Wednesday 25 May 2011

The lost Hylas


 Scarce was I weaned from Business School
When lost to the Naiads of the Typing Pool
Weep for me, heroes of the Argo's crew!
Weep for Hylas who was once as you.

Their Gorgon hair and Harpy nails
& fish for eyes & skin-like scales
Caused all they tease, save me, to fear them.
  My Hercules, then, was Coase's Theorem

'No mine and thine doth Beauty know
'But as Helen breeds in Allan Poe!'
Thus Chicago- my Greece and Rome
Till Nereid airs wrecked my home
Envoi-
Prince! If two Schools you rule, one Salt, one Freshwater
To a Salmacis your son, your Salamis a daughter

2 comments:

Rajiv said...

Why is Hecules Coases theorem? I personally think Ronald Coase has been totally misinterpreted. In any case don't see what you're getting at.

windwheel said...

I'm probably with you on Coase. There's a great video of him on his 100th birthday here- http://cyclingprof.blogspot.com/2010/02/ronald-coase-video-presentation-on.html
The conceit in my poem has to do with the way in which the Wicksteed, Palmer, Coase type business firm which emerges due to transaction costs and the need to internalize externalities has evolved in a different, surely unanticipated, direction since the 70's under the aegis of efficient markets/irrelevance of entitlements (who owns what)/rational expectations etc.
The Robert Graves type theory of epic heroes marrying Naiads or Melusine or Apsaras etc is about AIT, elite dominance, patriarchy etc. legitimating claims to kingship by linking themselves to ancient matriarchal lineages.
Essentially, I'm saying the freshwater, Chicago style thing drew a veil over what was actually happening within the firm- the Typing Pool was becoming more and more distant from the Business School grad- gender dimorphism was turning into a class divide, the firm was no longer Coase-cohesive but the locus of a tectonic fracture etc etc.