To Hillary: oh please go gentle
Hillary Clinton’s become persona non grata to Democratic leaders and the pundits sympathetic to them, who’d like nothing better than for her to go away and make nice to the new nominee, Obama. Why oh why won’t she just fall into line like a good girl? (Here’s a typical rant on the “sad spectacle” of her tenacity; and here’s Gerard Vanderleun’s deep sociological analysis of the situation).
My own offering is a poetic one, a riff on the Dylan Thomas villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” The Democratic bigwigs and the pundits who’ve come to hate the Energizer Hillary can recite it to her in their attempt to get her to stop ticking now that she’s proven she can take a licking:
Oh please go gentle into that good night.
You shouldn’t burn and rave at close of day
Or rage against the dying of the light.
All wise men at their end know dark is right.
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Yield and go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced on voting day,
Don’t rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who tried to put Barack to flight
All watched their chances slowly slip away.
Those men went gentle into that good night.
McGovern, who once backed you in your fight,
Deserted Eagleton. Now it’s YOUR day
To hear him say, “Accept the dying light.”
So Hillary, alone on the sad height,
We curse you if you will not go away.
Shut up, go gentle into that good night.
Don’t rage against the dying of the light.
I hope she rages and raves until the cows come home and run away. I’d like to see the Democrat Party in a real shambles; I only wish something similar and probable were lurking for the Republican Party. Short of some such cataclysm, I see little hope either party will reform itself to serve the people rather than itself.
It seems that Democrats have moved almost entirely to declaring reality to be one way or the other rather than recognizing reality, or arguing for it, or building it.
Whether that reality be Hillary, Obama or the Iraq War, the Democrats just set up a drumbeat and repeat it until they have at least their side convinced.
The task for Republicans is to break the spell, not just argue against it.
If she cant win, envy demands she ruins it.
Everybody fears angry men. But really angry woman is hundred times more dangerous. If Hillary actually is such a bitch as is portrayed, she can and will spoil the party.
I beg indulgence for a brief deflection from the thread. In college I took a course in poetry from a delightful, elderly woman who was a poet/rebel against her family wealth and prestige (her class didn’t teach), against an all male university English Department (where she’d been informed she’d never make Professor) and against society at large. She was remarkable, one of those few profs you feel lucky to find among the dross. One book used was called French Forms of Versification, which used William Henley’s Villainelle as a specimen poem:
A dainty thing’s the Villanelle,
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
It serves its purpose passing well.
A double-clappered silver bell
That must be made to clink in chime,
A dainty thing’s the Villanelle;
And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting ‘neath the lime,
It serves its purpose passing well.
You must not ask of it the swell
Of organs grandiose and sublime –
A dainty thing’s the Villanelle;
And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves its purpose passing well.
Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty thing’s the Villanelle,
It serves its purpose passing well.
I was so struck with that example it was sometime before I realized “Do Not Go Gentle” was a villainelle–full of organ swell, gradiose and sublime. I add William Empson’s “Missing Dates” as another fine example of Henley’s failure as a critic.
Missing Dates
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is not your system or clear sight that mills
Down small to the consequence a life requires;
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills
Of young dog blood gave but a month’s desires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills
Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.
The complete fire is death. From partial fires
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the poems you have lost, the ills
From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
Thank you for your indulgence. A little poetry now and then cleans the waste from the blood.
Of course, it would have been nice if I’d learned how to spell “villanelle”!
I wonder where GV got the “jello pie” idea.
That cool kid clique piece rather says it all…
Jamie Irons
DuMaurier-Smith,
Some time ago I saw a comment on a blog, maybe this one, where someone said roughly the following: “McCain/ Hunter 08- Impeach McCain in 09!” ROFL!
Two US presidents have faced impeachment. Both were Democrats.
I hope she keeps it contentious as long as possible…
Now I know what a villanelle is. Love the McGovern-Eagleton riff. Great! And the poem’s not half-bad, by the way. Good Job, NNC
It ain’t like Hillary didn’t hit the same 57 states as Barak did.
The woman is actually evoking some strange form of sympathy from me. Somebody just slap me and wake me from my stupor.
Whats gonna piss me off is if democrats win this election. Then we discover that GW starts having a martini after meals, rendering him the most fluid communicator the modern world has ever seen.
It seems the Democrats are the ones constantly harping about racism in America. A front page MSN article today addresses the racist comments Obama’s foot soldiers are encountering on a regular basis. Why are these ‘stumpers’ only contacting known Republicans? Gee! one can’t even imagine the rank and file traditional blue collar working man Democrats being at all racist! No sir! It must only be the Republicans who are racist. I think this is why Hillary persists, knowing racism is a massive achilles heel within the Democratic party.
Eagleton was the source for the “acid, amnesty, and abortion” remark slamming McGovern. Until the day he died, Eagleton never publicly admitted that he was the source of this remark to journalist Robert Novak. McGovern’s dumping Eagleton was poetic, if unwitting, justice. Eagleton was no victim. He was less than candid about his hospitalization AND about the “acid, amnesty, and abortion” remark and paid the price. Would McGovern have ever proposed that Eagleton be his running mate had he been aware of that Eagleton was the source of the “acid, amnesty, and abortion” remark? I think not.
I previously posted on this. Those who consider Eagleton a victim and McGovern a charlatan are missing the whole picture.
Gringo: that’s true, but not the point. McGovern was unaware of that, and it’s not the reason he dumped him.
neo: poetic justice.
Socialists eat their own… as its always been
Asrtdgr,
Socialists?? Neo liberals should you say. They wanted both ways, quasi-social”ist” reforms with centrist conservatism. Why would the gender platform should pay the price for this blunder?
It is time for the US “hollywood” political system to think seriously about a parlamentary system, via proportional representation.
neo-liberals? they are communist socialists… call a duck by a million names its still a duck.
the liberal label has been co-opted and hasnt meant what it meant for a long time… we act and think like it does, but it stands for socialism, not laissez faire anymore.
The US political system was find till we went to socialist land… its been going down hill ever since… massive texes, inflation, keneysian economics, planned economy, pseudo nationalized state supported companies that prevent competition through regulation, fake fronts by dems to park pork, soft eugenics, welfare slavery, and so much more.
the differences in everything are staggering, and only the few old enough to remember know how staggering.