice bitten...and yet I never learned the lesson, so I (even though a very late starter in my twenties) decided a very long time ago to keep at arms-length "heaven" and thereby its attendant HELL... Capito??? Thanks for asking, Ron !
Letter to a professional friend on the Net discovered 16 years later yester (Poetry) - 8/16/2022 9:31:03 AM
Written was so much passion. I wonder if you had any regrets. Perhaps by posting it now, you are expressing regret.
I wonder now what would've happened had I not misinterpreted what my Chinese date was telling me when she complained about her sister being married and her father "pushing" her just to go to school in the US like he did to become a medical doctor. Was she secretly asking me to consider marrying her?
But anything long distance is difficult to keep up. And you probably had a strong reason for ending communication.
Ron
Poems Omega Minus: Parts One to Five (Poetry) - 8/16/2022 7:15:58 AM
Hola ! Monseigneur Don Ron ! If you say so, you have every right to, but is "it" really what you say and not something else "also" and "more"?
It matters little really in the end. A poem is what the reader makes of it if he reads it with his eyes and ears wide open and his heart untroubled by the sense, I guess. Thanks very much, Ron.
Poems Omega Minus: Parts One to Five (Poetry) - 8/15/2022 11:28:44 AM
Back in 1965 quite a wordsmith focusing this one on leaving the subcontinent but still captured by it and all of its long history of meaning. Well done, poet.
Ron
Unquotable Quotes XX - Lawyers (Poetry) - 8/14/2022 6:20:03 AM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don Ron ! Yes, not necessarily so...but almost each line is fashioned through the "biais" of tropes and schemes which makes it literary in scope falling in the "gray zone" of poetry, but then one cannot legitimately call it an article or story either. N'est-ce pas, Ron?
What's important is that your own experiences concurr with what I have to say about lawyers and the courts. The well-educated and financially secure classes can cope with the situation, but just think of the masses who have neither: they just go through life all over the world dumbfounded. It's a shame fearing to raise one's own voice in defence.
Best. Wignesan
Unquotable Quotes XX - Lawyers (Poetry) - 8/13/2022 9:29:19 AM
Not necessarily a poem, but a great list of what to watch out for if one uses a lawyer.
When I think back on it, I've always won when I brought a case to court without a lawyer. Three times, at least.
When a major case done on my behalf by incompetent lawyers charging me considerably for my deposition, screwed up by filing wrongly, the wrong charge in the wrong (federal) court. The female judge threw the case out. I wrote a long letter to the judge after, but she did not respond.
The graduate only university that fired me, failed financially three years later and had to merge with an undergraduate school that was still financially solvent.
My divorce cost me $200 because it wasn't contested. Unfortunately, my lawyer who was a friend screwed up the decree, claiming what was mine was mine and what was hers was mine. He had to go back to the court to correct it, and got his fingers struck like a Catholic child by the judge.
Ron
Translation of Etiemble s poem: Dreams I - Reves I by T Wignesan (Poetry) - 8/10/2022 9:27:21 PM
Kudos for your perceptive analysis, Monseigneur Don Ron. Yes,indeed, he was an intellectual Titan who was orphaned early in life and brought up by a "charwoman" mother who cleaned other peoples' homes for a living while being abused by the rich who turned their noses up on her. Pity he burnt the rest of his collections. Thanks, Ron. Wignesan
Translation of Etiemble s poem: Dreams I - Reves I by T Wignesan (Poetry) - 8/10/2022 9:42:59 AM
Etiemble was a master poet and well imbued with science and mythology to write such a rant of the rise of humanity from the mind of God. Mixing up all of the eons of evolution into one stew of mixed metaphors for how we came to be amid monsters. Even predicting that dinosaurs had feathers as well as scales, something that was only proven just recently by close examination of fossils.
Ron
Limerick crochetes: Once Tamil Promotion Director (Poetry) - 8/6/2022 8:17:15 PM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don Ron! You have given me a headache - nay, migraine - trying to make out what you really mean by the "web" you cast to shroud your intentional "barbs".
I do hope you're not trying to belittle the Tamils (who, by the way, are also responsible for the dissemination of Buddhism - and Hinduism - all across the Asian eastern seaboard territories) for their acculturation of the Southeast Asian archipelago by your Trump analogy: they are not likely to take kindly to you, if that's the intentional thrust of your comments.
The Tamil in question in the limericks who was financially enabled by the Japanese co-founder - despite the usual bag-of-tricks he uses to entice savants to his fiefdom - managed somehow to construct a veritable storehouse of (Tamilian and Dravidian) knowledge, not, if I'm not mistaken, the case with Trump. The comparison stops there, I should think.
I served the man willingly in full knowledge of his aims until he went over-board with his "bag of tricks". If you were Tamil, you would know that Tamils are "users" in the main. If you stop letting yourself be used, you have had it: they'd ditch, backbite and scuttle you till you'd not know what really hit you! The eternal problem in the sub-continent is still caste-based, but I have to admit the Brahmins among the Tamils have made a more lasting contribution towards cultural and scientific advancement of their "congenères" than members of other social denominations. Best. Wignesan
Limerick crochetes: Once Tamil Promotion Director (Poetry) - 8/6/2022 12:06:24 PM
Your limericks certainly could have and probably did refer to how the Tamil culture was spread by the Chola dynasty from Sri Lanka throughout Southeast Asia.
But another alternative would be substituting Donald Trump for the Tamil Promotion Director. And, you have a very similar situation forming in the far reaches of the United States of America. Isn't that nice? No, not nice, but powerful, nonetheless.
Ron
Limericks crochetes: Once a Bar Student in the Fifties in London (Poetry) - 8/1/2022 2:58:31 PM
Trust you, Monseigneur Don Ron, to say the right thing at the right moment. My Chinese name is Wei Ni Shan. I was already enrolled as a student of the Bar in London when I was teaching at 18/19 at the largest Chinese school in the Federation of Malaya and got through all the subjects at the Bar Exams through self-study, though I attended some lectures just before the Trinity Bar Finals in 1956. I checked and re-checked the "bribery system": the "five guineas" was an initial downpayment. Once the bribing candidate's name appeared in the national newspaper, the Times of London, of course the grateful Barrister-at-Law made it a point to shower the clerk in question with all sorts of gifts. I was assured the man was invited to the colonies and feted like a Prince. Incidentally, I was never called to the Bar!
Your point about it being the case in the States may be gleaned besides from the film, "Love Story" where Barrett (played by Ray Milland) attempted to "influence" his son's admission to the Harvard law faculty, etc., but hurray! Barrett IV made it on his own. Very moving film, I must say. Nice to hear from you. Wignesan
Limericks crochetes: Once a Bar Student in the Fifties in London (Poetry) - 8/1/2022 8:48:59 AM
I had to laugh at your limerick story of bribery in the 50s. Apparently concocted by the British to send out inferior barristers to the former colonies as some kind of poison darts to poison the governments forming in those countries where the law had to be upheld and governments as free as possible from corruption. It worked and many former colonies fell into corruption from corrupt officials trained in England how to get ahead with a few guineas.
It's still happening today. Last year, some people in our law school at the University I worked at were convicted of taking bribes from law students to alter their grades. On a larger scale, parents have been convicted of paying for getting their children into elite schools by bribing weak faculty members who gave the underperforming students scholarships they didn't deserve.
