Sentence of the Day.
Sentence of the Day is a declaration I make now and then — certainly not every day — when I encounter a complicated and weird sentence.
That's in "Of Mice and ICE" (at the Poetry Foundation). The author is Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, an English professor at the University of Toronto, who teaches poetry and postcolonial theory and literature. She was writing in 2018, when the ICE problems were Trump's.
I got there as a result of googling "beastie," a word I used in the previous post, about a fox, and have used now and again and again on this blog.
A "beastie" is "A little animal; an endearing form of beast n. Also applied jocularly to insects. (Originally Scottish)" (OED). The oldest usage is in the Robert Burns poem that is referenced in that Poetry Foundation piece with the complicatedly weird sentence.
Here's the Burns poem with "beastie" in the first line — "Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie."
Here's Longfellow's "Evangeline" — which begins "This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks...."
What other sentences have caused me to declare "Sentence of the Day"? There was this, in 2005:
"Plump couches, radical books, free WiFi, $5 microbrews, killer sound system, a menu that runs from catfish and collard greens to peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches: a cool, comfortable, slightly bourgy haven for a hot, bothered, slightly bourgy peace movement."
This, in 2017:
"It is a mildly disconcerting experience, seeing conscious evolutions and experiments in style; baroque, ornate, urgent, dyspeptic; the repetitions and modalities at various points and the stylized categorizations and oppositions – prudes and perverts, monsters and insanity, measures and tests, inquiries and examinations, bodies and boys, punishment, pleasure, asceticism, suicide; the going back over old themes in new ways; how the old becomes new but how the new can never entirely disown the old; the desire for both fidelity in the evocation of moods and worlds, but not necessarily strict historical accuracy, whatever that might in the end be taken to mean; and the desire to write all this up somehow as a history of the present."
And here's another 2017 example:
"You know like any face I made when I was young was adorable and now if I’m worried there’s this pathetic gleam of how do I look and yet we love an old dog or an old leather couch so why not an old female arm or an ass all its own, speaking powerfully shabbily in time."
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58 comments:
A professor of post-colonial theory had enough humor and courage to call a bald eagle a bigot? How did that happen?
The perpetrators of Sentences of the Day need editors.
Burns and Longfellow, not so much.
The hard part is making it look easy. "This is the forest primeval". What a great first sentence!
And that lady at U of Toronto needs to shake the underbrush out of her head. She is a one-woman fire hazard.
"It looked... like a bigot."
Isn't that the definition of bigotry itself?
The first time I saw a bald eagle in the wild (it was in 1967 at Grafton, IL, where the Illinois River goes into the Mississippi), I thought it was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen in nature.
If you go to Starved Rock State Park in mid-winter, there are a bunch of eagles there who go for fish in the open water below the dam.
I memorized Evangeline, along with several Frost poems, for a high school poetry project. I have yet to encounter any modern, post-colonial, post-everything "poets" who write anything worth reading.
"Sentence of the Day."
Why? Just because of its click-baityness? I mean, Canadian college prof. insults U.S., film at eleven.
Ahmad al Issi? Is that the accused? I don't follow mass shootings on principle.
What could his motive possibly been? Anyone for addressing root causes? Anyone?
"The author is Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, an English professor at the University of Toronto, who teaches poetry and postcolonial theory and literature."
Someones's tax dollars at play.
So an ass and a bad writer?
These people are incoherent.
A professor? What a joke.
Btw, on a trip to Alaska years ago we saw bald eagles everywhere.
At first it was incredible...then after seeing so many, it was still nice, but they are like pigeons up there.
She was writing in 2018, when the ICE problems were Trump's.
ICE wasn't a problem for Trump. He seemed to be using that tool fairly effectively. ICE is a problem for Biden* since he's blunted the tool.
Miss me yet?!
Amadeus 48: "What could his motive possibly been?" Don't hold your breath for any of identity politics theorizing about the targeting of 10 whites by a Muslim as we've just witnessed with the Atlanta massage parlor shooting. The Narrative only flows one way.
Meadehouse needs a bottle of Timorous Beastie scotch, a name inspired by the Robert Burns poem, To a Mouse.
I memorized Evangeline, along with several Frost poems, for a high school poetry project.
Pfft, Evangelines I prefer to that long ass poem, include the 80s comic, the catchy Matthew Sweet song about it and the star of Lost.
I never saw "beastie" as endearing, as the only usage I was exposed to was the eponymous Jethro Tull composition:
Beastie
There's a beast upon my shoulder and a fiend upon my back.
