Simplicity in poetry By Siavash Emamzadeh hroughout my life, I’ve had an unpleasant relationship with walls. In elementary school, my name was never among the kids who solved the weekly math puzzle up on the blackboard. In high school, I was entirely snubbed by the honour roll on the foyer wall. And in Douglas College, my poems have never adorned the “Poem of the Month” sheet on bulletin boards on the walls. That means endless searches in rhyming dictionaries and deep (sometimes disturbing) self-reflections have yielded no recognition, and therefore, no success. Time and time again, I’ve stepped up to college walls in hope of seeing my poem, but have been repeatedly met with somebody else’s work. More often than not, these poems consist of abstract ideas, only understandable to those with a good knowledge of poetry. Does this make their poems undeserving of winning? Not necessarily, but it does raise a question: why do well-written simple poems always fall short of winning contests? Mind you, this is not to suggest that my poems should’ve been chosen, but rather it’s to stress that simple poetry can be quite moving. I like to think of simple poetry as a comedic movie; it can sway a wide range of people, but in the end, it’s never acknowledged for any big-time awards. Literature courses and books, for example, extensively study poets like Shakespeare, Poe, Elliot and others that have produced some of the vaguest poetry. Yes, it is exciting when (or if) one unearths the meaning of abstract poems, but who decided that concreteness is not poetically valid? Take, for instance, these lyrics to one of Poe’s poems, “Romance:” : Romance, who loves to nod and sing, efitfon With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake, Far down within some shadowy lake Now consider the following lyrics of a poem, “My Lady’s Presence Makes the Roses Red,” by this virtually unknown poet, Henry Constable: My lady’s presence makes the roses red, Because to see her lips they blush for shame, The lily’s leaves, for envy, pale became, And her white hands in them this envy bred These are both love poems, but I can more easily understand the comparisons and imagery in the latter. In the case of the former, the first line, I can understand, but after that, the references are completely over my head. As I understand it, a poem is first-rate if it makes timely use of figurative language and appeals to a wide range of people. Generally, abstract poems don’t satisfy the second criterion. At least not in my view anyway. might have a lot in common with Martin Willett. His website mwillet. org provides musings on a lot of hot button topics. An everyday British fellow working for a paycheque, he has a lot of heady ideas that would make any scholar sit up and take notice, he is a well-spoken, rational humanist who invites debate on writing. His presentation is fantastic, relating heavy concepts like the mind-body paradox to fun stuff like The Simpsons. While it may sound like a blog it’s not. He is fascinated with the idea of memes—that is, how information gets passed from one person to the next. Much of his work argues from an atheist perspective and considers | you're a bit of a nerd, then you Martin Willett www.mwillett.org religion to be the crutch of weak-minded individuals. Though he doesn’t believe that the world will ever be void of it, as illustrated in what he calls Willet’s Wager (a play on Pascal’s Wager of, “Hey, why not believe in God, what can it hurt?”)— that no matter how much more advanced any alien civilization is than us, IQs of 2.5 billion even, that at least some of them will believe in the bogeyman. Willet’s site also holds unconventional trivia contests —the questions are designed so that you can’t cheat, for example, “Who painted this?” with a picture of a painting. It’s a great site if you want some good debate in a very accessible and relatable way. The same old dithering Liberals By Siavash Emamzadeh Conservatives and Liberals have finally decided to work together and put a stop to their foolishness. The rare alliance between the two parties has led to the approval of the federal budget. The senate overwhelmingly voted in favour of the budget by a count of 50-4. Its approval grants Employment Insurance recipients up to five extra weeks of benefits. The Liberals, who outnumber the Conservatives 59-38 in the 105-seat senate, originally were to decide on the issue come April. However, they later discovered that upon “royal assent” (or approval of the governor general), the extra five weeks of benefits would apply to those that were no longer eligible to receive EI benefits on March 1*. In other words, the second Sunday before royal assent is when the benefits would go into effect. The sooner the better. With 600,000 jobs estimated to be lost by the end of the year, not many people will argue that this is a bad move. But the delay has led me to question this country’s leadership. Seven weeks: that’s how long it took Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to order his party to vote in favour of the budget. In those weeks leading to his decision, he was apparently studying the measures cited in the plan. It seems to me that there is little to study in a budget that, at the end of the day, lends a helping (albeit imperfect) hand to struggling Canadians. Especially considering the urgency of the situation, his explanation seems odd. As usual, I think the process’s delay was not a question of studying the budget, but rather political games, and this time, Ignatieff is mostly at fault. I: desperate times for Canadians, the Granted, Ignatieff makes a valid point that Harper and the Conservatives could’ ve at least identified the fine print relating to retroaction in the budget. But I’d expect somebody who has claimed to be examining the plan to discover that for themselves. The common knock on the budget seems to be that statistics forecasting the number of unemployed Canadians highlights the budget’s inadequacy. However, these stats are expected to rise regularly, so the passage of the budget can’t await a final number. There really isn’t going to be one. Furthermore, seldom do I agree with Gilles Duceppe, but he may have a point with his assessment of Ignatieff’s last- moment let-up. Referring to Ignatieff’s sudden support of the budget, he said “[The Liberals] are afraid of another election. The Liberals of Michael Ignatieff are exactly like the Liberals of Stephane Dion.” He may be right, because after all, had Ignatieff proposed changes to the budget and received refusal from Harper but support from the other parties, an election could’ ve arisen. And who can forget the similar situation which led to the 2008 Federal Election; instead at that time, it was former Liberal leader Stephane Dion who spurred the dissolution. Of course, after losing, Dion resigned. So is Ignatieff genuinely concerned about the unemployed or afraid of national humiliation? Ultimately, every politician in the government has to understand that this is no time to pursue individual party agendas. In these hard economic times, there is no room for a federal election-and certainly, there is no room for indecision. We voted these politicians to the government; now they have to do their part and deliver on their electoral promises.