Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: An Act of Kindness (was: Re: a rose-fingered...)
From: nikolay@husc10.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev)
Date: 19 Dec 92 17:36:04
Organization: The Kremlin Wall of Harvard
In-reply-to: marek@moose.cs.indiana.edu's message of 18 Dec 92 17:12:49 GMT

marek@moose.cs.indiana.edu (Marek Lugowski) writes:

> In article <NIKOLAY.92Dec18072101@husc10.harvard.edu>
> nikolay@husc10.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev) writes:

> >Bravo, this will surely provoke another bucketful from M & M!
 
> Hahahahhahahh!  Nikolayev sucking up to the Wicked Witch of the West?  I
> think I have not seen a circus of this magnitude since "The Life of the
> Gypsies" or "Santa Sangre". Phillip, I'll say this out of kindness: Rebecca
> does not need your alliance. It looks bad on her vita.  Mysogynists are
> not her kin. Please don't confuse family arguments with your own business. :)

Pray don't confuse this newsgroup with your family's private outhouse,
and eschew deluding yourself with the notion that I am offering anyone
an alliance. However, if I whimsically chose to obtrude my good-natured 
alliance on Rebecca, you, or anyone else, being the maniac that I am, 
I certainly wouldn't seek your or another's learned opinion, but simply 
grip the unfortunate darling by the throat so brutally and in such a 
manner as to prevent the faintest high-pitched squeak of discontent 
from escaping the puzzled lips. Keep in mind, besides, that I am only 
a misogynist with respect to you personally, as I am also a poetry-hater 
with respect to your versificatory simulacra, for which 'verse' is
only a most insalubrious euphemism.

Still, I feel that I must reward your kindness with kindness, and must, 
for the purposes of this posting, get over my calm yet considerable 
contempt for you. Ignore this well-nigh futile endeavour if you wish, 
or dismiss it as a rabid moralist's Christmas sermon. Regardless of 
your sentiments, I think I must at length say a few words on your score, 
for some possible reader's benefit or, who knows, perhaps even for 
your own. Feel free to deny that you need any such thing from me, but 
before you summon your and your family's unincisive ironies, Marek, 
consider for a moment that I am absolutely serious, that I am addressing 
you in good faith, and that I won't be impressed by any number of inflated 
cliches which you mistake for witticisms, so you may flame back 
to your heart's convulsive content.

Perhaps I should explain why I have chosen your r.a.p. persona for this 
exercise, and that calls for something of a feeble compliment. I feel,
somehow, that you are one of the precious few participants in this group
for whom, literarily speaking, there might still linger a tiny glimmer of 
rather unrealistic hope. I have truly grave doubts that you will ever 
accomplish anything worth a fleeting oblique mention in poetry; but then, 
I am more concerned with possibilities, however elusive, than with the 
abundant sad realities. Even if you derive nothing valuable from what I say, 
someone else might, and the game is therefore worth a candle. I must say
that I am not interested in proving my point or launching an extensive
argument, nor shall I commit myself to anyone's liberal education; 
therefore, I shall not, in this instance, bore myself to a yawning death
by citing and analysing any specific specimens of your writing. I address 
only those who have a certain degree of taste, intuition and reasoning 
ability, and everyone else may cheerfully reject my disquisitions as
the delusions of a self-important lunatic. I don't care if anyone 
disagrees with me. Sapienti sat.

Well, then, unlike the permanently dyslexic Marie and the dreadfully 
overwhelming linguistically dull majority of r.a.p.'s poetasters, you have 
a minor trump in your hand: a basic sense of language, a marginal smidgen 
of style which, although inferior to a decent journalist's, is nevertheless 
something you could hold on to and develop - your only asset at this stage, 
in fact. I would encourage you to make the most of it if you want to write 
poetry. Meticulous attention to language will help you rid your verse of 
prefabricated images; it will teach you discipline and structure. Only then 
will it become evident whether you have any talent at all, and I don't want 
to say that you have none, because, if you are still in your teens or 
twenties, you may yet learn a great deal, provided you make a conscious 
effort. It does not matter very much at this stage whether you write 
emotionally or intellectually; but put some painful effort in your writing. 
Remember that, in the wise words of Cyril Connolly, the author's only 
valid purpose is to create a masterpiece. Everything else is at best a 
loveless excuse for sloth, and always a crime. I don't want to say that 
you must always be serious in your writing, but you, and everyone else, 
should always aim at brilliance. Otherwise, you corrupt yourself by writing 
your stuff, and you corrupt other undiscerning souls by publishing it. 
I shall not argue that everyone who can't write great verse should
give up, and I don't claim to have produced any immortal poems myself.
But one must always try one's level best. Don't seek to charm anyone,
Marek: only great masters are entitled to that sort of thing. Avoid 
pretensions at sarcasm, because you have no sense of humour, and that 
can't be learnt. Avoid also irony and tongue-in-cheekness: these things
are only tolerable and even admirable in accomplished authors, but in 
those of your calibre they are at best reminiscent of a third-grader's 
second-rate mockery. The immoderate advertisement of irony by a host 
of evanescent modern and post-modern mediocrities, has hopelessly mislead 
many a credulous, vogue-hungry neophyte. Try also to avoid the opposite 
extreme: whenever you are not being ironic you end up sounding awfully
mawkish. And oftentimes, in your cherished quest for eccentric vibrancy, 
you mix the two vices, as in your text below.

Finally, stop squishing your zits in public, and if you must flame your 
betters, do so only when you wish to defend a deeply held conviction, 
and have the guts to follow up later, or elsedon't stick your nose out 
at all. Remember that snobbery is a form of cowardice.

>                        (pronounciation hints  "trz" approx. => ch, in cherry
> 						"j"	    => y, in eyee
> 						"u"	    => oo, in look
> 						"e"	    => e, in fence
> 						"a"	    => a, in father)
> 						"o"	    => o, in toll)
> 
> 
> 		a rose-fingered is a rose-fingered is a rose 
> 		(for d. h.)
> 		-------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> in my language		
> 		there is no girl name
> 		dawn
> 		
> 		the girl name dawn
> 		would have been jutrzenka
> 		but in my language
> 		they girls get named
> 		after saint girls
> 		or with old pagan names
> 		alone
> 		

[etc., etc.]

Trash this, it isn't worth shit.

> 
> 			Marek Lugowski
> 			2 March 1990
> 			Lake Monroe, Indiana
> 

[...]

Philip Nikolayev
nikolay@husc.harvard.edu