Am-air-ica

by Eber L. Aucsidew

Die Welt proclaimed the biggest drop in CO2 was in
America, in the first year of Donald Trump—no spin.
Though worldwide emissions grew by 1.4 percent,
they fell in UK, Mexico, Japan, and the US.
The IEA released its data on March 22,
comparing all the 2017 results in view.
The biggest drop came from the US—down .5 percent.
Die Welt proclaimed the World’s best protector was the Prez.
While China jumped a full percent, and others did so too,
the skies are cleaner in America, and often blue.

Eber L. Aucsidew is a poet of air and water. He appreciates the Milesians Thales and Anaximenes.

A New Dark Age

by Esca Webuilder

A new Dark Age descends upon a witless mindlessness
that permeates the Intenet with its unthinking cess,
that loves censorious fault-finding, carping viciousness,
believing that disparaging is better than to bless.

The new inanity that goo-twit, faceless mobs express
when they descry those they don’t like and foolishly regress
into stupidity and trivial antithesis;
like vile ogres in their hate, opposing, they oppress.

Deriding objectivity and worthy righteousness,
they fight the light of meritocracy without finesse.
It is a mindless lunacy, an inept senselessness,
a brainless dullness verging on profound unconsciousness.

Esca Webuilder is a poet of social media. “Braindead zombies despise individual achievement…” is a quote of his that has brought him into conflict with the offspring of Gog and Magog, El Ogog.

 

The GQ Canon

by Sirc de Wee Balu

GQ, a foolish little rag, continues on its way,
of blithering and slithering and slobbering away.
Its Lilliputian editors made up a list they thought
books overrated, not that great, in short, not worth a lot.
The fodder in their canon isn’t worth repeating, but
the ones they thought were worthless is—a height they’ll never touch.
The works they chose include The Bible, Huckleberry Finn,
The Catcher in the Rye, Farewell to Arms, Lord of the Rings,
The Old Man and the Sea, Th’ Ambassadors, and Dracula,
Catch-22, and Gulliver’s, ah, Good-bye to All That.

Sirc de Wee Balu is a poet of the silly, who likes to point out prosaic drivel wherever he finds it. The works mentioned above in the tennos include: the most popular book of all time “The Bible,” which contains the work of writers from Moses to John; Realist Mark Twain’s classic tale along the Mississippi, “Huck Finn” (with its own critical comments on Moses and Solomon); Postmodernist J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, not mentioned above, and his revelations of the phony in his urban picaresque “Catcher in the Rye”; Modernist Ernest Hemingway’s heart-wrenching World War I novel “A Farewell to Arms” and his novella of man v. nature “The Old Man and the Sea”; Modernist J. R. R. Tolkien’s allegorical fantasy “Lord of the Rings”; Realist Henry James polished, complex maze “The Ambassadors”; Irish Victorian Bram Stoker’s gothic horror “Dracula”; Postmodernist Joseph Heller’s absurdist World War II novel “Catch-22”; Neoclassicist Jonathan Swift’s brilliant satire (lost on the writers at GQ) “Gulliver’s Travels”; and the last mentioned work in the tennos, Modernist Robert Grave’s post World War I, bitter leave-taking of England “Good-bye to All That.”


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17 Responses

  1. Amy Foreman

    Mr. Wise, I always enjoy reading your poetry, especially social commentary–and I am so entertained by the many “faces” of Bruce! Thank you for my smile this morning!

    Reply
    • Walude Scabere

      In even very serious topics, as in Ms. Foreman’s ballad “Fear,” there is a certain enjoyment in the rhyming dexterity and metrical fun, that goes back to works, like the medieval “Get Up and Bar the Door.” I often feel that joy in even the most deadpan of tones on the most seemingly unpoetic of topics. The Neoclassicists (with an eye to ancient Greece and Rome) frequently indulged in such verbal play, and such humour is there in early American colonial literature, as in the aphorisms of Benjamin Franklin or the couplets of Ebenezer Cooke.

      I think humour is one vital component of a strong literature, one which can be seen in English poets, like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope and Byron, and English prosaists like Swift, Twain and Thurber. Can you imagine losing the treasure of humour in English writing to the humourless braindead zombies of the neoapoxalyptic landscape? In light of that here are a couple of docupoems from yesterday.