Ron
Villanelle: Kill not mad poets the soul-blood of Mankind - for Emmanuel Mac (Poetry) - 7/30/2022 10:48:34 PM
Well, Monseigneur Don Ron, I have to say something to re-celebrate your usual "sense of justice" and the heroic courage that accompanies your salvoes.
I found ONLY one lawyer - and that, too, fresh from the faculty - who was willing to fight for my son right from the start, and he said something that shocked me then but not ever since:
"Every President of the Republic is afraid of the POLICE !"
Villanelle: Kill not mad poets the soul-blood of Mankind - for Emmanuel Mac (Poetry) - 7/30/2022 8:55:18 AM
Are "mad poets" angry or just insane? I believe, probably, both. It is a fine madness that drives poets to challenge the word of politics. But they do it anyway. And I like it that way. Thank you for more enlightenment about the Ways and Means of French presidents and mad poets.
Ron
Limerick crochetes:Once a band of non-hearing sans abri (Poetry) - 7/26/2022 3:53:28 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, let's not distinguish or differentiate between "veterans" and "refugees" or those who - with age - lose their bearings (their homes and their relatives) and simply do not wish to be herded together and drilled into "regiments" without a voice of their own. Those who lie around in five-foot ways grateful for the coins one tosses their way could be you or me or your sibling or neighbour. Just that they had had enough of this world of conformity to customs and traditions and orderliness and the propriety of being upright members of society. Just that they prefer to starve in their rags and let the lave go by them. It's their life - their inalienable right! I was going to say; their God-given right !!! God Forbid!!! Wignesan
Limerick crochetes: Once Mid-East Refugee hijacked plane (Poetry) - 7/26/2022 3:27:20 PM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don Ron! Yes, I do have quite a few limericks I have kept under wraps for no reason in particular. Yes, I'll post them just for your sake. One in particular I wrote in answer to my being accused of the shortcoming of "Narcissism" by the mutual admiration club of "philosophers" and "nin.com holier-than-thou poops"! What I like about your comments is the way you fume ("fustigate or fumigate" is more appropriate) when some act, event or sheer pulling-the-wool-over-eyes marrs and sharpens your sensibilities... but then, you do go right across to the "great pretenders" to assuage and shore up their sides, too! Very tactful but it'll serve no purpose whatsoever in the long run...you must sense that!
Time is the foremost critic of all. It's the great weeder out of parasites - as if you didn't know that??? Wignesan
Limerick crochetes: Once Mid-East Refugee hijacked plane (Poetry) - 7/26/2022 11:17:49 AM
It's time for a 2022 version of this fine 2018 set of limericks. But I would replace "flying-trapeze" with flying-carpet, unrestrained by trapeze wires anymore like puppet strings where politics go back-and-forth, back and forth, all the time.
I loved the reference to nincompoop! ;-)
Ron
Limerick crochetes:Once a band of non-hearing sans abri (Poetry) - 7/24/2022 9:22:49 AM
Some great limericks highlighting the case for proper treatment of veterans in Paris and actually, all around the world. They certainly need help getting off the street where they will surely die from a number of causes. It's time to change our attitude. Both when it comes to.
Ron
Do dreams dream-up the Dreamer to mean something (Poetry) - 7/23/2022 10:37:15 AM
Monseigneur Don Ron! Thought it'd serve to remind your Lordship and others - who read and vomit out what they read - how convenient it is to comment on what one does not understand or does not want to comprehend simply by dismissing what lies beyond his/her limits or liking. It was Carlos Bousono who found that 'a joke is not a joke if you don't like the joker' (or words to the effect). It wouldn't be too difficult to demonstrate how you have gone out of your way to praise much less scientifically-constructed concepts in wayward language... (I don't know if I would spare the time, though.) No offence, either way, I do hope !!! Wignesan
Komori, for Dra Maria Carmen Estelles Valls, with long-owed thanks (Poetry) - 7/23/2022 8:46:28 AM
Touché ! Monseigneur Don RON ! Right on ! Perspicace ! But then, there must be a reason for the shaven heads which could escape us both. Perhaps it was just to stop the babies from pulling one another's hair during their sumo-bumpings on the tatami while the Komoris were catching their much-needed shut-eyes??? Have a great day pulling your hair out trying to figure this one out. Best. Wignesan
Komori, for Dra Maria Carmen Estelles Valls, with long-owed thanks (Poetry) - 7/23/2022 8:14:03 AM
Good question. Once you turn over your child to a Komori and they care for your children 24 hours a day, bonding with them, like you don't, wouldn't it be strange if they ended up thinking of their beloved Komori as their mother? Not at all. Shaving babies heads would be a sacrilege, only done by monks to keep from having to have hair being one of the characteristics of determining the identity of an individual.
Ron
If ever I had a country - LXXXVI - 86 (Poetry) - 7/21/2022 7:55:51 AM
Hey, Tom & Monseigneur Don Ron, if I didn't watch the spills and drills in the broken and stooped backs of young frisky girls (Watch that 21-year old fresh-as-a-daisy Spanish Gold Medalist after the 15000 m. race - where the Italian chick collided and sent the Chinese (HK or Taiwanese competitor) sprawling and was lifted off on a stretcher - on roller skates at the World Games in Birmingham - I wouldn't believe you guys a whit.
I thought the only place in the world that sort of thing could happen was here, right where I live, where you could take a stroll along ripped-up cobbled pathways alongside the lake or along sidewalks or indistinguishable cycle tracks and break your neck and get yourself a free dumping in sludge and sewer waters...
The only advice I can give you two lads is to migrate to Antartica where the worst that can ever happen is that you'd become the core of a burgeoning snow-ball till climate change finds your bodies intact for the ceremonies in Texas. Much binding in the marsh!!! Wignesan
If ever I had a country - LXXXVI - 86 (Poetry) - 7/20/2022 7:12:34 PM
a true write "T" I've tried that falling a few times-- so far so good- but next time who knows .The next one could be the last, but I use a little ol'cowboy logic. Spit-use one cuss word and get back on your feet- now I'm all ready for the next one Giddy up Hoss! Enjoyed your write.
If ever I had a country - LXXXVI - 86 (Poetry) - 7/20/2022 8:46:03 AM
Yes, it's true. Part of that "dependence" that you wrote about. Many "Mericans" who have lost their faculties of many that you reveal, refuse to use a walker until it's too late or even a wheelchair. A lesson I learned after many falls, countless stitches, and a fractured eye orbit. As a result, they often break their hips which leads to other complications and they die in the hospital. Fools.
My sister-in-law, a healthy 72-year-old, fell backward after dinner (and a bit too much to drink?) from the top of the stairs to their second floor condo on Key Largo for the winter that they were going to leave the next day while her daughter and my brother watched. Broke her neck and died instantly. Actually a good way to go without the prolonged pain. Still walking 6 miles to a local Arboretum and then back every day. I recall at least three times when those proprioceptors saved me from an equal fate as I teetered provocatively at the top of stairs with my adrenaline pumping my heart to the point of almost letting go.
Ron
Limericks crochetes: Once a bitter literary critic (Poetry) - 7/19/2022 8:28:56 PM
What d'ya mean, "You don't know who this tyrannical critic was?", Monseigneur Don-Ron. Of course, it's all about you and only YOU !
Naaaay! Just kidding you, but the "tyrannical" quality or feature fits you to a "T", though, I must say upon reflection.
So, you have predicted your own FALL, buddy!
Naaay, the critic (in reality, representative of ALL critics) is a composite figure, and I'm not saying it aloud, you may account for more than your fair share in his make-up. Toodle-dee-doo...
