From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: re:  the business of poetry (0)
Date: 16 Apr 92 20:39:54 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA

In rec.arts.poems, glj27240@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (the cult of Carrie ) writes:

> to have its own post, after i eat: "... .... .... ...".  Not quite
> as depicted, still, not a poem to be overlooked anyway.  The first
> (above) is merely a matter of positing yourself (assuming awareness:
> i mean this as a self-action, a _choice_, rather than the argument
> or consideration of category by happenstance) a positing, then, of
> onself either within or without the system.  

It is difficult for me to parse your prose.  Despite that I might
ask if it is possible to be outside the system.  Even Joe speaks
of his resistance being in chains.

> r hardin's post which
> ended "Men like to be crushed." seemed to suggest at least a form
> of this awareness in its recognition of the 'majority', not as to
> mere numbers, specifically the language of the media which here works
> or is propagated by fundaments as our own dear government. 

Another syntactically difficult sentence, but I would state that
r hardin's poem, which I loved, displayed no particular awareness
of positing himself within or whithout any particular system.
It seemed to me to be a piece composed entirely of wonderfully
offended irony.
 
> i don't
> want this to sound sketchy:  i mean exactly that underlying language
> is the same, that of the capitalist patriarchy and etc. etc. already
> mentioned.  on the other hand, we need not feel so optimistic, if that
> was ever our thought.  we also encounter these two jems:
> 
>   " ... I wonder why I should be motivated to care that groups
>     other than the one I am in have no language? "   
> 

By using the word 'jems' at the end of another syntactic torture test, 
I expect you mean to be ironic, but I ask you to reconsider.
People are not idealistic and altruistic by nature, and I am
asking specifically what motivation there is for the masses to
care about one another AT ALL.

If you refuse to address the question honestly, you paint yourself
as another government-fed radical getting fat biting the hand
that feeds him.  I personally DO have some compassion for the
groups oppressed by my very FUCKING existence and the existence
of the myth system that has placed me at the very pinnacle of
this system of oppression, but what I as YOU, _cult_, is 
WHY I or ANYONE should really give a fuck.

You and Joe both need to give some thought to what should motivate
people to escape the machine.  Maybe you have, but you either have
not covered it or it is buried in the depths of an affected
and confusing syntax.

> 
> and of course the "This is patently ridiculous" paragraph.  a post
> appropriately enough signed:
> 
> Andrew Aiken
> 
> "Ideology:  the science of idiocy"  -- John Adams
> 
> Madison was also mentioned in the post.  (Oh... but that was a long time
> ago.  - sorry, old joke.)  yet i wonder if this chad isn't also a consti-
> tutionalist.  but i wonder even more what he means by "mankind as divorced
> from nature"  only the incredibleness of this "nature" actually meaning to
> signify a certain 'state of things' - i.e. the relationship of "people...
> (and) their masters", i.e. this patriarchial machine and those who don't
> fit into its dominate class; keep me from trying to see what it apprears
> is there.  well, a little more than appears when Madison and John Adams,
> two of the 'symbolic', and literal - founders of this great patriarchy
> we've inherited are dragged up to 'support case in point'.   All i can
> say, in the words of Scarry Harry, is  holy holy shit! 

Well, at least the last sentence can be parsed by someone who
cannot read your mind.

I personally think that this great attack on the very _patriarchy_
that has given you the freedom and wealth to attack your 
subjugation is very very interesting.  I smacks of all the kids
with rich parents who get liberal arts degrees and sit about in
coffee houses drinking cappucino and attacking the hideousness
of the system with third-grade affected marxism.

This patriarchy has ENABLED many groups to cry out about their
plight.  YES, the patriarchy is hideous in its own ways, and
YES, it may be time to start talking about ways to throw it
off, but let's clean up our rhetoric and acknowledge just who
it was that took the first steps toward giving liberty and
justice to all.  It sure as FUCK wasn't YOU or Joe Green.
These MEN may have been products of their system, and the
system they created may indeed perpetuate oppressive thoughts
and methods, but you are being intellectually dishonest if you
do not acknowledge a very great debt to the men that acquired
the freedom that you DO have to sit in your comfortable little
university and free-associate into a computer terminal.


Just another GEM for your collection........!KOPJFPO:U#)(I
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems