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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