You are welcome! I definitely needed it though I think a little bit of hope would be good too, which came from a scene of a movie.
I had no idea it was a classic, not having being raised in an English speaking country, it was just the first that turned up in my search. It seems it was part of Dead Poets Society (the book version of the movie) and it turns out one of the poems of Vachel Lindsay appears there too whom I had mentioned earlier so I thought of sharing it here. The movie I thought was amazing when I was a kid and it showed me just how vast intellectual pursuits have been in the past and how alive going out of the rigid dogmatism can be when they go out to a cave at night to recite poetry.
One of the opening scenes the professor asks one of the students to read the introduction of a book on poetry that describes how to grade the value of a poem as the area of the graph made by plotting its "importance" versus its "perfection". In the same way modern society tries to box life and check boxes, measure performance and stifle the Life within us all.
"As you proceed through the poetry in this book practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry. --Excrement-- The professor says. --That is what I think of John Evans Pritchard PhD. We are not laying pipe here we are talking about poetry. Gentleman, I want you to rip that page-- The students look excited and fearful one another as someone starts ripping. --Rip it out. I don't hear enough rip! Keep ripping gentleman, the whole introduction. This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. Armies of academics going forward measuring poetry. No! We will not have that here. You will learn to think for yourselves again, you will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world--"
I think we need a lot of that and fortunately there is a lot of that here.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-10 04:40 am (UTC)I had no idea it was a classic, not having being raised in an English speaking country, it was just the first that turned up in my search. It seems it was part of Dead Poets Society (the book version of the movie) and it turns out one of the poems of Vachel Lindsay appears there too whom I had mentioned earlier so I thought of sharing it here. The movie I thought was amazing when I was a kid and it showed me just how vast intellectual pursuits have been in the past and how alive going out of the rigid dogmatism can be when they go out to a cave at night to recite poetry.
One of the opening scenes the professor asks one of the students to read the introduction of a book on poetry that describes how to grade the value of a poem as the area of the graph made by plotting its "importance" versus its "perfection". In the same way modern society tries to box life and check boxes, measure performance and stifle the Life within us all.
"As you proceed through the poetry in this book practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry. --Excrement-- The professor says. --That is what I think of John Evans Pritchard PhD. We are not laying pipe here we are talking about poetry. Gentleman, I want you to rip that page-- The students look excited and fearful one another as someone starts ripping. --Rip it out. I don't hear enough rip! Keep ripping gentleman, the whole introduction. This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. Armies of academics going forward measuring poetry. No! We will not have that here. You will learn to think for yourselves again, you will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world--"
I think we need a lot of that and fortunately there is a lot of that here.