Someone made this especially for me

I do not have roommates. Oh well; it works singleplayer too...

Chore Wars

Seeds in the Heart

I can't help but be amused by the way Donald Keene talks about poetry. I do understand that it's bad form to use "I" in academic writing; I also understand that he wouldn't want to make the prose more burdened by changing "most affecting" to "generally thought to be the most affecting". (I'm not clear, even after reading the introduction, as to whether he means "I think it's the most affecting" or "most scholars think it's the most affecting" or even "It is the most affecting, period, so shaddup.")

But when he goes on about how this poet is better than that one, and this poem is more minor than that one, I can't help but think, "Gee, I am SO SORRY that poetry written six thousand miles from here and thirteen hundred years ago does not live up to your aesthetic standards!" Not that it's wrong to have your own opinion or anything. Far from it. But he seems to imply that his aesthetic standards are the correct ones in a way that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps I'm just more of a relativist than Keene is?

To draw a really strained comparison, it's kind of like slash fans complaining that yaoi is too womanly and the men don't act enough like real men--who asked you, and obviously it works well enough for the people who wrote it in the first place. On the other hand, Real Litrachur is supposed to be universal; yaoi, not so much.