[1250] Brave World

Guest poem sent in by Sachin <sachin_041@>

But what about the courage
of the cancer cell
that breaks out from the crowd
it has belonged to all its life

like a housewife erupting
from her line at the grocery store
because she just can't stand
the sameness anymore?

What about the virus that arrives
in town like a traveler
from somewhere faraway
with suitcases in hand,

who only wants a place
to stay, a chance to get ahead
in the land of opportunity,
but who smells bad,

talks funny, and reproduces fast?
What about the microbe that
hurls its tiny boat straight
into the rushing metabolic tide,

no less cunning and intrepid
than Odysseus; that gambles all
to found a city
on an unknown shore?

What about their bill of rights,
their access to a full-scale,
first-class destiny?
their chance to realize

maximum potential?-which, sure,
will come at the expense
of someone else, someone
who, from a certain point of view,

is a secondary character,
whose weeping is almost
too far off to hear,

a noise among the noises
coming from the shadows
of any brave new world.

  	-- Tony Hoagland

The previous poem [Poem #1236] prompted me to look up Tony Hoagland on the
net and I came across this gem of a poem. This poem works for me on various
levels. At the most superficial level, its an interesting look at
circumstances from the other person's point of view.  It brings up the stark
fact that life is a zero sum game and for someone to win, somebody else
necessarily has to lose.

The last two paragraphs seemed especially relevant in the context of the
current ['recent' now - ed] Gulf war. The innocent civilians who lost life
and limb are but

".. a secondary character,
whose weeping is almost
too far off to hear,

a noise among the noises
coming from the shadows
of any brave new world."

Sachin

[Martin adds]

Tangentially, I was reminded of the following quote:

  Popular mythology to the contrary, that niche [large terrestrial life
  forms] has always been on the outer edge of existence. It's amazing,
  really, how the large size of humans prejudices our view of life. To this
  day, biologists talk of mammals dominating the earth. That's news to
  bacteria! Not to mention insects and worms. We, and all our bulky mammal
  relatives, are just rare clouds drifting over the teeming landscape of
  life. So were the dinosaurs.

  It reminds me of J. B. S. Haldane's quip, when he was asked what his
  life's study of biology indicated about God. "He has an inordinate
  fondness for beetles."

      -- Eric Flint, "Mother of Demons"
	  (available at http://www.baen.com/library/)

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From: "Highland, David" <David.Highland@>

Enjoyed the poem, and the perspective it provides.  However, I couldn't help
but be distracted by the odd reference to adventures of Odysseus and the
founding of a city.  Odysseus' adventures brought him home to Ithaca.  It
was Virgil's Aeneis who's adventures led him to found Lavinium  with the
Trojan refugees who progeny eventually founded Rome.  It seems the line
should have read "no less cunning and intrepid than >Aeneis<; that gambles
all to found a city on an unknown shore?" Was Hoagland being sloppy with his
literary reference, or am I missing some other connection?

Thanks,
david

From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@>

--- "Highland, David" <David.Highland@> wrote:
> Enjoyed the poem, and the perspective it provides.  However, I couldn't help
> but be distracted by the odd reference to adventures of Odysseus and the
> founding of a city.  Odysseus' adventures brought him home to Ithaca.  It
> was Virgil's Aeneis who's adventures led him to found Lavinium  with the
> Trojan refugees who progeny eventually founded Rome.  It seems the line
> should have read "no less cunning and intrepid than >Aeneis<; that gambles
> all to found a city on an unknown shore?" Was Hoagland being sloppy with his
> literary reference, or am I missing some other connection?

If he was, he's in good company - Keats's famous "stout Cortez" never gazed
upon the Pacific either :)

martin

From: "A Giridhar RAO" <drgiridhar@>

'A Discovery'

Dark pictures, thrones, stones that pilgrims kiss
Poems that take a thousand years to die
But ape the immortality of this
Red label on a little butterfly.

-- Vladimir Nabokov

Martin's 'tangential' comment to the Tony Hoagland poem (poem # 1250):

> It's amazing, really, how the large size
> of humans prejudices our view of life.
> To this day, biologists talk of mammals
> dominating the earth.

reminded me of this little 1943 gem by Nabokov on the vanity of human
wishes.

But why a _red_ label? The biologist Stephen Jay Gould in a brilliant essay
(in _I Have Landed_, 2002) gives the answer:

Museum curators traditionally affix red labels only to "holotype"
specimens -- that is, to individuals chosen as official recipients of the
name given to a new species. The necessity for such a rule arises from a
common situation in taxonomic research. A later scientist may discover that
the original namer of a species defined the group too broadly by including
speciments from more than one genuine species.... By official rules, the
species of the designated holotype specimen keeps the original name, and
members of the newly recognized species must recieve a new name. Thus,
Nabokov tells us that no product of human cultural construction can match
the immortality of the permanent name-bearer for a genuine species in
nature. The species may become extinct, of course, but the name continues
forever to designate a genuine natural population that once inhabited the
earth. (46)


Giridhar

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