BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 — The dictator sat alone in his cell, three years in American custody. His beard had gone gray, his sons were dead and the gallows were being readied.

Saddam Hussein in those final days turned to poetry, so often his source of solace in times of difficulty, inspired by his vision of himself as inseparably tied to those he led.

The poem, "Unbind It," is his rallying call to be sounded from the grave.

It is a mixture of defiance and reflection, but no remorse. No mention of the tens of thousands of lives he was responsible for taking. No expression of guilt or sadness or regret.

The poem, flush with florid phrases that were his trademark, begins with what sounds like a paean to the love between himself and his people, who were about to lose him.

Unbind your soul. It is my soul mate and you are my soul's beloved.
No house could have sheltered my heart as you have.

He moves quickly to more aggressive language. He refers to the foreigners who swept him from power and to the Iraqis who rose to rule here in his place.

The enemies forced strangers into our sea
And he who serves them will be made to weep.
Here we unveil our chests to the wolves
And will not tremble before the beast.

The verses were written by Mr. Hussein after he was sentenced to death and, according to his relatives, are believed to be his last written words.

A handwritten copy of the poem was passed along by the Iraqi authorities to his family in Tikrit, along with his final will and testament, according to Mr. Hussein's cousin Muayed Dhamin al-Hazza.

Mr. Hazza read the poem on the telephone, saying he hoped Mr. Hussein's farewell would underline the manner in which the execution was carried out.

Iraqi and American officials confirmed that a poem left among Mr. Hussein's belongings at the American military detention center was delivered to his family.

In the poem, Mr. Hussein praises those who continue to fight for the Iraqi nation and condemns the "wolves" who have brought ruin through their invasion. He portrays himself as a martyr.

His poetry, like his speeches at decisive moments of his dictatorship, was often obscure, highly alliterative and difficult, even for Arabic speakers, to comprehend fully.

At the height of his power, Iraqis brave enough to discuss the subject would shake their heads at his rambling speeches and convoluted verse. Some would suggest, with glances over their shoulders, that in his efforts to show himself as a scholar of Arab history and literature, he inadvertently revealed some of the darker recesses of his mind.

According to news reports, Mr. Hussein even made gifts of his poetry to his American captors.

Iraqis familiar with his style helped translate his death cell poem. Sections that would have been unintelligible in a literal translation have been interpreted loosely in an attempt to reveal the meaning Mr. Hussein intended.

He is most clear when talking about how he sees himself in light of his impending death.

I sacrifice my soul for you and for our nation
Blood is cheap in hard times.

Mr. Hussein told his official biographer that he cared little what people thought of him when he was alive, but that he hoped to be revered as one of the giants of history — as a Nebuchadnezzar or Saladin — 500 years from now.

He ordered that one in every 10 bricks used in reconstructing the ancient palace at Babylon be stamped with his name or an eight-pointed star to symbolize the eight letters in his name in the Arabic alphabet.

For a man whose vanity was in proportion to his brutality, he appears, from the poem, to have seen himself as dying for a greater good. It was a theme he returned to repeatedly in the courtroom where he was condemned to death for crimes against humanity, telling the judges that he was speaking to history.

Many Iraqis viewed the thousands of portraits of Mr. Hussein erected around the country — in business suits, as warrior, as Arab sheik — as a sort of guidebook to his illusions about himself. Even as his secret police murdered tens of thousands, he sealed himself off with the conviction that he was widely loved.

One of his favorite books was "The Old Man and the Sea," but his style could not be mistaken for Hemingway. No short crisp sentences for Mr. Hussein.

While still in power, he wrote, at least in part, two romantic novels. "Zabibah and the King," which is set in a fanciful Arabia of long ago, tells of a lonely king who, while powerful, feels cut off from his liegemen. He encounters Zabibah and is entranced by her beauty and wisdom. But outsiders soon invade the kingdom, which is described as the cradle of civilization, and Zabibah is raped — on Jan. 17, a reference to the beginning of the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

When the book was released, Central Intelligence Agency analysts reportedly pored over it searching for clues into Mr. Hussein's mind.

But they could just as easily have turned to "The Old Man and the Sea," which Mr. Hussein had first read as a young man in a different prison: "A man can be destroyed not defeated."

In that spirit, he urges his followers to be fierce and noble, saying:

We never kneel or bend when attacking
But we even treat our enemy with honor.

