Publishing

Battling Literary Censorship: New Court Action in the United States
The Association of American Publishers and associates are in court, they say, to protect freedoms 'foundational to our democracy.' The post [...]
In Paris, BIEF Celebrates Its 150th Year: ‘Open Marketplace’
With its Paris Book Market opening today, BIEF is observing 150 years of its service to French publishing in the international industry. The post In P [...]
In Hamburg: Ewald Frie Wins the 2023 German Nonfiction Prize
The German Nonfiction Prize's jury praises Ewald Frie's picture of urban-rural tension as 'inspiring innovative historiography.' T [...]
Sheikh Zayed Book Award Adds New Category, Opens Submissions
Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Book Award adds an 'Editing of Arabic Manuscripts' category as it opens a new round of submissions. The post S [...]
Joanna Kusiak Wins the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize, Cambridge Book Contract
Unique among book and publishing awards, the biennial Nine Dots Prize honors 'original thinking' on 'contemporary societal issues.' [...]

International Publisher Articles:

They

(for Sam Dunn)

They know who
they are
they who
break the bar
they who
lust for war

they who never
tire
they who
light the fire
they who
stoke the ire

they who’ve
been around
neither lost
nor found
seeking yet
more ground

*

they who never
rest
ready ever
to test
that they’re
the very best

the rulers of
this earth
crafters of
its dearth
almost since
their birth

their peoples
cant be blamed
their peoples
cant be shamed
their peoples cant
be named

*

restless
some inner curse
rush from
bad to worse
deep hubris that
they nurse

souls in
dire ferment
spirits in
dark descent
in rage
incandescent

in fury
born and bred
in gluttony
wildly fed
in greedful
passion led

*

a wonder
to behold
they who
never grow old
they whose
blood runs cold

masters of
land and sea
but not their
entropy
with no inner
tranquillity

though blest
with brain and brawn
from alien fount
be drawn
where wisdom
will not dawn

*

whence we’re
wily nilly led
to this baneful
watershed
where soon we’ll
all be _____

the skies may
rage and fume
yet we can safe
assume
they will deliver
us to doom

Yes we can
safe assume
frightful dangers
loom
they will this
globe entomb
and ferry us
all to doom

*

this tale
of blood, of gore
writ by the
hollow at the core

albeit human
in every pore
have wrought
it twice before

and yearn for
yet one more
one full blooded
encore
just to up
the score

*

what force has
so possessed them
what force can now
arrest them
what force is there
to test them
who there be
to best them?

it needs spring
from within
some voice
above the din
so the healing
can begin

and then
perhaps one day
like Asoka*
turn away
retiring
from the fray

in raw remorse
and rue
pride melting
like dew
in wan contrition
true
trampled
covenants renew

* lore/legend has it that, in 260 BCE, Emperor Asoka conquered the kingdom of Kalinga in a terrible war: and was so moved that he renounced war and , eventually, embraced Buddhism

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Delusion and Reality*

(for John Lodewijks)

My last post ( https://litvote.com/pipedream-2/ ) shared a pipedream.
It was little more than a thought experiment.
Why not?
Even Einstein hinted that reality may be an illusion (anticipated by the Vedic notion of Maya).
In fact, a Nobel was awarded in Physics demonstrating that the local
world is illusory.
If so, why not, in all self-awareness, dream within a dream?

*

Leaving that conundrum aside, what is the real, anyway?
A working definition: anything that has space-time co-ordinates, and/or exercises a determinate effect upon its environs (not perfect, but it will do)?
That would cover Gravity and Buddhism.

*

I have argued that EM (European Modernism) is the (Eurocentric) ethos within which we all (barring a few native peoples) co-exist, all but unconsciously.
It is the (problem) child of the European Enlightenment.
I have also suggested that it is demonstrably false in its assumptions, as to who we are as an anthropic species.
Just as you need an accurate physics to unIt isderstand chemistry and biology, you need a realist anthropology to understand our economic, societal, and political relations.
EM got the latter wrong, categorically.
Whence, ALL of its social theory is concocted, otiose, and far worse, misleading.
Left, Right, and Centre, of the EM spectrum, we have all been living under systemic delusion(s) in the E-Modernist world.
We breathe the same, unhealthy, ether.
It is the social ontology we exist in, and its dominant epistemes have
captured not merely our modes of thinking, but also our very imaginations.
Sadly.

