Word: poetic
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Such hoaxes were outrageous enough to make their perpetrators seem almost dignified in their raffishness. But forgeries have regularly caused more than empty pockets and red faces. One cut short a poetic career full of brilliant promise. In the 1760s, Thomas Chatterton, a teen-ager from Bristol, England, invented a 15th century monk called Thomas Rowley and wrote medieval-looking manuscripts of inspired poetry under the name. He had hoped to demonstrate his skills under a false identity and then reveal himself as the author when the public's attention was won. Before that could happen, the ruse...
...darted about by speedboat, yelling instructions to 400 helpers who had signed on for his latest production. His plan was to envelop eleven garbage-strewn islands between Miami and Miami Beach with some 6 million sq. ft. of pink polypropylene. Christo's $3.2 million "irresponsible, irrational, poetic gesture," as he calls it, is being financed largely by the sale of sketches, drawings and models of the work. As with earlier endeavors, such as draping a curtain between two Colorado mountain peaks, the obstacles were many. The man-made ones, like environmental protests, public hearings and government permits, were conquered...
...construction of the novel has not helped matters. Ararat is built on the ancient practice of poetic improvisation. Its key character, Rozanov, a Soviet poet and a scoundrel, has mastered the art of making up a story or a poem when presented with a subject by someone in his audience. The theme of Rozanov's current improvisation is-improvisations. He proceeds to spin out tales about other poets who then go on to invent tales of their own. The effect resembles a garishly colored Russian matryoshka: wooden dolls within wooden dolls...
Language might yet have made Ancient Evenings a page turner, and the novel does offer brief, poetic passages. The shimmer and heat of the Nile, the blaze of Egyptian architecture when it was new and radiant with epochal ambition, the perfume and soft light of a harem garden: all enjoy moments of intense realization. But such moods are continually broken by ludicrous sentences: "In either case, my Pharaoh's mind was now concerned with buttocks." Or: "Now, with the redolence of my nose, I watched and admired the delicacy with which the Pharaoh ate." Mailer's historical posing...
...rightist bias who revels in his animal prowess with girls in singles bars. Harold is a do-good veteran of the '60s scene with its liberal pantomimes and drug dabbling. He sought God in a physics equation and found solace in a loving wife and child. His poetic affirmation of that love affectingly shields him from the play's ungentle night...