Upvote for uploading half a poem
Very nice.
Reminds me of Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Ode to a Couple”.
*Edit: Added actual poem title.
Here’s the second… Half…
Half a life is a life you didn’t live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life
That’s a really interesting poem. I admire its passion, although I definitely don’t want its philosophy for me. I feel like subtlety and nuance are as important as boldness and directness. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it. This sounds to me like a reversal of the saying, “perfection is the enemy of good.” I read it as “all or nothing.”
Same. The author speaks from privilege, but e.g. to a starving person half a meal is very much preferable to nothing at all - obviously a full meal would have been even better but half will do, for now, and offer energy to then have a better shot at gaining a whole one?
But it’s a poem, so communicated truth using language as a vehicle, and I suppose it was successful because it got all of us to talk about it:-).
Well, now I feel like I’m back in school and just got tricked into enjoying learning something new by an English teacher. I am begrudgingly grateful. [Shakes fist]
If only we could all become so fortunate as to have a lawn and live to be old enough to yell at kids to get off of it!:-)
I don’t think it’s saying you should be brash and unsubtle. It’s just saying that you should commit, and give things the energy they deserve. Don’t half-arse things.
I think that can definitely be compatible with subtlety and nuance, if you want it to.
Fair enough. I’m glad to have another perspective on it. I do feel like it’s okay, maybe even good, to be ambivalent about certain things and half-arse them, even if it’s only to test the consequences of doing so to see where they should fall in the order of priorities.
Yeah, I agree. Testing things out is super valuable.
Tbh, I often don’t know how to take poetry… Sometimes I think I value it just because it captures a vibe that is very important, but only at specific times or places. Maybe the world is too complex for anything meaningful to be true in all situations.
Uh-oh. We may have fallen into the intellectual deep end here. And if you try to grab onto me, we’ll both drown.
https://www.eyes-and-vision.com/influence-of-culture-on-visual-perception.html