*

The greatest sin of EM lies in its original, baseline, alienation.
We have been alienated from our own, innate, species-being.
How?.
Most mainstream EM thought, specially in its ‘economics’ avatar, has presumed us to be characterised by one or other of these attributes: rationalist (not to be confused with being reasonable) , competitive, calculating, adversarial, covetous, acquisitive, etc.
In other words, EM (mis)took its own E-Modernist prescriptive credo of codes of conduct to be universal (rather than being imposed, and required, by its own agenda).
Au contraire, stated simply, we humans are emotive, cooperative, mutualist, convivial, and familial.
That, incontestably, is our ‘human nature’(oxymoron notwithstanding).
We are moral entities first, and materialist beings afterward.
And that moral sensibility is derived from natural reciprocities that arise within family and kinship bonds.
Mother and child, for example, is the first moral relationship, stemming wholly from natural instincts.
So the denial of our organic, instinctual, natures is axiomatic with EM discourse: only then it could ‘mold’ us willy nilly into whatever policy needs might require.
Whence needs disappear, from its lexicon, to be replaced by manipulable wants.
Similarly, it sees society(like Dame Thatcher) as a mechanical entity, merely the stage upon which ‘free’ individuals conduct their life-or-death struggles.
The principle of ‘substitution’ dear to it says it all: Solow is attributed to holding that ‘we can do without nature’.
I need hardly say more (nor would I, I dare say, want to).

*.

As an aside, try to pass a Micro Econ exam with ideas drawn from the foregoing set of anthropic premises!
Now you know why it reaps a Nobel : yes, it is the crown jewel of the hegemonic ideology of EM.
An artificial, make-believe, pseudo-anthropology undergirds all economics prognostications which have NO application outside of the self-inflated EM bubble , despite the high pretence of universality.
Whence the canny resort to ‘models’ that deliver only the assumptions carefully fed into them.
What a perfect policy tool(and that’s all Economics ever was, from its very inception)!
As I have written elsewhere, (EM) Economics is all, and only, about Economics, i.e. Micro-Econ is a wholly self-referential language game , and has nothing particularly useful to say about any other real domain.

*

The serious , even ominous, implications of the above must be understood.
EM breaks the social tie between humans as no other episteme in human history.
The key instrument here is Asocial Individualism (AI) that is virtually a Western, and EM, monopoly.
Even Non-European societies (btw, much of Eastern Europe and the tribalist Scandies also remain impervious to it) , albeit won over to EM , could not quite stomach that egregious innovation, to this day.
It is that one vital marker that separates European EM from all its clones in the non-European world.
The most important historical agency responsible for this historic rupture is Martin Luther and his ‘Reformation’.
AI gainsays our ‘natural’ inclinations to mutualism and association.
Instead, each of us lives within an inflated ego-bubble, in dubious rivalry and competition, distrusting one another, rather than a system which breeds endless , irreconcilable, dissension.
As one of the Chicago Seven (google that) put it , when charged with conspiracy: heck, we couldn’t even agree on lunch.
We still can’t.

*

Further, EM decreed the confining corral of the ‘nation-state’ (after the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648) for us all, as a desideratum (creating total chaos, e.g., in tribal Africa).
As humans, we cannot relate to abstract norms of ‘citizenship’, required by (Gesellschaft) states.
Our anthropic needs are simple and concrete: more micro, more narrow, more local (as with Gemeinschaft entities).
Human integrity is best expressed in face-to-face relations, not in large macrocosms, run through with anonymity.
Everywhere, the Modernist State (subsisting in uneasy, unstable equilibrium with other such constructs) is an imposed entity.
And nowhere was Modernism itself, happily, ‘voted in’.
In other words, were one to deploy one of its own tendentious tools, such as ‘majority vote’, it would not be here today.
Consider that.