Limerick crochetes: Portrait of a Dead Brit Nazi Lord of the Lollypoppians (Poetry) - 7/12/2022 3:22:59 PM
Takes me awhile to sort out your lingo "T", but then that makes it of interest "Sir1 the Brit said to the yank cowboy- "The correct phrase mister cow person is Tally Ho the Fox! Not there goes the little Bastard! Cheers "T" and have a great day.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 64 (Poetry) - 7/11/2022 9:04:13 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, what happens then when the body is cremated or eaten up by vultures? Does the LIE persist in the I AM? Or is the BIG LIE the Multi-Verse(s) or HE who created the BIGGEST LIE of ALL??? Admit it, WE all lie to ourselves to make believe we do not see the PIE ("pie" in French is "magpie" who cannot hear his own lies) in the SKY.
Don't forget it's the populace who put the leaders in the top places to perpetuate lies. Who then is the BIGGEST LIAR of ALL ? Just take one guess, and you'll be a right proper "liar", too!!!
END of the Dilemma with N° 64. See, I didn't lie. I told you so from the very beginning. Every good wish. Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 64 (Poetry) - 7/11/2022 9:01:22 AM
All of the lies, lie with us in our grave. Rest in pieces.
Some folks like our past president are only comfortable when surrounded by The Big Lie. Unfortunately when they have leadership positions, it can be very dangerous.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 63 (Poetry) - 7/10/2022 11:53:21 AM
Monseigneur Don Ron, it's nice to have you visit with your gems of commentary even if you repeat yourself and speak in riddles. Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought comments had to do with the poems under review.
Not that it matters in the short or long run, but i'm stumped if I know the relevance of what you say to an argument I have developed over two months now. Not complaining, mind you, but i'm wondering about the causes: torrid heat, lack of wind, tornado, mescalin, caffeine, amphetamine, heroin or just far too much love-making???
Your last chance coming up tonight with the last instalment: Villanelle n° 64, so maybe you'll come to your senses by then!!! No offence meant, of course.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 63 (Poetry) - 7/10/2022 8:11:52 AM
We should know like most biologists understand, that when populations grow beyond their limits, death usually enters and corrects the imbalance. We were warned in 1967 that we were over populating and needed to do someThing about it.
We should know like most biologists understand, that when populations grow beyond their limits, death usually enters and corrects the imbalance. The next virus may be more deadly than the one and its variations that we just endured.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 62 (Poetry) - 7/9/2022 9:55:35 PM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don-Ron ! My turn to say "I don't quite understand your quip." No, as far as I can decipher/dissect my own villanelle: "No, it's not Numerology (though I wouldn't downgrade the "science" - some years back a Lady: "Greene", I think, made an astounding prediction about my deciphering an age-old [1500? old] enigma in Tamil Studies). You are right, however, to query.
As for your question; "Why simplified nature and change?" Answer: "I haven't a clue, Chum! Could you, please, be more explicit?"
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 62 (Poetry) - 7/9/2022 10:28:54 AM
Numerology or rhyme scheme? I don't know because I never studied the reason why.
But change a powerful force that has created all of earth's very complex ecosystem as each generation complicates it more. Why simplified nature and change?
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 61 (Poetry) - 7/8/2022 6:54:01 PM
Thanks a million, Monseigneur ! Not just the Russian Bear (who has been - as I said earlier on - woken up rudely during his hibernation by both Hitler and Napoleon), but the entire WHITE race which has espoused the cause of Christianity and which continually bickers with one another over WHO is the legitimate heir of their scion) but also all war-mongering-countries strong enough to bully lesser neighbours for their own profit. Colonialism - fundamentally based on spreading faith - has reached the point of antagonising peoples (example: Israelo-Palestine) beyond the point of no return. Is it not a fact that Colonialists are the foulest-minded thieves??? Offering apologies to victimised subject peoples at this late date as some have done (Australia, Belgium, Germany, etc.) and returning some stolen artifacts and jewels is no comfort to their persecuted and damned ancestors and progenies.
As for my being exploited by the Vanity Publisher (in reality a mere printer by profession who has managed to acquire a following in the West among some writers, critics and poets by courting and offering them free publication and copies and "fame"), the only way to respond to such skull-duggery is to expose their own form of "colonialism" in the world of creativity before even that last bastion of culture becomes a charade!!! Adam Donaldson Powell, too, appears to back and remain the mainstay of Vanity-Publishing. All to no purpose, for in the long run time takes care of the chaff from the grain!!! Don't you agree?? Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 61 (Poetry) - 7/8/2022 11:44:59 AM
"Shun the cannibal who feeds on his own neighbors" is quite prophetic. The Russian Bear just can't help but to keep trying to gobble up neighbors with insatiable greed. On the other hand, evildoers, a greedy wealthy, want to be sure they have a retreat they can hide in.
Good stuff. Sorry to hear about the vanity publisher not submitting the right copy of the Blind Man's Lantern. I've had that happen to me in the past.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 58 (Poetry) - 7/5/2022 2:03:30 PM
Perhaps, Monseigneur, you should not try to conceive of each and every villanelle in the sequence as self-contained in meaning and argument. I notice you didn't comment on the previous villanelles; perhaps you had not followed the train of thought - in this rumination of the dilemma of violence as opposed to non-violence - in the development of an argument on a comparative basis extending from Thoreau, Gandhiji, Tolstoy, the Indian Independence Movement vis-à-vis the Mexican (Zapatan) Revolution (following on the heels of the latter), juxtaposed with that of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (including his "Viva Zapata" film script), etc. That's asking too much of a commentator who roves diligently on adducing his "appreciation" of every piece on AD whether repetitive or merely re-digested...
Perhaps all the guzzling and gargling you had to go through July 4th. got you somewhat groggy???
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 58 (Poetry) - 7/5/2022 10:52:08 AM
A little difficult to follow. In nature, everything eats everything else. The result is great diversity and balance among all competition for scarce resources. Too bad we have upset that balance by making ourselves superior.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 56 (Poetry) - 7/3/2022 8:49:15 PM
Bonjour Monseigneur Don Ron! I had already answered the point you raise on Arthur C. Clarke's postulate: the Human-Kind has only his insignificant backyard (though blessed with inordinately/infinitely bloated Ego) to populate even in our miniscule neck of the Milky-Way woods where hundreds of billions of planets can/may likewise entertain similar forms of Life as ours. It's just like US to presume our great role in the Multi-Verses!
Your insistence on reducing the population on Earth as the panacea for our belligerent ailments has very long ago been prescribed by Lao Tse's "Tao Te Ching".
Have yourself/Yourselves the usual belly-busting National Festive Day, Monseigneur! Best. Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 56 (Poetry) - 7/3/2022 1:17:18 PM
According to Arthur C Clarke circa the 1970s, free will operating under the tension of good versus evil as demonstrated in the International Space Laboratory and other scientific exploration like on the Antarctic, humankind can continue to exponentially populate the universe indefinitely, spawning many Star Wars in the process.
On the other hand, Limits to Growth would postulate that when supply of essential ingredients for greedy bipeds decreases, tension and warfare increases. Without limiting population growth, we eventually fall into a dystopia of angry, wasteful battle or what is left.
You present an interesting concept to contemplate.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 52 (Poetry) - 6/29/2022 9:00:06 PM
Kudos to you, Monseigneur Don Ron ! [After the comment on my Hippies story, I thought of dubbing your Lordship: "Miss-ReadeRon" forever, but...] In any case, you stumble again in minor details: "...and how uninhabitable except for our little blue planet." You must be kidding, of course!!! - like giving my age as 45 in the story.
