When all the good poems have been buried (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress.)

The Logical Conclusion
Ezra Pound

When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall "baaa" on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;

Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look.

____________________________________________________________

About the poem: I'm not embarrassed to say that I decided to post an Ezra Pound selection for two reasons:

(1) I wanted to see if Ezra Pound had ever written any poem other than "In A Station Of The Metro," which is the only Pound poem schools bother to teach anyone. (Turns out he has!)

(2) Once I thought to myself "I wonder if Ezra Pound ever wrote any other poems besides In A Station Of The Metro," I then thought "Wouldn't it be cool if someone decided to take all Ezra Pound's poems and set them to music and have various singers perform them?"

Because it would, and I thought that that idea was too good to have not been put into practice already, so I eagerly Googled it when I got to work, and I found that nobody has yet done it...

... so, dibs...

... but I also found out that Ezra Pound wrote music, including two complete operas, which is interesting because I just this morning I convinced Sweetie that it would be a good idea to take Mr F and Mr Bunches to a free showing of "The Pirates Of Penzance" tomorrow (I'm not saying that this was fate, but it pretty clearly was fate), an opera where I hope they'll perform this song:




So you can see how this all comes together. I am truly a Renaissance man.

About the Hot Actress: Sweetie said we should pick Kirstie Alley last week, but I didn't post a poem last week, so here she is. Is she still on Dancing With The Stars? I kind of gave up even trying to follow that. (But I'm still a Renaissance Man.)


ALSO : Michael and I had a debate about the relative merits of Moby-Dick over on Rogue Mutt's blog, and as far as I can make out, Ezra Pound is 100% on my side; as I like to say, that's a lot of percents.

I did my part to keep the economy from recovering. (I Get Paid For Doing This)

I just finished up a roughly fifteen minute conversation with another lawyer in our firm that began with a discussion of whether Batman could, if he filed for bankruptcy, exempt his utility belt as a "tool of the trade," but from there we moved on to trying to determine whether Iron Man and Batman were, respectively, employees of Stark Industries and Wayne Enterprises.

Left for another day: whether The Flash remained a scientist after he was either struck by lightning, or got super-speed via radioactivity, or both (we couldn't make up our minds about how The Flash got his powers, but we did agree that Green Arrow is kind of lame when you think about it.)

No, look, I'm totally serious about this. I like the song. (Awesome Covers Of Already Awesome (?) Songs)

Yesterday morning, Mr Bunches was watching a video that combined some sort of Japanese amusement park with Rebecca Black's "Friday"--

-- I know, that actually sounds pretty phenomenal, right? But I don't know what video that was and I'm at work, so I'll have to see if Mr Bunches ever finds it again--

-- and Sweetie asked what the song was; after I told her it was Friday, she said she kind of liked it and had never actually heard the song itself before.

I agreed with her that the song isn't bad, and I don't care what anyone else says.

But you know what's better than Rebecca Black's Friday (which I've now listened to at work a couple times?) Awesome covers of that song, like:

The Meatloaf Version:





The Bob Dylan Version:





The I'm Not Sure What Genre This Is But It's Pretty Neat Version:




Bluegrass:




The Campfire Singalong Version:






The Literal Version:




The a capella version:







And of course, Stephen Colbert's version of the song, which you can find here.

From here on out, I decree that "9" shall be pronounced "mab." (Life With Unicorns.)

I know a little something about heroic effort; after all, I once brought home an entire McDonald's cheeseburger for Sweetie and never even took a bite.

But that's nothing compared to Mr F finally counting to ten, as he did last week.

Mr F has never put together more than three words in a row, and doesn't usually bother talking at all. Last week, though, he up and counted to 10 entirely on his own; what he does is say the first number, and then, after the listener repeats it, he moves on.

That doesn't sound so heroic, but it is. Watch the video:



Every time I watch it I choke up a little.


Did you know that Publicus Proventus now has its own blog? It's true; click here to go there.