*

EM also enshrined the now accepted notion that ‘social engineering’ can produce designer societies, of our choice, like designer jeans.
No.
Such ‘designs’ can only hold, for a bit, via force and/or propaganda.
Human societies arise spontaneously, just like nature itself is self-organizing.
We human build societies, naturally, like ants and bees, instinctually.
And the building blocks are drawn directly from kinship(real and ersatz).
The template of the simple tribe is our original, seeding, matrix.
It is one big, extended, family.
Importantly, within that primal matrix, we may glean our REAL human nature, which gainsays the facile concoctions of EM ‘social science”.
When that original form dissolves, as it does (often, but not always), we follow the routine history of what I have termed Human Devolution.

*

In broad, metaphorical, terms, this devolution, discernible since the dissolution of the primal tribal form ,involves the (col)lapse of a Moral economy into a Material one.
In a Social Economy of Affections succumbing to a Political Economy of Interests.
In a realm of ‘feminine’ hospitalities ceding to the reign of ‘masculinist
proprieties.
In a convivial society mutating into a restless, fractious, competitive, one.

*

In fact, to digress a little, a great achievement of simple tribal society was to enchain male violence – the very bane of civilisation – within the (intra-tribal) bonds of familial affections.
Women, as the first peacemakers, had to build, and maintain, such a cordon sanitaire, if children were to be reared with any modicum of safety.
That formula has never been bettered, to this day.
However male adventurism , at some point, if not always, breaks away from such restraints, and we get the transition, eventually, to empire.

*

At any rate, all EM utopias, embodying high ideals, are really dystopias, in the making.
No wonder stellar examples of ‘engineered’ 20th century EM formations, Of Left and the Right, are at the very least, both dubious and daunting.
An engineered entity, idealists may need to note, is ever subject to the whims of the engineers.
To survive as humans, true to our natures, we may need to abandon such false trails.
All (E)Modernist paths are the same: they lead nowhere (other than to predictable tragedy).

*

In sum, force and fraud keep us tied to The Wheel, within the EM world.
There is NO EXIT from that dismal fate, within the grid.
Class, race, and gender redemption will provide no solace.
Perfect equality, perfect democracy, perfect liberty will also ring hollow.
Full employment, zero inflation, ‘sustainable’ growth, are also utter dead ends.
They will not, they cannot, heal the breach.
And yet the EM world, especially its intelligentsia, lives, daily, on those desperate, if barren, hopes.
Perhaps, they/we all need to wake up?
As Ben Franklin said: those that live on hope usually die of starvation.

*

The moment we opt out of that frame, ontically and/or epistemically, we are ‘free’, if in a real(ist) sense: to lead real, human, lives, and bask in its healing contentment(s).
Genuine human communities arise spontaneously, if given but a chance.
Those who would govern us and exploit/monetize our abilities/capabilities will try and block all such exits.
But it can be, and needs be, done.
We may not live by bread alone: neither can we subsist by dread alone.

*

To skeptics of the foregoing, I advocate a tourist trip to tribal Africa, or indeed tribal anywhere, just to sample, to glimpse, what simple conviviality is, and can be.
Or , perhaps. just watch pre-school kids (before EM schooling eats up their joys and morphs them into beings like us) play.
It may stir the distal memory of what we have tragically forfeited, in succumbing to the daily, EM, grind : worse, in the dissimulating name of ‘progress’.

*

You will get my point, unless hopelessly benumbed by EM nostrums.
There is nothing more to the ‘meaning of life’ than that: it is not a Rubik’s cube to be examined by a self-ordained caste of navel-gazers.
And it’s a far cry from enduring, as most of us do, in mortal insecurity, deep in debt, always running behind and playing catch-up, overcome with fear, angst, and anomie, in a life bound over to mortifying, even stultifying, servitude.
They will, of course, tell you There is No Alternative (TINA) , to struggle, strife, and adversarialism, much like Hobbes’ fantasy of societal life in the putative ‘state of nature’.
That’s high travesty, no less.
Have a look: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/kanth-a-400-year-program-of-modernist-thinking-is-exploding

*

So, one can safely put away all the ponderous platitudes and apothegms evolving from the likes of the canonical philosophers, old or new.
What a waste of scarce, precious, time!
They can do next to nothing to soften the rigors of human existence, nor add one whit of joy to it.
Let alone ‘happy’, how many contented people do you know in putatively (self-styled) ‘First World’, ‘Advanced, and ‘Developed’ societies ?
In fact, let me make this personal: are you, possibly, one of those few lucky ones in EM societies (to escape the unremitting ennui and/or drudgery) ?
Is that Panglossian seventh heaven all yours?

