Apologia Miscellanea

Back in the blur of my college studies, too much of my personal library became contaminated with the ugly tomes of mass organized murder (military history). I only knew enough to recognize the wastage of the carnage. In time, the Fates, The Graces, or what have you, bequeathed to me the combinatory experience of community theater, followed up by the more wholesomely endearing social practice of matrimony, wherein I was greatly influenced by a moral compass more certain and much sexier than my own.

Subsequently I developed an appreciation for language, love, the language of love, and the nature of egalitarianism.

In due course I slowly but surely began to swap out the horrific annuls of reiterating enfilade for some much more rewarding poetry anthologies, which my bookstore browsing revealed to me.

Here I digress briefly to elucidate on the crucial difference between denotation and connotation, and the relevance of equivalence to conceptualizations in general.

It's with denotation that we supply the bones for the more flexible syntactic flesh of connotation.    

Thusly it is with connotation where we may roam the diverse gardens of analogy, simile, and implicature, leaving denotation for the desolation of the literal minded. Yes, I say leave absolute quantities for the mathematician's unforgiving version of equivalence...the equal sign (=), liberating the poets to roam the carefree entendre Edens of inuendo...and out the other!

Whiles wary of the thorny characteristics of negative connotation, we zealously plunge into into the lexicographical aether of Anacreon's wine, women, and song...and Rumi's all around aesthetics of all that is just and beautiful.

On the free range of connotation and implicature we will encounter the compare and contrast wonderland of metaphor, which has just enough wiggle room to make the mathematicians and engineers jealous.

We sacrifice precision for gloriously sloppy merriment and love!


Here to role model for us, are some of my anthology favorites, starting with AN ARGUMENT...by Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

I've oft been told by learned friars,
That wishing and the crime are one,
And Heaven punishes desires
As much as if the deed were done.

If wishing damns us, you and I
Are damned to all our heart's content;
Come, then, at least we may enjoy
Some pleasure for our punishment!

Or an earlier work by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

THE VINE

I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.

Damn that's good!

And who better to translate Anacreon's (570?-478? B.C) THE WOUNDED CUPID...than the aforementioned Robert Herrick...

Cupid as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung.
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying;
Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying.
And why, my pretty Lad, said she?
Then blubbering, replied he,
A winged Snake has bitten me,
Which Country people call a Bee.
At which she smil’d; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears:
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is:
Come tell me then, how great’s the smart
Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart!


But lastly, what kind of of a Midnight Sonneteer would I be if I didn't show one of the best moon poems ever...by none other than the mighty Ben Johnson (1572-1637)

CYNTHIA'S REVELS: QUEEN AND HUNTRESS,CHASTE AND FAIR

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.

Criticize the thoughtful aesthete all you like but I will call it good, thusly...

How like a library book is a wine
And how like a wine is a book
Whereby consumption, by design,
Some modest pleasures are undertook...
And huzzah's to those who make them well
To ease the burdens of the human race
By ink and paper and vineyard smell
With a lover's kiss upon the face!

No need indeed for a million bucks
Or obscene ransoms for lives well spent
When some steady summertime sweaty fucks
Secure the only worth provident
Where a million bucks is no guarantee
Of satisfaction in any degree!