No subject

If meter supports rhyme,
As its rule of reason,
It is pointless to time
How it pleads to treason.

Biologist Bergman
Creates Evolution,
Finding in such merge, man
Patterns revolution.
All things into all go."

P objects and would show
Hearsay in quotation.

D replies, "Citation
Begs its basic question,
Disputes authority
By linking imagery."

<Judge notes this contention,
Saying he has intention,
To decide convention,
By needed invention.>

P calls as its Witness
Nagler, *"Generately,
View Forms Orality"*
<98 TAPA 269 (1967)>
Says this "Poets of past,
Lacking all this writing,
Needed mnemonic tricks
To make story plot last
And could not, reciting,
Rely upon pinpricks
Of drunken memory,
Allegoric simile.

Oral composition
Is a competition
Between sound and sensing."

D now blinks, in fencing
Away this damning sway,
That threatens outreach
Of his argument's play.
So, he moves to impeach
The witness called forth.
"Your honor, I do beseech
Your attention.  Up north,
Ice builds into mountains,
That flow in warm gulf streams,
South, as bottled fountains.
<Atlantic, March 2002, at 76>
New water from old ice
Has high market price.
Formula has water,
As H2O is but gases
Redefined as masses,
Ripe for profit's slaughter."

<Again, the Judge reserves fate,
Sets aside object's weight,
To scale for the balance
Such poetic nonchalance.>

P resumes his witness:
"Do you contend Homer
Had no paper; writless,
He forms so many somber
Lines of that ancient war,
Words, witness, as foreswore?"

"Yes, but I needs define
What makes formula line.
A group of words recurs,
under meter condition --
Say this idea occurs
And few others vary.
I quote Milman Barry,
his Standard Edition.
What makes it into group
Is appearance en troop.
Oral poetic trope
Has purpose and may aim
(Gestalt concerns say "Blame")
To make some line like rope.
You hold fibers, as wrapped,
As strong as words entrapped."

"Could you, oh Scribe, describe
Other formula views
Common among your tribe?"

"Wittgenstein does confuse:
Family sets compete
with fixed category.
Games resemble set rules,
Says W, but number feet
As you will, a rope still
Cables strands as our tools,
As number bound story
In thought or unbound swill.
<Nagler, 281; W's Phil.In. @67>
And, also, Chomsky, Noam,
Says surface needs its deeps,
Skipping soritic heaps,
As waves defend our home."

P does speak, to conclude:
"Semantic difference
Compares strings S one-twoed.
Draws valid inference,
When delta is lesser
Than some other guesser."

As P rests, so D rises.
"None of these are surprises
To the Poetic Defense.
You think that we are dense
And unable to repeat
Only the words that we hear,
With one telling?  How sweet!
How sit you there so neat?
Do not my words intense,
Seem ominous quite near?"

Calls D testimonias
Of Neusner for its case.
"Jacob, are you ready
To be witness steady?"

On the sign of some rock,
Neusner swears to speak true.
<Essential Papers on Talmud, Chernick ed. (1994)>
"Nothing acquires last form
Until it's written and spread
Upon time's face and head.
No writing is gainsaid.
Wholes may have parts in storm,
But, whole must still come through
And, by Law, become stock.
Oral tradition gels
Only in writing wells.
Into pre-history
We must ultimately
Be blind, lack all insight
On what makes a text right.
All we have is a Tree
To root Authority."

<Judge retires to chambers;
Dies unverdictably;
You inherit same verse,
Choose predilectably.
Should white tigers now die
As lady's inside guy?>

Thanks for listening and deciding,
Donald L Emerick