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03-17-2024, 03:57 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,375
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I had no problem with "limp," which I understood to mean "flaccid," and I understood that diminished masculinity was somehow intended here. I just didn't understand how a "petard" (a bomb) could be limp.
Does the narrator think that "petard" is some sort of structure by which things might be hoisted—say, a gallows, halyard, or flagpole—based on the expression "hoist by one's own petard"? I suppose something like that might resemble a stiffy. Unfortunately, the "hoist" in that expression refers to being pushed up by an explosion, not to being pulled upward by a rope or hook:
HISTORICAL
noun: petard; plural noun: petards
a small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blast down a door or to make a hole in a wall.
a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report.
Phrases
be hoist by one's own petard — have one's plans to cause trouble for others backfire on one.
Origin
mid 16th century: from French pétard, from péter ‘break wind’.
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03-17-2024, 07:12 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 8,952
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Yeah, I understand the expression to mean being blown up by your own bomb. I've used it a few times before and have suffered consequences peronally to which the metaphor can be applied. It is, in fact, a metaphor, and I'm trying to stretch it a bit. I'll admit it's confusing. What you're saying, I guess, is that it stands out in this long poem as particularly confusing. Red flag planted.
But you're also saying the phrase as used here indicates that the scribe does not know the meaning of the expression, which is certainly something to take under advisement, which I shall.
Thanks.
--Gave it a look, and it's coming out clean, I think. I say his banners are flapping with his limp petard. No hoist. I really think it's OK. He and others are at little risk of being hoist by a limp petard.
Last edited by Rick Mullin; 03-17-2024 at 07:35 AM.
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03-20-2024, 12:13 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia
Posts: 2,999
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The Shakespearian ‘hoist’ is virtually ‘blown up’ as a petard is a small bomb nothing phallic, the etymology of petard is based on fart, Latin via French.
I am still in the process of an intermittent digestion of this Rick, my apologies.
I will return.
Jan
Last edited by Jan Iwaszkiewicz; 03-20-2024 at 03:48 PM.
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03-31-2024, 12:44 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 8,952
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Thanks Jim, Carl, Julie and Jan,
I'll admit I had been hoping to get a couple more deep dive crits on this, but at its length that's asking a lot. It's experimental and borderline abstract as well. I hope I have given due consideration to my petard. ~,:^)
Rick
Note appendage to the title, which may help with traction...now Expression (Sunset) or The Death of Venus
Last edited by Rick Mullin; 03-31-2024 at 08:24 PM.
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04-28-2024, 02:11 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 8,952
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I removed the reference to Thalidamide. OK?
RM
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Yesterday, 01:01 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Florida, USA
Posts: 3,380
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Rick,
This is absolutely spectacular. It somehow manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. Its density and the layer upon layer of images that need revisiting and carry enough ammunition to feed that urge to reread. My favorite part right now is this:
Quote:
Impervious to all the moon can sorrow,
frozen mountains slam their wood-crack strains.
All color drained, gone even from the dayglow
factories that burned once and their trains
that throttled through the county night and day.
A river choked with surplus nurdles plies
the fallen forest like a mindless snail.
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I could really hear the mountains, and the dayglow thing is an example of that layered density. Regarding “limp petard,” I like to think non-spherians will need to look it up, discover it originated in flatulence, and the “flat” part’s slant-rhyming with “flapping” altogether sets a scene, humorous without detracting from the serious. Somehow that latter part of the sonnet brings Trump to mind, probably not what you had in mind, but still. Like “Huncke,” there’s this madcap image-jumping fervor to it yet the sonnet form (and I like the rhyme scheme!) ties it down somehow and there’s an overall solemnity to it, as there should be. It’s like a Götterdämmerung poem in a grand style. And the absurdity and humor is appropriate to the era in question. Sorry I couldn’t find something I’d change really. Just my general impressions. Well-worth reading and reading again…
Siham
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