Read Online Death Benefits by Robin Morgan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robin Morgan
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Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.
Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its authorâs intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.
Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possibleâto allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.
DEATH BENEFITS
What might I do to get beyond
living all these lives of quiet
courage too close for comfort
to endurance or mere suffering
or graceless martyrdomâall of which
equal cowardice: the unsaid, undone, unheard,
unthought of, and undreamt undoing of what
Iâve undeniably understood
this undertaking would unfold
or even (unconventionally) unify?
âLeave your loved ones
fixed for life,â the saying goesâand stays.
Life insurance and death benefits
are what a sensible person hopes for.
Meanwhile, Denial
leaks from our containment vessels
and passes through the doors and walls
of houses, flats, lungs, conversations,
an odorless, tasteless, non-discriminating
equal opportunity destroyer,
the blinded head proud in its even,
ceaseless, swivel.
Is it Denial then I follow in a burst
of irritation with my own obsessive focus
on one subject: this man, this woman, their
tiresome and pretentiously embattled love?
Others are aging and dying, sharing a crisis
of energy, sickening, telling kind lies,
outgrowing commitments, not getting involved.
Others, long starved into hatred, are killing
still others with the death benefit that reassures
them they are not merely part of a tactical phase.
Others glide through back alleys, blunted
triangles of shadow, movable famines, bolts
of coarse cloth whispering How disrespectful
to god it would be to appear
out in public not wearing scar tissue.
Besides, itâs protective, they add, turning
away. Why is that swivel familiar?
How can Denial deny coexisting
with the fiddlehead fern even as it exudes
its own Bach Air for cello too loud
for our ears? Or, wordless, deny
how a cat celebrates its own tongue
with each sauve coral yawn? Still,
before Affirmation becomes a denial
remember that this time cat, frond, and
melody too will be forced
to share benefits deadly as our own
denial of what they have never protested to be
their own innocenceâtoo pure for that.
Which is not a disclaimer. I too have had policies,
kept up my payments, gone veiled,
Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its authorâs intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.
Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possibleâto allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.
DEATH BENEFITS
What might I do to get beyond
living all these lives of quiet
courage too close for comfort
to endurance or mere suffering
or graceless martyrdomâall of which
equal cowardice: the unsaid, undone, unheard,
unthought of, and undreamt undoing of what
Iâve undeniably understood
this undertaking would unfold
or even (unconventionally) unify?
âLeave your loved ones
fixed for life,â the saying goesâand stays.
Life insurance and death benefits
are what a sensible person hopes for.
Meanwhile, Denial
leaks from our containment vessels
and passes through the doors and walls
of houses, flats, lungs, conversations,
an odorless, tasteless, non-discriminating
equal opportunity destroyer,
the blinded head proud in its even,
ceaseless, swivel.
Is it Denial then I follow in a burst
of irritation with my own obsessive focus
on one subject: this man, this woman, their
tiresome and pretentiously embattled love?
Others are aging and dying, sharing a crisis
of energy, sickening, telling kind lies,
outgrowing commitments, not getting involved.
Others, long starved into hatred, are killing
still others with the death benefit that reassures
them they are not merely part of a tactical phase.
Others glide through back alleys, blunted
triangles of shadow, movable famines, bolts
of coarse cloth whispering How disrespectful
to god it would be to appear
out in public not wearing scar tissue.
Besides, itâs protective, they add, turning
away. Why is that swivel familiar?
How can Denial deny coexisting
with the fiddlehead fern even as it exudes
its own Bach Air for cello too loud
for our ears? Or, wordless, deny
how a cat celebrates its own tongue
with each sauve coral yawn? Still,
before Affirmation becomes a denial
remember that this time cat, frond, and
melody too will be forced
to share benefits deadly as our own
denial of what they have never protested to be
their own innocenceâtoo pure for that.
Which is not a disclaimer. I too have had policies,
kept up my payments, gone veiled,
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