Lacrimae Rerum

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

“Lacrimae rerum” (“tears of things”) ~ Virgil, The Aeneid, Book I, line 462

“Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity”; and “The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.” ~ Sigmund Freud

“The condition for third-type of ambiguity is that two apparently unconnected meanings are given simultaneously.” ~ William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1947, page v.

This phrase is quite ambiguous, it seems.

The phrase is in a poem so that means

Subjective sense.  Because the brain of dreams

Is equally equivocal, its genes

                         Dido, Queen of Carthage

Require a queenliness of thought.  Two-forked,

At least, evasiveness gives verses strength.

Their force derives from being twist-like torqued.

Their strength derives from DNA the length

Of nightmares and of prophecies.  This “tears”

(At least in English) could mean weeping or

Rents down temple veils.  These rips, hiss tears,

Reveal great truths to make our thinking soar.

  Mind does not really need a type of verse

    As straight as prose. Such lines are clearly worse.

~ Phillip Whidden

by phillipw | Jun 29, 2024 | AM, Uncategorized | 0 comments