Numpty majuscles issued from the glades
By the avenging angel of foul moods
Codify the swampiness that reeks
In the lacustrine gulag’s frothy jakes.
Vulpine apologists voice vapid pokes
With knit foreheads and chic tortoise-shell specs.
McGeorge Beetlebrow humps insider scoops
While Polymarket shills fellate the creeps.
Where there’s oily smoke, confide the tools,
There’s fire to get upwind of in the holes.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
The landscapes of the face possess
And repossess my hand. Even still
It’s on the move: peak, fissure, defile;
Shadow here, just there a vegetation,
A blink, a snout, a rumination —
Fondest barbarism captured yet!
The face solicits pen and ink to nail the stink,
Charcoal, lead for testimony to the blink,
Pigment for the snout. And done. Peace out.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
Paramecia in a drop of pond,
Specks milling on the wreckage of dead stars,
Motes adrift in several gods’ eyes,
We precede our much foretold demise.
Unapprised of what there’s to confront,
We go on going on until we don’t,
You and I, he, she, it, we and they.
The noun names us. The verb takes us away.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
“Processing Nolan’s “Odyssey” is its own odyssey.”
(Frank Bruni)
It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display — and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth… It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal.
(Emily Wilson)
… [Wilson’s] tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note… Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.
(Joyce Carol Oates)
(I would write “strikes a sour note” because “tone” is singular, but Oates is writing on X, where neither fact nor grammar reigns.)
I endorse the heroic approach to classics: Skip the flicks, learn their language and read them in the original.
(Except for Bruni, quotations are from Neil Vigdor, “How Emily Wilson’s Takedown of ‘The Odyssey’ Ignited a Debate,” New York Times, 7-31-26)
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
Pious bromides don’t cut the mustard.
A stance that dines on meaty homily
Peels potatoes in the feast of sacrifice.
Report of rapture scarcely can make felt
That rage of loving kindness that’s broadcast
From the backside of Beyond and slams
Hot piety with undeciphered clout.
What’s a perfect Being mad about?
Surprised by what an omniscient Godhead?
Taken aback? Indignant? Caught off guard?
Virtue is a stretch for mortals, but:
The miracles, the raising of the dead,
the threefold oneness of exalted might —
It’s the dogma that’s surpassing hard.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
Her eyes are bleary with sleeplessness. She “watches over” stars all night as if she were a shepherd and they her flock. She hardly bothers to dress herself other than in tatters. Arabian poet Al-Khansā’ (d. 645 AD) starts to reveal in the third line of her famous elegy why she’s distraught and unkempt.
For I had heard — and it was not news to rejoice me — one making report, who had come repeating intelligence, […] (1)
Recently something came clear to me about the line. Here’s my transliteration of the Arabic text:
3 wa-qad sami^tu wa-lam ‘abjaḥ bi-hi ẖabar(an) | muḥaddiṯ(an) jā’a yanmī raj^(a) ‘aẖbār(i)
I had read ẖabar(an), an undefined Form 1 verbal noun in accusative case, and muḥaddiṯ(an), an undefined Form 2 active participle in accusative case, as being in a noun-adjective relationship to one another. The structure didn’t cohere, though.
It dawned on me lately that ẖabar(an) is an adverb affiliated with the verbal phrase preceding it — lam ‘abjaḥ bi-hi (lit. “not I found joy with it”). Muḥaddiṯ(an) is the sole direct object of the verb sami^tu, as well as subject of the 3rd-person-masculine-singular verbs jā’a (“he came”) and yanmī (2).
Here’s my translation:
For I had heard — and got no joy in it as tiding — a speaker (who) came yielding increase (of) the coming back of reports, […]
It’s clumsy but suits my present mode of study, which is to render texts as closely to the Arabic as I can while preserving legible English.
Notes
(1) Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University, 1965, p. 39.
