Why poetry matters
Here’s a fellow lover of poetry:
WHEN I speak of poetry, I think of classic poems written by great poets of the past, poetry that modern educationalists think of as ‘elitist’ literature. Such writing may now be largely the preserve of private schools – those privileged places disliked by our Labour government. This is a tragedy. Great poetry should not be the preserve of the few but the birthright of all children. For poetry is the language of the soul (think of the Psalms) and we all have souls. This is a challenging statement for an age of spiritual mediocrity, the age in which we live now, but it matters urgently – if only to remind people that the language of beauty still exists and that if children are exposed to it through the words, the cadences, the rhythms and the imagery of traditional poems they will have a glimpse of the eternal which they will never forget.
Poetry always mattered to me, but I cannot tell you why. It was simply on my wavelength. Even as a child, I felt it speak in a way prose did not and different even from music, which was also wonderful. I started to write poetry in earnest when I was in third grade, and although I stopped for long periods of time I never really stopped. There were also the poems I was assigned to memorize, back in the day when memorizing traditional poetry (some of it quite bad, by the way) was standard in the NYC school system.
I didn’t realize it, but my mother had also been a child poet although she had quit writing poetry in adulthood and confined herself to clever song parodies. Her father wrote advertising jingles for a living.
My father seemed to have no poetry in him, but he once told me that when his own father died at fifty-nine, when they emptied out his pockets they contained some poems. And my older brother was a poetry admirer who sometimes shared poems he studied in school and admired, and so I was exposed to a very wide variety of poetry and thought that was normal.
I was an adult of about thirty before I realized that not everyone loved poetry. In fact, I was shocked to learn that a great many people – perhaps even the majority – didn’t care for it. So there’s something else, some unknown factor, that accounts for love of poetry. I can’t begin to explain it, although it has something to do with a deep appreciation of a fusion of ideas and emotion expressed with an economy of colorful and unexpected – and often beautiful – language.
In other words, many poems make me shiver, either with delight or with wonder or with awe or with dread or with some combination of all of them. And writing a poem – especially a sonnet, a form of which I’m very fond – is a source of tremendous satisfaction.
Can appreciation of poetry be taught, in the way described in that initial quote in this post? I don’t know, although I tend to doubt it and to think that a person either loves poetry or doesn’t, although I agree that all children should be exposed to it. Maybe you can share your experiences along those lines in the comments.
NOTE: Here’s an early post of mine on memorizing poetry. And here’s one on sonnets.
The Las Vegas perp shot himself in the head
It gets stranger and stranger – Matthew Livelsberger, the Las Vegas truck bomber, apparently shot himself in the head:
The highly decorated U.S. Army soldier inside the Tesla Cybertruck that burst into flames outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel shot himself in the head before the explosion and likely planned to cause more damage but the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force from the rudimentary explosive, officials said Thursday.
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference that a handgun was found at the feet of the man in the driver’s seat, who officials believe is Matthew Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado. The shot appeared to be self-inflicted, officials said.
Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck. The explosion “vented out and up” and didn’t hit the Trump hotel doors just a few feet away, the sheriff said.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Among other charred items found inside the truck were a second firearm, a number of fireworks, a passport, a military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch, McMahill said. Authorities said both guns were purchased legally.
He had been a Green Beret, among other things, and had deployed twice to Afghanistan and also served in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Congo.
So, how was the explosion triggered? Perhaps a fuse of some sort which he lit before shooting himself? As I indicated in today’s earlier post, suicide was definitely a goal of his, and now it’s unequivocal. The Tesla/Trump connection seems quite purposeful, as well, although the message is a murky one to say the least. And the structural integrity of the truck serves merely as an advertisement for how well-built Teslas are.
To add to the murkiness, a relative of Livelsberger says that he was a Trump supporter and loved the military, also pointing out that he could have made a far more sophisticated explosive device. His wife, on the other hand, seems to have been anti-Trump, and says she had’t heard from her husband in days.
NOTE: The authorities are now saying that the New Orleans jihadi car attacker acted alone.
The plot thickens: were the New Orleans perp and the Las Vegas perp linked?
The answer to the question is that we don’t know, but perhaps:
The bomber who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas has been identified as Army veteran Matthew Livelsberger.
Although officers have not publicly named Livelsberger, 37, as the bomber, senior law enforcement sources confirmed his identity to KOAA and KTNV.
Livelsberger served over 19 years in the Army – 18 of which were spent with Special Forces, according to his LinkedIn profile. His current role was listed as a Remote and Autonomous Systems Manager, which he had been in for just three months. …
Law enforcement sources revealed that Livelsberger, who died Wednesday in the explosion outside the hotel, had previously served at the same military base as New Orleans terrorist Shamsud Din Jabbar.
Both attacked on the same day, both used electric vehicles rented from the same company, both were Army vets whose paths may have crossed. What are the chances this is a coincidence? Although it’s not outside the realm of human possibility, it doesn’t seem likely.
