I find fragments are more tantalizing and evocative than an entire work. Many #ruins look better bleached and broken than they did when new and whole. To me. I think this is why #reconstructions and #restorations are so often unsatisfactory even if absolutely accurate. Restoration robs the ruin of its power to conjure the ages it has withstood, to ensorcell our imaginations as we walk among the the scarred reliefs and tumbled stones. Rock of ages, cleft for me. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:26:26 JST tinydoctor -
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:30:27 JST tinydoctor I say this tho' I know our ancient heritage is being degraded by pollution, defaced or destroyed by fanatics and thugs, loved to death by tourists. Preservation and restoration are absolutely essential. But when I held a broken piece of Etruscan pottery in my hand, or when I was walking down a little sandstone canyon in Nevada, and saw like a blind man regaining sight the petroglyphs all around me, weathered by time and defaced by vandals, that is when the ghosts began whispering up my spine.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:36:07 JST tinydoctor All that austerely beautiful pentalic marble in the Parthenon was painted in bright primary colors, after the sculptors and stonemasons finished up. Giantess Athena tricked out in ivory and gold like a right tart.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:39:18 JST tinydoctor Sappho beguiles me because her work lives in fragments. In little mysterious phrases. "[ ] to melema tonon* [ ]" The transcriptions of papyrus and vellum fragments from classical times often have more brackets than words.
*the beloved one"
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:41:44 JST tinydoctor Fragments appeal because we ourselves are great jumbled collections of fragments. The unity of human personality and memory is an illusion, and the part is greater than the whole. The pseudonyms we adopt for ourselves online are the little fictions that belie the greater fiction that we are integrated unambiguous whole persons. If we don't have multiple personalities we have multiple personas, and we rearrange our mental furniture to suit the current passion play.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:47:23 JST tinydoctor Sifting the detritus and mementos of a strangers' lives, whether at an estate sale, a museum, or in the pages of a book, is a way of trying on another history, playing all the parts in someone else's miracle play.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 03:59:00 JST tinydoctor I have a weakness for using in my poems fragments, lines and phrases from Shakespeare and other literary forebearers as a kind of poetic shorthand for a particular mood or idea, and also a weakness for employing bible verses as a kind of punctuation. There are several problems with my working tidbits of titans into my poetry like a bowerbird insinuates foil and bits of ribbon into his palace of grass and twigs. The first difficulty is most people including poets don't read old stuff.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Feb-2024 04:03:58 JST tinydoctor I write in these borrowed words as if I thought my reader or listener would catch the reference when I know perfectly well it's not true in most cases. The second difficulty is they are borrowed. Unless I can put a new twist in the tail of a scavenged word, phrase, or metaphor, I don't think I'm doing it poetic justice or my job as a poet. But I love my shiny bits of language I have stolen from the trash heap of human culture. I love them too much. Third difficulty: I love them, too much.
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