tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1057830304128227046..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Fleeing Aleppo / Joseph Ceravolo: O carrion, o carrionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-5996611939986404322016-02-08T02:32:45.835-08:002016-02-08T02:32:45.835-08:00TC--Thanks for featuring Ceravolo regularly. A uni...TC--Thanks for featuring Ceravolo regularly. A unique voice <br />in so many surprising, unexplored corners of the language.<br />Deserves to be recognized on a wider level...awbradleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13651354262720219022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54915551178469445372016-02-07T12:29:06.995-08:002016-02-07T12:29:06.995-08:00Thank you, Duncan and Jay.
The situation in Alepp...Thank you, Duncan and Jay.<br /><br />The situation in Aleppo was terrible before the Russians started in with the hell bombing last fall. The Russian bombing has quite plainly made things suddenly and dramatically worse. Forty thousand people who had endured war for years and were as hardened to it as it's possible to be -- suddenly exiting in a day. <br /><br />The editorial given here (it's of course strictly an opinion piece, the current ridiculous journalistic/academic misuse of the descriptive term "narrative" notwithstanding) seems to reflect a certain sort of anxiety felt by a certain sort of European intellectual in a time of stress and crisis. The concentration on (exaggeration of) Russian complicity in the current world crisis is perhaps over-stated in the piece -- yes, the Americans are always in on the ground first, when it comes to destabilization projects.<br /><br />On the other hand, the sense of a civilization poised anxiously at the brink of its own demise does provide a feeling of urgency.<br /><br />Of course we don't really do civilization here, so that conversation, that dread, that nostalgia, will always pass us by. <br /><br />My first thought was to put Joe's prescient poem, written very near to the end of his life, and the photo of the bloody and shocked cat caught in the ruins of Aleppo, up top. <br /><br />Anything that happens in the reader/viewer as a result of looking at the photos and/or poems here or on other posts on this blog would constitute the entire effect of the post as meant.<br /><br />Any editorial direction suggested by any opinion piece or comment by me posted to accompany photos and/or poems would thus be strictly extraneous.<br /><br />Still, being an old cripple, I am aware of the need for handrails in certain public places.<br /><br />While on method, normally it's not the pundits I bother to post. I try to get a sense of what's happening in the world from witnesses and observers who are close at hand. The young photographer Baraa Al-Halabi, who has continued to live in and produce images of striking and painful specificity and honesty from Aleppo, has for me been the best source on what's gone on there over the past year and a half or so. In many ways his photos are the poetry of the war.<br /><br />But I recognize that for many people pictures and poems will always seem a distraction from the punditry. For me it's exactly the opposite. The pictures and poems tell me everything I need, or rather all I can stand, to know.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17657376580729485732016-02-07T11:28:06.658-08:002016-02-07T11:28:06.658-08:00The narrative is one-sided, criticizing Russia'...The narrative is one-sided, criticizing Russia's exploitation of chaos in Syria, while ignoring the US genesis of that chaos, but the photos are compelling. Meanwhile, the Syrians remain victims of a four-way battle between Assad, ISIS, Russia, and the US. In this respect, they are similar to the Vietnamese of four decades ago.Jay Taberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11016367021003977811noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-66688288562294113532016-02-07T02:21:56.609-08:002016-02-07T02:21:56.609-08:00This is isn't the first time that placing Cera...This is isn't the first time that placing Ceravolo's late poetry against the images of the ongoing disaster in Syria draws us close to the heart of it all. <br /><br />Watching the game play out now, one almost feels a nostalgia for the Cold War.<br />Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.com