“Section: Rock-Drill De Los Cantares” is the sequence of Ezra Pound’s “The Cantos” containing Cantos LXXXV-XCV. Here, Pound’s ideas on paradise, slowly built upon in the previous cantos, are brought to their zenith. These eleven cantos capture the idea of paradise that Pound is trying to articulate and achieve, and the relationship this has on culture and language.
Year: 2012
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Knives 101
What cooking utensil do you use the most?
If you say scissors, so you can open your KD packet, then you should stab yourself. But you probably can’t, because your scissors are dull and so are you. No, the only correct answer is the knife.
The primary difficulty of Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” lies in identifying the speaker in each of the respective poems in the sequence. Is Pound speaking, or is Mauberley? Precisely what is the relationship between the two? And what ideas is Pound ultimately trying to communicate? There is no consensus; conflicting interpretations, based on every possible combination and permutation of Pound and Mauberley exist.
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Poet and Persona in Sestina: Altaforte
“Sestina: Altaforte” by Ezra Pound explores the character of Bertran de Born, a French baron and Occitan troubadour. Pound manipulates the relationship between poet and persona, emphasizing the simultaneous artifice and naturalness in Bertran, to show Bertran’s primal and authentic character. Pound portrays Bertran independently to create a historical authenticity and objectivity, but cannot help but hint at the poet’s influence and own ideas. Hugh Kenner precisely notes this, saying Pound’s persona “crystallizes a modus of sensibility in its context.” (Kenner 11) The persona can thus be seen as a transparent mask: Pound wears the face of Bertran to immerse the reader in the historic context and character, but to make his own personal sensibilities stronger. Using this technique, Bertran is portrayed more vividly and personally, and “Sestina: Altaforte” can be read as an acceptance and vindication of Bertran de Born.
I love watching food programs. Everything from Hell’s Kitchen to Yan Can Cook, if I have spare time (and even if I don’t), I’ll be watching. For those of you with a social life, you might be unfamiliar with some of the finer aspects of modern food television. It cuts across every genre and every demographic. Gone are the days of mere instructional cooking shows or food documentaries – now, you have epic odysseys spanning several continents to find the best french fry, or some surreal dystopian competition where contestants use molecular science to cook to the death for our entertainment.
As food television becomes progressively stranger, I’ve noticed something interesting: cooking programs are pornography. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not saying, “Oh man, the Food Network is like porn,” in a joking way; I’m saying “The Food Network is porn,” in a dead serious way. Sure, one features naked people and the other features food, but at their core, they are the same.
Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls” and “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” both explore order and disorder in an animal society. By using animals rather than human beings, Chaucer is able to approach with a dichotomy, simultaneously emulating and parodying human society. Chaucer seeks to show the necessary co-dependent relationship between order and disorder. Disorder is characterized as compulsory for order to exist or function. It is this necessary duality that lies at the heart of both texts, and makes the narratives so intricate and compelling.
Introduction
The moral justification of Spanish presence in Latin America was the proselytization of Christianity. Religion would continue to have an unparalleled impact on the consolidation and maintenance of colonization. Christianity was often the first form of communication between the Spanish and indigenous. It was a key factor in the subjugation of Amerindians. Religion is the perfect grounds for determining the potency of Amerindian identity in the colonial era. One mode of exploring the role of religion in colonial identities is through architecture. As the colonizers conquered and consolidated Latin America, new structures were erected and existing ones modified.
J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians examines the actions and thoughts of the Magistrate, who becomes conflicted as the Empire he is a part of becomes increasingly violent against the perceived barbarian threat. Central to the Magistrate’s turmoil is the perceived superlative nature of the Empire with its objective history and absolute truths, and the irreconcilably immoral actions the Empire performs. The idea of history being written on the body is integral to this supposed unequivocal nature and history of the Empire. Literally, the barbarian captives are written upon. On a more metaphorical level, the torture of prisoners can be seen as an extension of the Empire’s writings. Torture provides an objective narrative, pain, on the subjective body. It absorbs and converts the subjective into the objective, so that only the history of the writer (i.e. the history of the Empire). remains. As articulated by Hegel, the modern Western idea of civilization has long rested on the union of history and its written record(Moses 117). The writing of history on the body then is the Empire, representing Western civilization and colonization, consuming the uncivilized colonized. At its core, Waiting for the Barbarians is about the Magistrate’s search for truth. Coetzee charts the evolution of the Magistrate’s beliefs from objective to subjective, from a Hegelian and teleological perspective to a post-modern and post-structural perspective.
How many hair products do you use? Shampoo, conditioner, gel, mousse, wax, hairspray? It might take ages, and cost a fair chunk, but the end look is worth it, right? Your hair is shiny and light. It looks like there is a perpetual wind flowing your long tresses back. When you step out of the shower, it is a Dove commercial.
But what did cavemen use before Dove Damage Therapy Daily Moisture? Did they just walk around with greasy scalps and dirty locks as they hunted dinosaurs? For that matter, what did people in the past century use? Modern shampooing only emerged in the 1930s.
Let’s talk about ironing.
“Ironing?” I hear you ask. “Is he being ironic?” you wonder, even as you congratulate yourself on your unintentional joke.