You don’t need to spend/squander years in school, and plough through learned tomes, to grasp this (in fact, most of those life-draining pursuits, in so-called ‘higher’ education, only obstruct clear vision, even as they gobble up the very best years of your life in but a garner of credentials).
What could be more obvious?
We fail to see what’s playing right before us every day.
So much for our stolid hebetude.
EM ideology, daily, mocks our very inner, lived, experience.
And yet are we far better beings than the system requires us to be.
You know you are.

*

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, complained Marx, in a famous statement – to which I add, Yes, True.
The point, however, is to live a fulfilling life within it.
This, as so many wasted lives attest- though it is no less than our birthright- is virtually impossible on the EM treadmill.
‘Climb every mountain, ford every stream’, they exhort you, instead, incessantly.
Really?
Ask yourself: pourquoi?
Cui Bono?

* A (skeletal) Primer on EuroModernism
N.B. An important caveat: I uphold/advocate/impute no idylls, no utopias, in the foregoing. Anthropic life , or any life, in any context, is, in the last analysis, ineffably, tragic – not idyllic. All I suggest is that we have, under EM tutelage, lost sight of the fact that we are natural beings, and so deny/defy some foundational inclinations, to our serious detriment ( EM has always denied us our instinctual underpinnings). Its disregard for the powerful grip (and need) of family and kinship is a signal case in point, and its substitution of artificial communities in their stead will always be a foredoomed project. I do proffer the suggestion- though based on knowledge of real anthropic societies that have been dismissed as ‘primitive’ – that to live in conformity with our innate natures( as simple tribal formations do) may not only be fitting, but is also , quite likely, a state that we ‘naturally’ gravitate to. In comparison, and contrast, Modernist solidarities of class, gender, nation, and ideology, are all too ephemeral and evanescent. Certainly, no primal society is run through with our normal modus of restive contention, dissension, discontent, and self-immolating division. This is not mere rhetoric: look where the EM world stands now , poised on the verge of annihilation. You might ask what forces propelled us to this fateful climacteric – and then , perhaps, a bit of what I have sketched in the imperfect passages above might appear plausible and relevant?

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Pipedream

We are boxed in.
The Crisis runs too deep.
No real options left to climb out.
Save One.
Universal Amnesty.

*

Let all of us : the bad, the ugly, and the horrible (let’s pretend we are All no good) decide to forgive, forfeit, and forget.
And start over.

*

I am not saying love one another.
That’s for another time, maybe, if ever.
Right now, let us just agree we All failed.
Imagine.
No Us, no Them.
No blame. No shame.

*

Instead, share, and share alike, our great big granary of Guilt.
North, South, East, West.
Rich, poor, high, low.
Pink ,brown, male , female.
Have done with Recriminations.
Everyone steps back.
Clear the air.
No hubris, no drama.

*

Erase the last 4 centuries (at least) of history.
Who did what and to whom and why.
Let us exonerate ourselves.
Eschew Adversarialism.
Rise above.
Nay, soar above.
Instead of being hapless hostages of history, be its conjoint Architects.

*

Let’s have weeks of celebration of this Great Redaction.
Weeks and weeks.
Maybe more.
Around a huge bonfire of our (carefully stoked) profanities: carpings, cavillings,cruelties, and caprices.
A Universal Reconciliation.
No less.

*

What say you?
I’m ready.
Think it puerile and trite?
Before curling up with scorn, Think Again.
What’s the Alternative?
Calamity: war, nuclear winter, human extinction, planetary destruction (I’ll ignore climate chaos).
That makes trite seem almost sacral?
???
Look at it this way: Where status quo is nightmare, pipe dreams are Reprieve?

