The Politics of Ashok
Or rather, Ashok Karra’s thoughts on my political side. I am most grateful for his ongoing engagement and interest in my work.
Today, Ashok was moved by a recent poem that appears in Jacket, “Two if by Land, I Do”:
…As always, Amy King is well-aware of what I, as a student of Leo Strauss, would call the ancient/modern distinction. The fundamental difference between us and the medievals/Romans/Greeks is that we base politics on the fact men are not angels…
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In the past, Ashok has explored “Everyone Has a Decision To Make“:
I want to meditate on the above poem in order to see the relation between speech and coming to a conclusion within one’s own thought. My own feeling is that this has broad implications for how we conceive of politics. If we cannot be sure of our own moral stances, how can we be so sure others are wrong? …
Many, many thanks, Ashok for your thoughts on and with these poems!
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“The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.” –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
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One Response to “The Politics of Ashok”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
February 4th, 2008 at 8:00 pm e..wow, a Straussian (as in Leo, grandpop
of the Neo-Cons), no less?!
That’s a difference. But very
thoughtfully analyzed…and the premises
crisply laid out. Fascinating. And
someone who follows the path back through
the prisms to you… not like the reviewers
who find mainly quirky lingo and mystery, eh?
Another sees sense beneath shimmers..
..impressive. Some widely-studied codeword
reader, maybe. To borrow a metaphor
from Strauss, Ashok seems to work hard at
seeing the shapes beyond the shadows!
I’m a bit “open society”/Popper/Soros myself..
..heh..there’s a difference! But that makes Ashok
all the more fascinating.
I found you basically via phrase-tuning, Amy…
..I wonder if Ashok had some similar path.
Or is it just the temptation of knowing there is
something flashing at the bottom of your pools?