None will remember the rising hero of yesterday who finally fell. And the ultimate winner who is immortal feels the sting of the final joke—their flesh, too, must expire.
We want the tournament to begin, knowing it’s an inevitable, painful, farewell, but we desire it—since a happy song means the composer is happy (we know that much) but the sad song is a sweet and tragic gift: we are guilty of wanting everyone to die so we can win—and it’s alright; the guilt is magically absolved by belonging to a faithful, friendly crowd inside a larger crowd—physical, real, and therefore anonymous.
The words “mayhem” and “delirium” are terms of destruction which occupy the realms where mind and body meet—an often overlooked but obvious feature of the Madness is the physical truism which plays out—exhaustion is the most important factor; the physical limitation of all best intentions mutilate those intentions at last; the team which conserves its energy will prevail, not the entity which expends it in burning glory; quiet things we don’t see lead to the noisy, physical triumph.
The poem is the shot, the prose all the preparation for the shot. Most critics still don’t understand the difference between prose and poetry—there is a radical difference. The prose is the preparation, the poem, the thing for which everything necessarily prepared. The poem is the expenditure made possible by the efficiency and frugality of all that held back. Poetry has no insight except in seeming; but in its wonderful seeming, without predicates, without present and past, without judgement, without qualifications, it is; prose has its better and more rational insight hidden by a wild patience we experience as originality.
The Scarriet 2024 March Madness Sweet Sixteen finds prose of patience next to daring and devil-may-care poems and epithets.
The NORTH Bracket:
HEINE the lyric assertion PLOTINUS the sensibly transcendent HOLMES witty bitterness ROSENBERG exposure of intellectual rot
The WEST Bracket:
RICHARDS lyrical mayhem ALLEN identity of conspiracy MILTON lyrically picturesque BLACKMUR joined insights
The SOUTH Bracket:
SCHWARTZ cozy and frightening MORRISON lyrical delirium GABOR wit one owns SONTAG embarrassingly irrefutable
The EAST bracket:
ANDREESSEN pinned to a rock UPDIKE cleaning up HAWTHORNE drone fiction WHITMAN (HELEN) end of the lyric
There are four ways to judge a song, a movie, a poem, a piece of rhetoric, an artist, an idea, a work of art. We can look, learn, surrender, or defend. As a Beatle fan experiencing the Beatles in real time, the song was experienced as zeitgeist by the fan in the zeitgeist; this is to surrender to a work of art. By contrast, we experience dead art by a dead artist in school; this is to look, if the teacher is good, or learn, if the teacher is bad. Finally, we defend art if we ever become a teacher or reach a mature, reflective, pedagogical level ourselves. The complexity of interaction is almost infinite—most Doors fans discovered Jim after he was dead—so this is somewhat like the school boy who happens to look at Keats in school, or is forced to learn Keats by a bad teacher. Three broad categories emerge. We surrender to art as zeitgeist, we look at or learn art as dead zeitgeist, or we defend art as what we feel is timeless zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is a highly sentimental experience, such that the only way we judge is by surrendering. The one who surrenders is the one who rejects (“I used to like that music but I no longer do”). The one who defends may do so for fraudulent reasons (“I myself don’t like this art but feel others ought to like it because of its moral or its message.”) As time passes and society becomes more reflective and sophisticated, no one finally knows what art is. Is this song actually good, or am I re-living it falsely in a pitiful sense of flown Zeitgeist? Am I defending it, without really liking it, or knowing what it is? Am I teaching it without truly knowing it? Am I liking it only because of the way I first experienced it? Am I hating it because of the way I subsequently experienced it? Do I even know how I experience it now or will experience it tomorrow? Do I defend it falsely and shamefully? Do I only experience it through others—who don’t really exist as I think they do? Am I allowed to have this judgment of it? Do I want to like it, but never will? Do I want to dislike it because life is too short? Can I separate it from my Zeitgeist? Do I know what it is at all?
Delmore Schwartz 1913-1966 (The World Is A Wedding, p. 25, 1948)
In New York…there are at least six million human beings and during holidays there are more than that number. But, in a way, these numbers hardly exist because they cannot be perceived (we all have four or five friends, more or less). No human being can take in such an aggregation: all that we know is that there is always more and more. This is the moreness of which we are aware, no matter what we look upon. This moreness is the true being of the great city, so that, in a way, this city hardly exists. It certainly does not exist as does our family, our friends, and our neighborhood. Jacob felt that he had come to a conclusion which showed the shadow in which his friends and he lived. They did not inhabit a true community and there was an estrangement between each human being and his family, or between his family and his friends, or between his family and his school. Worst of all was the estrangement in the fact that the city as such had no true need of any of them…
Ben Mazer 1964- (New Poems, “The King” p. 46, 2013)
You might have been anyone. Your relatives, anyone. The place—where were we?—might have been any place. After dinner and talk that can only go so far we moved beyond the doorbell as if to be understood by going so far—no direction but to fall in the betweenness of hours up the zig zag streets when no one calls and everything repeats the insistent identityless rhythm that is our shield and passport—unhearable beats seeking the eternal and lost child. Unanswerable and hung up on a star like all the nights we died anonymous moving dead leaves like beads across the wind, retiring all our talk in the monstrous dark.
