This blog wanders down many lanes that have nothing to do with poetry. Except that everything has to do with poetry. It is a concise way of holding up a mirror to the world, exploring ideas and playing with language.
Emotions are explored by neuroscientists, philosophers and poets because of their complexity and essential part of the human experience.
Martha Nussbaum, the philosopher, has some interesting thoughts about anger and society. This extract demonstrates one aspect of machismo that puts men to shame:
“Men in particular think that they have achieved something if they can make a woman mad, particularly if she is calm and intellectual. Often, they use the attempt to make you mad as a way of flirting, no doubt thinking that unlocking the pent-up emotions of such a woman is a sexual victory. (And note that they assume these emotions are pent up in general, not merely unavailable to them!) This exceedingly tedious exercise shows that they have few or no interesting resources for flirting (such as humor or imagination), and it really has the opposite effect from the one intended, boring the woman, who has certainly seen this before, and making them look very silly.”
Her book Anger and Forgiveness is now on my reading list.
Here is a poem that conveys the rage of anger:
Anger against Beasts by Wendell Berry
The hook of adrenalin shoves
into the blood. Man’s will,
long schooled to kill or have
its way, or kill the beast
against nature, transcend
the impossible in simple fury.
The blow falls like a dead seed.
It is defeat, for beasts
do not pardon, but heal or die
in the absence of the past.
The blow survives in the man.
His triumph is a wound. Spent,
He must wait the slow
unalterable forgiveness of time.
odespinner 