“Musick has Charms to soothe the savage Breast/to soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak,” -William Congreve (1670-1629)

(Yeah, I had to research these two words because I was distracted by Ellen in class. She was a babe.)

-Musick

VERB TRANSITIVE
to compose music for (a poem, libretto, etc.)

-Breast

VERB
face and move forward against or through (something).
"I watched him breast the wave"

Teacher here. It's made-up-nonsense. I don't give a shit what gender or sexual orientation a kid is and im CERTAINLY not going to try to convince anyone to change anything about themselves.

That said, I'm going to acknowledge that gay/trans people exist in authorship and literature as it arises. You can't read someone like Whitman (Leaves of Grass, arguably America's greatest poet) and not come across references to sexuality either implicit or explicit. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45472/i-sing-the-body-electric

It becomes relevant in passages like this:

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

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Maybe a conversation like:

"'Love flesh swelling' like he's in love with some woman and they...he...?"

"Probably not, he didn't have any serious female relationships as far as I am aware."

"But the title is 'The female form'"

"Well, it's possible, but it's not likely the case that he was talking about himself being in love with a woman. This poem is in the text but he wrote many other pieces about he-himself falling into and out of love with various men and we have letters documenting those relationships with his male significant others. Although, I'm not sure what to call them because gay marriage would have been illegal at the time. He's likely writing the poem in a way where he appreciates the female form and sees men who are drawn to it like the way I appreciate watching bees act obsessively driven to the middle of flowers. I like watching Bees in action, but that doesn't mean I'm going all pollen crazy, still I appreciate it for what it is."
-------------------

This is an example of how discussion of sexuality would come up in my classroom as I imagine it. Note how I'm not trying to convince the kid I'm talking to to turn gay like it's a big game of rainbow-red-rover or something. Nevertheless, knowing the author's sexual preference in this instance informs our understanding of the piece.


My own personal theory?
The people railing against things like this are the same shitheads that can't be bothered to read ANYTHING and instead giggle and guffaw at "hurhurhurhur he hadd'a boner" where I get to live an early stage of Idocracy.

Also, I agree that the "funky stuff" shouldn't be just avoided altogether. For goodness sake, just let teachers have the difficult conversation that everyone is avoiding. Reminds me of when Peggy Hill was struggling to say "Penis" when she was assigned sex ed.

Creepy.

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'Paradise Lost': How The Apple Became The Forbidden Fruit

This month marks 350 years since John Milton sold his publisher the copyright of Paradise Lost for the sum of five pounds.

His great work dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake — and an apple.

Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to "the fruit." To quote from the King James Bible:

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And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
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"Fruit" is also the word Milton employs in the poem's sonorous opening lines:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/04/30/526069512/paradise-lost-how-the-apple-became-the-forbidden-fruit

that is a tome in two sentences.
a poem with two verses.

well said.

See, my distinct impression of the Trump administration's policies and actions surrounding immigrants at our southern border was that it... wanted them to fuck off and/or die. "Remain in Mexico" was abhorrent. Family separation was a humanitarian disaster.

What *specific* policies or actions did the Trump administration take or promote which should make me believe they cared? That they had even the tiniest shred of humanity regarding people who've suffered enormously and struggled to reach what they hoped *might be* a less shitty life for themselves and their children?

"Come in legally" is fine, so long as we live up to being the beacon of hope and freedom that we like to think we are. Which would require allowing in a LOT more refugees than the Trump admin tolerated.

Ever read the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty? It is beautiful, and if the US can manage to live up to it for a change then perhaps we'll have made America great, for the first time.

A tribute to Oscar Wilde?

Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. -wiki

HM Prison Reading was formerly known as Reading Gaol

The Ballad of Reading Gaol
BY OSCAR WILDE
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45495/the-ballad-of-reading-gaol

(Edit)
I also read somewhere Robert (Bob) Ross was a good friend of his, who he stayed with after leaving prison, and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".

There's a famous poem about an incident that happened in Britain during WW2 in which an exhibition of Spitfire gunfire accuracy ended rather badly when the pilot mistook that viewing stand as the target and raked spectators and high-ranking military observers alike.

A lot of people died.

Incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imber_friendly_fire_incident

I can't find a link to the damned poem; it's named "Incident, Second World War" by Gavin Ewart.

Ahhh. Much better. Thanks for the extra effort.

It's true. People rarely get what they deserve. That's why love is at the top of my list.

I see people grieve everyday. Some more than others. People feel betrayed by love because until they lose someone they love and who loved them, love becomes the thing of intense evil.

Suddenly they wonder what they did to deserve the pain they suffer. Feelings of being tricked and it can't possibly be true. Love is not supposed to take you there. You feel as though you must have had the wrong idea and everyone else got it right but you.

You feel alone. Very alone. Frightened. Insanity starts to creep in. Everything now has different meaning. Suicide becomes an option not only because of the pain but because you have gotten others to follow you down that road and will they be able to handle it? You feel trapped.

You start looking through the bible you wrote for yourself. The rules you wrote to live by. Did I have sympathy for others? Did I help others when I could have? Did I judge or did I understand?

There is only one way out. You must continue to love knowing the pain that you may lead others to. That's what music is all about. That's where music lets you know you're not alone. You did the the right thing and suddenly you can hear the voices of those who led you to where you are. They knew you were coming and they are now there to catch you. You crossed through the pain of hell into a world where you were loved all along and never believed it.

It's in every song ever sung. Every poem ever written. Every movie ever made.

The broken hearted. The bleeding hearts. The lovers. The artists. The creators.

So.... If you could just work that into a song, that would be greaat.

This poem the the bestest!

You mean cops doing their job.. Yep I support. ( Are there some bad apples Yep - like any group)

The rest of you gibberish is nonsense. Typical brain dead fake media consumer of fake news.. Hand up don't shoot --all fake.

Ferguson's own "gentle giant" Michael Brown , Innocent young man. BS he got every price of lead he deserved.




A poem I found about this man.

There once was a Punk named brown,
Who bum-rushed a Cop with a frown.
Six rounds later, he met his Creator,
Who sent him to Hell in the ground.

I like that they've changed the standard orientation of the bill

I carry a 5$ Canadian bill that depicts kids playing hockey on a frozen pond and also has a poem on it

I wish the US could be more like CA

Fair enough, but the more passwords my squishy meat bag brain has to remember, the more likely I am to make them easier to guess.

On the other hand, if I only need one password, I can make it ridiculously long (favourite line from a song or poem or movie, for example).

An 8 character password with a mix of lower and upper case, numbers and let’s say 10 symbols (@&$!, etf) has (26+26+10+10)^8 possible combinations: ~ 722 trillion.

A ten character password of just letters has 52^10 possibile combinations: ~144555 trillion

longer is better than complicated

bad ass poem