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To Thy Work
Created: November 19, 2019, 12:05 AM
Location: Middletown, KY
Publication: Thirty Degree West's The Weekly Degree on January 12, 2020
Notes: The poem began as an assignment to write an ekphrastic on Hamlet.
Line 1: Other comes from Lacan as does (a) also known as objet petit a
Line 2: post-hoc- is the first half of the informal fallacy Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Line 6: symbolic-object is a formation of Lacan's Lack (manque)
Line 7: (— φ) stands for the castrated phallus
Line 8 i(a) stands for the ideal ego in Lacanian algebra
Line 12 "on his swift wings" is a play on Hamlet's reply to the ghost in Act I Scene v: "Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge." lines xxxv-xxxvii
Line 13: "mind-dependent" comes from George Berkely's Ontological Idealism
Line 17: "time-future" comes from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets most notable in the first poem Burnt Norton
Line 17: "known-world" refers to both Edward P. Jones's novel The Known World
as well as Mount Eerie's song Known World from his EP Mount Eerie pts. 6 & 7
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