James Morrison 1943-1971 (“The Crystal Ship,” The Doors, 1967)
Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss, Another flashing chance at bliss, Another kiss, another kiss.
The days are bright and filled with pain. Enclose me in your gentle rain. The time you ran was too insane. We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again.
Oh tell me where your freedom lies. The streets are fields that never die. Deliver me from reasons why. You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly.
The crystal ship is being filled, A thousand girls, a thousand thrills, A million ways to spend your time. When we get back, I’ll drop a line.
Benjamin Jowett 1817-1893 (Analysis of The Republic by Plato, trans. B. Jowett)
The good man and the good citizen only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all, by education fashioning them from within.
Hesiod 776-650 BC (quoted by Socrates in Book II Republic)
Virtue is honorable but difficult, vice is easy and profitable.
John Lennon 1941-1980 (Interview, London Evening Standard, March 1966, reprinted in American teen magazine Datebook July 29, 1966)
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first—rock & roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
C.S. Lewis 1898-1963 (quoted, in conversation)
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Bob Newhart 1929- (Brainy Quote)
I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down.’
Robert Browning 1812-1889 (Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, Post-mark, April 16, 1845, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845-1846 with portraits and facsimiles In Two Volumes Vol. I, 1898)
I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the other evening, of Mr. Kenyon—how this wind must hurt you! And yesterday I had occasion to go your way—past, that is, Wimpole Street, the end of it,—and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I came to yours,—much least than less, look up when I did come there. So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the ‘Athenaeum’ last night,—one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it—‘to such little purpose’ said my friend—‘for he is so inoffensive—now, hugged ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the papers to-day about Maynooth… [ ] Three scratches with a pen, even with this pen,—and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all. Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett, R. BROWNING.
Elizabeth Barrett 1806-1861 (Letter to Robert Browning, Post-mark, April 18, 1845, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1845-1846 with portraits and facsimiles In Two Volumes Vol. I, 1898)
If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written . . not this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, . . in the midst of my silence, . . you would not think for a moment that the east wind, with all the harm it does me, is able to do the great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind; for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, . . all your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was better that day—and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so long since. And therefore, I was logically bound… [ ] When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true—I was getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself. But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music—and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, . . without being gathered. Let Maynooth witness it! if you think it worth while! Ever yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT
‘And is it nothing to be ‘justified to one’s self in one’s resources?’ ‘That’s all,‘ indeed! For the ‘soul’s country’ we will have it also—and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was by the way to see your letter!
Andrew Marantz 1984- (“O.K., Doomer” The New Yorker, March 18, 2024)
In theory, the benefits of advanced A.I. could be almost limitless. Build a trusty superhuman oracle, fill it with information (every peer-reviewed scientific article, the contents of the Library of Congress) and watch it spit out answers to our biggest questions: How can we cure cancer? Which renewable fuels remain undiscovered? How should a person be? “I’m generally pro-A.I. and against slowing down innovation,” Robert Hanson, an economist who has had friendly debates with the doomers for years, told me. “I want our civilization to continue to grow and do spectacular things.” Even if A.G.I. does turn out to be dangerous, many in Silicon Valley argue, wouldn’t it be better for it to be controlled by an American company, or by the American government, rather than by the government of China or Russia, or by a rogue individual with no accountability? “If you can avoid an arms race, that’s by far the best outcome,” Ben Goldhaber, who runs an A.I.-safety group, told me. “If you’re convinced than an arms race is inevitable, it might be understandable to default to the next best option, which is, Let’s arm the good guys before the bad guys.”
Franklin Foer 1974- (“The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending” The Atlantic, April 2024)
Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six years earlier, hoping to find a community that shared her progressive values. Her family had developed a deep sense of belonging there. But a moral fervor was sweeping over Berkeley High that morning. Around 10:30, the walkout began. Jewish parents traded panicked reports from their children. Zolt Hara heard that kids were chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that suggests the elimination of Israel.
Robinson Jeffers 1887-1962 (“The Bloody Sire” 1940-1941, The Poetry Anthology 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America’s Most Distinguished Verse Magazine, 2002)
It is not bad. Let them play. Let the guns bark and the bomb-plane Speak his prodigious blasphemies. It is not bad, it is high time, Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.
What but the wolf’s tooth chiseled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds and hunger Gemmed with such eyes the great goshawk’s head? Violence has been the sire of al the world’s values.
Who would remember Helen’s face Lacking the terrible halo of spears? Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar, The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar? Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.
Never weep, let them play. Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
Mitch Murray 1940- (“How Do You It?” Gerry and the Pacemakers, Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, 1964)
How do you do what you do to me? I wish I knew. If I knew how you do it to me, I’d do it to you.
How do you do what you do to me? I’m feelin’ blue. Wish I knew how you do it to me, but I haven’t a clue.
You give me a feeling in my heart, Like an arrow passing through it. S’pose that you think you’re very smart, But won’t you tell me how do you do it?
How do you do what you do to me? If I only knew. Then perhaps you’d fall for me—like I fell for you.
Zsa Zsa Gabor 1917-2016 (The Wise and Witty Quote Book, p. 70, 1998)
I’m a great housekeeper. I get divorced, I keep the house.
Susan Sontag 1933-2004 (Against Interpretation: And Other Essays, 1966)
What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.
Scarriet 