Thursday, June 9, 2016

The Complete Palladas from the Palatine Anthology




 Translated By Harold Anthony Lloyd  © 2016


Translator’s Notes:
I have compiled a complete verse collection of Palladas in English for several reasons.  First, of course, the merits of the best lines speak for themselves and much of this is lost in prose translation.  Second, almost all that is known of Palladas comes from his verse.  Much like the historical search for the identities of Shakespeare’s young man and dark lady in his sonnets, Palladas’s epigrams provide most of the fodder for speculation about the poet himself.  This of course cannot be done as fully in the absence of every available epigram and therefore requires inclusion of his lesser lines.  Third, this sort of inquiry applies to characters in the epigrams themselves such as Hypatia and the wife of Palladas.  Fourth, the epigrams show the fascinating state of the world as the Greek gods gave way to the god of Christianity.  Finally, the epigrams show the fate of a grammarian who would have lived solely by his art but had to abandon that art in the face of starvation.  This perhaps gives some comfort to other poets who have chosen a trade as well as a poet’s life.

Snow In August (A Book of Original Verse)



 

       Snow In August

She had enjoyed sweet certain knowledge that,
however hot the summer, August brought

its welcome snows upon a boundary fence
that she had kept to please her neighbors, too.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Charms & Knots (A Book of Original Verse)





Part I: Plato’s Pigeon Hole
Part II: Aristotle’s Remainder
Part III: Anthology of Moons & Other Nouns

Dedicated To: The Late Kenneth Hovey, Former Associate Professor of English, University Of Texas San Antonio.  The cover pictures is of Abby (b. April 20, 1991 & d. April 2 2004).

Who read a Chapter, when they rise,
Shall ne're be troubled with ill eyes.
--George Herbert

Revised version December 2009/June 2016

Deborah's Sonnet Song (Additon to the Apology Box)

A bit of music!  Life leaps over speech!
Life leaves some greater parts beyond the reach
Of words alone.  Therefore, God gave us each.

I’ll sing of me who judged beneath a palm
And reckoned past and future.  Thus, I knew
Jael would drive a stake in Sisera

Once she had feigned her hospitality.
I killed no guests, there’s no hypocrisy
Here in my seeking hospitality.

Hear! I’ll sing purest notes beneath a palm
And judge not.  Here in Heaven I’m too new
To gauge Jael or even Sisera.

I’ll let the veterans guess at Sodom’s sin
Of harming guests one has invited in.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016
  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Monday, June 6, 2016

I Mined and Shared from Matchless Mines of Me: Two Sonnets of Job (Apology Box Additions)


In these days when some claim to follow so-called prosperity theology, it's of course good to remember the story of Job.  It is, in fact, impossible to claim that one follows the Bible literally and yet also claim that God will lavish health and material reward on those who follow him. Similarly, suffering does not in and of itself indicate malfeasance. Both experience and Job tell us just the opposite.  We see good people suffer, and we see people who do bad things prosper nonetheless.  Of course, this is not to say that we are not often rewarded for good and that we are not often punished for doing wrong.  Nor is this to say that at least some form of reputational "karma" does not exist.  We of course build and lose reputations based upon our voluntary choices and we reap and suffer consequences of those choices.  However, all this occurs in the context of a world coming at us in countless ways that are also beyond our control and that deliver both bounties and setbacks that we don't deserve.  The best of us can live in poverty and ill-health despite our best efforts and those of us doing the worst can live in great prosperity.  To claim otherwise (1) rejects both experience and the Book of Job, (2) rejects true humanity itself, (3) rejects the compassion and understanding true virtue requires, and (4) demeans grace which, frankly, we all need to appreciate and cultivate more.    

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Finding Wisdom in a Fractured World

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/5/2014 in The Huffinton Post


We need to discuss the nature of wisdom more than we do. If we can’t articulate at least some measure of what it means to be wise, how can we justify any notion of the good life or of the good society? At this particularly-difficult time when our country seems fractured down the middle, how can we not focus on the nature of wisdom?

The Kingdom Is Within

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/16/2014 in The Huffinton Post


Friday, June 3, 2016

Apology Box Additions: Sampson & Delilah

    
                 
                        Sampson’s Sonnet 

The day misleads.  We’re blessed by losing eyes
Too easily distracted by the rose
That colors over thorns, insects, and blight,
And feigns geometries in petals though
True lines and circles never can be drawn
On warped and pitted canvases of earth.

The very structure of the eye proclaims
That sight has little worth.  Jehovah would
Not make such fragile orbs for vision if
It were a thing for us to treasure much.
Delilah is more proof.  Unseen she could
Not use her outer bloom for treachery.

By losing eyes, I took on better sight
And found more focus in the dark than light. 

