DDCPoetry

  Apologies for the gap in-between as I copied this and the rest of the poem was on another page.  This poem should be a single stanza. With that being stated, this poem works as a joke where there is a punchline at the end.  However, we start at the time "Shorter Russian Poem" which could mean that the poem is about Russia or it could also mean that the poem is a shorter version of a Russian archetype of poem.  My guess it's about the former rather than the later. So we start with natural devastations like "famine, plague / floods, rains / droughts".  The placement of "floods" next to "rain" and then "droughts" brings an interesting duality to this poem.  I would think it'd be something like "drought, rains, floods" but this set-up kind of brings a positive trajectory: drought at least there's rain.  But the disasters are separated and are added up rather than to be thought of as a trajectory.  Devastation is Deva...

  The first thing that pops up when I look up "pathetic fallacy" is this: Pathetic Fallacy Definition and Examples I'm trying to see the emotion in the inanimate, and it doesn't look like this poem deals with this concept, so I think the title, like the poem, separates the definition. Pathetic:  1: having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity 2: marked by sorrow or melancholy : SAD 3: pitifully inferior or inadequate the restaurant's pathetic service 4: ABSURD , LAUGHABLE Fallacy : 1 a: a false or mistaken idea  popular fallacies prone to perpetrate the fallacy of equating threat with capability—C. S. Gray b: erroneous character : ERRONEOUSNESS The fallacy of their ideas about medicine soon became apparent. 2 a: deceptive appearance : DECEPTION b: obsolete : GUILE , TRICKERY 3: an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference This seems to fit the idea of the poem more as we get to the first idea with: Never mind there...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Why I Am Not a Buddhist" by Charles Bernstein Originally read: June 25, 2013 More information about the Poet: Charles Bernstein In the "About the Poem" here Bernstein writes about how he's wrote these types of poem before like, "Why I Am Not a Christian" and "Why I Don't Meditate" -- and for this poem in particular the writer was "both sophistical and sincere (a favorite combination)."  Bernstein further goes into his intent for writing poems like these with: "My concern is more What is false? than What is truth? All true poetry comes from deep fear, immobility, timidity. (I love Walter Benjamin’s essay on Hölderlin’s timidity.) This is our common ground, our temporal consanguinity (blood ties). Reality is not kind. I’d tell you in an instant, if I could." Bernstein's aesthetic shows in the first line of the poem.  "Reality cons me as it spur(n)s me."  The parenthetic...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Pompeii" by Charles Bernstein  Originally read: April 11, 2013 More information about the Poet: Charles Bernstein Depending on the reader's sense of background the opening line, "The rich men, they know about suffering" may come off as jolting.  I don't think the first thought that comes to mind is "suffering" when it comes to someone who is "rich" -- but the first line dictates how the reader should go about the poem -- a bit skeptically, a bit weary, but treading forward and not over thinking the lines. Unfortunately, I naturally over think lines.  But the poem exposes it's intent with the line, "Rich men say they can't control,"  and past me wrote, "proverb -- wealth versus control.  Suffering at the loass of control." The poem goes expansive after what cannot be controlled, "The tides, the erosion of polar caps / And the eruption of a terrible / Greed among those w...