At least, your boss, you and I are consistent about the scriptures. It's amazing, isn't it that Creators of the Uni/Multi-Verses had no idea or inkling whatsoever of what astrophysicists already suspected/knew a century or so ago!!!
Still, it's also an amazing insight on the part of Carl Sagan to have underlined the scientific basis for the Hindu notion of the Brahman Day and Brahman Night, and for Carl Jung to have prefaced the Taoist foundations of the Yi Jing. All Hail to poor humiliated Galileo!!!
Hope your own situation improves even if the continuous/continual War mongering goes on (latest event at Madrid in full swing). Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 52 (Poetry) - 6/29/2022 9:59:39 AM
Kudos for writing about dark matter and energy back in 2015. I've always been fascinated with what astrophysicists and other scientists are continuing to find out about our universe.
Back in the 1980s, my boss would often remark to me about some papers in his office being lost in a "black hole." I find our little problems minuscule, too, when compared with how vast our universe really is. How violent, and how uninhabitable except for our little blue planet.
Why I don't dwell on creators and all of that bull crap because it really doesn't make any difference. The more we know scientifically (not biblically--that's backward), the less we know. Why worry about it during our short lives. Our progeny will do wonders we never could conceive, even in our wildest fiction. I just let it be at that and look backward only to improve history, not bury it in shame or prejudice.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 51 (Poetry) - 6/28/2022 9:58:38 AM
Pleading to everyone to not believe that God gave man dominion over nature. For nature grows on its own rules unencumbered by man and their shortsighted profiting from nature without any real dominion or even giving back anything.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 50 (Poetry) - 6/27/2022 2:55:47 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron ! As usual, you only react to the part and not the (w)hole. Not that you have to. There's no caveat on what a critic (as opposed to a literary critic, i.e., one used to or trained in reacting through his reading of chefs-d'oeuvres and aesthetics ) ought or ought not to express through the prism of his appreciation of a work of art produced by an author or poet who like-as-not may well be versed in the norms of the structure and composition of a given genre. This is not a complaint nor a rejection of what you may have to say from your own point of view or stance - depending on your own particular nurture in the given field upon which you focus your attention. In a way, what one might "object" to in your comments (if one did not take exception to your recurrent habit of being motivated by your own personal history) is the restrictions (contritions?) you impose on your own intellect. I'd rather see you use your intelligence in sizing up what you read than be regaled to your unmotivated/unmotivatable literary prescriptions. (See my reaction to your comments on my last story.) No offence meant, of course. Always a pleasure to have you come around and knock on my door!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 50 (Poetry) - 6/27/2022 8:40:49 AM
We are all square pegs with only round holes to try to fit into. No wonder we don't succeed. the Security Council counsels no one. No security there.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 49 (Poetry) - 6/26/2022 9:21:59 AM
It is really interesting to see how the more we try to tame nature, the less it is tamed. The violence we been doing in our war against nature is totally unsustainable.
An architect friend of mine once told me, "Nature is the best landscaper." So landscape architects need not apply.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 48 (Poetry) - 6/25/2022 9:38:52 AM
Hail Monseigneur (the French reserve this appellation for Kings/Emperors
and theor ilk) Don Ron ! Got your message about Tom & Nancy, but I thought Lefty lived in Washington? He shore got me mixed up and muddled. Be that as it may, is this line of yours true to fact: 'Every time evil arises to try to take over the world, good karma comes along to defeat it like you have illustrated.'
The "good karma" of post-WWII America, for instance, could have avoided the greatest disaster in human lives (women and children, the old and the decrepit, the sick in mind and the blind, the food-providing animals and the joyously-singing birds, not to mention pregnant women, animals, birds and insects about to bring forth their young...) during the few extended seconds of HELL-on-Earth at Hiroshima (and to repeat the "karmic action" at Nagasaki a little later) if they had had wanted to avoid Man's inhumanity to Man and all blameless creatures by inviting Tojo and his needlessly violent clan to a demonstration of Nuclear Power at some deserted Pacific Isle. Don't you agree, Monseigneur?
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 48 (Poetry) - 6/25/2022 8:55:04 AM
Once again you've outlined what causes war and why it is so hard to eradicate, even with nonviolent protest.
"Class race religion which can most money make," outlines the cause that keeps us in perpetual war. Every time evil arises to try to take over the world, good karma comes along to defeat it like you have illustrated.
Why in our Civil War, the South chose Dixie describing their white only, slave labor created, idyllic lifestyle as their anthem. While the North, more pragmatic, chose The Battle Hymn of the Republic with its fiery lines… "He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword…" to help rally the troops having to fight their own brothers in the South. Sometimes, eye to eye with bayonets.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 47 (Poetry) - 6/24/2022 10:41:33 AM
I believe you are referring to a pledge to change in the face of global warming. But just like today, the debate always turns toward providing more funds for the machine of war that drives economies. It seems as though without war we cannot exist. But it's absolutely sure that with global warming we won't exist. The canary in the cage has already died, but we are still pumping armaments into Ukraine and pumping oil from the ground.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 46 (Poetry) - 6/23/2022 3:55:16 PM
To answer your question on NOT knowing anything about COP, Monseigneur Don Ron, here's a link - open it and translate it through the automatic process available these days on your computer:
https://bonpote.com/cop26-les-7-objectifs-pour-esperer/
For over 20 years now, the COP (Conference of Parties) - including representatives from the non-governmental sectors - and representing some 190 nations have been convening (in Paris 2015; Madrid 2014; Glasgow 2019, etc.) to deliberate on ways and means (reduction of temperature to around 2°C by 2100 through prohibiting use of charcoal, deforestation, conversion of thermic vehicles to electric ones by 2035, the awarding of $100 billion to developing nations who cannot afford to cope with the extra costs involved in the conversion process, etc.) in order to formulate a viable platform to combat greenhouse gases, methane, etc.
Please credit my account to the tune of $150,000 for the lesson on climatic change news by tomorrow, please!!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 46 (Poetry) - 6/23/2022 8:53:56 AM
I'm not sure what COP (city of Paris?) means, but your poem is still relevant today with even America now going ahead with creating more nuclear weapons, to what purpose?
There are no new problems under the sun, just old ones that never seem to get resolved without some superhero spider-man to come to our rescue, naught.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 45 (Poetry) - 6/22/2022 6:21:38 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, nothing is certain about the collision course of the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies, not anyway as the fast irreversible melting polar caps. As Aurélien Barrau has recently warned us in his "English" interview with local American TV, it's not a matter of centuries but decades before temperatures rise and practically all major urban shorelands be submerged. The galaxies can linger eons away through vast expanses of space, and there might only occur partial spasmodic explosions, not one ogre devouring the other, and who knows a merger could take place and produce a new galaxy: the Andro-Milky-Meda-Way!!! In the meantime, some meteorite might slip through our defensive surveillance systems and blow us all to Kingdom come!!! Like the ones that wiped out the dinasaurs but - damn-it - not the rest of the living creatures!!! Barrau warns in astrophysical terms of our having reached the critical "crash" moment already and demands immediate action - his words falling on deaf political ears far too occupied with re-election, of course!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 45 (Poetry) - 6/22/2022 9:52:13 AM
Ninety percent of the population is ill born in public or private schools do not teach them very much. But you have the wisdom of the ages from all of your studies. Especially noting that Andromeda is on a course to destroy the Milky Way.
