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| photograph taken by Jonathan Ness copyright © 2025 |
Alex Ness
November 5, 2025
JUST TO SAY
I am not announcing a national emergency or a desire to run for President of the United States... Just a change in the course of stuff here.
WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
I have been having 3 or more migraines a day, for recently the last 5 months. Beginning in 2013 Imitrex used to be a magic pill. However over time, the last few months especially, it has shown far greater loss of effective results. With more migraines, the diminishing results have been brutal. It is hard, as you might expect, to write or do research with eye blur, pain and light sensitivity. The event of my neck being broken in 2019, is what led to so many more issues. And cancer in 2013/2014 led to other issues.
It has led to other issues, and I've grown unable to finish projects, and my memory loss over that same duration, has made creative work almost impossible. I have an idea, I start writing, and then I lose track of my focus. I am better on a focused short subject, such as I am writing. It means I need a break where I can read or listen or watch, and soak it in, rather than do so for the purpose of writing about it now.
OK SO WHAT? ARE YOU TAKING A HIATUS?
No hiatus but I am tired, and need rest. I would prefer to have enough money to go on a break, but I fund my activities with sales of my books. And they aren't selling. I'll write up an offer soon but I have low expectations. My dog and pony show here is mostly a one man show. It has grown in readers, but when something health wise or life event wise happens, everything becomes way the hell more difficult. I'm not complaining or even trying to say things are worse than they are. I don't think this health event will mean more than a month of appointments but as I am often reminded, I am not the doctor.
I respect and am grateful to Chris Staros of Top Shelf Productions and Lys Fulda of Sphinx PR for their support with content and efforts to raise awareness and visibility for various talents. They are friends too, but really, to cover creative media, requires creative people, publishers of what they create, and retailers to sell stuff. They also need customers. It is a cycle and when I can't enhance the volume so others will notice and give support, the cycle is interrupted. And then I worry that I've not been an asset.
CANCEL CULTURE ISN'T NEW
When Ovid wrote a series of poems, Emperor Augustus Caesar had him exiled. When asked what is the reason, he said, I probably said something that offended the sensitivities of the emperor. And it is thought that the attention to love and romance, in a time of cultural changes in Rome. A desire by the state for more children, and more families, versus the then current of passions ruling the young, marriage being thought good by most, but old fashioned by some, and other changes that seemed dangerous, led the emperor to worry for the future generations. That he was a thoughtful and able thinker and human, he didn't usually seem to make choices rashly, or out of pure fear. But it is a testament to the societal appreciation for Ovid that the emperor was so quick to send Ovid away.
Galileo Galilei was a thinker, scientist, astronomer and engineer. He made his supposed offense, by reporting that the sun doesn't orbit the earth, as supposedly God had done, and the Roman Catholic church of the day was not interested in the reasons Galileo had come to his conclusions. The pope of the day was also not interested in having one of some fame, come out against the church's teaching, whatever that particular teaching said. That the Church's overall position would change eventually is not a great leap of intellectual doings. Galileo was made to suffer house arrest for the rest of his life after the Pope condemned him for challenging the church on a matter of fact, over belief.
These two examples and one further down page, aren't about the culture doing the cancellation but are about how the removal or censoring of those who think different than the herd, in the state or in the masses risk speaking out, even if correct, because the dullards and worriers of culture think there is a risk of knowledge or opinion breaking out. Beyond the three today, the modern society removes talented people who made the mistake of living less perfectly in the private life than they presented as humans in popular imagination. Always wonder when clashing ideologies coalesce and agree over the danger of a particular member of society.
BOOKS I ENJOY READING
Although you've no doubt, if a repeated reader of this column, saw me mention speculative fiction and history. But there are other works that I enjoy, specifically with the baseball books, as audio books, when I'd take the 94 to Fargo and back run, when I was in Grad school and my lovely wife lived in Minneapolis. Especially I had a Hammer. It was hard to drive with tears falling. It struck my heart as a moral awakening, to see that even people of immaculate talent and grace had to be stronger and braver than their teammates and counterparts, because of their skin color. That Jackie Robinson changed America sounds like a huge statement, but the moral changes it led to, allowed casual racism to wither, and Americans come closer to their original ideals of everyone is born equal. That Atlanta and the FBI had to post officers to protect Hank Aaron who stood ready to take over the record a heavily lauded Babe Ruth, hero, athlete and white man, owner of the all time record of Home Runs, is a statement of how ignorant, intolerant and vile various racists could be. These books allowed me to be entertained but shocked me from my naive views and beliefs in the American past, and hopes for the world.
EZRA POUND
Remember what we talked about regarding cancel culture? Ezra Pound was probably the best American poet of his time, but had let his arrogance, talent, and decision to only listen to his own mind choose what was truth. His poetry was new, reflecting both the past and present, homage and more, using the previous masters of poetry's works, weaving into his own.
But he believed World War One was caused by monied interests and banks, especially. He went from a non political voice, to one that accepted Fascism's Statist uses of control and the monetary policies, and eventually the racism inherent in almost all Fascism of the day. He blamed bankers, then made the short leap to all bankers are Jewish. To then, Jews cause war for money. All that is vulgar and ugly, and only true when boiled down to almost no meaning. And when war came, he fled to the protective powers of Fascist Italy.
He did some radio talks, was not heard throughout the world, but wasn't honest about his form home and country. At the end of the war he was captured, kept in a cage, and brought to the US so he might spend 10 years in a mental hospital. Since other traitors were killed, or made to work hard labor, his long duration in a mental hospital was seen as a way to say, he didn't kill Americans, but he lied about them. In the very end Pound both regretted his racism, but was unable to deny his overall outlook. As a poet he was a giant, but due to his opinions many stopped reading him or listening to his voice.
His views, right or wrong, isolated him, and made him an Exile. His genius was clear, and some would no doubt have censored or canceled him in any event, but he caused good people to have to choose to think he was insane rather than evil. William Carlos Williams had initially offered some support, but very little as he believed racism was unforgivable. E.E. Cummings chose to think that one must engage a mind that is powerful, but incorrect, and thought Pound's detention and societal scorn of his choices, had to be addressed, but without giving the exile an opportunity before the public to have explained his errors, and if he had changed. With his 5000 dollar check Cummings was enormously important for Pound's future as free man. As it allowed him legal representation, and a chance to redeem his work, status in the poetry world, academia denial or acceptance and simply why he defected from his home country to represent a morally repugnant Italia, Fascist and vile. I respect his work enormously. I hold his racist views to be ugly, vile, and dangerous.
Thanks for reading my work.
LINKS:
MY POETRY: AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
HERE: Poplitiko.Blogspot.Com
MY PUBLISHED WORKS
Social Media:
https://bsky.app/profile/alexanderness63.bsky.social
https://x.com/alexnesspoetry
https://www.facebook.com/alex.ness.549436
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