{"id":4372,"date":"2012-04-17T08:30:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=4372"},"modified":"2012-04-17T08:45:31","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T15:45:31","slug":"how-poetry-can-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/how-poetry-can-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"How Poetry Can Kill&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>How Poetry Can Kill You [Chapter on SKIN IN THE GAME]<\/p>\n<p>Ask a polyglot who knows Arabic who he considers the best poet \u2014in any language\u2014 and odds are that he would answer Almutanabbi who lived about a thousand years ago; his poetry in the original has a hypnotic effect only rivaled by the grip of Pushkin on Russian speakers. The problem is that Almutanabbi knew it; his name was literally, \u201che who thinks about himself as a prophet\u201d, on account of his perceived large ego. For a taste of his bombast, one of his poems informs us that his poetry is so potent \u201cthat blind people can read it\u201d and \u201cdeaf people can listen to it\u201d. Well, Almutanabbi walked the walk \u2014a rare case of a poet with skin in the game, dying for his poetry.<br \/>For in the same egotistical poem, Almutanabbi boasts, in a breathtaking display of linguistic magic, that in addition to being the most imaginably potent poet \u2014which I insist he was \u2013 he knew \u201cthe horse, the night, the desert, the pen, the book\u201d \u2014and thanks to his courage got respect from the lion.<br \/>Well, the poem cost him his life. For Almutanabbi had \u2014characteristically\u2014 vilified a desert tribe in one of his poems and they were out to get him. They reached him as he was traveling. As he was outnumbered, he started to do the rational thing and run away, without shame, except that one of his companions started reciting \u201cthe horse, the night&#8230;\u201d back at him. He turned around and confronted the tribe to his certain death. Thus Almutanabbi stays, a thousand years later, as the poet who died simply to avoid the dishonor of running away and when we recite his verses we know they are genuine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150703360413375&amp;id=13012333374\">How Poetry Can Kill&#8230; | Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Poetry Can Kill You [Chapter on SKIN IN THE GAME] Ask a polyglot who knows Arabic who he considers the best poet \u2014in any language\u2014 and odds are that he would answer Almutanabbi who lived about a thousand years ago; his poetry in the original has a hypnotic effect only rivaled by the grip [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[495],"class_list":["post-4372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facebook","tag-almutanabbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4374,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4372\/revisions\/4374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}