*

So, go on: share it.
Spread the Word.
Give up pet peeves.
Call off personal beefs.
Calm those querulous passions.
Chill.
We are One, Now.
And how!
Game Over.
Oui?

ps perhaps, as per the above, we might finally, at long last, discover, that, underneath it all, we are all, inescapably, ineffably, ineluctably- and ever so briefly! – human. Whence, we might, again at long last!, unite around the pledge of No More – hot or cold, big or small – War. We might wonder, as we tred this charmed muskrose path: what took us long? As has been said, there is (or might be?) hidden value to daydreaming.

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Gandhi*

(For my Daughters)

He stood alone
brave strode ahead
though likes of Churchill
dear wished him dead

Nor did he seek
the philosopher’s stone
no thrones to covet
humble flesh and bone

True to his Values
ached for The Good
doomed as is often
to be misunderstood

He was his very own
a rare feat today
where paradigm-bound
we enter the fray

Ready risked his skin
to prove his platitude(s)
though some saw him stark
rustic and rude

Did not much matter
Be it right or wrong
bespoke his own truth
and a world went along

Sought no royal road
high Idylls to save
paths of such hubris
but bend to the grave

Some did adorn him
others heaped scorn
was unmoved by either
to placid manner born

Mild against Evil
cleft bold to the Right
of the human in All
nor once losing sight

To dwell but in Peace
to succor the Weak
to protest the Tyrant
of such did he speak

They slew him swift then
they’d do it yet again
Love hath no respite
Where(ever) Hate rules Men

I know little of gods
still less of paradise
but crave more his kind
meek gentle and wise

Lived as he died
as simple as plain
now he’s owned by history
even legerdemain
* Birth Anniversary October 02 (1869)

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

On Modernist Democracy

(For Roslyn Fuller)

Preamble

Einstein is credited with saying there are only 2 known Infinities.
Human stupidity, and the the likely size of the universe.
Only about the latter , he added, was there any doubt.

And so our rulers are aching to lurch us on to War, again.
And most of us buy the puerile media and policy spin.
Even those those! – especially those – who think themselves extra smart and savvy.

For many , it is anything but stupidity.
it is canny avarice, as with the dozens of constituencies that profit directly from war.
It is the most profitable and the largest industry going.

They dominate the media, and most of the government.
And they game the game, and spin the spin.

It may be time to question the parameters?

* * * * * * * * *

Question: How did the governors gain such inordinate power?

Well, they never gave it up, for starters.

Medieval ruling elites turned over, in time, to Modern ruling elites.

Once power has been monopolised, i.e., usurped, by a sect , a clan, or a stratum – as is ever the case once simple tribal forms suffer dissolution – it is scarcely ceded : except perforce.

*

We are not speaking of some idyll of ‘democracy’ drawn from political fantasy(I offer no critique of the idyll – it is just that).
But Modernist democracy.
Or, even more accurately, EuroModernist Democracy.

A bit like when you study ‘economics’ it is not some universal template, as is the official pose.
It is Modernist economics.
Or, more specifically, EuroModernist economics.
Even our ‘Nobel Laureates’ (what a joke!) are wholly unaware of that simple axiom.

*

Let me state the axial point: EM democracy is a tool (means) of legitimation of power.

It should not be mistaken for the ‘real thing’.

That gainsays, instantly, all the vapid distortions that informs discussions of the subject.

As Napoleon, canny political scientist, said it : you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
You get the point.

*

Today, the Oligarchy has state power virtually sealed.
As Santayana had it: democracy is the paradise that unscrupulous financiers dream of.
And that our 1% have achieved, in abundance: we have the best ‘democracy’ money can buy.

The 2 Party system (wherever practised) is little more than a quasi Duopoly.
And they play good cop, bad cop, every 2/4 yrs, depending on the electoral cycle.
And we lap it up, like dutiful little kitties.

As someone very bright put it, if elections were effective they’d be illegal.
Ponder that.

*

Keep the masses poor, insecure, and in irrevocable debt: and they won’t question a thing.
As the old adage goes: family (wo)men, facing the above, can’t be heroes.’
And so, we don’t have any.
Period.
Except those that strut in cartoons.

*

Additionally, use media and a galaxy of ‘think-tanks’ ( professional spin doctors) to endlessly purvey disinformation, and the citizenry is kept in hapless, infantile, irredeemable, even stupefying ignorance.