      A Man Was in an Elevator
      by Sirc de Wee Balu
      “In Tasks so bold, can Little Men engage,
      and in soft Bosoms, dwells such Mighty Rage?”
      —Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”

      A man was in an elevator; he was asked which floor.
      He answered, “Ladies’ lingerie.” Just that and nothing more.
      Some laughed; but not the gender-studies prof within that car.
      She filed a complaint about the joke. He’d gone too far.
      How could he dare—the brute mysogonist—speak out like that?
      And then he had the gall to call her frivolous, in fact.
      The ISA agreed. He must apologize to her.
      But so far he’s refused. O, no, on that he won’t demur.
      Misogyny, misanthropy—a suit is threatening:
      the lightning flashes, thunder roars, above the mezzanine.

      At the “Brown Apocalypse”
      by Wic E. Ruse Blade
      “I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over, as I was walking along and thinking on poor England.”
      —Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels”

      A semi-trailer overturned upon a median,
      in Poland, blocking traffic in both ways, in early morn.
      Its contents spilled near Slupca o’er the six-lane motorway,
      and tons of choc’late formed a rocky road upon display.
      A head policeman said the cooling mess was worse than snow,
      and they would need a lot of water just to make it go.

      The driver went to hospital; he had a broken arm;
      but luckily no other travelers were chocked or harmed,
      except perhaps an overzealous local journalist,
      who walked along the edge, but slipped and fell into a ditch.
      O, what a waste that none could taste the choc’late with their lips,
      but there were lots of smiles at the “Brown Apocalypse.”

      Reply
      • Amy Foreman

        Just fabulous, Mr. Scabere. And I agree about humour and lightness, both of which allow the poet to delve into even the darkest subjects of human existence without resorting to either the profanity or the narcissistic, navel-gazing drivel of the “humourless braindead zombies of the neoapoxalyptic landscape?” (as you put it so well!)

  2. James Sale

    Fascinating work and Mr Wise, appropriately as it turns out, is wise! It is almost beyond parody the inanition of the modern world, but Bruce manages it: I especially like his GQ Canon – whatever one’s religious beliefs it seems utterly perverse to be s***ta**e and claim that the Bible is overrated! How could that be? And no surprise: how the pseudo-intellectuals hate Tolkien’s genius tale, and no doubt because so many straightforward people love it. Well done, Mr Wise, a lovely expose. This theme is something important to me, and in my own different way with my Cantos I am trying to expose the shallowness of this kind of idiotic thinking, or rather, should I say, posturing.

    Reply
    • Sirc de Wee Balu

      With billions of people on the Internet, there are many topics in many fields that fly beyond our ken. Little trinkets, like the GQ canon list, are often missed on the radar, but, when spotted, can be used as indicators of cultural trends. And though GQ is certainly more popular than the SCP, with well over 600,000 subscriptions, that doesn’t mean their metrosexual prosasters are clear-headed, especially when it comes to literature. I suggest they focus on fashion, style, food, and movies, things they are known for, as opposed to substantial writing; although that will not preclude them from winning a watered-down Pulitzer every now and then.

      I suspect their perusal of the Bible is shallow “posturing” as Mr. Sale has suggested; and undoubtedly not in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek. Why even the suicidal, atheist Ernest Hemingway strained pathetically after Biblical symbolism in his novella “The Old Man and the Sea”. It’s not that I like all these works; I don’t. But I have read most of them all the way through, and several of them more than once, and the works GQ prosasters suggest I read are mere alphabetical lollipops.

      I recently dedicated a poem to Mr. Sale, but as I did not know his middle name, and could not find it, my dedication to him as Jem al-Seas appears in the following tennos; J. R. R. Tolkien can be a handy backdrop for the “inanition” of our times as well.

      Trolling Trolls
      by Uclis Weebeard
      for Jem al-Seas

      Among these Oceal Just-Us warriors of Dark Sauron are
      the Trolls who love the Necromancer, for his love of war.
      The only greater in their minds, as they attack the right,
      is Melkor, he, their lord who turned away from light to night.
      Named Morgoth, when he had destroyed Two Trees of Valinor,
      and murdered Finwë, Noldor’s King, whose son was Fëanor,
      this Tyrant, Enemy, Oppressor of the World—Bauglir—
      is he who rose in might and fright, the god of hate and fear.
      And though his sad disharmonies assault the good and true,
      they can’t supplant the beauties of the music of Eru.

      Uclis Weebeard is a poet of J. R. R. Troll King and his World.

