Just to give another example of what I call "good judgement", we could compare Alan's P1 and my P2 with a P3 from Alfred Lord Tynneson: The Dragonfly Today I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. He dried his wings: like gauze they grew; Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew. In this case it's easy to say that P2 << P3, because the dragonfly makes for a much better subject than COVID, more interesting words and phrases are thrown into the mix (sapphire mail, nice!), and the meditation is deeper, see also: https://www.thereader.org.uk/featured-poem-the-dragonfly-by-alfred-lord-tenn... Again, I don't want to be a rude judge about this, but I'm guessing that Alan would agree P1 << P3. This decision immediately sets up an equivalence relation between P1 & P2. They are both poems that are much worse than Tennyson's "The Dragonfly". Cheers, Brad On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 9:56 AM Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 08/05/2020 18:23, Brad Klee wrote:
The poem is a good start but not that easy to read. IMO, too much like prose. Here is an alternative version, roughly equivalent:
These COVID, the cancelling germs, Sickened spring and summer terms. Should they plan to attend next fall, we mightn’t commence any at all.
Allan's version is much better, sorry.
-- g
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