12-22-2016, 07:02 PM
(12-21-2016, 12:48 AM)dukealien Wrote: Clean. I really don't have much to say aside from stuff that jumps off of what others have said, but I'll try my best.
Elective This title made me think of the class of subject, which is kinda weird -- it feels more appropriate to use, say, "Electoral".
Can any words, my sister, ease your pain
of anger and betrayal at this vote Betrayal? Betrayal perhaps committed by the American people, especially those who voted for him that, by the opinion of this sister, should have known better, particularly the Christians (who at the end should have at least abstained) and the women? Or betrayal at the system itself -- and not at democracy failing, but at the electoral college failing, what with Trump not winning the popular vote, and elective (electoral?) districts being somewhat gerrymandered to hell. So I do think that betrayal isn't an overreaction....
....but that's liberal old me. Perhaps the pressure of working class white America was so big so as to make them choose the candidate avant-garde (and some legitimate articles would lead me to believe that, yes); perhaps the method by which America's system works is perfect for itself because it distributes power between the states, thus tempering mobocracy (irony?); perhaps gerrymandering ain't that big yet. Perhaps, in the end, it's not so much fellow Americans or the system betraying her (betraying us), but our perceptions of, say, progress, or what this [over-]idealistic/idealized beacon of democracy truly is.
I mean, in the end, this pain is for the most part an ephemeral hurt, I think ------ at least for any white voters, or any non-American, non-emigrants spectating. If someone else had won, then the pain would, again for the most part, simply switch to an ephemeral hurt, and very few from the liberal side would actually do anything to alleviate the problems at the root. But this is for the most part, and I suppose empathy plays a big part -- this victory is truly dangerous for the poor, the colored, the immigrant, and the refugee, less so I think because of Trump as the person (if, in his nebulousness, he is even one person), and more because of what he stirred up.
which makes a man whose sins you rightly note Oh, I don't think "sins" is too scriptural. In fact, if you consider how many Christians (I assumed -- that specific statistic, I never really checked) voted for Trump, it's perfectly scriptural -- and really, I feel like a good deal of the hate against him is for the issues in his character that would never have been issues in, say, Andrew Jackson's time, such that they are sins by some modern doctrine, rather than the ideas that truly establish what America is.
the chief of us? It’s useless to explain.
Your world-infected sadness will remain
inflamed by image, story, song, and quote;
each day a joke, a smile, will get your goat
until all love for goodness seems in vain. But back to the poem at large. This stanza's pretty straightforward; nothing to see here, really, and I don't just mean this stanza. But considering the character of the poem, it's no real issue.
My sadness echoes yours, though its sole cause
is sympathy. To neither of our lives
was damage done, we only suffer grief
at others’ self-inflicted hurts. So pause To return to an earlier point: the piece really doesn't seem to address the root cause of her "pain / of anger and betrayal" enough. Like I said, though the loss of life, liberty, and property isn't real yet, this election, or rather his election, has stirred up enough shit to inevitably bring that down to a sizeable number of the population (or at least that's how it seems, from over here), a sizeable number that never inflicted anything of the sort upon themselves. Who's to say her pain isn't sympathy or empathy as well, just to a greater degree?
and think the world no worse: your joy revives Although this point does vindicate some of the problems. Not the final clause, mind, which I think is simply unsatisfying, but "think the world no worse" -- no, the world isn't any worse, nor is it any better. Come in, morphine; so follow, heroin -- come in, fireworks; so follow, the gun. Even (in my Christian mind) Jesus wasn't enough to change the world, at least not in a way such despair for elections matches; thus, the [always] soon-to-come world's end.
with laughter at its foibles, pure relief.
Overall, I think there really isn't much to "see" here, in the sense that nothing really grabs, but that's alright. The form alone is very solid, but I find the piece as a whole too, what, unsatisfying? shallow? There's a thoroughness of thought that's missing, I think, a thoroughness that, following the calm mood of the form, would prove to be comfort enough, for the butthurt -- say, if the focus is shifted to the whats and hows and whys of your sister's sickness, then you shouldn't I think need to really talk about cheering her up, just as a recent widow prefers silent company.
Or at least that's if your sister was anything like me. To each, his or her own love-language, that's what I was taught.