something from Soren...

     'The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. ...My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible....'

the best american poems you say...

     Jay Parini offers his accounting of the ten best American poems [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/mar/11/best-american-poems].  Gave me pause, it did, so I had to come up with my own.  As you'll see, we agree on Whitman, Stevens, Bishop, and Williams, though I had the good sense to include the latter in my official list.  I've also decided not to limit myself to just ten poems, though I will try not to cram too much into this.  So, here goes, some of the best American poems according to little ol' me, in no particular order I might add.

Yes, Whitman's Song of MyselfAnd yes, 'The Idea of Order at Key West' by Wallace Stevens, along with The Man with the Blue Guitar
Yet again with a yes to 'One Art' by Elizabeth Bishop, and I would include 'A Miracle for Breakfast' and 'Sestina'
Trumbull Stickney's 'Mnemosyne'
Edwin Arlington Robinson's 'Eros Turannos', 'Sonnet', George Crabbe', and...hell, all of the sonnets, and 'Rembrandt to Rembrandt'
I include Frederick Goddard Tuckerman's Sonnets as a unified work
Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, by William Carlos Williams
'The Fear', 'The Oven Bird', 'Never Again Would Birds' Song be the Same', 'Design', 'After Apple Picking', 'Home Burial', 'The Silken Tent', 'Star in a Stone Boat', 'The Need of Being Versed in Country Things', by Robert Frost
'Lying', 'Mayflies', 'A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra', 'Thyme Flowering among Rocks', by Richard Wilbur
Louis Zukofsky's A
The Venetian Vespers, 'Terms', 'Death Sauntering About', Anthony Hecht

I'll stop now.

incoherent thoughts on the little war in Libya...