                  Delilah’s Sonnet

How could betrayal happen to a man
Who’d made a wager, murdered when he’d lost,
Who knowingly pushed massive pillars down
To crush a child that led him to the place,
Who’d used his trust, dominion over beasts,
To bind their tails and send them off in flames?
(I still can hear the awful yelping of
The twice-red foxes till the fires consumed
Their tiny throats and tongues.)  I had no choice.

He was a monster.  Villainy requires
Containment which we did—yet let him live,
A courtesy he failed to show himself
In taking his own life that we had spared.

Delilah in return should, too, be spared. 


© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Apology Box (Or a Brief Course in the Humanities Through Some Notables’ Last Words)



I've drafted a book in verse I'm calling "The Apology Box."  As I finish polishing the parts, I plan to insert them here.  The book sets out pages from a box that fell from the sky.  The pages turn out to be judgment day speeches of various historical characters.  In addition to any merits the book may have as verse, I hope the book can (1) prod the reader to survey the humanities to the extent required to understand what the characters are discussing, (2) provide examples of what does and does not work rhetorically, (3) explore how people were trapped by (or tried to use and trap others with) the frameworks, prejudices, and commonplaces of their times, and (4) help rekindle more interest in formalist verse.  The speeches will vary in "quality" given the limitations of their authors and given such other accidents such as whether or not authors may have had assistance in their speeches (the box does not indicate who may or may not have had counsel or other assistance). My original plan was to start with Adam and bring the book up to recent decades.  However, that project has proven too long which means the book may end up slanted purely by accident toward more ancient figures including many Biblical ones.  By omitting more recent figures I don't mean to suggest they do not interest me.  I am just being realistic about time. To help balance this out, I've changed the book at points from a purely chronological order. I've posted a few of the finished speeches in other blogs and am repeating them here where I feel they best fall.  The book will grow from here as I add other finished speeches in no particular order--the box was jumbled after all.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Razing Babel: Two Sonnets For Too Xenophobic Times




In these Xenophobic times, we should recognize that Razing Babel was a blessing not a curse.   The punishment of imprisonment within a single, narrow tongue proves much, much worse than the inconvenience of dealing with others who don’t speak our native language.  Here’s why:

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Sewing & Sowing Words



 
We’re artisans who sew and sow words.  We sew and sow words for, among other things, organizing, molding, and embellishing the world in which we’re thrust and thrust ourselves.  Words are powerful tools that must be handled with care.  And, yet, too often when sewing and sowing language:

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Beyond Rawls’ Fiction: The Veil of Ignorance Is Real

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 3/2/2016 in The Huffinton Post


Justice Scalia, Queen Anne, and the Pragmatics of Interpretation

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 2/18/2016 in The Huffinton Post

Kennings: I've Made a Little List

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 2/9/2016 in The Huffinton Post

Poets and Lawyers: Birds of a Feather

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 12/15/2015 in The Huffinton Post

Biting the Hand That Feeds: Entitlements and the Fundamental Attribution Error

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 5/12/14 in The Huffinton Post



Letter to the Class of 2014

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/29/14 in The Huffinton Post

From Days of Auld Langdell: Crisis and Reform in Modern Legal Education

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 4/25/14 in The Huffinton Post

Obamacare and the Self-Made Man

Archive of blog originally posted 3/26/2014 in The Huffington Post


A friend left me a note last night: “My life has been crazy—But with God’s help it will get better.” I’ll come back to my friend. Let me first turn to another quote that drives many Americans crazy and as a result is endangering the life of my friend:

“Every American regardless of his means must have access to reasonable health care. In the absence of a single-payer system, every American regardless of his means must purchase health insurance in the marketplace to guarantee such access.”

What in these words (and their equivalents) raises such ire in decent folk? Americans on the whole are decent folk and selfishness or other immoral motives therefore do not likely underly their anger. Instead, I believe much of their anger turns on the myth of the self-made man. Let me explain.

Americans are proud of their country as a land of opportunity where all can succeed if they just work hard enough. We all know stories of those who rose from rags to riches. We also of course know our own “hardship” stories of pinching pennies to make it through law school or medical school so that we could be the lawyers or doctors that we are today. We pat ourselves on our backs for our hard work and our sacrifices.

By running such gauntlets, we believe that we’ve proved our self-sufficiency. We are self-made men. It’s of course nonsensical to tell self-made men (and those who are on their way to such status) that they must buy insurance. Such persons have already proved that they need no such patronizing. Furthermore, by our example we believe that we’ve proved that others can be self-made men, too, if they will just work as hard as we did. We shouldn’t therefore just “hand” out insurance to those who could have worked for a better status in life. Such “handouts” would encourage laziness. Like self-made men, all other Americans should strive to be self-made men (or the lucky children of self-made men).