And this is starting to make me think of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, domestic terrorists who met while in the army. In terms of the destructiveness of their attack, however, McVeigh and Nichols were way ahead of either the New Orleans perp or the Las Vegas perp. The latter only managed to kill himself.
McVeigh detonated his explosives, which were housed in a Ryder truck that had been rented in Kansas, without killing himself. He did this by means of a fuse with a two-minute delay, which he lit before exiting the vehicle. The explosion was enormous and killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured 684 – with the perps uninjured.
Both the New Orleans and the Las Vegas perps, on the other hand, are dead. It seems to me that for both, part of their intent was suicide. For the New Orleans attack the motive appears to have been jihadi sentiment, and although we know little about the Las Vegas attack so far, politics seems far more likely. This argues at least somewhat against a connection.
What a strange beginning to 2025.
Open thread 1/2/2025
And then there’s the Tesla explosion in front of Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
It’s hard to believe that this was an accident – the symbolic associations are so obvious. However, it nevertheless might be an accident:
Police are investigating the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Police said a cybertruck pulled up in front of the hotel on Wednesday near a glass entrance, then smoke started coming from the vehicle and it exploded.
The driver was killed and seven people were injured, police said without naming any of the individuals involved. Officials said all injuries were minor.
ADDENDUM:
The New Orleans car attack perp: what is known so far
In no surprise whatsoever, the identity of the mass murdering terrorist in New Orleans is revealed to be a Muslim and perhaps an ISIS-follower; his name was Shamsud din Jabbar:
Inside Jabbar’s truck — a Ford pickup that “appears to have been rented” — was an Islamic State flag, weapons and a potential improvised explosive device, according to an FBI statement. The agency said it is investigating the slaughter as “an act of terrorism” and looking into how Jabbar gained possession of the vehicle. An FBI official said the agency believes Jabbar may have been working with accomplices, though none had been identified by Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement, the FBI’s Houston office said it was “conducting law enforcement activity” with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office near the intersection of Hugh Road and Crescent Peak Drive, the north Houston intersection where Jabbar’s most recent known address was located.
The possible accomplices supposedly placed IEDs in the area. Jabbar himself is an army veteran and was born in the US. This is not unusual for jihadis, who are at times native to the countries they attack but have been radicalized somewhere along the way, often in a mosque or online. Jabbar seems to most closely fit the profile of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood attacker who was also born here and was in the military at the time he attacked (and in fact for Hasan, people in the military were his targets as well).
Some outlets are still reporting the death toll as “at least 10,” but the UK’s Daily Mail says fifteen:
Mechanical barricades which normally stop traffic from entering the street during pedestrian-only times are in the process of being replaced, per the city website, potentially leaving it vulnerable to such an attack.
A witness who was at the scene in the French Quarter on Tuesday night said the steel bollards were not raised in position at the time.
‘Those barricades were not up, period,’ New Orleans resident Jimmy Cothran told CNN. ‘They had the flimsy orange ones that you could just push over with your finger. We actually thought it was kind of odd.’
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the suspect ‘went around our barricades’, suggesting there also may have been enough space between the temporary ones to plow a vehicle through.
As is so often the case, the Daily Mail already has a great deal more information than US papers. For example, here’s a video made by the perp for a previous real estate job, in which he seems totally normal and friendly. But there’s this:
The suspect’s love life was scattered – having been married twice. His first marriage ended in 2012, and his second in 2022.
His second wife’s new husband, Dwayne Marsh, said Jabbar had begun to convert to Islam within the last year and was ‘being all crazy,’ reported The New York Times.
Marsh said Jabbar had two daughters, one a teenager and one a young adult, and that they were ‘a mess’ after the attack.
Divorce and then Islamic radicalization, ending in mass murder and suicide by cop.
More:
The FBI confirmed Jabbar had attached an ISIS flag to the truck he used to plow through the crowd.
‘An ISIS flag was located in the vehicle and the FBI is working to determine the subject’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations,’ the agency said.
And in this article some of the victims are identified, all young people. RIP.
A New Year’s Eve terrorist attack in New Orleans kills ten and injures many more
It seems to be a copycat attack:
A driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Orleans revelers early on New Year’s Day, killing 10 people and injuring more than 30 in what the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism.
The driver was killed in a firefight with police following the attack around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday along Bourbon Street in the city’s bustling French Quarter, the FBI said.
Even with barriers erected, it seems to be relatively easy to drive through them and do great damage.
No more information is available on the perpetrator at the moment, but I assume it will come out some time today.
RIP to the victims.
Open thread 1/1/2025
January first. Clean slate. Fresh start. Happy New Year.
Talk about euphemisms: Biden’s cognitive decline was under-reported
Journalists sitting together wondering why journalism didn't happen. https://t.co/JdUvMRJs96
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 30, 2024
This is what Ive been saying; it’s bigger than Watergate. Nixon lied about a third-rate break in he had nothing to do with; the people around @JoeBiden, the Dem Party leadership, @KamalaHarris misled the country about the ability of the President to carry out his duties as he was… https://t.co/YTgLXYqmkh
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) December 31, 2024
I think it was really rather simple.