      By the way, prosaster is a neologism meaning dilettantes in prose, as poetasters are dilettantes in poetry; it is a neologism coined by Beau Lecsi Werd.

      Reply
      • James Sale

        My dear Uclis (or Uncle?) Weebeard – thank you so much for dedicating a poem to me which I had no idea of, and who Jem al-Seas was!!! Now I know it’s me – fabulous – I am truly entering your magical world. FYI, and actually, a little known fact about me is that my middle name is James! It’s just I never use or reveal my first name, since I don’t like it. So now you know an unimportant fact to everybody, except of course myself, for whom it’s vital – as names have each their own magical sound and spell. As for the poem, I love it and I suspect ‘the mindflayer’ (who commented recently on my Canto, would as well, since even the name suggests someone deeply into the fantasy/horror universe!

  3. J. Simon Harris

    Wow, that list from GQ is hard to believe. Either they never read those books, or they’re just trying to elicit a reaction (or they’re morons). Anyway, thanks for posting these! I always enjoy your satire.

    Reply
    • Sirc de Wee Balu

      I think Mr. Harris is correct on all three counts:

      1. As I mentioned to Mr. Sale I am fairly sure they have not really read those books. How could they have to come away with such a benighted view? As in the case of the writers of the Bible, I can’t imagine they have read either the Hebrew or the Greek; and if they have scanned some of the words in English, I can’t imagine they read with any sensibility. Even though I have not read the entire Bible in Hebrew or in Greek, what I have read in Hebrew and Greek is so remarkable stylistically, linguistically, heuristically, and inspirationally that its depths, even with persistent study, are not exhaustible. Now I know various religious groups (Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, etc.) divide up the books of the Bible into various ways, but I doubt whether the GQ writers even mentally divide the Hebraic books up into the most basic of groups, the Pentateuch (Torah), the histories, the poetic and wisdom books, and the books of the prophets, or the Greek books, into the gospels, the acts, the epistles, and revelation. Really what they reveal is rather more ignorance than insight.

      2. Undoubtedly the writers of GQ are trying to “elicit a reaction”; they certainly got one from me—a tennos; they are not worth much more than that.

      3. They are morons, from the Greek, meaning foolish.

      And I have one more count:

      4. They are prideful and arrogant, but without the slightest reason whatsoever for being so.

      And Mr. Sale has one more count:

      5. They are vulgar.

      As for the other works mentioned in the tennos, I have neither the interest, nor the inclination, to spend more time on such frivolity; but I did think it was important enough to make a poetic statement, and one that I prophesy will last longer than the magazine itself.

      Reply
  4. Monty

    Good day, Bruce.

    Regarding Eber’s offering: May I heed
    That if one were to ask him where he obtained
    The said statistics and percentages, he’d
    (confidently, it seems) tell one that he’d gained

    Them from respective Government-Releases.
    And if one further asked Eber: ‘Do you not
    See Government Statistics as like pieces
    Of confetti; just thrown around in a plot

    To keep the Sniffers at bay?’ One asks, would he
    Scoff at such claims, and dismiss one as merely
    A conspiracy-theorist? One may well be . .
    If that’s the term for one who sees things clearly.

    Reply
    • Eber L. Aucsidew

      Die Welt (The World) is a German newspaper of some 180,000 readers. Certainly no admirers of Donald Trump, they got their data from the IEA (International Energy Agency), a Paris-based group that focuses on energy security, economic development, and environmental protection. Why I enjoyed this particular article in Die Welt was it clearly demonstrated how the American mainstream media completely buried the IEA news because it didn’t fit in with its bias. It was another example, if one needed one, of the incredible indulgence in yellow journalism in the US.

      I must admit to “Monty” that, as a philomath, I do admire data when it’s really based on clear-eyed facts; and as a lover of the air I breathe and the water that I drink (Aren’t we all on that same boat?) I care what’s held at bay. Here’s to clean air and clean water, and may Am-air-ica continue to lead the World in reducing pollution in both. As an aside, it is rather surprising to find my given name in loose iambic pentametres.

