{"id":805,"date":"2009-07-14T17:17:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T00:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/07\/richard_renaldi_-_things_fall\/"},"modified":"2009-07-14T17:17:34","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T00:17:34","slug":"richard_renaldi_-_things_fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/07\/richard_renaldi_-_things_fall.html","title":{"rendered":"Richard Renaldi – things fall apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via<\/a><\/p>\n

\"richardrenaldifallapart.jpg\"<\/span>Why is this image smoking, while countless others featuring falling down barns are born stone cold dead? Renaldi’s absence of nostalgia. His image is a clean hit.<\/p>\n

The title of this post comes from the 20th-century’s most influential poem, Yeats’ The Second Coming<\/i>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.<\/p>\n

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sherman Alexie’s Web site<\/a> is titled, Falls Apart<\/i>. Joan Didion’s breakthrough essay collection? Slouching Toward Bethlehem<\/i><\/a>. And 
\nChinua Achebe’s best novel, the African version of King Lear<\/i>? Things Fall Apart<\/i><\/a>. <\/span><\/span>The first 8 years of the 21st century suggested an answer to the poem’s last line. What beast slouches toward Bethlehem? We do. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Why is this image smoking, while countless others featuring falling down barns are born stone cold dead? Renaldi’s absence of nostalgia. His image is a clean hit. The title of this post comes from the 20th-century’s most influential poem, Yeats’ The Second Coming: TURNING and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}