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Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan

Clearly, Inception is a highly accomplished movie - for a Summer blockbuster. No one can possibly be so dulled to the dazzle of special effects and stellar cast, and the fast-paced action sequences, not to appreciate it at some level. The question that Nolan's unusually intelligent thriller wants us to ask of it, however, is whether this is a good, thought-provoking film by any standards, not just Hollywood's own seasonal one.

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Radio Ga Ga

Late at night, my hands in bitty suds
My windowed image set against the sky
The radio flashes reports of distant guns.
A horrid double pun, the news from them
Finds me as quickly as the lobbed shells arc
To their marks a mile (an earth) away. If I
Could slip between their wavelengths I think
I'd rumble up my verb-tank, and smash it through
A wall; I’d lob an angular noun to lodge
In mud, and kids would climb its ragged edges
And wonder what its fractured shape might tell
Its rounded d and sloping e, its jagged t and h.
My full-stop shells would unfold as they fell
To swinging question marks, a dropping line
Interrogating the aimless volleyed taunts.
But the radio’s jingle calls attention back
To myself, my verbals and my wrinkled hands
Doing the dishes, passing poetic time
In my revolutionarily flagrant mind.

Your Comments on "Radio Ga Ga"

Name: Jayne Website: http://bit.ly/cTjC5S Date: November 22, 2010

Comment: Your poetry is wonderful. This poem is just a pleasure to read, you are clearly very gifted! I love the lines "I'd rumble up my verb-tank, and smash it through/A wall" it creates such wonderful imagery.

I have just started a poetry blog but feel too nervous to commit to it fully and put more work up...maybe the nerves will be beaten eventually! I suppose opinion is all subjective but the thought of exposing myself completely is slightly nervewracking. I suppose that's where a good psuedonym comes in!!

Name: De Waal Venter Website: http://bit.ly/poeson Date: March 27, 2010

Comment: Hello Ishmael,
I like your poem: N listening to Queen\'s song on the radio, washing dishes, and his (her?) thoughts take their own course. The strength of the poem lies in die metaphor of a word taking the shape of a tank shell and smashing into \"them\". The poem suggests that this word is \"death\". One infers that the war images are invoked in part by this section of the Radio Ga-Ga lyrics:

\"You gave them all those old time stars Through wars of worlds -- invaded by Mars\"

The poem falters a bit towards the end where \"full-stop shells\" and question marks are introduced. The metaphor is being overworked a trifle here, I think. Another problem I see here, is that the reader is uncertain at whom all this aggression is aimed - academia? fellow poets? the broad populace? Perhaps a rewrite should rectify these points. Although the poem is rounded off nicely by N coming out of his reverie and finding his hands full of suds, it is a bit of a let-down. In my opinion the poem\'s strongest point is the the word \"death\" being hurled into the \"midst of the \"enemy\". It would be gratifying if the poem could end at a dramatic high point like that.

Radio Ga Ga

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