Enough
 

Enough

There has to be a better way than this:

The frantic pace obscuring what time means,

The endless sense that something is amiss,

The numbing cold upon the flickering screens.

There has to be a better way to live,

Where rage and outrage tire of their striptease,

Where we realize that to get we have to give,

Where opponents are not enemies.

We'd better find a way to cool it down.

We'd better learn to have more conversations.

We need to learn that we're a common noun,

Admit some calculus of variations.

Otherwise, well, you think this is rough?

I've never heard a fire say "Enough."



By David Rothman

Yes, it's beginning to feel like it's time. Brilliant final two lines.


And of course this one:

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

By William Wordsworth
z

I've kicked seven shades of shit out of this particular poem. I've mocked it, parodied it, sided with Hecht to laugh at it and extrapolated from it in several directions. But it's still the one that comes first to mind in this context.


Dover Beach

By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Thanks for the Wordsworth and Arnold. The Rothman, not so much.

Lots of "enough" going around:

In another room, just outside the locker room, Coach Jay Gruden stood behind a lectern and shook his head.

“I like the way we are playing and competing,” Gruden said. “After the Saints game it could have gone a lot of different ways with this team, but our leaders stepped up and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

Is that about not calling the team "Redskins"?

I love it when Boomers write sonnets telling me to shut up while they don't feel guilty about publishing in First Things, The New Criterion, and similar C.H.U.D. publications and enjoy the last dozen years before we all boil to death in rising seawater.

I don't think the seawater will be boiling. We will drown in it, not be boiled in it. But it doesn't matter. I've never heard rising seawater say "Enough" whether it was boiling me or simply drowning me.

"Enough, already!"


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/...g?imwidth=1400

Would someone enlighten me as to what C.H.U.D. stands for? Thank you. :confused:

In a political context, C.H.U.D.s are people who, like Roger Kimball, say things like: "Congratulations to President elect Jair Bolsonaro. The left-wing press describes him as 'far right,' but then they describe President Trump as 'literally Hitler'. What Bolsonaro is in fact is a populist, nationalist patriot. A good thing." You know, sufficiently right-wing and with a twitchy enough right arm as to overtly hail fascists.

https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showt...ighlight=Chuds


Catherine - We've been here before. For further enlightenment take a deep breath and plunge in.

I was way off point about the Redskins. I apologise for that. I was trying to make sense of Sam's original and subsequent posts.

Enough is a beautiful thing. I have spent a lifetime trying to live in the light of it, fighting upwards in times of too little and saying "no thank you" in times of too much. Current consumerism appals me. The thing is, living according to those precepts is all very well, but pointing it out is, as I have lately discovered to my tearful cost, "virtue signalling".

Is that being "butt-hurt"? I have foundered before on terminology, clinging to the moving staircase of it: CHUDs, Narcs and Bozos - I try not to qualify.

I could howl for the best minds of the later generations but I will just have to trust them. Trust is the farmer in Steeple Bumpstead when I was a child who always put a barrel of surplus apples at his gate at this time of year with a placard, "Help Yourself". It's my Grandmother holding my wrist - "two's enough; one for now and one for later".

It's all falling apart. We will perish in wars over resources long before we drown. Enough is not a concept that has much hold on the minds of the multitude, Enough is all we need. In principle.

But please don't call me a Boomer. I'm not a Boomer. I am of different generation and am sorry for being Silent.

I’ve submitted a lot of embarrassingly terrible poems to a lot of places, but the only one that I’m ashamed of is when I sent a good one to TNC. Roger Kimball is a vile man.

"Bolsonaro, who is leading by a wide margin in polls, has said that he would rather have a dead son than a gay one and that homosexuality is a result of a lack of beatings. A recent string of attacks on gay, lesbian and transgender people by his supporters has shocked many here and sparked fears that homophobic violence will increase — and go unpunished — during his presidency.... Brazil already has one of the world’s highest rates of LGBT killings. Last year saw a record 445 reports of anti-gay killings." Washington Post

This is why I hate Rothman's poem and certain formalists whom I'll outlive--assuming I don't go to Brazil, I guess--but won't name because they'll cry ad hom to Alex, boo hoo--who call for civility when the other side literally wants you dead.

Tut tut, Walter, that's very rude of you.

How is it rude, Aaron, or false?

It's neither rude nor false. My post was a (bad, apparently) joke, about the civility police viewing the very arguments against civility ("the other side literally wants me dead") as themselves uncivil, since those arguments attribute very mean things to the other side.

(As a general rule, possibly an exceptionless rule, I will not say "tut tut" if the point I'm making is at all serious.)

No worries. Part of me did think you were joking since it seemed unlike you. (I would have gone for a tsk, tsk.)