San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/12/MNG8TMU1KQ1.DTL

'Convert or die' game divides Christians
Some ask Wal-Mart to drop Left Behind

Ilene Lelchuk, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.

The series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

"You are fighting a defensive battle in the game," Frichner, whose previous company produced Bible software, said of combatting the Antichrist. "You are a sort of a freedom fighter."

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the retailer has no plans to pull Left Behind: Eternal Forces from any of the 200 of Wal-Mart's 3,800 stores that offer the game, including just seven in California. The nearest are in Chico and Redding.

"We look at the community to see where it will sell," said Tara Raddohl. "We have customers who are buying it and really haven't received a lot of complaints about it from our customers at this time."

Clark Stevens, co-director of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, said the game is not peaceful or diplomatic.

"It's an incredibly violent video game," said Stevens. "Sure, there is no blood. (The dead just fade off the screen.) But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance. You can either play for the 'good side' by trying to convert nonbelievers to your side or join the Antichrist."

The Rev. Tim Simpson, a Jacksonville, Fla., Presbyterian minister and president of the Christian Alliance for Progress, added: "So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?"

Both groups formed in 2005 to protest what their 130,000 or so members feel is the growing political influence and hypocrisy of the religious right.

In Left Behind, set in perfectly apocalyptic New York City, the Antichrist is personified by fictional Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive."

Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia's side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story.

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" -- and thus can't be on Christ's side in the game.

"That is so obvious," he said.

Left Behind is a real-time strategy and adventure game. Players don't role-play like in Grand Theft Auto -- it's more like the board game Risk than Clue.

Frichner said more than 10,000 retailers -- including Sam's Club, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, GameStop, EB Games and various Christian stores -- offer the game. He said sales are terrific, though he wouldn't reveal figures.

Protesters are targeting Wal-Mart, where the game retails for $39.96, because it is one of the biggest video game sellers in the United States.

More than 60 million copies of books in the series have sold since the first volume came out in 1996.

Jeff Gerstmann, senior editor at Gamespot.com, an online publication, said the game sn't popular. The game itself, which Gamespot rated 3.4 out of a possible 10, has lots of glitches.

"And it's kind of crazy," Gerstmann said. "One of the evil characters is a rock musician. ... If you get too close to him your spirit is lowered."

But Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a "thumbs-up." The reviewer called it "the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior -- and use to raise some interesting questions along the way."

Frichner said that is precisely his company's ultimate goal in offering the game: to bring parents and kids together to talk about the Bible. He said most teens are playing video games, so it was natural to turn the books into one.

His business partner, Troy Lyndon, created Madden Football, one of the top-selling sports video games. Left Behind Games Inc. is based in Murrieta (Riverside County).

E-mail Ilene Lelchuk at ilelchuk@sfchronicle.com. --> -->

I know I've posted a lot of blogs this week, some certainly more interesting than others, but I just found this article in Slate that I think everyone should read at least once. 

The N-Word: Unmentionable lessons of the midterm aftermath.

By Diane McWhorter
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006, at 6:29 PM ET

Warning: This article contains the word Nazi.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_horton/2006/10/post_499.html

End the politics of humiliation

Civilians are currently being harmed by our presences in Iraq, not helped.

Richard Horton, Oct. 11, 2006

The figures from Iraq are now confirmed. Nobody believed the Lancet report in 2004 from a group of American and Iraqi public-health scientists who surveyed homes across the country and found that as many as 100,000 additional Iraqi deaths had taken place since the coalition invasion in March, 2003. A raft of government ministers were deployed to destroy the credibility of the findings and, in large part, they succeeded. But now their denials have come back to haunt them.

The same team from Johns Hopkins University worked with Iraqi doctors to visit over 1,800 homes throughout the country. These homes were selected randomly to make sure that no bias could creep in to their calculations. Such a random selection method is absolutely essential if the figures are to be believed.

They identified over 12,000 family members and tracked those who had died over an interval that spanned both pre- and post-invasion periods. The Iraqi interviewers spoke fluent English as well as Arabic and they were well trained to collect the information they were seeking. They asked permission from every family to use the data they wanted. And they chased down death certificates in over four out of five cases to make sure that they had a double check on the numbers and causes of death given to them by family members.