(2) Verb yanmī (root n-m-y) has a wide range of modern meanings in Wehr. I will go with Lane’s “yielding increase,” which can suggest repetition. The gist is clear enough: A report being carried by someone is propagated through repetition.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
I confess to a proclivity (morbid?) for depicting faces in various states of contortion. A face at rest, unless it’s grizzled or reflective of a corrupt soul, has bland contours. States of agitation are what lay bare the deserts, mountains and swamps of the human physiognomy.
I cruise journalism and clip photos (jpegs) of mass rallies.
Often they’re filled with the faces of men who exhibit rage in their demeanors. All my life, Iran has chanted, Death to America, the great Satan!
Trump’s useless rejoinder referencing Iran has been, They’re scum.
The two extremes, Satan and scum, do violence to the lived reality, complexity and vitality of two worthy populations duped into senseless contention by bad leaders. Most citizens of both countries deserve a better life than they’ve got.
As I zoom the photos and study the men’s expressions, I often imagine sitting with one in his living room, taking tea and conversing. Maybe arguing, maybe disagreeing, but not with violence. Parting with a handshake, or, better, a fraternal embrace.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
No matter where life takes me,
I carry this love. I carry my part.
This ending to Aaiún Nin’s long-ish discursive poem “McDonald’s Money” made me cry. Not from sadness, but because it crowns a fine writing with the keen point that love is a shared burden we take up and carry with devotion; also because I know more of it now than when I was younger and stupider.
It’s the third of three poems by Nin in Poetry, July-August 2026. All three teach me something about the craft and art of it: Equally relevant to how something is said is the selectivity deployed in what is said. That may sound ridiculously truistic, but for me it captures something of the purity I respond to in Nin’s deceptively unguarded plainspokenness and declarative finesse. Consider the phrase, [You] Hold me back to life. Of course poets choose their content and words! The trick is to choose well.
One of Nin’s three poems is so short that I venture to quote it entirely here:
In the Camp
In the camp they cannot pronounce my name
So they have given me a new one
I have lost everything
Ask me my name
Please ask me my name
(Aaiún Nin)
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
On June 24, 2026, the academic summit on the topic of “Extreme Heat” scheduled to be held in London, England at the London School of Economics Shore Library was canceled due to extreme heat.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
On ‘Difficulty’
This comment by Victoria Moul has jostled my world:
It is very difficult indeed to write lyric poetry which is both beautiful and straightforward to understand, and which also has something to say — a clear and specific message or argument. These seem like they ought to be the basic virtues of verse but it is a rare poet who can put all three together as consistently as [Edwin] Muir.
(Victoria Moul, “Horace & friends,” substack)
As a reader of contemporary poetry I had not encountered the argument she makes for the lyric in support of beauty, clarity and content. Much of the verse I read does not give itself up, if at all, to a first pass; invites if not demands revisiting; and may defy grasp or retention anyhow. This, I’ve been induced to believe, is of the nature of verse and to be expected: the saying of bright things darkly, so to speak.
There’s more. In discussing J.H. Prynne’s poetry, Victoria Moul writes the following:
Prynne’s poetry is, it’s true, exceptionally “difficult” because it is often impossible to parse in any conventional way.
Her quotation marks and reference to parsing are noteworthy. I often test verse against my capacity to winkle out in my own way what it “says” (more quotation marks!). In other words I parse it, sensing all the while that doing so goes against good practice in the view of experts.
Here’s the rest of Moul’s observation, which I find somewhat climactic:
But I find so much of Prynne’s poetry, for all its obscurity, exceptionally beautiful and unmistakably profound. The fact remains that I am more often moved to tears reading Prynne than almost any other recent poet in English.
Worse luck for me is I tend to express myself in doggerel, the more so when exercised. As doggerel will do, the product is blatantly rhythm-straitened and message-laden, salted with rhyme as if by a drunken sailor. It’s on the opposite side of where lyric shines. I’m okay with that. But for my reading life, Victoria Moul gives me much pause, as well as encouragement.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved