Lots of people consider their output poetry if it rhymes, or rhymes well enough. It doesn't even have to scan. They're wrong, of course. The bar for good poetry is high, whether or not it rhymes. Good poets use words in a surprising way.
Alas, it can't really be a take-down unless the person in question knows that he has been took. It is a valid critique, but Bezos will never be aware of it, and will continue destroying the Post and blaming everyone else for the destruction, until he no longer sees the ownership of a once-great newspaper as something that burnishes his public profile. He might sell it, or more likely kill it, since it is unlikely that anyone would be willing to pay the price appropriate to a great newspaper when that newspaper is no longer great, or even adequate.
YES, you kicked Bezos' bozo ass properly! Thank you, Gene! To quote a pop song from my youth, you turned him "inside out, boy, you turned him, inside out, and round and round." I am going to share a copy of this with friends in hopes that they will start reading your column and subscribe.
Savagely incisive, Gene; thanks. Just one quibble: "You expected your employees to keep on working when their colleagues died."
Bezos doesn't view them as employees, because that implies seeing them as human beings. He instead sees them as widgets: disposable, interchangeable, boring and residing at the other end of the food chain from him. That's why he has no clue what reporters and writers actually do.
Just my personal opinion, but I think the tech bros like Bezos have never developed their minds to comprehend the side of one's humanity that results in poetry among other arts, the kind of things that make humans fully human.
The tragedy that has befallen The Washington Post is quite personal to me. I learned to read at a very early age (starting at age 2, fully capable by age 4), first by having my infinitely patient grandfather read to me, over and over, the contents of a "Little Golden Book," the bit of distinctly un-free verse entitled "The House that Jack Built" until I had it memorized. Then I deciphered the words from its pages, and then, using the Post that was delivered each morning to my home, I picked out the words and parts of words and combination of those parts of words until I could read the paper front to back.
Ever since I was a toddler it has been MY newspaper, my primary source of news, sports and commentary. I was weaned on Bill Gold's "The District Line," the Allsop Brothers, Drew Pearson, Art Buchwald, the incomparable Herblock, Shirley Povich for my beloved Nats, and all the rest (of course, let's not forget the last page of the Washington Post Magazine each Sunday, reserved for the works of some guy who was named, if I remember correctly, "Gene Weingarten"). Wherever I have moved during various periods of exile in my life -- Pittsburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, Anchorage and wherever-all-else, I have had the Post mailed to me, because a four-day-old Post was better than whatever was available locally. The Washington area has always been and will always be my home wherever I may roam.
I reveled in Watergate and was proud of the pivotal role MY paper played in it. I grumbled at the blatherings of R. Emmitt Tyrrell and America's Most Overrated Intellect, George F. Will, attended closely to the wise observations of David S. Broder, and laughed at Tony Kornheiser's "Bandwagon" observations of the suddenly successful Redskins. And they had the best comics section in the business!
I started reading it on the Internet (I was an early Internet pioneer, having been network administrator of two of the three data networks (NASA's SPAN and PSCNi; the other was DoD's Arpanet) that made up the original Internet backbone) when the Post started their first website, and ever-so-cutesily named it "Digital Ink," back in the mid-1990s. I still comment there prolifically, but their once robust commenting system has been ruined by very bad software and an AI-based "moderator" that makes it a fun but annoying game to try to figure out what on earth it has chosen as a reason to reject your wholly inoffensive comment, where you try to retain the meaning as you change a word or a phrase and then resubmit it in the spirit of "Here, let's try THIS."
And now all the wonderful good that it has been for so many years is just gone, POOF!, at the brutal hands of one selfish, arrogant rich guy. It is like someone has ripped out not just a big part of my heart, but a big part of my mind as well. And there is nothing comparable to replace it. Oh, I read the New York Times, the (formerly Manchester) Guardian and news and commentary from various other sources (many of whom have Substacks of their own now), but it'll never be the same.
I would terminate my subscription in a huff and have been tempted to hundreds of times, b-b-b-but I can't. I just CAN'T. It has been a part of my life literally all my life, and just as I would not abandon a parent who had degenerated into senility and lunacy, I'm stuck with it.
And it makes me very sad every day. I feel sort of the same way about WHFS, but worse.