All of these checks and balances mean that the 650,000 additional Iraqi casualties they report since the invasion are the most reliable estimates we have of civilian deaths. Most of these deaths have taken place among young men aged between 15 and 44.

Not only do we have a better understanding of the toll our invasion has had on the country, but we also understand better just how those deaths have come about. Before the invasion only a tiny proportion of deaths were due to violence. But since the invasion over half of deaths are from violent causes. It is our occupation and our continued presence in Iraq that is fuelling this violence. To claim that the terrorist threat was always there is simply disproven by these findings.

The nature of these causes has changed too. Early on in the post-invasion period deaths were made worse by aerial bombing. But now gunshot wounds and car bombs are having a far greater effect. Far from our presence in Iraq stabilising the chaos or alleviating the rate at which casualties are mounting, we seem to be making the situation go from bad to worse. In each year since the invasion took place, the mortality rates due to violence have increased. In the year until June 2006, the mortality rate from violence has increased one-hundred-and-twenty times.

The total figure of 650,000 is truly staggering. It represents 2.5% of the entire Iraqi population. Back in 2004, the Lancet was criticised for publishing a number that seemed to have a high degree of uncertainty. The best estimate then was 98,000 deaths. But the uncertainty meant that it could have been as low as 8,000 or as high as 194,000. But now the measure of uncertainty still shows just how terrible our intervention in Iraq has been.

The lowest possible figure is 400,000 deaths and the highest figure is over 900,000 deaths. Even at our most optimistic moments in looking at these numbers, we have to concede that we have created a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions for a foreign policy that was supposed to protect civilian populations, not subject them to ever-greater harm.

Why is this Lancet estimate so much higher than the figures put out by President Bush or Iraqi Body Count? They put the number of casualties in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands. To be fair, Iraqi Body Count does not claim to publish accurate absolute numbers of deaths. Instead, their figures are valuable for measuring trends.

But the reason for the discrepancy between these official estimates and the new figure of 650,000 deaths lies in the way the number is sought. Passive surveillance, the most common method used to estimate numbers of civilian deaths, will always underestimate the total number of casualties. We know this from past wars and conflict zones where the estimates have been too low by a factor of ten or even twenty times.

Only when you go out and knock on the doors of families, actively looking for deaths, do you begin to get close to the right number. This method is now tried and tested. It has been the basis for mortality estimations in war zones such as Darfur and the Congo. Interestingly, when we have reported figures from these countries, politicians do not challenge them. They frown, nod their heads, and agree that the situation is grave and intolerable. The international community must act, they say.

When it comes to Iraq, the story is different. Expect the current government to mobilise all its efforts to undermine the work done by this American and Iraqi team. Expect the government to criticise the Lancet for being too political. Expect the government to do all it can to dismiss this story and wash its hands of its responsibilities to take these latest findings seriously.

But if we were talking about the risk of smoking to the population and we published research demonstrating the impact of tobacco on mortality, few would dispute the message or the importance of scientists and medical journals in being actively engaged in a public debate. For Iraq, violence is the public-health priority right now. It is a proper subject for science and it a proper subject for a medical journal to comment on.

So what is the right conclusion from this work? How should this latest research inform public policy? First, Iraq is an unequivocal humanitarian emergency. Civilians are currently being harmed by our presences in Iraq, not helped. That should force us to pause and ask what we are doing and why. There is no shame in saying that we have got the policy wrong. Second, we have a legal obligation under the Geneva conventions to do all we can to protect civilian populations. These findings show that not only are we not adhering to this legal obligation, but also that we are progressively subverting it year on year.

And finally, we can truthfully say that our foreign policy - based as it is on 19th century notions of the nation state - is long past its sell-by date. We need a new set of principles to govern our diplomacy and military strategy: principles that are based on the idea of human security and not national security; health and wellbeing and not economic self-interest and territorial ambition.

The best hope we can have from our terrible misadventure in Iraq is that a new political and social movement will grow to overturn this politics of humiliation. We are one human family. Let's act like it.

William alerted me to this article: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5039230,00.html.

More on Philadelphia and the evils of home fries later.

