[Vision2020] Poetry for Jeremy, by Poets who Actually Fought

[Ted Moffett]

Melynda and Don:

Don wrote to Melynda:

"But you wouldn't understand them, either."

Talk about an arrogant dismissal of someone's capacity for empathy and 
understanding!  How, Don, do you know that Melynda cannot in some important 
manner understand this poetry?  Because she was not in battle?  I assume 
this is your argument.  Then why study the history of people and places you 
have never been to?  In this case again I assume your statement "But you 
wouldn't understand them, either" should also apply.

Yet I bet you pontificate on historical events that you never experienced 
yourself.

Stephen Crane's civil war novel "The Red Badge of Courage" is regarded as 
one of the most realistic portrayals of battle and combat from the point of 
view of inside a soldier's mind, yet Crane never was in a civil war battle 
himself, if I have my facts on this novel correct.

The human imagination has an amazing capacity to allow us to imagine and 
feel that which we have never experienced directly.  Can this be the same as 
the actual event?  No, but this hardly implies the extreme dismissal you 
made of Melynda's capacity to understand the experiences you refer to.

Ted



>From: Don Kaag <dkaag@turbonet.com>
>To: Vision 2020 <vision2020@moscow.com>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Poetry for Jeremy, by Poets who Actually Fought
>Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 07:01:00 -0800
>
>Melynda:
>
>Here's a real short poem written on a piece of cardboard C-Rat box by a 
>Marine grunt at Khe Sahn, Central Highlands, former Republic of Vietnam, in 
>1968:
>
>"For those who serve/Freedom has a taste/The protected will never know"
>
>You can have Ezra Pound... he was a pretentious, expatriate, snob.
>
>As for Wilfred Owen... at least he knew what he was writing about.  He had 
>"been there and done that".  And that means for all of your English degree, 
>you will never truly understand his poetry.  You don't have the referents.
>
>Here's another one, from Lord Macauley:
>
>..."And how can man die better/Than facing fearful odds/For the ashes of 
>their fathers/And the temples of their Gods?"
>
>Hey, this is fun.  I bet we could quote pacifist/war poetry back and forth 
>for weeks...
>
>I could even post some of mine.  But you wouldn't understand them, either.
>
>Regards,
>
>Don Kaag
>
>On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 10:24 PM, Melynda Huskey wrote:
>
>>There died a myriad,
>>And of the best, among them,
>>For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
>>For a botched civilization,
>>Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
>>Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
>>
>>For two gross of broken statues,
>>For a few thousand battered books.
>>
>>   ~Ezra Pound
>>
>> 
>>
>> 
>>
>>If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
>>Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
>>And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
>>His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
>>If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
>>Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
>>Bitter as the cud
>>Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
>>My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
>>To children ardent for some desperate glory,
>>The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
>>Pro patria mori.
>>
>>~Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen.
>>
>>
>>
>>I knew a simple soldier boy
>>Who grinned at life in empty joy,
>>Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
>>And whistled early with the lark.
>>
>> 
>>
>>In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
>>With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
>>He put a bullet through his brain.
>>No one spoke of him again.
>>
>> 
>>
>>You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
>>Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
>>Sneak home and pray you'll never know
>>The hell where youth and laughter go.
>>
>>~Suicide in the Trenches, Siegfried Sassoon
>>
>> 
>>
>>Melynda Huskey (once an English professor, always an English professor)
>>
>> 
>>
>>P.S.  I could also produce a splendid and varied set of poetry in 
>>celebration of adultery--but I hesitate to conclude from that evidence 
>>that sexual dalliance is the destiny of all humans.
>>
>> 
>>


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