Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Poems for Shark Week Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water... —from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman In honor of Shark Week , the Discovery Channel's annual weeklong series of television programs devoted to sharks, Poets.org has compiled 35 Poems about Sharks , and examined how the animals have been represented in classic and contemporary poetry. Described by poets as "death-scenting," with "lipless jaws" and "eyes that stare at nothing, like the dead," sharks have long served as a cultural symbol of mortality and looming danger. Despite the fact that sharks kill fewer than 20 people a year, their reputation as the ocean's most allusive and deadly predator continues to inspire fear and fascination in audiences throughout the world. Included are poems by Carl Sandburg, Robert Graves, Martín Espada, Denise Levertov, Joel Brouwer, Walt Whitman, Tomasz Rózycki, Herman Melville, Alan Dugan, James Dicke...

Last night I saw the war movie Hurt Locker at the Towne Centre in Provo, and if you live in Provo and you weren't in the theater with me, you probably missed your chance--independent movies with no big names, this is probably a one-weekend-only deal. Too bad. This movie, as far as I can tell, realistically depicts not just the fear and moral indecisiveness of war, but something also of the tedium and boy-stupidity (as illustrated when the company gets sloshed on whiskey and compete to see who can punch whom in the stomach the hardest). There were a couple of instances where I think the soldiers probably would have shot first and give warnings later--when a taxi breaks the perimeter of a IED scene at 50 mph, you can probably assume that he's not just a bad driver--but other than that, this film was remarkably true to life. I think. Because, you know, I haven't been to war. Not this war, not any war. I'm not particularly signing up at my local recruiter's either, bec...