      Reply
      • Monty

        Can I ask ya, Bruce: when ya next see Eber, can ya tell him that I have two confessions to make? They are: 1/ I hitherto wasn’t aware of the word ‘philomath’, so I thank Eber for the disclosure. Indeed, since gaining its meaning, I’ve decided
        that it’s a word not unattributable to myself (albeit not a word I’d use in company). 2/ I’m not one who’s totally adept with all the different Terms for poetry Structure, hence they generally have no bearing on the poems I write. I s’pose we all have our own criteria as to what constitutes disciplined poetry; my personal (unswerving) criteria is as follows: a/ Something deeply-felt that one wishes to convey.. b/ Strict end-rhymes (and I mean ‘strict’; not nearly-strict . . STRICT.. or not at all, as in blank-verse.. c/ Equal amount of syllables in each line (in the case of my last correspondence – 11 syllables). I ‘read’ all forms of poetry (within or without the above criteria), but when it comes to ‘writing’ one, I generally seem to adhere to the above criteria. Some may refer to that as ‘limiting’.. to which I couldn’t disagree.

        So, I hope Eber will understand that my last correspondence couldn’t have been written in “loose” Iambic Pentameters . . ‘cos it wasn’t written in Iambic Pentameter! It was simply written how I saw fit; with not the slightest regard to Form.

        If I may refer Eber to 3 recent offerings on these pages (of which he’s probably aware); all of which adhere strictly to the 3 criterions above, hence were all like a breath of fresh air for me . . R. Libby’s ‘Bluebonnet Sonnet’.. and A. Foreman’s ‘Fear’ and ‘Loving My Neighbor’. That’s what I call disciplined poetry (especially Loving Thy Neighbor; it’s a fuckin’ masterpiece! The discipline, combined with the globally-powerful sentiment conveyed; with the potential to make the reader think twice before ‘Judging My Neighbor’). It’s enough to make me drool.

        I don’t expect Eber to share my sentiment that ‘IEA’ is just that.. 3 letters! In this case, acronymical to some agency – the same as any other modern-day agency – which may be self-servingly riding the gravy-train; and if it’s in their interests (financially or otherwise) to release certain figures . . of course they will.

        I ask ya to stress to Eber that I’m not saying the figures are untrue; how can I? I have no proof! But in the same vein, how can Eber say the figures ‘are’ true? He equally has no proof!

        All of the above can be simply and neatly encapsulated in the old adage: Don’t believe what ya read.

  5. David Watt

    Mr Wise, your poetry always has something relevant to say, and entertains no matter the topic pursued. As Messrs Sale and Harris have stated, GQ displays a strange view of literary merit.

    Reply
  6. Lew Icarus Bede

    I realize that the poetry of Mr. Auxcsidew, as a poet of environmental science, id est, as a studier of air and water, is somewhat limited. I think “Monty” brings up some thoughts that should be addressed, because his thoughts are really not all that different from many, if not most, contributors to SCP, and are important in any serious discussion of poetry. What I personally like about Monty’s poem is what he draws from and argues against in “Am-air-ica”.

    1. Ironically, Monty’s hendecasyllabics are probably nearer in poetic practice to that of the early Eber than anybody @ SCP; for Eber, too, was once syllabically oriented (like the German Baroque poet Georg Rudolph Weckherlin, who, influenced by La Pléiade, strove for a syllabic verse) and was also a bit of a martinet in rhyme, as are some present-day SCP contributors. One of his early creations was the bilding, a poetic structure of the 1970s, when he lived in Deutschland, of twelve lines of twelve syllables in an ababcbcdcdad rhyme scheme, with an 89/55 Fibonacci split, which came from the German word Bild, meaning image, picture, painting, photo. The metre he used, coming out of his studies in Modernist and Postmodernist free verse, followed Monty’s basic free-form format, with some other tweaks as well.

    2. Mr. Aucsidew should have been more careful in his analysis of Monty’s twelve lines of eleven syllables. Undoubtedly, he was marking accents, when he should have been counting syllables, not as the ancients did, like Sappho and Catullus, but as we moderns do. In fact, if Mr. Aucsidew had been more careful, he could have noted that Monty’s lines, though they have a loose pentametre grounding, vary as to lineal accents. What amazes me is how often Monty resorts to a “modern cretic” at the end of more than half of his lines. Mr. Aucsidew should have also seen how he “couldn’t have written in ‘loose’ iambic pentameters…as it was written how [he] saw fit, with not the slightest regard to Form.”

