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Damn paywall, got me again.

I'm sure this will provoke the ire and revulsion of uziq and some others but I can't say I've ever cared for or appreciated poetry much. The most boring and pretentious of art forms.

But you can have your favorite book, by all means.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-05-08 16:05:58)

history undergrad, IR postgrad.

yep, EU's CSDP was my focus.

Nice. I did most of my political science major at the undergrad level on the EU, then went into a master of public policy with a focus on culture policy to tie in my undergrad major in english literature. The political science component was a combination of statistics, history, IR, and fluffy political science.

Pochsy wrote:

Jay wrote:

Read my poem and we can be best friends, but only if you say you like it.

Poetry has its place. I had enough iambic pentameter shoved down my throat in high school that I can appreciate it, a bit.

Pochsy wrote:

Nice. I did most of my political science major at the undergrad level on the EU, then went into a master of public policy with a focus on culture policy to tie in my undergrad major in english literature. The political science component was a combination of statistics, history, IR, and fluffy political science.

Honestly I always felt a 'pure' academic discipline makes for the best undergrad if you know how and where to focus going in. Having said so poli sci segues nicely into public policy. The link with english literature is not immediately obvious to me but I'm sure it's there.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-05-08 16:30:24)

They're pretty close

Jay wrote:

Pochsy wrote:

Jay wrote:

Read my poem and we can be best friends, but only if you say you like it.

Poetry has its place. I had enough iambic pentameter shoved down my throat in high school that I can appreciate it, a bit.

iambic pentameter is 1 of about 7 commonly used meters. i find english poetry purposefully written strictly in iambs tends to feel a bit plodding and stodgy. like a schoolbook exercise.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-08 16:28:22)

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

I'm sure this will provoke the ire and revulsion of uziq and some others but I can't say I've ever cared for or appreciated poetry much. The most boring and pretentious of art forms.

But you can have your favorite book, by all means.

why would you call something pretentious because you don't like it? it's the most idiotic word ever applied to any art form. 'blah, all poetry is pretentious'. you just de-ranked yourself -25 intelligence.

Good thing I don't depend on your assessment of my intelligence. I mean of course not 100% of all poetry is pretentious but the very definition of the word kinda describes the entire exercise in a lot of instances.

Pochsy wrote:

The deep seated concern for the very structures a bureaucrat moves in is something I feel, too. It's like building some lumbering machine that really isn't built to steer clear of the sudden icebergs.

I think having studied literature helped the most in being able to deal with rhetoric and understand its use. Apart from the obvious things like being able to read shit most people think is nonsense and to derive meaning from it.

In international organisations its problems derive more from the international state system than they do from its own bureaucratic machinations, though those are of course a bit kafkaesque especially in a place as enormous as the EU. Nonetheless the principal contributor to its lumbering nature is dependency on, indecisiveness of and cumbersome decision-making in the council. Apart from that it's technically complicated as well - my expertise was in but one area and it took some time until I arrived to a point where I felt I understood the whole thing. That whole thing still being just one part of the machine.

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

I'm sure this will provoke the ire and revulsion of uziq and some others but I can't say I've ever cared for or appreciated poetry much. The most boring and pretentious of art forms.

But you can have your favorite book, by all means.

why would you call something pretentious because you don't like it? it's the most idiotic word ever applied to any art form. 'blah, all poetry is pretentious'. you just de-ranked yourself -25 intelligence.

Good thing I don't depend on your assessment of my intelligence. I mean of course not 100% of all poetry is pretentious but the very definition of the word kinda describes the entire exercise in a lot of instances.

you mean it has artifice? conceit? er, that describes all art, in that case. to use the pejorative sense 'pretentious' is the height of philistinism. a piece of text without any pretence isn't art: it's a fucking instruction manual. it's a road sign. it's a warning sticker.

you are a very silly little boy. go and stand in the corner and think about what you're saying.

Pochsy wrote:

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

I'm sure this will provoke the ire and revulsion of uziq and some others but I can't say I've ever cared for or appreciated poetry much. The most boring and pretentious of art forms.

But you can have your favorite book, by all means.

wallace stevens is great. one of my favourites. 'harmonium' has to be one of the most intimidatingly good first poetry collections.

And to think he literally came out of nowhere in middle age, which are not known to be a person's height of creativity. And to top it all off he was an insurance executive from Connecticut. I think I'm so into his work because on some level I hope to have my own creative spring in middle age while I toil away at mundane work.

you can still see his house on google maps. i've looked before.

i would say the arc is almost unheard of but unfortunately possibly the only other american poet/man of letters of bigger stature than him, eliot, was a banker until middle-age. it's a neat image, though, and incredibly rare.