Feel his burning breath a heaving, smoke oozing from his stack.
And he moves beneath the covers or he lies below the bed.
He's the beast upon your shoulder. He's the price upon your head.
Amadeus 48 said...
Ahmad al Issi? Is that the accused? I don't follow mass shootings on principle.
What could his motive possibly been? Anyone for addressing root causes? Anyone?
Clearly white supremacy and support for Trump. And insurrection.
Don't ever forget the insurrection part.
Sanctimonious hypocrite(s)? Immigration reform? Anti-nativists. Pro-Choicers. The Green Blight..a gauntet of bird whackers, run by bald eagles.
LOL! She sounds just like a bigot, bet she looks like one, too.
You have to fight for your right to par.....tae!
'Bourgy' mangled. It's bougie.
White muslim.
Ahmad al Issi? Is that the accused?
Yes and yes. I’m surprised he is alleged to have used an AR-type rifle. Usually the guys who shout “Allahu Akbar” as they commit murder prefer AKs.
I'm old enough to remember when bald eagles were supposed to be nearly extinct because of "man's encroachment" and stuff like that. I live on the Connecticut shoreline, and a nesting pair of bald eagles have set up shop just a few blocks down the street. The squirrels have been noticeably subdued this spring.
I'm sure Professor Kolb thought her eagle line was clever when she wrote it. It seems a bit clumsy and sophomoric to me, though.
Getting back to Prof. Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, I for one find it interesting that she equates “majestic” with being a bigot. Says something about her that she probably, belatedly, wishes we didn’t know.
One week last month, when it was unseasonably cold and rainy—which I loved because I was in a depression—there were suddenly mice flurrying everywhere in the courtyard, in and out of a pneumatic HVAC unit they installed last summer.
Mice installed a pneumatic HVAC unit last summer.
I too like to anthropomorphize wild animals with the temporary politics of countries they are associated with. Bears are all communists, Chukar are all muslim extremists, and beavers, well, beavers always remind me of insipid bullshit academics who languish in the undeclared 51st state of the Union desperately trying to be relevant, and failing miserably.
The Land of Evangeline is in Nova Scotia in the Annapolis Valley. My mother's family is from there. It was a beautiful place to spend a summer as a child. I guess it's the Canadian bald eagles that are the bigots?
Professor Kolb proudly put out this thought and did not, so far as we know, then stop and remark, "Wow - it is amazing how fucking crazy I really am!"
(with apologies to Se7en's Detective Mills)
I too like to anthropomorphize wild animals
They feel objectified when you do that.
Eagles are pretty common here on the Bay. In summer, they prefer to steal from Ospreys, hence their use as the IRS symbol. In winter, they get ducks and other birds, carrion, and the occasional fish. They're not particularly noble but they're pretty impressive up close.
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Now that is a sentence worth reading.
Compare this description of an animal:
"I saw a bald eagle in the wild a few weeks ago, and to be honest, it looked ... blah blah blah ... like a bigot."
To this one:
"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep."
One is real poetry, the other is narcissistic excrement.
Or to be clever, an American poet is better than a Canadian one.
I'm old enough to remember when bald eagles were supposed to be nearly extinct because of "man's encroachment" and stuff like that.
Bald eagles were nearly extinct because of DDT. They have recovered nicely over the past (almost) fifty years, thanks to the endangered species act and the banning of all of DDT derived pesticides.
Another favorite opening sentence, from a real poet:
"It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined."
This was a British poet, superior to the lesser poets of Canada.
I wonder if the time will come when a course on "White Poetry" can be offered at a US college. The teacher can frame everything negatively, and use critical race theory to tear apart the poems, but secretly delight in sharing poetry that has value. Maybe he (or she!) will be completely discreet, or maybe he can wink and nudge and not get in trouble for it. "A's" will only be earned by those who somehow signal that they reject all the bullshit.
I had an English professor who said if I, as a freshman, could successfully explicate "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", I didn't need to take any further classes as an English literature major, because I would know everything worth knowing about English poetry since Beowulf.
I couldn't do it, but it made me treat that poem with respect.
Hey Freder,
If DDT were used judiciously, which it certainly wasn't in the 1950s, it would be a boon to mankind in terms of insect pest control. It could smite the pestiferous bedbug. It could help suppress insect borne illnesses in, yes, AFRICA!
Watch out, Freder, your dismissal of the benefits of DDT could be racist.
Everything is racist.
Even animals. Even an eagle, who's only concern is to find food.