     Seems a scattered uprising against Ghaddaffi [Qadafi, Gadaffi, Ghadaphi, whatever], led in a rather haphazard way by a gaggle of folks divided in their aims and their loyalties, grew into a civil war as military units in eastern Libya and elsewhere defected and took up arms against their former master.  So far so good.  Yet, there's something amiss here - we really don't seem to know what the hell is happening in Libya, and the reason I think is that we have no means of reflecting in any depth on the mind at work in Tripoli.  This, along with what is obviously a lack of tactical and strategic wit, will doom any military intervention in Libya, even if such intervention is legitimate.
     To begin.  The revolutionary fervor sweeping across north Africa and into Arab nations like Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, has taken many forms in its protean growth, and in this way this regional unrest resembles somewhat Europe in 1848.  Consider the differences between Egypt and Libya.  Libya is a 'nation' cobbled together from two lopsided halves, and  eastern Libya has never sat easy with the much larger western region.  Instead of a unified people with a shared history or ideology, what we have is a loosely tied gaggle of tribes and a swirling current of interests often at odds.  In fact, it's safe to say that in western and central Libya, the Maximum Leader enjoys considerable support for any of a number of reasons.  This is why the larger success of the rebel forces have been concentrated in the east, and why moreover those successes have not included any advance through conquest of territory.
     What's more, Ghadafi has more or less systematically destroyed every mediating institution that could stand between him and 'his people'.  Not even the military is unified.  It has a weak officer corps, and there seems to be an uneven connection between the military and people it supposedly serves.  This is all simply consistent with Kadafi's radical ideology.  To his mind, his will is the immediate manifestation of the General Will of The People.  When he says therefore that 'The People' love him, he means it quite literally - how could they not love the Leader who incarnates their universal, general will, and thus rules with justice and a sure hand? 
     How different Libya is from Egypt.  The latter has, for instance, a unified military with a strong officer corps, a military moreover that commands the respect and even, it seems, the love of the people as a whole.  And Egypt itself is a land with a long, complicated, often contradictory history, but one the Egyptian people claim with pride.  Just think of how often we heard about the 'four thousand years of history' as the early movements of their revolution unfolded.  Finally, whatever one may say of Mobarak, he did not spend decades dismantling every mediating institution in the country so that there would be nothing and no one between him and the Egyptian people.  Indeed, it seems that one of the problems in Egypt was and is that many of those institutions may just be too sclerotic and thus in need of radical overhaul.  For these and other reasons, it's safe to say that while the Egyptian revolution is far from over, it will always be a far different affair from the civil war in Libya.
     Note that I call it a civil war.  As soon as the first shots were fired, and troops defected and brought their artillery units and fighter jets along, the uprising in Libya became a civil war - it's just that simple.  So, we and other nations are intervening in a civil war, which by definition is a vicious fratricidal struggle, even when the various factions barely recognize each other as belonging to the same nation.  To take up arms and wade into a civil war is - again, by definition - to take sides. 
     Yet we steadfastly deny this reality.  Thus we have embarked on a venture that is muddled from the start.  Consider - the supposed mandate of this action is to 'protect civilians', but who are the civilians in this case?  How do you distinguish between those who are protesting and thus applying pressure through civil disobedience, and the rebel forces that provide the force to back up that political pressure?  Those marching and gathering in city squares, and those firing artillery and strafing loyalist positions are two sides of the same movement.  When Gadaffi attacks either one of 'em, he attacks the same movement.  Do we only bomb his forces when they are attacking the protesters, but not when the attack the rebel armies?  Whatever the impossible answer to that intractable question, it's irrelevant in a way since we have mounted concerted aerial and missle bombardments designed to 'degrade Libyan command and control abilities', which is tantamount to helping rebel forces destroy the official Libyan military and thus overthrow the regime.
     What's more, the tactics used in this baffling engagement are incoherent.  Cruise missiles, strategic bombers, and strike fighter-bombers are impressive and powerful, and they certainly allow 'allied forces' to deliver massive firepower efficiently, but I hardly think they are the best tools at hand if the goal is the protection of civilians, even if one wishes to protect 'em while helping one side win the civil war.  They make a notoriously blunt instrument, and inevitably kill civilians, often in large numbers.  As soon as the first civilian casualties are counted, especially if they are in loyalist strongholds like Tripoli, the veneer of 'legitimacy' will come right off this thing.  Far better would have been the use of such close air support aircraft as the A10, the C130 gunship, and various attack helicopters, all of which could take out loyalist armor and artillery and troops, while allowing their pilots greater precision.  Fighter-bombers could then be restricted to engagements with their like numbers in the loyalist air force. 
     Of course, to take such action would require that we come clean and, as I've said ad nauseum, admit that we've intervened in a civil war within a sovereign, if criminal, nation, and that we're determined that one side prevail over the other.  The allied air power would in that case constitute the de facto air force of the rebel forces. 
     Now, I offer no brief in support of such intervention.  I find it dangerous and futile.  It is dangerous for several reasons.  We really don't know who if anybody is really leading the rebel forces, and thus we have no one to talk to and treat with as the war comes to an end, if indeed we know what the 'end' of such a civil war might look like.  [What does 'winning' look like if you have no unified opposition?]  We can understand this by way of contrast - consider that whatever one thinks of the Confederacy, a Confederate victory would have been as clear as that of the Union, because the Confederacy was a unified political body.  We can't tell what the hell the opposition in Libya really is, or what they really want, apart from their well-justified loathing for Qadaphi.  So, such intervention is dangerous.  It is futile for all the reasons already given: the ambiguity of the objective given the nature of the opposition, the poor tactics reflecting poor strategic thinking, and so on. 
     Still, if we are going to do it, the let's at least do it right.  To do so, however, would expose pilots to immediate risk - they could be captured or killed, as they would be vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.  It would be politically unpalatable, as much amongst the Arab League and here in the US.  Finally, to intelligently and effectively intervene in such a civil war would require the kind of strategic and tactical, as well as political, reflection that no one in Washington, London, France, or anywhere else among the 'allied nations', is capable of.  The only real strategic thinking manifest in the whole affair has been among the Russians and the Chinese - let that terrify you as it may.  The result is that we do not get a coherent military and political intervention in a messy civil war, but we get instead a half-assed 'no fly zone', historically the costliest and most pointless response to a regime's dastardly deeds.  I don't see how any good can come from this.

something from David Bentley Hart...

