Word: poeticize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...vows concocted for those weddings seem period pieces now. They were oppressively poetic, gushily confessional. They were sweet and intimate and profound and occasionally metaphysical, like a Hallmark card. They were illuminated by moonbeams of Kahlil Gibran ("Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone") and drenched with fragrances of Rod McKuen. At one wedding of the time, the bridegroom rhapsodized: "It is therefore our glorious and divine purpose to fly mountains, to sow petalscent. . . to glorify glory, to love with love." His bride answered: "We hereby commit ourselves to a serenity more...
West by Steven Berkoff. A Berkoff play (Greek, Metamorphosis, Hamlet) is simultaneously avant-garde and deja vu. Actors in whiteface mime extravagant gestures, confronting the audience with stylized, scatological invective. It is like being back in the rumble seat of '60s performance art, but with a raw poetic urgency. Other English play wrights may update Shaw; Berkoff wants to be an East End blend of Sam Shepard and Jean Genet. West, the first of his plays to infiltrate the West End, can be seen as a new West Side Story. Mike (Rory Edwards), leader of a quintet of Hackney...
...Revolution was won, in 1782, French-American Writer Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur said of his adopted land: "Individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men." Americans embittered by the wars of Europe knew that fusing diversity into unity was more than a poetic ideal, it was a practical necessity. In 1820 future Congressman Edward Everett warned, "From the days of the Tower of Babel, confusion of tongues has ever been one of the most active causes of political misunderstanding...
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...