The universe is very violent, and so are we. Why it's so hard to do anything peacefully when our leaders get rich by going to war and using the ignorant population as ammunition for their grand plans of worldwide conquest that usually ends up with their own death in some form of violent manner.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 44 (Poetry) - 6/21/2022 8:18:12 PM
Like it as might we not, Monseigneur Don Ron, here you're both right and wrong. How do you know if we're a "very rare occurrence in the universe" or multi-verses??? There are trillions of planets where similar LIFE with their own share of Einsteins/Barraus/Heisenbergs, etc.,could be possible. No-one disputes the fact that the human brain is simply enormously brilliant, capable of even doing what only gods can will, but on one point, you're clearly wrong when you say: "except the resolve of the people not to go over the edge." Unfortunately, the people all over have been enslaved in ignorance and beaten into submission through widespread poverty and lack of leisure and education that they are always willing to accept the status quo prescribed by their leaders. The PEOPLE - the overwhelming majority - have no way out, have no say in what goes on, they are always duped, My Friend!!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 44 (Poetry) - 6/21/2022 1:13:17 PM
We are very rare occurrence in the universe. But our selfish survival genes have started to use technology to raise and hoard riches. In order to keep the riches flowing, part of the money is used to corrupt the people that would stand in the way of further raping of the planet for riches of the few.
We are on the cusp of a major crisis as a result of rapid deployment of the earth's riches. So aptly put in 2015 and increasing today without anyone or anything to stop it except the resolve of the people not to go over the edge.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 43 (Poetry) - 6/20/2022 1:19:53 PM
How right you are, Monseigneur Don Ron ! It only goes to show how useful it is to have a brother or two in high places at the right moment. High "tipping-point" indeed! Still, Al Gore should have remonstrated and fought back; it seems to me he gave in far too meekly. Florida always appears to be the "killing-fields" for the phoney bunch in your sun-burnt beaches for leeches, I'd say.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 43 (Poetry) - 6/20/2022 10:55:40 AM
Referring to signing an early agreement to try to stop the surge of CO2 escaping into the atmosphere. Ice melting and waters lapping at the edges of major cities in Europe. Soon to be underwater before we can or will react.
I'm beginning to think that we have already passed several "tipping" points while the money grabbers grab more money as if it will help them and don't change and most of the governments of the world struggle to change or are incapable of changing. It's a sad state of affairs that should have stopped in the year 2000 when Al Gore was robbed of the US presidency by our House of Lords.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 41 (Poetry) - 6/18/2022 9:53:35 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, Bonjour! Nice to see you're "spiritual/religious (?), too, like those you I thought you spurned or pitied? Proof: 'Sometimes I wish that we were more pragmatic and less spiritual...'
I'm a bit surprised that your superior intelligence fails you where you should be reading what is put on your plate to eat raw and rough.
The case is simple as it is evident. What one is tutored to believe from the cradle, one will only surrender (at Death) by slitting the other's un-godly throat. For the White Man and his lackeys, Christ can be split-up so long as other material interests can be served: Euro-America versus Putin's Russia as at the moment. Throughout history the same repetitions take their toll - musical chairs, My Friend ! - so long as the Christian Church is not made to look subservient to another's Temple. What a sorry plight for Humanity!!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 41 (Poetry) - 6/18/2022 1:03:19 PM
From what I gather from your poem, the real world suffers for the meddling of mythical spirits.
Sometimes I wish that we were more pragmatic and less spiritual. Instead of praying to ease the suffering of those lost to stupid mindless hatred, get busy and do something about it. Solve a difficult problem rather than dance around it with rhetoric tinged with religious overtones. Preventing reality to just roll up its sleeves and get to work in an endless cycle of talk and no action.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 38 (Poetry) - 6/15/2022 8:50:54 PM
Hail Monseigneur Don Ron ! You do indeed excel yourself here in your comment. Firstly, what does this mean: "I want so a play by Sartre." I guess this's an understandable error perpetrated by your dictation machinery. You mean, of course: " I once saw a play by Sartre." Forgiven outright, but not the innuendo that I may have plagiarized a Sartre play. There you are guilty.
You are obviously referring to Sartre's "Le Diable et le Bon Dieu" (1951)on the Renaissance Peasant Revolt in Germany that Goethe and others (including Cervantes' "El Rufian Dichoso") have all enthused on the theme of le Bien et du Mal. That I have also done so (without having read their works) doesn't of course elevate me to their ranks for the simple reason these most fortunate writers were born in the West where the system of education (Lycée, Henri IV, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Aggrégation, etc.) was not available in the East, I'm afraid. Still as a choice victim of several Western States - with no silver spoon thrust in my mouth at birth - I have nothing to be ashamed of. Yours truly, T. Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 38 (Poetry) - 6/15/2022 12:13:24 PM
Another poem more current than ever. I want so a play by Sartre. I seem to remember that the title was, "God Is on Our Side." The whole point of the play was that God was leading both sides and it was the same God. Your admonishment of the many gods of many religions makes the whole situation ever more complicated.
Gods do not make war except in myth. Real wars are conducted by men, with the support of women, who find religion just a healthy boost to what they know is very bad stuff.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 36 (Poetry) - 6/13/2022 11:56:21 AM
Many have that mind not their own. And they certainly do not feel any pleasure in something they feel is just their birthright. And they certainly will not disagree with their lifeblood. Why they are so dangerous.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 35 (Poetry) - 6/12/2022 9:17:21 AM
We certainly like to see all the suffering that comes with the latest "breaking news." The problem begins when we begin to think that what is happening is happening to us rather than being some small fluke in the statistical pool of humankind. And yes, there is a battle between good and bad within us. But that should not become boring in the case of the fate of the world. Waging war because we are bored would not be a good thing.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 34 (Poetry) - 6/11/2022 8:53:02 AM
It certainly seems that a lot of people are not taking time to think about what is happening when they let the 1% with all the money run things by puppet strings while they shed and complain rather than taking action in the right direction.
True in 2015 and truer today.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 32 (Poetry) - 6/10/2022 4:59:59 AM
Hi Senorita Audrine Max ! Surprised to receive a comment from anyone who is not Donald Ron, Tom Leftwich or "m" ! You have trangressed a taboo ! Nothing but the dog-house for you from now on ! The Watch-Dogs of my pages (including a priest (Catholic?) and an Interpol-Poet (Indian ?) will not take kindly to you, too !!!
Thanks for the "comment" or rather for thinking "aloud". Hope you can avoid tinnitus among other ailments as well.
Every good wish.
Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 31 (Poetry) - 6/8/2022 9:42:32 AM
You nailed it with this one in 2015. Pius politicians making promises they never keep while they rake in unhealthy dollars from powerful fossil fuel and armament lobbies designed to keep the world unhealthy and in the pockets of promises unkempt.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 29 (Poetry) - 6/5/2022 4:13:27 PM
All Hail, Ron! My response to your comment on Villanelle-28 adduces Professor-Philosopher Poet Astrophysician's learned opinion on the irreversability of polar meltdowns and the devastating rising waters and temperatures to come. He even thinks the trips to Mars are a pure waste of time and money. He should know better than any one else. I may be exaggerating but I do think he's the modern-day epitome of Leonardo da Vinci-Michelangelo-Raphael-Gallileo-Einstein, and he was born the day I set foot in Paris almost half a century ago. To look at him, anyone might think - in his L.A. City Lights Books attire - that he's a Hippie.