Here's the article: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=8379aa1f-2100-4605-9ffd-2177103e8ecd&k=98103

And a review from San Francisco: http://www.culturevulture.net/Opera/Idomeneo.html

Mozart opera cancelled over severed 'god' heads

Berlin opera house fears piece could enrage Muslims

As a late addition, here's another voice on the subject: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_kettle/2006/09/mozart_is_not_muhammade_enemy.html

To paraphrase Dauro (and that Dylan guy), I ain't gonna work on Judy's farm no more!

Last day of AGA work has come and gone.  I got muffins and 'squagles.'  Judy, my boss whos in Hong Kong, called me at home Thursday night.  Did she say anything nice?  No, just called to bitch and moan about... sumthun er ruther.  I spent all day repeating the same bullshit about enjoying everything and promising to miss people.  I felt like I was signing the high school yearbooks of people I didnt know and didnt really like.  Fuck it.

Now I'm freeeeee!  Had happy hour last night with Holly, Steve, and Keli--some of my favorite work people--along with Felicia and David, then David and I stuffed ourselves silly at Matchbox, mmmmmm.  I'll be going there again.

So the plan now?  My first day of work at the new place is July 5^th.   On June 21, next Wednesday, I'm flying down to Florida for a week.  If you will be in Florida at that time, drop me a note and maybe we can meet up.  The weekend is pretty filled with Father's Day stuff (by the way, Father's Day is this Sunday, like tomorrow.  Call your dad.  He'll appreciate it), but the rest of the time is still pretty open.  There's a possible trip down to West Palm area, but that is as of yet unconfirmed. 

When I get back, my brother may come up to the District, but that also is unconfirmed.   I've discovered that my family isn't great at planning ahead on things that we can put off planning until later.  This tends to irritate people.  Sorry.  However, if anyone still doesn't have 4^th of July plans and would like to venture to our Nation's Capitol, you have an open invitation.  Maybe we'll have a barbeque before the fireworks.

And, um, that's all for now.  I'm off to watch the Italy-US match and pretend I know something about soccer (are we calling this football now?). 

Mid-terms are 6 months away, so just register now and you won't have to do it later! 

Courtsey of NARAL, here are a few reasons to vote for people who would actually represent you:

1. We must block potential anti-choice Supreme Court nominees now that Roe v. Wade hangs by just one vote.
   
   
2. For more than three years, Bush's FDA has refused to allow the "morning-after" pill - a safe and effective way to prevent unintended pregnancy - to be sold over-the-counter.
   
   
3. More than half a billion taxpayer dollars have been spent on ineffective abstinence-only programs since Bush took office.
   
   
4. We need the votes to pass the Freedom of Choice Act so that we never have to fight for the right to choose again.
   
   
5. With only two years left in his term, Bush will use his anti-choice Congress to pass as many anti-choice bills as he can. This is our chance to stop him (and them)!

But really, vote what you believe!  Hold leaders who don't represent you accountable!  Don't let people trample your rights and values because they wirte a 'D' or 'R' after their names!  Remove the problem children from power and find voice that is willing to speak up for you! 

Dissed in Verse

The art of the poetic insult.

Some years ago April was declared Poetry Month. Is that a good idea or a bad one? A vulgarizing gesture or a democratic one? Or completely unimportant? As in previous years, Slate will attempt to straddle all sides of this issue: this time, with a little anthology of poems that deliver insults or express personal dislike.

Poetry of bad personal feeling, insult, revenge: It's central to the art. The best-known poem in the category may be Walter Raleigh's epitaph on the Earl of Leicester:

Here lies the noble Warrior that never blunted sword;
Here lies the noble Courtier that never kept his word;
Here lies his Excellency that governed all the state;
Here lies the Lord of Leicester that all the world did hate.

Part of the trick is the bluntness of the last line: the very absence of wit, after the opening sarcastic reversals, constitutes its own kind of wit.

The tradition of poetry as a way of being mean is an ancient one. The inventive range of Greek and Latin put-downs suggests that they were playing variations on a long, rich tradition of barbs and comebacks reaching back into prehistory. Dudley Fitts' Poems From the Greek Anthology includes lyrics of personal derogation like this one, attributed to the Emperor Trajan:

            Lift sunward your considerable nose, 
                                    fling wide th'abyss of yr mouth,
            And you'll make a presentable sun-dial for all who pass by.

The image is unfair, unkind, and funny, like Paul Engle's epigram on the Duke of Alba as painted by Goya:

This is the kind of face that sheep
Must count at night, when they can't sleep.

