THE WORLD WON’T LISTEN: I can’t say I really understand the enthusiasm for international courts and international governing bodies as such. I mean, I can see how these things could be useful for certain limited purposes, but I find the standard objection to the UN and similar bodies–this isn’t the united nations, it’s the united governments, and when many of those governments are repressive it becomes the united dictators–pretty compelling. I also expect that the farther removed a policymaker is from the effect of his policy, the more likely the policy will cover abuses like the ones detailed in my JWR column last week.
Radley Balko took a good whack at the UN here.
But this is all leading up to something else, which is that a few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I use Spenserian stanzas as a writing exercise–I crank out a stanza or two about whatever I’d planned to write, and cull the best phrases from the stanza for later use. This works really well as a basic writing exercise, since Spenserian stanzas are super-easy (nine lines, five iambs per line for the first eight lines, six iambs in the last, ABABBCBCC). It also works well because the form is so tight: You have a small space and relatively stringent restrictions, so you have to work hard to cut the key so it turns in the keyhole. That forces you to craft phrases you ordinarily wouldn’t come up with. (This is one reason that I like rhymed poetry in English better than rhymed poetry in languages where more words rhyme, like Spanish and Italian–rhymers in English have to work harder, and therefore when they do wrestle the rhymes into place, if they’ve managed to also illuminate something in the poem’s meaning there’s this amazing feeling that really is much like the feeling you get when a troublesome key finally catches in the lock and turns–or like the feeling you get when music that has wandered away from its melodic line suddenly swings back into the melody, or like when you make baseball and baseball bat connect on the sweet spot. Not that I have ever experienced that last one, I’m just guessing.)
So anyway, I meant that I use stanzas to prepare for writing fiction, but this friend assumed I meant I use them to prepare for journalism! That would be pretty awesome, but no, I don’t begin each morning with a cup of coffee and a quick nine lines on regulatory burdens on small businesses, or conservative philosophy in the university. (“Does anything rhyme with ‘Derrida’?”) She was so disappointed that she managed to make me promise that I would, in fact, knock out a stanza on an Issue of the Day.
It took a while. I started two of ’em, one based on David Brin’s Transparent Society (okayish book, decent intro to the subject of surveillance and privacy, BOY does he hammer his points into your skull, over and over and over again…), and one about proposals to try Saddam Hussein before an international tribunal. The Transparent Society one was actually better–had neater phrases, some of which I’ll no doubt be using in the future–but I couldn’t finish it. The Saddam one is boring, but it is complete, so I offer it now. It’s not exactly a classic of the form, but, hey. (I note that the poem equivocates on whether the world’s kakistocrats would stick up for Saddam, throw him to the wolves, or try to eke as many concessions from the anti-Saddam countries as possible in return for their condemning vote; it depends, doesn’t it, on what appears to be in their best interests at the time?)
Rejoice! he’s brought to justice at the Hague.
Now pick the jury, that’s where trials are won.
(Who caught him? How? Who runs Iraq? That’s vague.)
Three months’ negotiations are good fun;
Free tyrants rush to judge the captive one.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission’s head
Proclaims him Buddha’s babe, a mustached nun.
And when the craven countries’ votes are read
You’ll wish some C.I.A. Yale grad had shot him dead.