I wish I could post a pic of him here. Every good wish. Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 29 (Poetry) - 6/5/2022 9:10:05 AM
Interesting how you seem to celebrate a reversal in population increase while global warming continues. Leading to the Paris Agreement that Donald Trump conveniently backed out of and Joe Biden has returned United States to.
Juxtaposition what was happening then, and still is from 2015 to 2022, with what is happening in Britain with all of the celebration of the continuation of the welfare recipients, the Crown Royals perpetuating their progeny down through the ages on the backs of wage slaves.
Celebrating while the oceans rise and icebergs melt.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 28 (Poetry) - 6/4/2022 2:35:24 PM
Monseigneur Don Ron, the extra-ordinary and unique French genius Aurélien BARRAU (Professor astrophysician-philosopher-poet and political essayist) does not think so: from his learned observations one can glean that it's already too late. Here's a list of his writings:
Forme et Origine de l'Univers, Paris, Dunod, 2010
Multivers, Paris, La Ville Brûle, 2010
Relativité Générale, Paris, Dunod, 2011 (with J. Grain)
Dans quels mondes vivons nous ?, Paris, Galilée, 2011 (with J.-L. Nancy)
Variations sur un même ciel, Paris, La Ville Brûle, 2010 (J.-P. Uzan et al.)
Big Bang et au-delà, Paris, Dunod, 2012
Des univers multiples, Paris, Dunod, 2014
De la vérité dans les sciences, Paris, Dunod, 2015
Au coeur des trous noirs, Paris, Dunod, 2017
L'Animal est-il un homme comme les autres, Paris, Dunod, 2018
Le plus grand défi de l'histoire de l'humanité, Paris, Dunod, 2018
Météorites, Paris, Dunod, 2020
Happy reading Senor Don Ron ! Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 28 (Poetry) - 6/4/2022 12:16:34 PM
Little has changed except getting worse in the last six years while the little man still bicker over dollars spent and gained rather than understanding the wisdom of your lives…
"Can this polluted earth be saved at this stage?" I certainly hope so, but time is running out if we don't stop bickering and act positively to change things… Drastically!
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 27 (Poetry) - 6/3/2022 6:08:16 PM
Well, My Lord Senor Don Ron, I thought I'd do well to say it again:
'ALL Hail, Senor Don Ron, Sir ! Glad to know H.N.'s back to give you HELL minus stress. At least, now, the homestretch will be paved with tell-tale stress marks to guide you over the bed of roses.
Even if your artificially constructed lines and rhymes don't do you justice as a supreme AD critic, your "gamesmanship" in bearing with us all DOES. Thanks ever so much for that ! Let me say it now and here before I, too, disappear: You are, indeed, one of the MOST - if not the MOST intelligent person - I have ever come across ! Well, you know the rest.'
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 27 (Poetry) - 6/3/2022 12:01:52 PM
Nice using golf as a metaphor for war. And Tiger Woods for all you does to the sport, like promoting Buick, making it a bestseller in China. ;-)
Real Tigers are only interested in food. But an occasional white hunter makes a nice snack for a mother tiger and her half grown cubs.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 26 (Poetry) - 6/2/2022 3:28:06 PM
So that's what you think, My Lord Senor Don Ron ? Don't forget the one-poem medieval Spanish poet's COPLAS sobre la Muerte...I expanded upon to give you the proper warning. The long lines of the dead (like in the Customs queues at Australian and US airports where trained dogs sniff out the smugglers of drugs, worm-ridden and insect-infested food and foliage) hovering at Death's Door giving all kinds of HOLY excuses for favoured treatment just won't pass muster. In your case, I'm afraid, you have only yourself to blame. You assumed the role of CRITIC (of all genres of writing in Authorsden), a role that calls for IMPARTIALITY and FUNDAMENTAL and INALIENABLE standards of JUDGEMENT - not to be goaded by notions of POPULARITY nor be corrupted by letting snippets of personal ANECDOTES, triggered by what you read. These failings will not go unpardoned at the FINAL EXIT GATE. You cannot plead ignorance of the rules in vigour at the au-dela FRONTIER. WHY??? Think of the harm you have done: giving hope to all poets and writers that they can ALL get the NOBEL, BOOKER, HAWTHORNDEN & NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS, etc. And sure as HELL, some of them might do themselves irreparable harm (read as VIOLENCE), and WHO will be to blame???
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 26 (Poetry) - 6/2/2022 10:59:21 AM
Despite your dire warning about getting our shit together before we go, I feel rather confident that there will be no checkpoint for me at all to worry about.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 25 (Poetry) - 6/1/2022 6:55:22 AM
It is the natural order of mammals who congregate for most to gravel under the leadership of the alpha male or female, whichever be the case. Humans are no exception. We are social animals and tend to "follow" leaders unquestionably even though the leaders may be taking us to our death. Why so many sign up for war and glory, only to come back, if not in a coffin, with the life beaten out of us, no more to dream of the glory of war.
And you write of the worst. The promises made by those in frocks. Consoling the sheeple with promises of some state of life after this awful life that is so ridiculous that it hurts a thinking mind. Unquestioned belief is the opiate of the masses Pavlovian dream.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 24 (Poetry) - 5/31/2022 8:59:41 PM
Hail Lord Professor Don Ron ! Setting me an exam paper, eh? There isn't enough space in this box to hold my response, but I'll try (hoping for an A1, if you don't mind). Your friend Behram is a Parsee, Zoroastrians from Persia who fled the Islamisation of Persia. They became an extremely influential and well-knit community (given to commerce and culture) in India: witness the TATA industrialists, etc. The very fact that Behram named his sons after illustrious pre-anno domini Persian kings who waged wars (or stemmed Greek or Macedonian/Alexander's incursions into Asia Minor) shows to what extent he believed in the Ahura-Mazda/Ahriman (Yin-Yang) fire-worship of his ancestors. The ancient Greeks (like all Euro-American Christian peoples) were obsessed with wars against one another (the Athenian versus Sparta Peloponnesian War that lasted some forty years which produced the first scientifically documented War history by the General Thucydides) and so on and on until Napoleon and Hitler (and Putin ?). Of course, Asians are no exception. Check Nietsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra for a "reason", if you will. And don't forget to what extent the West, the Mongols and the Japanese humiliated and robbed the Chinese who now have filled the rice bowl for each and everyone who are willing to forego "freedom and democracy" for a while yet.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 24 (Poetry) - 5/31/2022 7:09:47 AM
I once attended a play that clearly showed that God was always on the side of the winner of a war. And I'm not sure how you included Zoroastrians in this poem. Shouting peace or hypocritically calling for peace while going to war.
I met an engineering student from Bombay while studying for my master's degree at the University of Wisconsin. We got along great and ended up rooming together that summer during summer school in an apartment. Behram, along the way, told me that he was from Persia and a Zoroastrian who didn't practice the religion. His wife was a Christian and still in India.
When he got his master's degree in manufacturing engineering and a good job in New York State, he sent for his wife. They had three sons: Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. I checked on him last week. His wife, Gool, passed away a couple of years ago from multiple diseases, but not Covid, and he is living alone and quite well at 84. One practice of the Zoroastrians that I like was having their bodies at death taken to rooftops where the vultures could take them back into the lifecycle of the ecosystem. Probably better than burying dead people in boxes in the ground.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 23 (Poetry) - 5/30/2022 9:52:22 AM
Like in the Battle Hymn of the Republic, God is always ready to "… Loose his mighty swift sword."