    3. I also see that Mr. Aucsidew, who also admires the homespun poetry of Ms. Foreman, if not “especially ‘Loving Thy Neighbor,'” which Monty calls a “masterpiece,” “enough to make him drool,” is perhaps less forthcoming for his praise of New Millennial poets—perhaps because he looks at the global panorama of writing, from the ancients to the present. I also think Mr. Aucsidew is very narrow minded, because of his focus on water and air (but even Pindar was there). And though Mr. Aucsidew uses the acronym IEA in his poetry, I don’t think we can know how seriously he takes that organization. I think that what he was trying to do in his poetry was to bring elements of our complex contemporary scene into his poetry.

    4. As for the importance of “something deeply-felt that one wishes to convey,” this is where I suspect Mr. Aucsidew differs from nearly all New Millennial poets he has read, much to the chagrin of contributors to the SCP; so I think Mr. Aucsidew would agree with most of these sentences of T. S. Eliot, which I suspect many of the contributors @ SCP would not:

    a. For it is not the ‘greatness’, the intensity, of the emotions, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.

    b. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him ‘personal’. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

    c. There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet.

    d. This leads me back to the poet, who is neither an emotionalist nor a sensationalist, who has been all this while in the conversation with the other artists, with a few scientists, and with Aristotle in a corner of the room.

    e. The end of the enjoyment of poetry is a pure contemplation from which all the accidents of personal emotion are removed; thus we aim to see the object as it really is…

    f. Those who object to the ‘artificiality’ of Milton or Dryden sometimes tell us ‘to look into our hearts and write’. But that is not looking deep enough; Racine or Donne looked into a good deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tract.

    g. [As an aside, I believe Mr. Aucsidew really believes one of the factors of the greatness of Beethoven’s music lies in his approach to the digestive track.] He’s got to be kidding, right? No, I think he really does believe it.

    h. I am delighted to hear that you have been at the late Beethoven—I have the A minor quartet on the gramophone, and I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaity [sic] about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse once before I die.

    i. What every poet starts from is his own emotions…Shakespeare, too, was occupied with the struggle—which alone constitutes life for a poet—to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal.

    j. I enjoy Shakespeare’s poetry to the full extent of my capacity for enjoying poetry; but I have not the slightest approach to certainty that I share Shakespeare’s feelings; nor am I very much concerned to know whether I do or not. In short, Arnold’s account seems to me to err in putting emphasis upon the poet’s feelings, instead of upon the poetry.

    Finally, I did enjoy Monty’s poem for several reasons: its sincerity, its statistics simile, his ability to hold several complex thoughts simultaneously, and its succinctness.

    Reply
    • Monty

      I must say, Bruce: I was surprised to note that your colleague, Lew, has deemed the poetry of your other colleague, Eber, to be “somewhat limited”. Upon which ground does Lew base his claim? If Eber wants to breathe fresh-air; so be it.. it’s his right. If he then decided to express that desire onto the page; well, what a splendid idea for a poem . . to convey something about which he felt deeply. From my point of view, it was never a case of what I “argued against” in Eber’s piece. I had no argument against the poem itself; he was perfectly entitled to his idealism. My only gripe was with the validity of the ‘statistics’.. and the earnestness of the source from which said statistics wete obtained. This in no way lessened the sentiment which Eber felt compelled to convey.

      At this juncture, it may be prudent for you to make both Lew and Eber aware that I’m now of an age (55) where I’ve become inflexibly stubborn in my belief that no government/government agency on this planet have any right to be trusted. To give an example of my disdain for such: If one were to tell me that they believed any government-released statistics, in any country, to be credible . . then I’d propose, by inference, that the same person must also believe that TV advert polls – ‘ . . and 8 out of 10 owners said they prefer . . ‘ – are credible. I see no difference between the validity of either!

      I’d be most grateful if either yourself or Eber would tell Lew that I strongly object to his use of the word ‘resorts’.. as in: “how often Monty ‘resorts’ to a modern cretic”. Only if I knew what a modern cretic was (I’m not even gonna look it up) could I even remotely be accused of ‘resorting’ to it. Surely Lew could only be in a position to make such a claim if he was sat next to me when I wrote the poem; and he overheard me saying to myself: ‘Right, I can’t be bothered to make this poem structurally correct, so I’m gonna resort to modern cretics’. Further, to anyone who ‘does’ know what a modern cretic is; I’m curious as to whether they would describe it as something that one has to ‘resort’ to. Is it something sinful?

