05-16-2025, 12:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-16-2025, 12:51 PM by RiverNotch.)
Part of the essence of poetry is its unison of style and substance. Stylistically, there's nothing that stands out from this per se, but like the most objectionable verses of Kipling or Eliot, the substance is
shite. The critique here is that a church is being racist because it objects to a state's blatantly racist actions in accepting white "refugees" (South Africa, as far as I know, is not in such a state of crisis as Palestine or much of South America, not least with its Afrikaner citizens), as opposed to refugees of color elsewhere? There may be some systemic hypocrisy behind it---for all I know, that particular church may be in day-to-day operations quite hostile to dark skinned folk---but this poem does not address it, not at all. Instead, it works with a warped, fundamentally broken logic, like critiquing antifascists for violence when the entire premise of fascism is to monopolize violence, one that will only be acceptable to a delusional audience that is not nearly as numerous as the speaker thinks they are. An audience that I know will eventually diminish further, leaving this poem a black stain in the author's reputation---again, like Eliot and Kipling or Pound or Wagner, for all their sublimity, are seen as monsters now. To be even more Christian, sublimity is a worse virtue than justice, or than salvation.
And to turn to the source Himself, He said it's good to listen to what the hypocrites say, not what they do, and if such high-churchers are being hypocritical now, they're certainly not saying anything false.
shite. The critique here is that a church is being racist because it objects to a state's blatantly racist actions in accepting white "refugees" (South Africa, as far as I know, is not in such a state of crisis as Palestine or much of South America, not least with its Afrikaner citizens), as opposed to refugees of color elsewhere? There may be some systemic hypocrisy behind it---for all I know, that particular church may be in day-to-day operations quite hostile to dark skinned folk---but this poem does not address it, not at all. Instead, it works with a warped, fundamentally broken logic, like critiquing antifascists for violence when the entire premise of fascism is to monopolize violence, one that will only be acceptable to a delusional audience that is not nearly as numerous as the speaker thinks they are. An audience that I know will eventually diminish further, leaving this poem a black stain in the author's reputation---again, like Eliot and Kipling or Pound or Wagner, for all their sublimity, are seen as monsters now. To be even more Christian, sublimity is a worse virtue than justice, or than salvation.
And to turn to the source Himself, He said it's good to listen to what the hypocrites say, not what they do, and if such high-churchers are being hypocritical now, they're certainly not saying anything false.