Poetry Is Not Dead

X-Men First Class is reason to believe this.

There are various reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with this, and most of them are not even contingent on semantics.

Poetry mags are online and free. Poets tend to work for free regardless of age / era. Smart men want to get laid. Smart women want to prove they're smart. etc.

My argument is a little more flexible.

If poetry is a distillation of language to a stylized and pure structure to best express something, then you have the written or spoken form. The spoken very quickly translates to music. However, it's hard to argue that Beethoven's 1812 Overture does not express something pure and specific in a massively stylized way.

No language, however. Therefore universal. A boon, perhaps.

Most of the rest of the world still considers written and spoken poetry to be important. Moldovans can't get enough of it. Poetry is recited in every class, and at every function. Teens recite it to each other on park benches. It gets a little gooey and annoying even for Kiddo.

They understand that poetry is not a thing for elitist intellectuals, as Pound and Eliot forced us all to believe. They see how poetry is larger than just our everyday chatter. How it better expresses ourselves. They understand that the human brain is more capable than mumbling arguments.

Which is how we like our media. No one reads more than the first paragraphs of newspaper articles. No one watches movies that don't sync up with their own theses. The more little in jokes and loops and references, the better the movie.

X-Men First Class not only has excellent characters and color scheme that match and fit the universe, Marvel's epic poem, but it rhymes.

The idea from the other four movies, is reiterated with a slightly different timbre. Magneto echos Kevin Bacon's character. Magneto then chants this idea once a movie, in different words. Professor X, of course, says exactly the opposite in coda to each iteration. It makes for a very nice AB AB AB AB structure.

The scenes, like stanzas, each encapsulate and express one wheel or cog to fit into the whole. These, in themselves must be perfectly balanced to not offset the others.

Think about Wolverine Origin. It throws off the whole epic because it is too much focus on one cog. However, in the recruitment montage of First Class, Hugh Jackman gives his cameo as the leather jacketed bastard and says the only thing that could possibly fit with the rest of his part : "Go f*** yourself."

The audience loves it, because they get it. It rhymes.

The epitome of this, however, is the poetic way in which Magneto finally exacts his revenge. The coin that symbolized his personal failure burrowing through the skull of his creator. It's beautiful.

There are many many more things that are amazing about this movie (not to mention the excess of sexy cast in it), but I just wanted to express, here, how poetic it is.

Sass -- ?

What is 'sass,' exactly?

According to reliable sources, I possess a good deal of it.

When first told this, I was a little confused. This accusation is new. Quick paced conversations, laced with loving insults and quips about sex and drugs and politics are traditionally beyond me. In most, I can barely keep up just listening. Traditionally.

Traditionally, I am “earnest,” “sweet,” and “charming,” but only because I observe, out loud, the good traits of those people around me.

So, slightly stunned by this comment, I think a second and with a puppyish tilt of my head, say “I think what you perceive as sass is simply me blurting out the truth at you.” which, apparently, was a sassy thing to say. The high-energy gentleman receiving this comment laughed, slapped me on the back and strutted off to continue working. He finds me “charming.”

Now I don't know what “charm” is either.

My Big Girl Wallet

In the past couple days I have spent too much money. Thankfully, not a whole paycheck's worth, or on a credit card. It has also been in pursuit of early Christmas shopping, so I can feel morally at ease with it.

Two things were for myself: art magazines and a new wallet.

The art magazines because I've been devoid of imaginative imagery so long I'm over dosing on tactile pages of plush paper covered in lavish paintings of surreal human forms in some out-of-the-box cura scuro poses.

The wallet, though, the wallet is because I have never bought one for myself. My wallets have varied from empty cigarette boxes and rubber bands to designer leather change purses with little hearts stitched into them. But I have never bought one.

To me, this is a 15 year long irony to which an end must be put.

So, at the age of 26 I have bought a wallet. It is a flat pocket book, after Betty Draper aesthetics. It is hard on the spinal inside, but with plush sides, and covered in waterproof plastic. It snaps shut at the top with difinitive accuracy. It's pink satin lined, and holds cards and some money. It's flexibility is marginal, so I can't cram if full of superfluisity.

I love it.

I call it my Big Girl Purse.

Until Short Round points out the big cartoons on the sides of it. On one side a single cross

-eyed piggy. On the other, Gir—the demented robot of Invader Zim fame—is smiling at a TV surrounded by more piggies.

I love it.

Physical things aren't supposed to bring you true happiness, but this wallet literally gives me the same gratification that a good flirt session usually provides.

This must be why people obtain credit cards in the first place.

And why I still won't.