I'm tired of sides and left and right. Of hearing about CHUDS and Boomers. Tired of feeling like every reaction I have to hatred and atrocity must be filtered through the correct political prism. Tired of having exactly the same feelings of sickened disgust at the vile, toxic, religion-inspired misogyny and/or homophobia that produces this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45829440

and this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45918845

yet feeling like voicing disgust for the former is acceptable while voicing the same disgust at the latter somehow allies me with the neanderthals of the English far-right. I'm very tired of ideology and politics and resolve henceforth to simply be as kind to people as I am able.

Edit: and I'll make my judgement about who those people are and the level of kindness they deserve on a case by case basis. ;)

Edit edit: It seems that most of the energy here is expended not in sympathy for victims of injustice but at sniping vitriol against fellow writers for occasionally appearing in the 'wrong' magazines. The tiny, overwhelmingly liberal world of poetry bickering while the world falls apart.

Mark, just the other day you argued against my complaints about centrists by saying that centrists, when they devote their energies to non-issues like "the regressive left", shouldn't have to issue prefaces about there being far bigger issues (e.g. the actual fascist right) around.

Yet now you are upset that some of us are question fellow formalists who are happy to appear in pro-fascist rags like The New Criterion without issuing the caveat that there are far bigger issues (e.g. the actual election of a murderous fascist in Brazil, which TNC's editor supports).

You see the double standard, yes?

I didn't know much about Roger Kimball; I knew TNC was more right wing, but had no idea how bad his politics were. I like David Yezzi; I don't know his politics, but the poetry I've read has never jumped out to me as conservative, necessarily. I'm happy to be wrong on that, though it may not matter.

Most of TNC, with a few exceptions, is pretty bland politically: fairly solid art & lit discussion with the occasional one-liner to remind you it's a conservative outlet (also in this vein: their inability to praise a queer or minority artist without taking a potshot at politically left art). A lot of their overtly political stuff in the early days of the Trump admin seemed squeamish about Trump, though of course eager to point out how the left is worse, suggesting that Kimball may have kept any explicitly anti-Trump material out. (But then, those were the good old days, when Republicans still hemmed and hawed about Trump's manners before they cast their votes in favor of his fascist policies, so maybe Kimball didn't need to.) But Kimball himself is an anti-moral slimeball, and anyone who works for him taints themselves by doing so.

I think Yezzi is more left-leaning. I hope he does the correct thing and resigns. The poetry selections, anyway, have gotten more and more insular with the same people reappearing every third issue more or less. I wonder if they've had a drop in submissions over the last few years.

Every one of us is a preacher, in one way or another. We all want to testify to the truth, as we see it, and to have others adopt our way of thinking.

It saddens me to see people using preaching methods that they should know don't work, because those same methods have never worked on them--and have, in fact, strengthened their resolve to promote the opposite point of view.

For example, some churches preach only to the choir. That is, their mission is not to persuade sinners of the error of their ways. Their mission is to be a social purity club, where the like-minded can rail to the like-minded about what terrible people the less enlightened are. They relish the idea that those they consider to be sinners will be sorry someday that they didn't admit that the churchgoers were right. This sort of preaching fills a need, but the need it's filling is self-esteem therapy rather than making any sort of positive difference in the world.

In contrast, some churches preach by going out into the public sphere to berate or shame sinners. This, too, seems to me to meet some sort of self-therapy need rather than converting anyone. Yelling at people for not being of your mindset does not convert them to your mindset. It just convinces them, and everyone else in earshot, that people with your mindset are nasty, vindictive, hate-filled people.

And then there are churches that try to use civil power to outlaw things they consider sinful (or to legalize things they consider virtuous), as a substitute for effective preaching. Their approach seems to be, "If you're not very good at persuading people to your point of view, no problem--just take away their choice in the matter." While imposing your rules on people against their will certainly does make a difference in the real word, the law will be changed back as soon as your group loses power, if you can't convince others to freely choose the outcome you wish. Legislating what people can and can't do physically does nothing to change their minds and hearts.

My own church practices all three of these ineffective and/or downright harmful preaching methods. I stay in my church anyway, because that's where the religious hypocrites are, and religious hypocrites are the sinners who do the most harm to themselves and others. (See Matthew 23.) If I leave, I can't keep trying to change minds and hearts to a worldview that is more in harmony with their own professed beliefs.

By staying, I may seem to be endorsing things I find repugnant, but I think I've been pretty vocal about clarifying my positions on those, and it's no secret that although I still participate very actively and visibly in my worship community, I don't receive Communion anymore because I am not in communion with my church on several matters, and I would be a hypocrite myself if I didn't follow the rules about that. I'll stick around until I'm booted out, though.

Likewise, I will continue to submit certain poems to venues with whose viewpoints I strongly disagree, because that is the only way to reach the audiences whose minds and hearts I would like to change. Anyone who reads the actual poems I've published there can see that I am not endorsing the wider editorial stance of those venues. I realize that my repeatedly saying so probably makes my publication in those venues less likely, but if so I don't begrudge the editors their right to factor that into their decision about whether to publish my stuff.

I offer the above thoughts in case anyone sees useful parallels with their own stances or situations, whether religious or political.