As a spastic I am so glad that I saved enough money so that my paid caregiver/partner can buy the best food regardless of the inflating price, and serve it to me in the most delicious fashion. Otherwise, I would be among the homeless and die quickly either in the heat or the cold of the street.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 22 (Poetry) - 5/29/2022 8:58:17 AM
"Let not religions parade on public roads" says a lot about the power of religion and their warring gods. To many Americans, the flag is their religion. They wave the flag and wave their guns as though ordained to use them for violence, not peace. Religion spouts peace, but condones war--even backs war by being on the side of the winner every time.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 21 (Poetry) - 5/28/2022 8:03:05 AM
While written in 2015 the phrase, "Callow kids spray lead…" is about as predictive as it gets given what's happened recently here in the United States lately. And, if Star Wars and other soap opera dramas of a dystopian future are played out with all that slam bam, thank you ma'am destruction of planets for the hell of it, the Milky Way may be in danger of humans and our intelligent machines rather than the normal forces like Andromeda eating the Milky Way in a few billion years.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 20 (Poetry) - 5/27/2022 4:18:25 PM
By the by, Tom, there are TWO of this Villanelle posted inexplicably on the site. Not my doing, I swear. I even tried to delete the other, but Senor Don Ron might interject and reject all such efforts for he has entered a stunning commentary to which I riposted. You may perhaps wish to see the other Villanelle-20, but HOW is the question.
Be that as it may, I'm deeply touched by your "tribute" to my non-violent sequence. The credit is not mine. Things get written as they happen in the mind. "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on..." (Omar Khayyam)
How are you and the Boss-Lady? I would have wished to have seen a pic of the diamond jubilee gathering of the clan, and thus see what a lucky guy you are for the Once-in-a-Life-Time Catch you made 60 years ago!!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 20 (Poetry) - 5/27/2022 3:52:19 PM
Good Lord! Senor Don Ron!!! Are there more than TWO of the same YOU???
Witness: 'I can't recall having any violent thoughts...'
'Do I have violent thoughts, yes.'
Sir, if there are any more violent or non-violent thinking or non-thinking Don Rons, I - and the Guinness Book of Records - would certainly like to know. Please acknowledge, appose whichever or all the separate individual signatures, and return by recorded delivery.
Right now, I feel like an international goal-keeper confronted by two or three balls in a penalty shoot-out, all at one and the same kick-out. Yours poorly, Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 20 (Poetry) - 5/27/2022 10:43:59 AM
I can't recall having any violent thoughts, but last night in a dream, I dreamed of men, and women, in a dystopian small community where having a gun and bullets to fire from the gun became all important to warding off those who did not have guns or resources to survive and needed to turn the tables on whoever had the gun at that time… Over and over again. Kind of like our wars that keep coming back over the same issue, time and time again, but never solved.
Do I have violent thoughts, yes. But I never would carry them out. But it appears that some people are so driven by their insecurity, that they do.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 20 (Poetry) - 5/26/2022 8:39:00 PM
mister "T" I've enjoyed reading your Dilemma of the non violent poems.At this time in my life, I just can't forget or put aside the terrible violence and killing that's become a daily menu in the news. it's doubly hard to generate humor when your mind is occupied with murder and mayhem . I have to say reading your poetry is enjoyable for me at this time. It's very thought provoking when I realize what you're saying Mister you sure put your life into this writing and believe me it beats the hell out of the news. if I want to forget the spin of the world today, I see the truth in your work Thanks for sharing, it beats the hell out of TV
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 19 (Poetry) - 5/26/2022 6:23:02 PM
Senor Don Ron, Sir: If I ('do you really know') do not know what you think I should know in this 'non-violent world', how is it possible I wrote - up to now - what I'm writing about this world ??? Maybe you think (I do not blame you), I'm from Andromeda which is about to clash, collide and cuddle our/your Milky Way galaxy??? Nonetheless, I like what you say since it rhymes, so may you be pardoned for what you say since you read and comment on everything that is posted on the site that you may not know if you are commenting on one piece while you are thinking of another or many others.
Yes, indeed, Nature is very violent, but at what VIOLENT cost to those infinite number of lives it begot in the very first place!!!
LIKE eating what you bleed to death for no reason at all since the non-violent way can just as well afford "vege"-fed LIFE...
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 19 (Poetry) - 5/26/2022 9:02:48 AM
I believe you are describing the ecosystem that supports all life. As we trample it down to the lowly dust mite, do you really know what we are doing to what we think is a nonviolent world?
Nature is not as benign as it looks. Nature is very violent. But that very nature of violence has created the most magnificent survivors that Earth has ever seen. We are good example and because we are intelligent, should know that to destroy the very best will destroy all the rest.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 18 (Poetry) - 5/25/2022 7:56:32 PM
Good Lord! Senor Don Ron! You're over-doing Thyself in this vitriolic commentary. Hurra! You have rendered homage to India's Father of Independence, but, might I say, if only you had added the syllable after Gandhi's name thus: Gandhi-Ji/Gandhiji, Indians all over the world would love you for it. Why? Because it's the honorific address or reference of respect for a dearly-loved Soul in Hindu terms.In the circumstances, I think you should go without food,fun or drink for at least another two or three months...Secondly, Gandhiji not only went about affronting the British Raj "bare-chested" as you well put it, but - here is the lapse - nearly "bare-foot" as well. Just imagine slopping through all the accumulated filth in towns and villages without sewer-systems in his slippers and sandals.Thirdly, on the Brahmacharya (sexual abstinence) front, he did slip up a bit now and then. Finally, he committed troops (186,000 ?) to WWII efforts in Europe in exchange for the promise of Independence after the War.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 18 (Poetry) - 5/25/2022 9:47:48 AM
This poem says a lot about our innate pleasure in supporting military aggression and calling it, defense. Aggressive countries like Russia, now committing blitzkrieg war against Ukraine finding the obsolete strategy is backfiring in their face. Back home, all of those old men with their chests heavy with medals from past campaigns. Where they conveniently and cowardly stayed back behind the front lines and directed youngsters into the gristmill of combat.
But conscientious objectors as bare chested as Gandhi, win more wars without any medals except, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize. Created by a man who developed dynamite and then finding out that his invention was most prized by war makers, distancing the battle from hand to hand, eye to eye, and making it no longer, a simply, the macho sport for kings.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 17 (Poetry) - 5/24/2022 12:52:13 PM
My Lord Senor Don Ron, you amaze me not just with your fulminating words but even with a single letter, nay, even with a phoneme. Take for example this excerpt from your stalwart stance against all sorts of undermining powers:
'Certainly have yielded power all the way down to the present.' - which to my simpleton mind means the (Freemasons) have by now lost all their power. Poor Devils !
Now let's imagine the replacement of the "y" by a "w" in 'yielded' and the sentence would mean just the opposite of what you meant. You are the unchallengeably defiant magician of hermeneutics, deserving of being refered to as the MERLIN of Meaning.
King Arthur would have been proud to have included you in his Round Table of Imperishable Knights and even, I'd wager, to have replaced him 'all the way down to the present.' No mistake about that at all !!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 17 (Poetry) - 5/24/2022 9:01:13 AM
So true. The Freemasons are still around. Most of the founding fathers of the United States were Freemasons, said to be an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Certainly have yielded power all the way down to the present.
