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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"War and Peace" dismisses explanation almost as soon as it begins and reduces the difference to appetite, pleasure, and performance.
The repeated "Not a chance" gives the poem its shrugging, adversarial rhythm. Rather than grant war and peace any grand moral separation, it folds both into wine, women, and song. That ending sounds cynical, but it also suggests that history keeps being decided by ordinary hungers dressed up as ideals.
'War and Peace' dismisses explanation in the same breath it invites it -- 'Not a chance,. ok,. let anyone talk, / explain it... talk about the differance / Not a chance' -- the repeated refusal giving the poem a shrugging, adversarial pulse. It collapses any grand moral distinction into appetite: 'it all has to do, / with wine,. women and song', letting ordinary hungers, not ideals, decide history.