     I've been a bit hard on David Hart of late, but he still writes a good book.  Here's something from his polemic Atheist Delusions, wherein he makes a cogent point that, in my reading of the evidence, is obviously true if only one gives it some thought:

'In truth, the rise of modern science and the early modern obsession with sorcery were not merely contemporaneous currents within Western society but were two closely allied manifestations of the development of a new post-Christian sense of human mastery over the world. There is nothing especially outrageous in such a claim. After all, magic is essentially a species of materialism; if it envokes any agencies beyond the visible sphere, they are not supernatural—in the theological sense of “transcendent”—but at most preternatural: they are merely, that is to say, subtler, more potent aspects of the physical cosmos. Hermetic magic and modern science (in its most Baconian form at least) are both concerned with hidden forces within the material order, forces that are largely impersonal and morally neutral, which one can learn to manipulate, and which may be turned to ends fair or foul; both, that is to say, are concerned with domination of the physical cosmos, the instrumental subjection of nature to humanity, and the constant increase of human power. Hence, there was not really any late modern triumph of science over magic, so much as there was a natural dissolution of the latter into the former, as the power of science to accomplish what magic could only adumbrate became progressively more obvious. Or, rather, “magic” and “science” in the modern period are distinguishable only retrospectively, according to relative degrees of efficacy. There never was, however, an antagonism between the two: metaphysically, morally, and conceptually, they belonged to a single continuum.'

Give some thought to, say, the use of nuclear fission to produce massive amounts of energy - whether controlled for power production, or uncontrolled for the destruction of cities and their inhabitants - in light of Hart's argument. 

annoyed isn't the word...

     So, here I am in my home office of a sunny nearly Spring day, trying to work with the window open.  This forces me to ask, in all charity, why the hell we all have to listen to the radio blaring from my asshole neighbor's garage.  Just wondering....

     You may notice Whitman graces our masthead here at ER.  Well, I give you The Whitman Archive.  Do go and have a read...

what does it matter?

     Of course, there is nothing more petty, more boring, than pondering the divides between putative liberals and conservatives...I would rather work, read, make poems and such, and receive such consolations on the way as are sent along...to chant slogans in the public square, to pretend such things are important, would be slavery...

a poem by Milton...

It just seems apt to the day...

I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs
By the known rules of antient libertie,
When strait a barbarous noise environs me
Of Owles and Cuckoes, Asses, Apes and Doggs.
As when those Hinds that were transform'd to Froggs
Raild at Latona's twin-born progenie
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
But this is got by casting Pearl to Hoggs;
That bawle for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry libertie;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they roave we see
For all this wast of wealth, and loss of blood.

what's a liberal...

     For a long time I thought of myself as a 'conservative'.  Then it occurred to me that the word has been corrupted beyond salvaging - those who pass as 'conservatives' don't want to conserve anything of value.  They just want to keep their noses stuck in a ledger and count their pennies as they lumber past the graveyard.  So, by current lights, I'm not a 'conservative'. 
     So, am I a 'Liberal'?  It's tempting - I have a thing for Adam Smith, and think quite highly of suspect characters like Milton and Hume.  Still, we face the same problem: 'Liberal' has been likewise corrupted.  'Liberals' nowadays care nothing about justice and truth, liberality and generosity.  No, they'll go along with any corrupt, authoritarian political machine as long as they get two things - lots of swag on the public dime, and the license to kill children deemed inferior or otherwise unwanted.
     What's a middle-aged business owner who writes poetry and loves classical theology to do?