Here are the first two paragraphs of Carlo Rovelli's 2018 book The Order of Time, a discussion by a theoretical physicist of what time is:
I stop and do nothing.
Nothing happens.
I am thinking about nothing. I listen to the passing of time.
This is time, familiar and intimate.
We are taken by it.
The rush of seconds, hours, years that hurls us toward life then drags us toward nothingness.
We inhabit time as fish live in water. Our being is being in time.
Its solemn music nurtures us, opens the world to us, trouble us, frightens and lulls us.
The universe unfolds into the future, dragged by time, and exists according to the order of time.
Is this poetry? Is it poetry only because it's broken into lines (which it is not in the book).
What's my point? That poetry is in the eye of the beholder? That you can't define it, but you know it when you see it? That Bezos can do neither and has destroyed his newspaper as Trump has destroyed his marriages, his children, his businesses, his government, and is working on his country, the lives of his fellow humans, and the life of his planet? That it's time to say goodnight, Gracie.
I know the difference between then and than, but I often find that although my head was thinking THAN, my damn fingers were typing THEN. Fortunately I proofread my work emails before sending and am mortified when I encounter the mistake. And no, it's not auto-correct doing this; it's some disconnect between my thoughts and my fingers.
I think that Bezos is fundamentally stupid - yes, very lucky but not very bright. Let’s not forget that he founded his company with Mackenzie Scott who is compassionately and quietly sharing her wealth.
And he said in the interview he doesn’t like giving to charities that make people dependent without changing their situation. All well and good. But if you need to eat, or need medical care, you need it now. Then you can do the job training program or whatever. We make people in need jump through so many hoops just to prove they deserve help.
There is a difference between free verse and unrhymed verse. Blank verse is unrhymed but has a very rigorous meter. It has been used by great writers for centuries. Any kind of verse must pass a high threshold to become poetry rather than just elegant prose. The verse I write is mostly doggerel, but at least it scans and rhymes.
The craziest thing he said in that interview is that Tr*mp is “more mature” and “more disciplined” than in his first term. Perhaps true in the sense that he is decaying at a faster rate and is more laser-focused on stealing as much money and power as he can before the jig is up, but …
(Also, doesn’t Bezos look like he’s had plastic surgery on his face?)
Reading this post, sitting on my back porch. Now, the damned crows over my pasture are cawing 'jeff bezos, jeff bezos'. Regarding his gif in your post, is he morphing into Gollum?
Yep. His consideration of wapo content and employees as fungible has wrecked a wonderful institution. As helpful as the interwebs are, there is no substitute for having so much great writing and reporting in one easily accessible place.
I find that the utility of the "interwebs" (love that term) has been hopelessly besmirched by AI dreck. It's just maddening and scary all at once. This makes newspapers of record all the more essential. It's a shame that the Post has been sullied in a different yet related ($$) way.
The Washington Post paid nothing for the content of The Style Invitational except maybe the cost of certain trinkets. It was still too high a price. I am surprised they did not implement pay-to-play.
I would have offered a fourth choice for the readers' poll: Free verse CAN be legit poetry.
But much of the free verse I encounter nowadays is basically prose, with the line breaks in odd places to make it look like a poem. I can't say whether it's held to a higher standard than "traditional" poetry, but I could argue that the "comforting scaffolding" of rhyme and meter can seem more like a straitjacket, at least to many of us who regularly try our hands at versifying. Marcus Bales is one who makes it look easy.
Another who makes it look easy is Brian Bilston (https://www.facebook.com/BrianBilston). His poetry is mostly humorous but often with a subtle twist that elevates it above prose.
Lots of people consider their output poetry if it rhymes, or rhymes well enough. It doesn't even have to scan. They're wrong, of course. The bar for good poetry is high, whether or not it rhymes. Good poets use words in a surprising way.
A superb take-down
Alas, it can't really be a take-down unless the person in question knows that he has been took. It is a valid critique, but Bezos will never be aware of it, and will continue destroying the Post and blaming everyone else for the destruction, until he no longer sees the ownership of a once-great newspaper as something that burnishes his public profile. He might sell it, or more likely kill it, since it is unlikely that anyone would be willing to pay the price appropriate to a great newspaper when that newspaper is no longer great, or even adequate.
Yes!