The Roman poet Martial devised an imaginative put-down, translated in a rhymed couplet by Francis Davison in 1608:

I muse not that your Dog turds oft doth eat;
To a tongue that licks your lips, a turd's sweet meat.

The observation regarding the habits of dogs is sharp, but the rhyme of "eat/meat" is dull. The modern poet (and student of Martial) J.V. Cunningham (1911-1985) comes up with a more interesting rhyme, along with a brilliantly double-edged spatial metaphor:

This Humanist, whom no belief constrained,
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.

That "broad-minded" and "scatter-brained" are so close in literal meaning, yet opposite in feeling, is funny; that "constrained" is their spatial opposite creates an explosive intellectual energy. The three terms come together in a braininess of composition that slaps the Humanist's bland face.

Cunningham deploys fierce wit. Marianne Moore achieves a similar effect from control of tone: Her dry, precise idiom is a literary version of social agility. Her title is unbeatable:

TO BE LIKED BY YOU WOULD BE A CALAMITY

"Attack is more piquant than concord," but when
   You tell me frankly that you would like to feel
   My flesh beneath your feet,
   I'm all abroad; I can but put my weapon up, and
          Bow you out.
Gesticulationit is half the language.
   Let unsheathed gesticulation be the steel
   Your courtesy must meet,
   Since in your hearing words are mute, which to my senses
          Are a shout.

Moore's poem is, paradoxically, about not using words: on her side, because they would be wasted on her listener; on the other side, because her opponent is verbally incompetent. Putting away her verbal sword, the poet bows her antagonist out with a gesture. This is a classy, fast, and subtle version of the old joke about declining a battle of wits because the enemy is unarmed. The phrase "I'm all abroad" adds a poignancy that the joke lacks: Dealing with this candid poltroon, to whom words are toneless, Moore feels like someone in a country where she understands neither the language nor the behavior. The final word "shout" suggests bad manners or danger, and the poem is about both. For Moore there is something fearsome, as well as rude, about someone who can physically hear but remains intellectually tone-deaf.

One of the great insulters in English poetry, Ben Jonson, like Moore, sometimes wrote out of an angry despair at those for whom words count for little. On such grounds, Jonson (who wrote masques as well as plays and poems) seems to have particularly hated his theatrical collaborator, the great 17^th-century architect and special-effects set designer Inigo Jones, to whom he refers as "Inigo, Marquess Would-Be." Legend has it that Shakespeare did a good impression, onstage and in private, of Jonsonin righteous anger, one imagines.

Jonson's rage at Inigo Jones exceeds that of any screenwriter upstaged by computer graphics in his over-the-top "Expostulation with Inigo Jones." ("O showes! Showes! Mighty Showes!/ The Eloquence of Masques! What need of prose/ Or Verse, or Sense, t'express Immortall you?") In another, calmer poem, adapting the Latin of Martial, Jonson imagines his enemy fearing that he might be named in a savage poem and then contemptuously imagines putting the man's fears to rest:

Since Inigo doth fear it as I hear
(And labors to seem worthy of that fear)
That I should write upon him some sharp verse,
Able to eat into his bones and pierce
The marrow! Wretch, I quit thee of thy pain
Thou'rt too ambitious: and dost fear in vain!
The Lybian Lion hunts no butter flyes,
He makes the Camel and dull Ass his prize.
If thou be so desirous to be read,
Seek out some hungry painter, that for bread
With rotten chalk, or Coal upon a wall,
Will well design thee, to be viewed of all
That sit upon the Common Draught, or Strand!
Thy Forehead is too narrow for my brand.

Jones is unworthy even of being insulted, a better target for anonymous graffiti than for the poetor so says Jonson, disregarding how many times he returned to the subject of Jones and Jones' undeserved honors.

It's also worth noting that Jonson makes Jones' distinctive given name explicit, right at the beginning of that poem. Withholding particular names, and attacking an entire class of people, can be a way of attacking particular people; surely, William Butler Yeats had some specific examples in mind when he wrote:

THE SCHOLARS

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's innocent ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

It is sad to think that in his time and place Yeats had to endure literary academics who were self-righteous, driven by intellectual fashion, reluctant to think independently, socially provincial, self-important, and timid.