In 2020, the Democrats decided Biden was their most “electable” candidate, and that his cognitive challenges could be successfully covered up. COVID restrictions made that even more possible.
The did it more or less successfully for years, although the right certainly noticed. But the view of Biden from the right was dismissed as a partisan conspiracy theory, with the MSM backing that “debunking” up. You can get away with a lot when the MSM backs you up.
The reason they kept Joe in there for so long was also that his cognitive challenges made it easier for other party operatives to control him and be the powers behind the throne.
But in 2024 it became impossible to successfully cover it up anymore. So the house of cards collapsed, and all the cards regrouped to build another house for the new candidate, Harris. It wasn’t a very sturdy one, however.
What are you doing New Year’s Eve?
And me? Glad you asked.
This year I’m visiting relatives and there’s actually a party tonight. So I’ll be attending.
Staying up till midnight is no problem for me, since I’m a night owl and always have been. Actually, even when young, I had somewhat of an aversion to New Year’s Eve. To the idea of a night when you were supposed to have fun or else. A reminder of the speedy passage of time. With alcohol drinking. And the obligatory midnight kiss, which wasn’t a fun moment if you didn’t like your date.
Once or twice I went to Times Square to see the ball go down in person and not just on TV. Curiously, those were some of my better New Year’s Eves. Maybe it was the people I was with those nights. We ate at Tad’s Steaks, just for laughs, but Tad’s wasn’t bad at all.
And five years ago the very last Tad’s in New York City closed down. I had no idea any of them had lasted that long.
So let’s drink to Tad’s:
The cafeteria-style chophouse is known for hawking inexpensive meat-and-potato dinners on red trays — meals that cost little more than $1 each when the first one opened in 1957. A steak lunch today can be had for as little as $9.
At its height, Tad’s had eight New York locations out of 28 nationwide. But come Jan. 5, 2020, the red neon sign in the window advertising “broiled” steaks at 761 Seventh Ave. will go dark — as will the vast grill that played host to smoky “steak shows,” where dozens of cuts could be grilled at once during the thick of lunch hour.
Happy New Year, everyone! I’m very grateful for all of you. Here’s to a wonderful 2025, full of love, joy, and good health!
[NOTE: Some of this appeared in previous posts.]
Saying goodbye to 2024
The years go by way too quickly these days. So there’s that.
But 2024 has been a year of great surprises and reversals, many of them unexpectedly good.
These surprises and reversals started approximately at the year’s midway point. I date the very first as the Trump/Biden debate on June 27. It’s not that I expected Biden to do well, but I didn’t expect him to do so abysmally. And I didn’t expect the MSM to admit it, but the fact that they did admit it indicated that perhaps the plan always had been to ditch him after the debate. But plan or no plan, the ditching is what occurred – on July 21 – which was the third surprise.
You might think I skipped surprise number two. But no, that happened on July 13 in Butler, PA: the near-assassination of Trump. It was no surprise that someone would want to kill him. But it was a surprise that the Secret Service was so negligent (or worse) at protecting him, and an incredible surprise how close the would-be assassin came to achieving his aim but how a serendipitous turn of the head at the last minute meant that Trump only got wounded in the ear. If you saw that in a movie, it would seem highly improbable. And yet it’s what happened, and it made people even more sympathetic towards him.
Surprise number four was concurrent with number three: the anointment of Kamala Harris as nominee, without an open convention. She didn’t seem like the best candidate and certainly not the most popular at the time, although in retrospect I can’t say there was another good alternative.
Surprise number five was how truly terrible she was as a candidate. Again, I didn’t expect much, but I expected her to be able to be fairly coherent in interviews. She was not – although it didn’t matter to tried-and-true Democrat voters. Interesting to me is that fact that, among the Harris voters I know of whom I asked the question “did you watch any of her interviews?”, the answer was “no.” Why bother? They knew they weren’t voting for Trump.
Then there was another failed Trump assassination attempt on September 15 which was foiled. Shall we call that number six? And then, on September 17 we had number seven, the exploding Hezbollah pagers, followed closely by number seven and a half, the exploding walkie-talkies. Both were followed by a series of amazing Israeli feats which I’ll lump together as number eight: the destruction of most of Hezbollah’s armaments, the assassination of Nasrallah and of Sinwar, and the destruction of many of Iran’s armaments. Whether or not I have the order of things right, that was the general direction: again, right out of a very fanciful movie.
Later on we had two great PR stunts by Trump: his stint at McDonald’s and his time as a garbage man. We’ll call those number nine.
Followed by number ten: the Trump victory in the election. The surprise was the scope and clarity of it, plus the fact that the results were known on election night itself.
So tonight, let’s make a toast to an even better 2025!