This... is depressing. Is this what's passing for intelligent thought? Or is this blob just something shoved out of a cloaca by someone desperate for any sort of attention?
Apparently the best way to get such attention is by identifying some new receptacle for bigotry.
The New Woke Religion - All Sin, All The Time, With No Redemption Possible.
Terrible poet. Nose ring AND nose stud. Mocks her husband’s dead grandmother. Classy.
A bald eagle soaring looks like a bigot? Uhhhh.... white head... surely not. Symbol of America? Maybe, by someone that does not know we are one of the EAST racist nations on earth and knows, just knows that can't be true.
In any event an eagle likely does not discriminate based on race. I'd say the author mores more about loons (like her human cohorts) than eagles.
But let's see who the author is.
The author is Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, an English professor at the University of Toronto, who teaches poetry and postcolonial theory and literature.
Who could have ever guessed?
Seems like a pretty narrow (and slanted) field of study to be turned loose on impressionable young minds. But that's just me.
In Alaska the Bald Eagles come in flocks like blackbird flocks that cover the sky.
If DDT were used judiciously, which it certainly wasn't in the 1950s, it would be a boon to mankind in terms of insect pest control. It could smite the pestiferous bedbug. It could help suppress insect borne illnesses in, yes, AFRICA!
What are you, so kind of Commie? You want chemical companies to only produce and market, and consumers to only use it only for disease vector control (which is actually its current status) and not as a general agricultural pesticide, where both the chemical producers and farmers maximize profit?
My first reaction was to the insanity of watching a bald eagle fly and thinking, "Looks like a bigot." Then the second-order insanity of thinking, "That's a real gem. I should share it with others, to enlighten them."
What strikes me now is what a very bad sentence it is, quite apart from content. She wouldn't win the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with it, but I think an honorable mention is well within her reach.
Note to falsely elegant writers: When your subordinate clauses have subordinate clauses, you're overdoing it. The reader will not be admiring the complexity of your thoughts.
I thought that Silent Spring stuff about DDT making condor eggs fragile turned out to be largely bullshit as an explanation for declining raptor populations.
I thought that Silent Spring stuff about DDT making condor eggs fragile turned out to be largely bullshit as an explanation for declining raptor populations.
Well, you thought wrong. However, you are correct that DDT had little to do with the decline of the California condor. That had more to do with condors being killed by eating poisoned carcasses meant to control coyotes.
One of the nice things about where we live in MT is that we have eagles. We have a hydro dam on the other side of the hill that my subdivision is on. Essentially, I have the north side of the hill, and the power company has the south, River side. Most of the power heads east and south, but some heads the opposite direction, and someone built an eagles’ nest platform in top of one of those towers. I check it out at least once a week when we are up there. Mostly, the adults are soaring over the River, fishing. But by mid summer or so, you can see the young ones high up in the nest. We don’t actually see them over the house much - though we do see hawks who hunt and fish just south of the eagles on the river. And you see other pairs fishing up and down the River. But seeing them on the other side of the hill, like I so often do, is a constant, because the location of this nest is so perfect. They are high up, with an unobstructed view of maybe a half mile of the River, as it bends around that hill of ours. And realistically, about the only way of getting there is to fly (squirrels would have to hang upside down, crossing the bottom of maybe 10 feet of plywood to get there).
The nearby eagles are one of the big reasons that our cat is an indoor cat. My partner almost lost a cat to an owl, about five miles down River, at the ranch, when she was married to her ex. The cat slept on top of the German Shepard on the porch, until one night, the owl tried to poach the cat. He wasn’t successful, but left the cat well shredded. The dog slept wrapped around the cat that night keeping him warm, until discovered the next morning. The vet was able, after a lot of work, to sew the cat back together, but he was never the same, and ran off the first chance he had, when they got back to PHX for the winter. Still, we have a pair of dark tiger colored cats that live a couple doors down, which translates into a dearth of songbirds in the neighborhoods, and many fewer squirrels. They are pretty hardy. He told me last summer that one of the cats disappeared in a sub zero blizzard. She was found later on our roof. Apparently coaxing her down, with the blizzard still raging, was a not so pleasant experience. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be 10 feet up an icy ladder at such a time.
When I see the word "beastie", I think of van Leeuwenhoek describing what he saw through a microscope - wee, little beasties.
The nearby eagles are one of the big reasons that our cat is an indoor cat.
Bald or Golden? Bald Eagles feed almost exclusively on dead or dying fish.