Self-made men. What, though, does that phrase really mean? At first blush, it seems a straightforward reference to those of us who relied on ourselves alone, who didn’t whine when we were down, who worked as hard as we needed to work to achieve our goals, as a result achieved them, and thus became self-made men.

However, this “straightforward” definition doesn’t withstand even a sliver of real scrutiny. We are all subject to natural and social forces beyond our control. Despite our best efforts, we get sick and we suffer setbacks. If we made it through law school or medical school by pinching pennies and by hard work, those of course aren’t the only reasons that we made it through law school or medical school (or whatever other school or task you might wish to substitute). The pinched pennies and hard work numerically pale in comparison to the endless number of other factors involved. In addition to all the things beyond our control that could have gone wrong before we even stepped through the doors of law or medical school, we were lucky enough to keep our health throughout the process. We were lucky enough to have the teachers, parents, and other supporters that we had. We were lucky enough to have the fellow students from whom we also learned. We were lucky enough to have the police, military forces, and fire departments that kept us safe as we studied and whose expenses we therefore did not generally mind paying in the form of taxes. (Isn’t it interesting that we generally don’t question taxes to protect the health of our structures but go into a tizzy over taxes to protect the health of the persons inside?) We were lucky enough to have the roads that let us get to school and to have the safe food to eat (however cheap) that allowed us to survive. I could go on but the reader should get the drift by now: no one can be a self-made man in this contingent and interrelated world.

In fact, the more we try to speak of ourselves as self-made men, the more we contradict ourselves. Virtuous “self-made men” are understandably proud of their property which they hopefully charitably share with others. Yet property cannot exist without society — if there are no other people around it makes no sense to speak of property. If there is no one you can ask to get off your land, what could it possibly mean to say that the land is yours? To be a self-made landowner, you therefore require others. But then how can you be a self-made man? As John Dewey puts it, “...[T]he more we emphasize the free right of an individual to his property, the more we emphasize what society has done for him: the avenues it has opened to him for acquiring; the safeguards it has put about him for keeping...” To claim to be a self-made man is thus to renounce the claim.

Once we finally take the myth of the self-made man for what it is, we can begin to be sensible about health care not only for others but for the sake of “self-made men” as well. That’s right, I did say for the sake of “self-made men” as well. The “self-made man” also benefits from universal health care. He, too, could lose all his wealth and actually need his health insurance for necessary care. He, too, should not then simply go to the emergency room and stick the rest of us with his bill. He, too, could catch diseases universal health care could have prevented. His stock portfolio, too, is harmed by the lowered productivity of ill workers and by the lowered productivity of those with pre-existing conditions stuck in jobs that do not maximize their potential. Things that hurt our GDP hurt all of us including the “self-made man.”

Though the “self-made man” should also embrace universal health care, more humble persons concern me as well. This brings me back to my friend I quoted above. She is a woman who has worked hard all her life and who is under no illusion that she is a “self-made woman.” The Republicans who recently took control of North Carolina’s state government have refused to join the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. This hard-working woman is now ineligible for state Medicaid assistance and she does not make enough to qualify for subsidies under Obamacare. The March 31 Obamacare enrollment deadline is looming and in the meantime she has no health care coverage. Though not a “self-made woman” of means, she has done nothing wrong. She goes to church, works hard, takes care of her elderly father, is helping put her daughter through college, and is a blessing to this earth. As the minutes tick down to the end of the month, legal aid workers and kind law students at Wake Forest Law School are trying to provide this hard-working American with access to medical care. They understand that we (including “self-made men”) are all in this together. The rest of us should be as clear-headed.

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Religious Hypocrites and Their Timeless Tactics: McCrory, Tartuffe, and HB 2



Pat McCrory’s HB 2 reminds me of Molière’s Tartuffe. In both cases unwitting victims are fleeced by people pretending to be virtuous. Tartuffe fleeces a wealthy man named Orgon. With HB 2, Pat McCrory fleeces every worker of employment protections including the right to sue in state court for discrimination based on “race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” (Those still doubting that please click here.) In both cases, the same ancient three-part strategy is used against unwitting victims who can admire (at least at first) the very man that fleeces them. Using Molière’s classic tale to explore this ancient strategy not only arms us against the McCrorys of the world. It also reminds us how classics not only entertain but teach and prepare us as well. Please follow me—this won’t take long.  Click here.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

My Thoughts in the Washington Post on HB 2

“This is really a devious bill that harms workers under the guise of regulating bathrooms,” said Harold Lloyd, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law. See the full article here in the Washington Post.  Katie Zezima did an excellent and thorough job with this piece.

