Ends And Means

Here are some new poems and commentary by my new friend (we’ve never met in person, only by email) Dr. Gershon Hepner:

Ends and Means

The ends may justify the means
providing you achieve your ends,
but don’t expect to hear loud paens
of praise from any of your friends
unless they are the end that you
befriend like Machiavelli’s Prince,
concealing that you take your cue
and principles from what he hints.

Jason Zinoman reviews a sex comedy, “The Mandrake,” by Machiavelli that is being produced in Manhattan [“Dashing Through a Sex Comedy by Machiavelli (Yes, That’s Machiavelli)],” NYT, January 24, 2008:

In the end it’s Machiavelli as sex comedy, which would be fine, I guess, if the actors delivered the belly laughs. The ends may justify the means, but only, of course, if you achieve the ends.
© 2008 Gershon Hepner 1/24/08

CRIES OF EXTINCT BIRDS

Cornell, most succinct,
has recorded a hoard
of birds now extinct.
What we can’t afford
to keep live and well,
we study, like laws
that Calum Cornell
has made the clotheshorse
for Genesis legends,
extinct as a bird
like carrier pigeons,
flightless, but heard.

Inspired by a poem by Robert Crawford in the TLS, January 18, 2008. The poem follows a poem by this poet called “After Gaelic”. It is dedicated to my friend Professor Calum Carmichael or Cornell University, who hails from Islay, produces pìobaireachd and pioneered studies in the relationship between biblical narratives and laws which stimulated my own work in this field leading to my forthcoming book, Legal Friction: Law, Narrative and Political Identity in Biblical Israel (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), forthcoming.

Chorus

It was a bad sign when the sung
Ballads were written down
So one rich man might own
A people’s songs;
And now I’ve heard that at Cornell
There’s a recorded hoard
Of cries of extinct birds.
If earth is ill

And local sights and sounds will drown,
Still down downloads again
Freely for everyone
Uncosted song.

© 2008 Gershon Hepner 1/25/08

Plus this poem, on the subject of airbrushing:

SIMONE’S BUTTOCKS

The photo of Simone has been touched up,
to lose some kilos, rolls of fat and years,
as if Jean-Paul were able still to cup
around the buttocks. Existential fear
of being fat and ugly, growing old
prevent a photo that has been airbrushed
from telling stories no one wishes told
about themselves, when by old age they’re crushed,
although, of course, we do not mind at all
if subjects of such photos are our friends,
in whose decline we love to see the fall
of buttocks, breasts and other dividends.

Elaine Sciolino write about an exhibition at the National Library in Paris, “Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret,” in the NYT, January 16, 2008:

The lighting is bordello red, but the librarians insist that their X-rated exhibition is serious. “Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret,” which opened at the National Library here last month, offers a peek at its secret archive of erotic art, putting on display more than 350 sexually explicit literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, film clips, even calling cards and cardboard pop-ups. Visitors to the library can listen to a modern-day recording of an 18th-century “dialogue” during sex (simultaneous orgasms included) and watch a six-minute excerpt from a grainy black-and-white silent pornography film made in 1921 (one man, two women, intriguing lingerie). The handwritten manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s novel “Les Infortunes de la Vertu” (“The Misfortunes of Virtue”) is under glass here, as are 17th-century French engravings of “erotic postures”; English “flagellation novels” exported to France in the late 19th century; Japanese prints; Man Ray photographs; and a police report from 1900 that compiles the addresses of Paris’s houses of prostitution and what they charged. Sadism, masochism, bestiality, inflated genitalia and the most imaginative sexual fantasies and athletic poses are given their due. To avoid complaints that a publicly supported institution is corrupting the country’s youth, no one under 16 is admitted. “In an era where sexual images are a product for popular consumption, the library has decided to lift the veil on this world of imagination and fantasy,” Bruno Racine, the library director, said in an interview. “The library is a very serious institution, and the project was done with gravity. But we also perhaps are different from what you think — and there is humor here too.”…

Even Simone de Beauvoir’s backside is not off limits from exposure and analysis these days. The decision by the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur two weeks ago to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of that feminist literary figure with a nude photo of her (taken from the back in 1952) has been sharply criticized and just as sharply defended. Florence Montreynaud, a historian and feminist author who runs an anti-sexism organization, protested the photo by offering the magazine’s director, Jean Daniel, a choice: apologize or bare his own bottom. She also said the magazine should publish the bare buttocks of Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s long-time partner.The fact that the cellulite on Beauvoir’s thighs and buttocks was airbrushed away added to the indignity. The media columnist for the newspaper Libération, Daniel Schneidermann, wrote: “The photo has even been retouched — the buttocks of Beauvoir — with makeup, to make them lose some kilos, some rolls of fat and to take off 10 years.”

© 2008 Gershon Hepner 1/16/08