YES, you kicked Bezos' bozo ass properly! Thank you, Gene! To quote a pop song from my youth, you turned him "inside out, boy, you turned him, inside out, and round and round." I am going to share a copy of this with friends in hopes that they will start reading your column and subscribe.
Much obliged!
Yes, thank you for your voice, Gene. Another musical muse, Fatboy Slim, said it well:
Don't be shocked by the tone of my voice, uh
Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice.
Savagely incisive, Gene; thanks. Just one quibble: "You expected your employees to keep on working when their colleagues died."
Bezos doesn't view them as employees, because that implies seeing them as human beings. He instead sees them as widgets: disposable, interchangeable, boring and residing at the other end of the food chain from him. That's why he has no clue what reporters and writers actually do.
Just my personal opinion, but I think the tech bros like Bezos have never developed their minds to comprehend the side of one's humanity that results in poetry among other arts, the kind of things that make humans fully human.
Paul Krugman also slams Bezos: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/bezos-backlash-and-zombies
I posted a link to The Gene Pool in a comment at Krugman's Substack.
The tragedy that has befallen The Washington Post is quite personal to me. I learned to read at a very early age (starting at age 2, fully capable by age 4), first by having my infinitely patient grandfather read to me, over and over, the contents of a "Little Golden Book," the bit of distinctly un-free verse entitled "The House that Jack Built" until I had it memorized. Then I deciphered the words from its pages, and then, using the Post that was delivered each morning to my home, I picked out the words and parts of words and combination of those parts of words until I could read the paper front to back.
Ever since I was a toddler it has been MY newspaper, my primary source of news, sports and commentary. I was weaned on Bill Gold's "The District Line," the Allsop Brothers, Drew Pearson, Art Buchwald, the incomparable Herblock, Shirley Povich for my beloved Nats, and all the rest (of course, let's not forget the last page of the Washington Post Magazine each Sunday, reserved for the works of some guy who was named, if I remember correctly, "Gene Weingarten"). Wherever I have moved during various periods of exile in my life -- Pittsburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, Anchorage and wherever-all-else, I have had the Post mailed to me, because a four-day-old Post was better than whatever was available locally. The Washington area has always been and will always be my home wherever I may roam.
I reveled in Watergate and was proud of the pivotal role MY paper played in it. I grumbled at the blatherings of R. Emmitt Tyrrell and America's Most Overrated Intellect, George F. Will, attended closely to the wise observations of David S. Broder, and laughed at Tony Kornheiser's "Bandwagon" observations of the suddenly successful Redskins. And they had the best comics section in the business!
I started reading it on the Internet (I was an early Internet pioneer, having been network administrator of two of the three data networks (NASA's SPAN and PSCNi; the other was DoD's Arpanet) that made up the original Internet backbone) when the Post started their first website, and ever-so-cutesily named it "Digital Ink," back in the mid-1990s. I still comment there prolifically, but their once robust commenting system has been ruined by very bad software and an AI-based "moderator" that makes it a fun but annoying game to try to figure out what on earth it has chosen as a reason to reject your wholly inoffensive comment, where you try to retain the meaning as you change a word or a phrase and then resubmit it in the spirit of "Here, let's try THIS."
And now all the wonderful good that it has been for so many years is just gone, POOF!, at the brutal hands of one selfish, arrogant rich guy. It is like someone has ripped out not just a big part of my heart, but a big part of my mind as well. And there is nothing comparable to replace it. Oh, I read the New York Times, the (formerly Manchester) Guardian and news and commentary from various other sources (many of whom have Substacks of their own now), but it'll never be the same.
I would terminate my subscription in a huff and have been tempted to hundreds of times, b-b-b-but I can't. I just CAN'T. It has been a part of my life literally all my life, and just as I would not abandon a parent who had degenerated into senility and lunacy, I'm stuck with it.
And it makes me very sad every day. I feel sort of the same way about WHFS, but worse.
Here are the first two paragraphs of Carlo Rovelli's 2018 book The Order of Time, a discussion by a theoretical physicist of what time is:
I stop and do nothing.
Nothing happens.
I am thinking about nothing. I listen to the passing of time.
This is time, familiar and intimate.
We are taken by it.
The rush of seconds, hours, years that hurls us toward life then drags us toward nothingness.
We inhabit time as fish live in water. Our being is being in time.
Its solemn music nurtures us, opens the world to us, trouble us, frightens and lulls us.
