I have seen the following presented as an anonymous Buddhist saying:
Not every poem’s good because it’s ancient,
Nor mayst thou blame it just because it’s new,
Fair critics test, and prove, and so pass judgment;
Fools praise or blame as they hear others do.
Interesting, and perhaps naive, challenge to Lincoln’s prophetic “You can please some of the people all of the time…”. The poem seems to suggest that you can actually achieve some kind of vaulted “fair critic” status and escape the tragedy of the fool. But what if the others are more qualified than you and you do not have the resources or expertise to reach conclusive judgment? Who decides fairness, or what constitutes sufficient “test and prove”?
I am not convinced of the Buddhist connection. For example, compare it to the actual teachings in the Dhammapada:
‘They blame him who sits silent
And him that has much to say;
They blame the one that’s of measured speech;
In the world there is none unblamed.’
Maybe it’s just me but that makes the first verse look more like a protestant attribution of righteousness. I mean should those blamed by the fair critic(s) feel more enlightened than those blamed by the fools? Where’s the middle path?
Although I really liked this detail found on a store window, I must confess that when I read or hear Leonard Cohen it always reminds me of his tawdry quip in The Energy of Slaves:
I did not know until you walked away
you had the perfect ass
Forgive me
for not falling in love
with your face or your conversation
Apparently he was seeking a different sort of evidence of life back in 1972. Now I think I will mix the two works and instead think of it as “you had the perfect ash…”
Some nice jazz and lyrics from a young English music student named Maya Yianni can be heard here.
Speaking of lyrics, I can’t seem to crack the profiling in the latest KT Tunstall hit, “Suddenly I See”:
Her face is a map of the world
is a map of the world
You can see she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
People who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
This is what I want to be
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me
— Suddenly I see
This is what I want to be
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me
And I feel like walking the world
Like walking the world
And you can hear she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
She fills up ever corner like she’s born in black and white
Makes you feel warmer when you’re trying to remember
What ya’heard
She likes to leave you hanging on a word
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
This is what I want to be
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me
— Suddenly I see
This is what I want to be
Suddenly I see
— Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me
And she’s taller than most
And she’s looking at me
I can see her eyes looking from a page in a magazine
She makes me feel like I could be a tower
Big strong tower, yeah
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see
Yeah, yeah…
A real toe-tapper, but who is the source for the description? What’s really in the image she sees? According to Wikipedia, the Scottish Tunstall was “inspired by New York singer and poetess Patti Smith…”
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
