A Term of Art of War at an Organ Recital
The phrase has pleasing (even pious)
Connotations, like Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Molotov Cocktail,” and Enola Gay.
– From Formal Application, Donald W. Baker (1923-2002)
Deep in meditation by the end of an hour of organ music
in an old church pockmarked by manhole-size plaques
To the Glory of God commemorating rich men’s sons
blown into the next life on the winds of war,
I note the last piece:
Carillion-Sortie – Henri Mulet (1878-1967)
I know the term sortie as a term of art of war.
More generally it means to go out, leave
in the Middle French word sortir
and learned its meaning of
deployment from a strongpoint
by associating with other tough romance words:
salient
petard
enfilade
and
carronade
the last of which sounds pleasantly like a musical term
but which was a short-barreled gun
of the late 18th and 19th centuries
that fired large shot at short range and
was used especially on warships.
Definition and certain word suggestions found at www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
I don’t really expect anyone to believe this, but I wrote this tonight and then went over to dversepoets.com to see what the prompt was, and it fit to a tee…
french always sounds enticing and romantic, no matter what the meaning of the word really is..ha..and.. arbeit macht frei…we learned that in school…in a way it does i think..
I am not familiar with that poet so I enjoyed trying to gain some information, reading Professor but couldn’t find Formal Application except for an explanation of the title, which was intriguing. I wonder what he was going to hunt. This is fascinating conceptually, as Claudia says the enticing sound versus the meaning. Word changelings, or logical fallacies, or most frightening, ideological monsters. Anyway, you captured my imagination and thoughts, thank you.
Fascinating tour of language, rhetoric and war.
Anna – not sure if the poem is public domain, but it’s copied in full here:
http://everything2.com/title/Formal+Application
I first read it years ago in a Norton textbook on literature.
Thank you very much. I’m reading it now.
Yes, I believe – and yes, it does fit to a tee, and yes it’s a fine (and very clever) poem which I for one would have loved to say I’d written.
not a musical term but a gun….dang…we can make anything sound pretty even when it is not cant we….
Yes, great combination of different subjects–fine work here!
Word origins are interesting (take petard, for example). Good post.
A unique piece … liked the experience of reading it! 🙂
Both enjambment and steampunk…well-executed. The addition of French terms of war worked so well. Guess it’s hard to think of many things more disparate than and organ recital and war. And the irony of the plaques really struck me.
I guess organs are kinda steampunk at that…:-)