The universe unfolds into the future, dragged by time, and exists according to the order of time.
Is this poetry? Is it poetry only because it's broken into lines (which it is not in the book).
What's my point? That poetry is in the eye of the beholder? That you can't define it, but you know it when you see it? That Bezos can do neither and has destroyed his newspaper as Trump has destroyed his marriages, his children, his businesses, his government, and is working on his country, the lives of his fellow humans, and the life of his planet? That it's time to say goodnight, Gracie.
Goodnight, Gracie.
Please check your thens and thans. They are screaming at me.
I know the difference between then and than, but I often find that although my head was thinking THAN, my damn fingers were typing THEN. Fortunately I proofread my work emails before sending and am mortified when I encounter the mistake. And no, it's not auto-correct doing this; it's some disconnect between my thoughts and my fingers.
Please focus on the content!
I think that Bezos is fundamentally stupid - yes, very lucky but not very bright. Let’s not forget that he founded his company with Mackenzie Scott who is compassionately and quietly sharing her wealth.
And he said in the interview he doesn’t like giving to charities that make people dependent without changing their situation. All well and good. But if you need to eat, or need medical care, you need it now. Then you can do the job training program or whatever. We make people in need jump through so many hoops just to prove they deserve help.
Mackenzie was, without a doubt, the personification of the cliche, The Better Half.
And she's so much better off with the Bozo out of her life.
Bezos didn't understand the Post is a public trust
Because profits are his life's true lust.
https://www.trust.org/
Reuters seems to be pulling their weight.
There is a difference between free verse and unrhymed verse. Blank verse is unrhymed but has a very rigorous meter. It has been used by great writers for centuries. Any kind of verse must pass a high threshold to become poetry rather than just elegant prose. The verse I write is mostly doggerel, but at least it scans and rhymes.
The craziest thing he said in that interview is that Tr*mp is “more mature” and “more disciplined” than in his first term. Perhaps true in the sense that he is decaying at a faster rate and is more laser-focused on stealing as much money and power as he can before the jig is up, but …
(Also, doesn’t Bezos look like he’s had plastic surgery on his face?)
Reading this post, sitting on my back porch. Now, the damned crows over my pasture are cawing 'jeff bezos, jeff bezos'. Regarding his gif in your post, is he morphing into Gollum?
Yep. His consideration of wapo content and employees as fungible has wrecked a wonderful institution. As helpful as the interwebs are, there is no substitute for having so much great writing and reporting in one easily accessible place.
I find that the utility of the "interwebs" (love that term) has been hopelessly besmirched by AI dreck. It's just maddening and scary all at once. This makes newspapers of record all the more essential. It's a shame that the Post has been sullied in a different yet related ($$) way.
Hate to admit, but I think I copped that term from w bush. Also love his 'strategery'.
Strategery - Will Farrell SNL. Not that the younger Bush wasn't completely capable of his own mispronunciations
Thank you! Wanna be sure to give credit where it's due!
Now you've given me the evil idea to run a picture of Bezos through an AI filter to render him as Gollum.
Enjoy the back porch. It's a dreary, rainy day up here in NoVA, but we need the rain.
Show it!
Roofed and screened on this end.
Same here, barely 60. Already had near half inch, hoping for lots more. My pond is doen about 3 feet.
Big Daddy, it's now on my Substack. You are subscribed, correct?
Send some of that our way. It’s dry as dust here in the Southwest.
Sorry. Maybe next week, if we get what we need here.
Send some of that rain our way! It’s dry as dust here in the Southwest.
The Washington Post paid nothing for the content of The Style Invitational except maybe the cost of certain trinkets. It was still too high a price. I am surprised they did not implement pay-to-play.
I would have offered a fourth choice for the readers' poll: Free verse CAN be legit poetry.
But much of the free verse I encounter nowadays is basically prose, with the line breaks in odd places to make it look like a poem. I can't say whether it's held to a higher standard than "traditional" poetry, but I could argue that the "comforting scaffolding" of rhyme and meter can seem more like a straitjacket, at least to many of us who regularly try our hands at versifying. Marcus Bales is one who makes it look easy.
Another who makes it look easy is Brian Bilston (https://www.facebook.com/BrianBilston). His poetry is mostly humorous but often with a subtle twist that elevates it above prose.