Kate Bush - 'Army dreamers'

Politics needs poetry -- so hooray for Herman Van Rompuy

First let me say this: on balance, I would far rather that people in politics were writing poetry than not. Where are the poets in the House of Commons? So let's give Herman Van Rompuy a round of applause.

However, I am suspicious of the haiku as a form. I have read a great many over the years – it is the default form in schools, and children are always being made to write them – and have come to believe that haikus are particularly popular among those who don't have time for poetry.

At its best, the form has a delicacy to it which can be very beautiful. At its worst, a haiku is a miniature place for people who don't like poetry to hide in. When a haiku works, it has a simplicity and brevity which I like – and brevity is close to the very heart of poetry. But if you don't pull it off there is a flatness and banality to the form.

I am not sure Van Rompuy totally avoids that. There is, I'm afraid, a touch of the Basil Fotherington-Thomas in some of his work – an awful conservative, picturesque prettiness.

Some are good, though. My favourite is Water:

Puddles wait

for warmth to evaporate.

Water becomes a cloud

He captures an idea of transience here, and of cyclical return – ideas which are central to the tradition of haikus. It is a scene of quietness, but there is threat in it.

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Q&A: The Poet of Baghdad

Watch part two

In 1979, Nabeel Yasin fled his homeland with his wife Nada and three-year-old son because he had published poetry that did not conform to the views of Saddam Hussein and his regime, including the work The Poet Satirizes the King.
Branded an 'enemy of the state', Yasin faced imprisonment and likely death if he remained in Iraq. He continued to write and publish poetry from exile in the UK, his works smuggled back into Iraq where they became a popular symbol of resistance.
Now the Iraqi poet is running for the position of prime minister in the upcoming Iraqi elections.

Filmmaker Georgie Weedon tells Yasin's story in his film, The Poet of Baghdad.

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Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West -- the myths that mystify

Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.

http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html

Why are so many media conservatives so obsessed with rape?

Conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage frequently employ rape metaphors when discussing progressives or progressive policies. For example, Beck said that New Yorkers are "being raped by [their] government," while Limbaugh, during a discussion of health care, told his listeners: "Get ready to get gang-raped again.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200911190048