Anonymity cuts more than one way: It can cut against self-importance. The Harvard University Press absolutely refuses permission to quote whole poems by Emily Dickinson on the Web, under any circumstances, no matter what the fee. (The Harvard legal department fears the publisher's potential loss of control.) So, here is the second half of Dickinson's poem that begins, "I'm Nobody! Who are you?":

How drearyto beSomebody!
How publiclike a Frog
To tell one's namethe livelong June
To an admiring Bog!

(Slate readers are invited to compose epigrams on the Harvard University Press' stewardship of Emily Dickinson's poetry and send them to that press in Cambridge, Mass., 02138.)

The best anonymous lines I know in this category were composed during World War II, possibly by various British soldiers, or by one inspired soldier. The lines are sung to the tune of the "Colonel Bogey March":

Hitler
Has only got one ball.
Goering
Has two, but very small.

Himmler
Has something similar,
But Goebbals
Has no balls
At all!

Hitler was said to have had an undescended testicle; fact or legend, this piece of writing makes the most of it, superbly. The technical word for rhyming between two languages is "macaronic rhyme"; "Himmler" and "similar" is an example, and the slight imperfection of the rhyme (two syllables rhyming with three) makes it funnierand suggests dialect pronunciation.

The 19^th-century Englishman Walter Savage Landor writes the following stanza about an eminent Romantic poet's planned or rumored marriage for moneyaddressing a specific person, like Jonson's Inigo, without quite naming him:

Weep Venus and ye
Adorable Three
Whom Venus forever environ:

Pounds, shillings and pence
And cold sober sense
Have clapped the straight waistcoat on *****.

Ezra Pound quotes these lines in his ABC of Reading, with the observation: "Asterisks left by the author and concealing nothing." (I can remember reading the passage in college, with relief that I could indeed fill in the name and know beyond suspicion that Byron was being treated unfairly.)

Sometimes, the poem builds up to the most ordinary, standard, one- or two-syllable terms or condemnation. Louise Glück's poem "Labor Day" concludes with a single syllable, distinct as a slap:

Requiring something lovely on his arm
Took me to Stamford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,
The family's; later picking up the mammoth
Girlfriend of Charlie, meanwhile trying to pawn me off
On some third guy also up for the weekend.
But Saturday we still were paired: spent
It sprawled across that sprawling acreage
Until the grass grew limp
With damp. Like me. Johnston-baby, I can still see
The pelted clover, burrs' prickle-fur and gorged
Pastures spewing infinite tiny bells. You pimp.

I like the way the "sprawling acreage" of the "quasi-farm" comes in for part of the poet's contempt, and then how just before the last two words her observation and expert appropriation of natural detailthose irritating burrs and bellsset up the final rhyme.

The great nonsense poet Edward Lear sets the category of insult on its head, or makes it do somersaults, in his poem mocking himself:

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
(Leastways if you reckon two thumbs);
He used to be one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of marsala,
But never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, laymen and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.

When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, "He's gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!"

He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.

He reads, but he does not speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

In moments like the third stanza, briefly, and with the lightest of touches, Lear shows a little of the pathos in the monster of the self, that angry, yet eager-to-please, creature. Turning the aggression inward is one more literary ploy, one adapted in tribute to Lear by T.S. Eliot, who wrote:

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With a bobtail cur
In a coat of fur
And a porpentine cat
And a wopsical hat:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

Eliot has the good judgment to make his poem a tribute to Lear's. An interesting question is which of the two poems is more penetrating, more genuinely self-deprecatory.

The opposite of deriding oneself may be deriding the entire human race, as does John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), in his "Satire Against Mankind," which begins:

Were I, who to my cost already am,
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, Man,
A spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bar,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five:
And before certain instinct will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err.

Wilmot also supplies a conclusion for this bouquet of raspberries, by justifying the art of poetic execration, invoking his predecessors. Here are the opening lines of his "In Defense of Satyr":

When Shakes. Johns. Fletcher rul'd the Stage,
They took so bold a freedom with the Age,
That there was scarce a Knave, or Fool, in Town,
Of any note, but had his Picture shown;
And (without doubt) though some it may offend,
Nothing helps more than Satyr, to amend
Ill manners, or is trulier Virtue's Friend.
Princes, may Laws ordain, Priests gravely Preach,
But Poets, most successfully, will teach.