And , to clinch it, as and when needed, put out bright-eyed/bushy-tailed gatekeepers who keep the faith lit.

Recall the ‘yes, we can’ interlude?

*

All of the above is no more than the prosaic Art of Governance,, so it should occasion no surprise, except in those that live in ineradicable delusion.

It reveals not the shrewdness of the rulers, but the naivete of the ruled.

How/when can that spell break?

When supermarket shelves are empty: and/or the body count of victims becomes palpably intolerable.

Those are the limits within which the governors operate.

Those are the limits of EuroModernist hegemony.

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Gandhi and Orwell

Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi

If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have
any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.
George Orwell

October 02 was Gandhi’s birth anniversary.

The usual tributes ensued: sincere, phony, and outright disingenuous.

My point here is simply to point, en passant, to a unique side to him that is not oft noted.

In a moment.

*

Gandhi and Orwell.

What could they have in common?

Both were born in India, both were deeply distrustful of Euromodernism (EM), both were passed over for appropriate Nobels, and both made imperishable contributions to universal human welfare.

One showed how awful EM could get (left, or right variants) for politics and civil society.

The other showed how this could be, effectively, resisted.

*

Orwell had no self-consciousness about EM, but provided its most trenchant critique (pointing to its immanent Dystopian tendency, in both its Left and Right incarnations).

Gandhi consciously chose non-Modernist forms of protest( practised , incidentally, by women , within the private household, for aeons) and, to the shrill indignation of All variants of EM (Left and Right) , went on to see his Project prevail.

With the taint of subjectivity (is that a taint?) I affirm that these two are, possibly, the most outstanding Public Citizens of the 20th century.

Happily, the two also symbolize East and West, North and South, to give it global relevance.

*

EM agendas (left or right) have brought us today to ( the brink of) extinction.

As Einstein said we cannot hope to solve problems using the same tools that created those problems.

It is not too late, possibly, to reconsider its inherent misanthropy, as understood by Orwell , and as resisted by Gandhi.

Else their efforts would have been, utterly , and tragically for all of us , in vain.

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

World War 3?

What if they throw WW3, without announcing it?
What if?
Well, guess what?
That’s exactly what’s going on.
WW3 is ON.

This is it.

It is different from the prior 2 Global Conflagrations.
It is the 21st century.
It is going to be different.

It will be in many little pieces.
Here and there.
Bit by bit.
Much of it, below the radar.

*

Sanctions.
That’s War.
Where’s the mystery?

Who applied the sanctions?
Where’s the mystery?

Using Media to whip up daily, incessant, hysteria.
That’s war.
Where’s the mystery?

Even the Pope knows what’s on, and has spoken.
That’s a first, btw.
Where’s the mystery?

It’s not a whodunit.
It’s the Usual Suspects.
Whence, a bit monotonous?

Where’s the mystery?

Sure, we can (and will) all take sides.
Inevitable.

But it will not alter a thing.

So, which side of the Facts are you on?
And where do you get your facts from?

*

WW3.

It’s on.
I know, its hard to believe.
But it is.

Are the Players self-aware?
We hoi polloi don’t know (we never do).

There’s a thing called momentum.
It takes over.

Not much we can do about it.
It’s a Great Power Thing.

So.
Honestly.
Where’s the mystery?

*

One curiosum.
Most, but not all, peoples have made wars.
But only European rulers have made Global wars.
Could be cause they ‘think Big’, in all things?

*

PS Ok, so you know, now: but don’t tell the kids.

Why ruin their hour in the sun?

Leave them be with their crayons, cornflakes, and cartoons.

Leave them their Halloweens, and holidays, to come.

They don’t need to know that, IF we get past Covid, there’s war, nuclear annihilation, and climate catastrophe.

As the bard has writ: where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be…

Besides, if they get lucky, and get to grow up at all, maybe they won’t grow up to be like us?

There’s a thought.

*

And so it goes.
It’s the Human Drama.
So, I ask you: where’s the mystery?

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Her Majesty?

The passing of a fellow human is always a grim
reminder.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls!
Is it any different with a so-called ‘queen’?
What is a queen, anyhow?
It beats me.