Real Crimes Against Nature: N.C. Republicans Target Renewable Energy

Pat McCrory and Republicans in the North Carolina legislature claim to abhor the unnatural. Thus, they passed HB 2 ostensibly to prevent a crisis that they fabricated about straight men putting on dresses to peep at women in restrooms. (However, as I have noted elsewhere, this bill is really more about taking away workers' rights. See here.) But when it comes to real crimes against nature, at least some of these Republicans take a different tune. As more particularly described here, Two North Carolina Republicans have introduced legislation taking on renewable energy in the state. This is not only mind boggling in light of the common-sense future choices we must make about energy consumption and availability. It is bizarre coming from people who claim to know and defend the "natural." Where is the defense of the natural here? The sun rises in its natural place and freely and cleanly offers up it natural energy. The wind blows naturally, too, and also freely and cleanly offers up its natural energy. By contrast, coal, petroleum, and uranium are unnaturally ripped or fracked from beneath the ground or waters leaving the environment in a mutilated and unnatural state. Let's call out the true "perverts" here.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Running Tally of Billions in Federal Medicaid Money That Pat McCrory Has Thrown Away

Click here for up-to-the moment tally.

McCrory’s House Bill 2: A Brief Outline of Its Five “Parts”


When non-lawyers hear Pat McCrory’s claim that North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is just common sense while at the same time they hear the Department of Justice attacking part of it as illegal, I can understand how easy it is for such non-lawyers just to take the word of the political party they prefer. They probably aren’t sure where to look for the Bill and even if they lack this doubt they understandably might imagine the Bill has much too much legalese for them to tackle.

For remainder of blog, click here.


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Three Sonnets in Paint



Of course pigment and its forms cannot translate to word.  Paintings must be seen not heard.  Though we cannot speak paintings, we can, speak about paintings.  Thus, I share three sonnets where I try to speak about three paintings.  I picked these three paintings because they themselves seemed to try the reverse impossibility I note.  They try to be sonnets in paint.


The Old Testament & Same-Sex Separation Anxiety




The Old Testament contains powerful examples of deep affection between those of the same sex.  David tells Jonathan: “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26).  Ruth tells Naomi: “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” (Ruth 1:16).  As the halves of each pair would enter Heaven at different times, I wondered how they might address the separation and the fear that one or both might not be admitted.  Of course, these sonnets are my words, not theirs.  As such, and being a Wildcat, I couldn’t avoid language suggesting joinder of #DavidsonCollege and light.  Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas!

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Cicero and Classical Rhetoric: A Good Man Is Still Fluent Dead


Much needless suffering (including physical carnage) flows from our inability to persuade with words rather than force.  Much of that verbal inability comes from a lack of basic instruction in the rhetorical arts that the Greeks and Romans perfected long ago.  Their manuals (such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Artistotle's Rhetoric) lie too often untouched  though freely available online and in libraries all around us.  Ignoring such works makes no sense, and I hope one day the vast majority of us will rediscover and value what the ancient rhetoricians have given us.  I wonder how Cicero might speak to us now about the power of word over sword (of dropping the "s" from "sword" and using the resulting "word"), and about the need to read, ponder, and perfect the teachings his earlier generations have kindly left us.  I've written the following sonnet hoping to capture some wisdom from that man of words who was murdered by men of swords and whose hands and head were cut off and nailed up for public view.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Cincinnatus: The Other Political Archetype


As we watch today's political nastiness, we should remember there is a better political archetype.  There is the Cincinnatus figure who serves out of duty when he'd rather be doing something else. In the legendary case of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (who died ca. 438 B.C.) that something else was farming which he twice abandoned out of duty to serve.  Can we not find such persons today to serve?  Perhaps wanting a political office should in itself be disqualifying.  Perhaps at Judgment Day all good politicians will speak as I imagine Cincinnatus speaking at his Judgment Day in this sonnet I have written:

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Verse Translation: A Call for Harder Work and Greater Care



Too much verse translation is too free and loose.  We must take the time and effort to preserve both meaning AND form (including meter and rhyme where they exist) without sacrificing one for the other.  Though we can never fully translate verse from one language to another, we can come close if we’re willing to work hard enough.  To illustrate this, I want to give some French to English examples of my own.  I don’t claim they are perfect by any means but I think they make my point.  I ask the reader to pull the original French texts and compare them with what I have done.  I break my examples into seven parts (I-VII).

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Overview of Wake Forest Law Review Legal Education Reform Symposium




Wake Forest Law Review Symposium Overview:
Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft
By: Steven Verez

On October 23rd 2015, The Wake Forest Law Review held a symposium entitled:  “Revisiting Langdell: Legal Education Reform and the Lawyer’s Craft.”  Over 200 persons attended the event.  The symposium was hosted by Wake Forest University School of Law Professors Harold Lloyd, Associate Professor of Legal Analysis and Writing and Christine Coughlin, Director of Legal Analysis, Research & Writing.  A symposium edition published by the Wake Forest Law Review containing articles by most of the speakers will be available soon.  A brief overview of some of the speakers’ topics and discussions is set out below.