"and beavers, well, beavers always remind me of insipid bullshit academics who languish in the undeclared 51st state of the Union desperately trying to be relevant, and failing miserably."
Beavers are fucking industrious. Academics - at least, the insipid bullshit variety - are layabouts and wastrels.
Freder Frederson said...
The nearby eagles are one of the big reasons that our cat is an indoor cat.
Bald or Golden? Bald Eagles feed almost exclusively on dead or dying fish.
Wrong. As I said, they much prefer stealing fish from Ospreys, but they will hunt fish, ducks, sea birds, and even small mammals when the Ospreys are uncooperative (say between October and March). They will even scavenge roadkill, and push off the buzzards.
Freder Frederson,
Yes, DDT did cause eggshell thinning in raptors. I was a peregrine falcon nut as a kid, and read everything there was at my level on the subject back then (late 70s). But bald eagles were never in danger of going extinct, because the AK population was so huge. The peregrines had a tougher time of it, at least until they discovered the remarkable city combination of skyscrapers and pigeons :-) A gazillion nesting sites, and an all-you-can-eat buffet below!
My folks are, in their retirement, wildlife photographers. They see bald eagles all the time on their own property, in rural MD, but when they want to photograph them seriously, they go to Connawingo Dam, which is rather like the pigeons for the peregrines, only with salmon. My parents find themselves in the company of a few dozen other highly-equipped bird photographers, all waiting for an eagle in mid-catch. They've captured hundreds of images, a few of them really spectacular.
Bigoted eagles?
It must be a Muslim thing:
At a recent South Asian Muslim wedding, I made the fatal mistake of taking biryani from the buffet tray with my left hand. With the visual acuity of an intolerant, bigoted eagle, my aunt spotted the alleged criminal act and loudly admonished me in front of my peers: “You took food with the left hand?! We don’t eat with the left hand – only the right hand. The left hand is used for … 'other things.'” "Secrets of the Muslim Bathroom - Wajahat Ali
Mosquitos and other critters became very tolerant of DDT over time. Back in the day, Mosquito control districts kept using more and more DDT to declining effect. With it's patents running out, it was easy to cave into Rachel Carson. They switched to spraying diesel on water surfaces. Other uses were replaced with organophosphates... Yum!
The sentence might be more successful than one might think. Reading it, I could viscerally feel the hate suffusing every word. If that was the author's intent, it was successful.
We don’t eat with the left hand – only the right hand. The left hand is used for … 'other things.'
Socially distancing you paws... hands is insufficient. You still need to need to wash your hands with soap and water to mitigate fecal transmission.
We want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, a$$-kickers, $hit-kickers and Methodists.
Althouse writes: She was writing in 2018, when the ICE problems were Trump's.
pacwest notes:: ICE wasn't a problem for Trump. He seemed to be using that tool fairly effectively. ICE is a problem for Biden* since he's blunted the tool.
The New York Times said there was a scandal with ICE when Trump was President, and so it must be. The people who write for the Times would never, ever, try to fool Professor Althouse.
This English professor is an associate professor at the suburban branches of University of Toronto (Mississauga and Scarborough) and she seems to be a typical Girl of the 'Burbs using her background to be more interesting than she herself is. 'You see an eagle, I see a bigot' - that is so suburban. Also, pines and hemlocks are not specifically Canadian but, of course, this 'Burban Girl (who comes from Albany) isn't really in touch with nature and climate zones. It's my opinion that middle-class suburban is a universal world-wide category, transcending race, color, creed and gender-change. It has typical behaviors, one of which is the Don Quixote syndrome, in which 'Burban Girl begins to imagine herself as Other and Alien to the point where she cannot see the landscape around her except as an actor in her inner "I Am Alien" drama. This can be a career boost for awhile especially in a suburban university which is the mundane suburban reason why it happens.
Years ago when I first saw a Bald Eagle in the US Midwest (after they had been pretty-much wiped out) it was exciting. When I excitedly pointed to a Bald Eagle in the US Pacific Northwest, the man standing next to me said, "They're like pigeons out here. They eat all the fish."
Point of View and history are important.
"I saw a bald eagle in the wild a few years ago, and to be honest, it looked, even as it flew over the snakey river and the murmuring pines and the hemlocks—Canadian trees, according to Longfellow, whose 'Evangeline,' is a poem of exile I adore—like a bigot."
I saw a house-mouse in the my kitchen a few years ago, and to be honest, it looked, even as it scurried over the linoleum floor to safety behind the stove—like a dirty Jew.
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