I think it's time to boycott The New Criterion. I'm with Walter, btw, though Walter probably thinks otherwise. I did publish in TNC once; the editor asked me if he could take "Cleante to Elmire" after he heard me read it, then decided it was "too long." He took, instead, a couple of epigrams; I later published a review of Dorothy Parker's selected poems.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...VJeqXs-f2XmIO5

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/...wclassmatescom

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2006/10/layed-out


(The latter is about Ken Lay, late CEO of Enron.)

Not really Aaron, it seems a tenuous connection to make. You expressed 'disgust' at 'centrists' writing anything critical of the left and linked this by implication to tacit acceptance of Trump, if not actual far right terrorism. I thought this was a bit of a stretch and that people should be able to criticise certain aspects of a political ideology without this being seen as approval for its opposite. One of the main criticisms directed at the so-called 'regressive left' from what I understand is its squeamishness and double standards in criticising some of the more illiberal attitudes of Islam, particularly its homophobia and misogyny. The story I linked to is a case in point. The police authorities in that case admitted they were slow in investigating those particular crimes for fear of being seen as 'racist' by local authorities and communities. This doesn't seem a 'non issue' to me, given that it resulted in the systematic rape and abuse of fifteen vulnerable girls.
I'm not 'upset' much less 'disgusted' by people expressing themselves here. It was an edit of an edit: an afterthought to my post. The main thrust of which was that I tire of everything having to be filtered through left/right tribalism. Even poetry. Even poetry. As it happens, I generally agree with the principle that Quincy seems to hold and am glad of the heads up regarding the right wing political affiliations of certain magazines that I might want to avoid submitting to. But I also think one's decision about where they submit is a matter for their own judgement and conscience.

But who knows — 'I am large, I contain multitudes' as the man said (always useful that one).

There are so many places to submit to without having to hold one's nose that I really don't understand why those who find the journal offensive wouldn't simply take them off their list.

Counting TNC, there are now two journals I don't submit to (though it never occurred to me before to submit to TNC, so I can't claim it to be entirely a matter of principle). I have met and continue to respect both their poetry editors.

Mark, well, if that's what you thought I was saying (it wasn't, at all), I guess it makes more sense of why you reacted as you did.

May I ask what the other is?

Sure, I guess. It's been discussed here. First Things. Mike Juster is the new poetry editor and my stance toward the magazine is no reflection on him whatsoever. I also know and like many poets who continue to submit there. It's just not for me.

I have sent a Facebook PM to the poetry editor:

"Please consider resigning from The New Criterion.

“There has to be a better way than this,”
is often what one says when what one means
is that they can’t account for what’s amiss
without discomfort, so they put up screens
to blind them to the hells some others live.
But sometimes emperors are all striptease,
and you can’t just ignore it when they give
their followers a list of enemies
and wink that they should all be taken down.
It isn’t something cured by conversations.
And call it what you will, by any noun,
a thorn is still a thorn, the variations
are all equally bloody, cold, and rough.
In times like these, "enough" is not enough.


--David R.

(you're missing a "the" in L5)

x
Don't ignore Julie's perspective and rationale. It is the antidote to polarization and stalemate. Constructive activism can't happen without understanding the things she illuminates in her post.

Oh, and tend your own garden.
x

(thanks, fixed)

Jim, Julie's perspective is valuable, and much of what she says is admirable. Improving flawed organizations from the inside is noble work. I am not at all convinced by her implied point: that publishing poems in magazines that stump for fascism contributes, in any meaningful, effective way, to that sort of work.

"Tend your own garden" is fine advice much of the time, though when the owner of the neighboring garden has a gun and is coming for yours (this is a metaphor for fascism), you might want to start worrying about what's going on in the gardens around you.


David, your poem is an apt improvement on the original David R's.

Julie writes, "Likewise, I will continue to submit certain poems to venues with whose viewpoints I strongly disagree, because that is the only way to reach the audiences whose minds and hearts I would like to change." That may be true of Julie's poems, but my own poems don't engage on subjects that directly involve the objectionable viewpoints of these venues. If they did, I see that it would be valuable to have my poems stand in contrast to the objectionable viewpoints expressed elsewhere in the magazine (though even then, I don't think of my poems as being written to change minds and hearts). But since they don't, they would only help to decorate a package that I don't approve of, or failing that, lend support and implied endorsement to the publication.

I don't understand (I understand too well) how otherwise decent people think this is about conversing with the other side. The other side--in this case Bolsonaro and Kimball's support of him--is literally--and I am using literally literally--calling for the deaths of: gay people, indigenous Brazilians, trans folk, socialists, and others.

Oh, and writing a poem never stopped anyone from calling me a fag. Your poem ain't gonna do shit.

BTW, you can't edit First Things and not be a homophobe; you are being paid by a homophobic institution that regular publishes anti-gay bullshit, giving that institution agency and an audience, an institution that just this August ran a piece equating homosexuality to pedophilia.