When invited to join the junior version of the Freemasons in high school and later, a fraternity in college, I decline both because I didn't see any value in belonging. Why I left the church in my early 20s, finding there was too much ritual and indoctrination, with two little proof that any of it was worth anything other than power mongering and social climbing.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 16 (Poetry) - 5/23/2022 1:46:16 PM
My Lord Senor Don Ron, I can see how my barbed menaces and dark warnings in my previous responses to your babblings has brought you to your senses, and that your Lordship has deigned to toe the temperate line and adopt a sane posture for the benefit of wayward passerby reader-poets. Good for you, Sir, considering you have much to lose in your self-inflicted plight as resident AD critic for all seasons and annoyances.
As such, to allay all your fears from now on - provided you continue to behave - I agree tentatively to withdraw my defamation suit for the betterment of your continued well-being.
Enjoy life while you may...
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 16 (Poetry) - 5/23/2022 9:54:35 AM
Unfortunately, ancient Greece and ancient Athens is gone. The representative democracy and United States is a valiant, but poor example of the form of government described in The Republic.
And you're right about the corruption and money, majority rule and all of the other vices that have crept into so-called civilized government.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 15 (Poetry) - 5/22/2022 6:55:54 PM
Hail, My Lord Senor Don Ron ! What are you trying to do ? Accusing this poor humble Soothsayer of having accused the most powerful and irreproachable one-time Supreme Ruler of the Americas (read as the World) for having 'thrown pennies to the masses' (tot-it-up: one penny per head makes that nearly 8 billion and 'pennies' makes that 8 trillion - a really overwhelmingly generous guy, minus the trillion he/you owe to the Republic of China, the annual interest being 1 million $).
I do hope you have enough left over in your account after your-ex excised your "unearned" bounty for i'm thinking of bringing a defamation suit (together with you know whom?) for damages to my reputation as a run-of-the-mill Soothsayer, and just for Your Worship's sake I will not have the payout taxed with French VAT. Okay ? Take it easy. The conclusion of the case might take ages for the local judiciary takes its own sweet time, as the saying goes.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 15 (Poetry) - 5/22/2022 8:39:32 AM
I don't believe you're writing about the United States. But in 2015, you may have been predicting the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. In all of the United States history, there has not been a president that was more of a monster than he. Although many Americans don't believe it. While he cut red tape allowing his rich friends to get richer, while throwing pennies to the masses and flattering them with false praise, he bargained with the worst dictators on the planet as his buddies.
Perhaps a benign robot could do better. Biden certainly acts a bit like a robot.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 14 (Poetry) - 5/21/2022 8:30:04 AM
Truer today than it was when written in 2015. Once one belongs to a party there seems to be a duty to despise the opposite party and to hold fast to the ideals of the party whether they are still true or not. Slowing progress greatly for the state and the people suffering in the state while the obsolete, already dead, old-timers debate what is already moot.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 12 (Poetry) - 5/19/2022 9:29:57 AM
You are absolutely right. For the few that have tried the ultimate freedom of "living off the land," most have quit for an easier way to live under civilization. But under civilization, freedom is hemmed in by rules created by leaders who are not often motivated by good ideals, mostly by greed and power, the two elements of control that religion provides in spades.
No one is free. If left to ones wits in the wilderness, most people would die of thirst, hypothermia or hyperthermia, dehydration, illness, starvation or predator within as little as three weeks. Why we live in relative ease in restrictive civilization with all of our wants and needs taken care of by our bargain with the devil, religion.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 11 (Poetry) - 5/18/2022 7:09:54 PM
'And so it continues without end. Unless we choose to end it without further war and inhuman destruction.'
There can be no "unless", Senor Don Ron. That's the rub or the fix. Without the positive/negative (Yin/Yang) conflictual ferment, everything'll just peter out: to borrow Eliot's words in another context, for example: "...not with a bang but a whimper..."
But, if you left it in the hands of those who claim their God/gods is the real McCoy, it will certainly end in a BAAaaaaannnnnnnnnnnggggg!!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 11 (Poetry) - 5/18/2022 9:08:43 AM
Well stated. It takes a strong intellect to reject the prevailing religious entity occupying the state we are born in.
When we look up at the sky as young beings, we find that we are insignificant and fear the great unknown out there. Religions come along with a solution for that fear. As you stated in your poem, the offer forgiveness for any kind of stupid act we may do out of ignorance or anger that we can't control. And, in exchange for devotion and continuing to spread the word as it has long been written, eternal life. Just exactly what that life is, varies but always includes those that we have lost and want back, selfish as we are.
And so it continues without end. Unless we choose to end it without further war and inhuman destruction.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 10 (Poetry) - 5/17/2022 8:41:51 AM
The myth that elephants are afraid of mice may be based on fact. I believe that elephants are quite sensitive to their environment and do not trample small creatures if they can help it. It is only during the must that bulls become crazy with lust and don't pay any attention to what they are trampling when fighting other bulls for female attention and conquest.
That said, the symbol of the incorrigible right in the United States is the elephant. Could your villanelle be referring to that party's behavior in the United States?
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 9 (Poetry) - 5/16/2022 9:50:45 AM
And here was I thinking all the time that His Lordship was the true scion of the Knights Templar for having hid the Holy Grail in some over-used coffee or chamber pot, so you'll agree, Senor, that the greatest harm the British Empire has bequeathed its far-flung domains is the obsteperous unelected "State within the State" (L'Etat dans l'Etat) which makes a mockery of DEMOCRACY. Guess which "entity" (the secret or the manifest) wields true or absolute power wherever it has sprung deep roots??? And its international tentacles undermining the clusters or unions of States... Toodely-Doooooo !!!
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 9 (Poetry) - 5/15/2022 9:51:52 AM
So many elephants have made that charge before the great White hunter whose elephant gun had an opportunity amid shaking in his boots to fire between the eyes and dispatch the mighty beast who meant no harm. Sad.
And while monks were taught to turn the other cheek when confronted, some of them, like the Knights Templar, took up arms anyway to sue the devil and take his riches home to praise and disrespect.
Ron
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 8 (Poetry) - 5/15/2022 1:00:56 AM
Once again in a short space of time, My Lord, you have commited the high treasonable crime of reading and taking the "part" for the "whole", a crime that must go down in history as Lèse Majesté, to the say the least. No doubt you have been - distracted this week by the ermine pomp and glittering Kohi-na-Noor splendeur of your fellow comrades at the opening of the House of Lords, so Your Lordship may be forgiven this time round, I guess.
Secundo, it would appear to you humble serf, that you may not have heard of the eminent Maquis de Sade, an able contortionist of the mind in bed; or maybe you have, but your bed-fellow refuses to comply to your wishes. "Oui" ou "Non" ???
In conclusion, the violence women inflict on their "SOLES/SOULS" is reflected in their mind-backing gyrations, so they say, but I cannot vouch for it, being only a confessed ascetic in this domain. Have a good day, My Friend. Wignesan
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent - 8 (Poetry) - 5/14/2022 9:25:16 AM
I'm not sure what this has to do with nonviolence as a way of resisting oppression.
To take a stab at it, I would say you are describing self-inflicted pain that some people need in order to be successful sexually. I never understood it, because pain is not pleasurable to me and never will be. I prefer all finesse and beauty for sex and other pleasures in life. Like I don't want to be punished for eating good food because it has a hot pepper in it that makes my mouth and tongue numb and therefore no longer able to taste the exquisite beauty of some flavor only hinted in the food.
So, I guess you're entertaining the idea that some people find violence, even to themselves, pleasurable over the boring life like normal, simple pleasures of gentle loving.
Ron