Let’s call her Liz, and it makes far more sense.
Excise the mystique.
And one can then mourn her passing, like any other amongst us.
I am sorry Liz is no more.
Her family must be in some distress.

The irony is that such institutions yet thrive, even today, squarely in the heartland of the various Western empires, despite the tendentious, high artifice of ‘democracy’.
Not to mention a hereditary peerage!

Per capita, these so-called royals must rake in a regal chunk of the public purse, even as 1 out of every 3 Brit children struggles in poverty.
Do they possess a conscience?, one wonders.
Modernism never quite displaced the medieval!
O the governors of the Brutish* Isles: how they still game the game, and spin the spin.

No matter.
Present times have made much of all this near obsolete.
It would be meet if all these glorified parasites , the world over, were to yield up their thrones and titles.
Unfortunately their latter day replacements, the new rentier billionaires, would be no improvement.
Therein, the tragedy of our times?

* I mean no disrespect to the populace of the nation in using this epithet: only its wretched power elites , who have looted the world, willy nilly, with wholesale impunity, for centuries.

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

The Lost Minstrel

I sing no
more

In
lucent hue

The heart is
marred

Reft
with rue

Near and
dear

Left are
few

Yet I
warble on

In
accents
true

Sing not
for me

But for
you

Talk
not then
of mice
and men

And maybe
never
talk again?

And rave
not
of Michaelangelo

Once far away
twice
long ago?

The icons come
the icons
go

What’s left
is but
a maudlin show

Where daisies
wither
and wild weeds
grow

Sing not
of sacral
monument

Towers the
sky
looks down
on (wo)men

Vanities
that quick
forsake

The winter
storm
the summer
quake

Life will
fester
blood
congeal

As we
boldly chart
the human
weal

Until stupor
does the
spirit seal

Quo vadis
mighty
conqueror?

No more
than wilful
wanderer

Rushed to
meet
an empty
fate

Oft
untimely
sometimes
late

Hither you
strut

Thither
you lie

Beneath a
patient
ogling sky

That but
waits for you
to do
and ___

Kingdoms
rust
duchies
fail

For want
of wisdom
for want
of a nail

And you
who bluster
you who
rail

You who
seek that holy
grail

Where will
you splendor
ere
you fail?

“Tis
but a
hapless

Once
told tale

No, you
cannot
prevail

Though you
be
hearty

Though you
be hale

Though
you
lusty cheer

Those
strong
arms flail

Your ship of
life

Has long
set sail

Caught in
maelstrom

Lost in
gale

As wizards
simper

And
witches
wail

You rush
out
in frenzy
unready
to quail

You rush
out
in frenzy
to no avail

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Attrition

Let lifeblood
simmer
let life spirit
congeal

We have been
unlearnt
learnt not
to feel

Whence the world
grows dimmer
and we know not
how to heal

*

The love force
still rises
in wan mute
appeal

As life force
reprises
gone past
its weal

‘Tis a farewell
to hope
the spirit
now must seal

*

Even the gods
will not relent
though I bow
scrape and kneel

So summer flags
to fall
and I must take
to heel

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)

Yan Huang, Author of LIVING TREASURES:

Yang Huang's Author Talks during the #AAPI month, on MY GOOD SON
MY GOOD SON is a Nautilus Gold Award winner and Lambda Literary Awards finalist. May is the AAPI mon [...]
MY GOOD SON Launch Party
Welcome to the virtual launch for MY GOOD SON on 6/9 at 6pm PST! I will be in conversation with a b [...]
Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White
Today I am excited to welcome an author I admire, Joan Steinau Lester, whose new memoir LOVING BEFOR [...]

by Ben Mattlin (HC ’84)

CONVERSATIONS ABOUT INTER-ABLED ROMANCE, part 5...
Like all romantic entanglements, the reasons for their tensions—tensions, which eventually led the invisible rubber band between them to snap—weren't quite clear. Or maybe they were entirely too clear. Telling me about it, Shane struggled for the right words, but his meaning rang with the clarity of breaking glass. "For a while, she was planning on moving up here to be with me, to be able to help out with all my stuff," he [...]

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