      Not only does Lew accuse me of resorting to modern cretics, but he states that he’s “amazed” at how often I (purportedly) did so; even after I told him in my previous correspondence that my piece was wrote ‘with no regard to form’. Perhaps Lew wishes to repeat that loudly to himself: With No Regard To Form . . then he may not be so ‘amazed’ at my ‘modern cretics’; my ‘loose pentameter grounding’; my ‘variation of lineal accents’. How can my piece be criticised for things I’d already admitted? If I may draw an analogy: It’s like Lew asking me to cook dinner.. and me replying that I can’t cook.. and Lew saying I should just do it anyway.. and then criticising me when dinner’s ruined! Senseless . .

      89/55 Fibonacci Split . . please, Bruce; Lew’s scaring the children! Don’t tell me what it means, and I won’t look it up.. I daren’t. I can’t even look at it, and I’m slightly dismayed that this image is in any way related to poetry . . I hope I never see it again. But what about the children? Or young people in general, just coming to poetry for the first time? What are they to make of such an alien-sounding Term? Does Lew not think it would be a difficult enough task, in these times, just to drag a western teenager away from their screen in order to simply READ a poem (in the slim hope that one may relate to it, or be amused by it)? Difficult enough in itself, but if that same teenager was then ordered to analyse the poem, to dissect it in order to determine its Form and Structure; and to then learn all the different Terms for said form and structure; and was then told to draw a comparison/similarity from that poem to that of some German writer who was doing his stuff 3 million years ago . . . it’d surely scare them, and may put them off poetry for life. Whereas, if they were introduced to poetry in it’s simplest form (or even with ‘no regard to form’), and subsequently decided that it was something to which they wished to become attached; then, further down the line, they may feel the need to take poetry deeper – to analyse, to dissect, to learn all the Terms . . and why not? How enriching that must be. But that ‘need’ can only come from within . . it can’t be thrust upon one. Oscar Wilde explained this much more succinctly when he wrote: ‘Nothing that’s worth knowing can be taught’.

      The above claim from Oscar, along with such as Mark Twain’s warning: ‘Don’t let school get in the way of your education’.. is the perfect fuel for those who believe that poetry and academia are not natural bedfellows . . and that coming to poetry from academia can sometimes result in the obligatory (but maybe unnecessary) dissection of poems; the obligatory EVERYTHING of poems.. everything except, maybe, the simple enjoyment of absorbing the story/sentiment/protestation conveyed.

      Could ya express to both Lew and Eber that I consider myself to be one who has a fairly deep affinity with T.S. Eliot’s poetry; but some of the drizzle attributed to Eliot above has no place in my alliance with him. Indeed, some may take offence to Eliot’s assertion that: ‘Very few (readers) know when there is an expression of significant emotion’ (in a poem).

      Eber may wish to be told that I breathe comparatively clean air for 8 months of the year. I’ve lived in the South of France for the last 18 years, and although the air is far from clean.. being on the Mediterranean sea, it’s ‘comparatively’ clean with regards to most other parts of Central Europe. And for the other 4 months every year, I live in Nepal . . Clean Himalayan Air.

      p.s. Regarding the (obviously intentional) misspelling of the word “Gaiety”: my curiosity demands that I ask who decided to misspell it.. You or Lew? And which of you then added the obligatory ‘sic’? And one must ask: How and Why did this come about? Were ya trying (in jest) to make it appear to be Eliot’s mistake? That’d be unkind to any poet, in view of what Mr Wilde once said: ‘A poet can survive anything . . except a misprint’.

      Reply
  7. B. S. Eliud Acrewe

    1. I “s’pose” French data in German reportage should be more vigourously questioned.

    2. Trust must be earned; and granted it can never be 100%; but as relating to CO2 emissions in 2017, I think Mr. Aucsidew probably did not have greater access to better data.

    3. May I heed your advice, Monty Med? “Did you not hear that Lew?” His piece was wrote with no regard for form. “Do not ask him to cook.”

    4. Those Germans–which German writer was doing his stuff 3,000,000 years ago?

    5. Something that’s worth knowing can’t be taught?

    6. Style: Wilde exaggeration with local-colour Twaing.

    7. Very, very few readers know when there is an expression of significant emotion in a mathematical proof.

    8. Clean air does not a clear head make; but it helps.

    9. That was T. S. Eliot’s spelling; but that doesn’t make it a mistake.

    10. Say, Hey, to Waseel Budecir in Nepal, and Brulise de Wace in Provence.

    Reply

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