Interesting work from South Africa by a poet invited to facilitate Steve Biko Foundation poetry workshops. This poem and the following praise for Magogodi caught my eye on the Centre for Creative Arts site:
Reading … listening to Kgafela oa Magogodi’s poetry and song is a shattering experience. His linguistic chisels go far beyond ‘causing blisters in the eardrums of society’. They are like a shattered mirror, with each piece of glass throwing at you a reflection, an image of its own. His art is not something that you can fix a label on without going drastically wrong.
I have been dealing with reviews of a lot of really bad security lately.
I do not know how to put it in perspective any better than by analogy to (of course) poetry. Really, really bad poetry, as revealed bycracked.com in their recap of the 10 least romantic love song lyrics:
Jimmy Webb. “MacArthur Park”
“As we followed in the dance,
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love’s hot, fevered iron,
Like a striped pair of pants.”
There’s not much we can say here. Just read it over a couple of times. Yes, this song is the ACME of bad lyrics, but this particular passage is breathtaking. ‘Yes babe, you remind me of my wrinkly pants.’
Sometimes when I have to sit straight faced across from someone who glibly tells me how acceptable their security system is, right after I have punched into it like a hot tongue through rice paper, I remind myself how much bad poetry there is in the world.
“Yes, your security reminds me of my wrinkly pants”
An excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
by William Carlos Williams
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Found in an interview with Physician Valerie Berry by Len Anderson
LA: Is poetry also a healing art?
VB: I think all arts heal. Sometimes it takes us a while to recognize how, especially when the initial experience of it makes us uncomfortable or leaves us perplexed or angry. I’m reminded of surgery. For me, the sacred moment in surgery is when you hold the scalpel above the unmarked, intact skin. You know that once you cut, it will never be the same, no matter how well it heals–yet the healing can’t begin until the surgery opens the patient, reveals what’s wrong. I think art does that.
Somehow I imagined the sacred moment being when the procedures are finished successfully and all and the tools are accounted for….
Can’t wait to start my next incident response and say “let’s savor this sacred moment — the healing can’t begin until we start cutting”.
Educause has an excellent page with links to video and kits for awareness flyers.
Indiana University, for example, has some funny security slogans that were part of a prepackaged awareness kit:
Protect your password – “Invasion of the Password Snatchers”
“Beware of Worms and Viruses”
“Beware of the Phishing Scam”
Be careful when downloading or clicking – “The Thing from the Internet”
Keep your computer free of spyware – “Beware the Eye of the Spy”
Eye of the Spy? Spooky. Nothing like fear and humor to get people thinking.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
