NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/bi/17463

Text File | 1993-01-03 | 1.8 KB | 44 lines

Newsgroups: soc.bi
Path: sparky!uunet!tcsi.com!hermes!miket
From: [e-mail] (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Purity
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 23:20:19 GMT
Lines: 32

In article <[e-mail]> Graydon <[e-mail]> writes:
>Getting to be too much to quote.
>
>My favourite, if grammatically incorrect, response to 'what are you?'
>questions is 'a people'.  If they stop blinking after 5 seconds or
>don't scream at you for being a wiseass you're probably ok.

What about when they smile condescendingly and erase you from the list
of "peoples" with whom they can hope to have an adult conversation?

I liked Whitman's "I contain multitudes" a little better, but both are
just a tad insufferable in casual company, no matter how you put it.

>[several good points, deleted however.]
>
>The other thing is that sticking people in bins works just fine
>in fairly homogeneous enviroments, which most e[n]viro[n]ments are.
>It leads to a narrow view of the world and no good poetry known to
>me. (which last is a significant condemnation.)

T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, to name just two, were somewhat antisemitic.
Both wrote some very good poetry, despite dumping far too many people
into the "Jew" bin, all the more heinous in view of how few of them
ever returned during this time (the thirties and forties).

Poets have all the failings of the rest of us, and often many more.
I suppose they tend to stick people in bins somewhat less often than
ordinary folk, but that doesn't mean they never do.  Even some brilliant
poets have this failing.
---
Michael Turner
[e-mail]