Quote:
Originally posted by oliver murray:
I thought this was a terrific poem when I first saw it, and still do at this reading. Prophetic too: "lost to museums"!
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Oliver--As I remember the period when this poem first appeared on the Deep End, your chronology is a little off: The brouhaha about the Iraqi museum was one of the prompts for the poet to write it, not prophesy about the future. But maybe I'm misremembering.
Everything about this poem is a mess--the attempt to use that foompy meter for a serious purpose, the bizarre parade of ancient scenes as figures for the modern, the creaky "Sands of Araby" images.
I'd throw the whole thing immediately in the out box, except for one little problem: It's a fantastic poem. Everything works together in a way that I wouldn't have predicted in a million years. Someday, when I'm a grown-up, I'll be able to figure out how the poet pulls it off.
This was simply the best anti-war poem I saw that year, subtle and keen at the same time, and I admire its author enormously. It should have been in the New Yorker.
Jody