Why Didn't This Stuff Happen Before Finals?

First, A Northwestern University student is refusing to perform a song based on works of Walt Whitman because Whitman was a racist. The choral work does not contain evidence of Whitman's racism.

Whitman was a racist; he was also gay. Oh by the way, he was the best American poet of the 19th Century, and he cared for wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

It would have interesting to ask the young'uns if we should not read "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," "O My Captain!, My Captain!," or "I Hear America Singing" because Whitman was racist or gay or both. It would also have been fun to extend the conversation to ask them if people should not buy Ford products because Henry Ford was an anti-Semite.

This Francis Beckworth sentiment matches mine on this issue:

You do yourself no good by not seeing the greatness even in people who have held disreputable ideas. To look at Walt Whitman and just see a racist is precisely what makes racism wrong: you don’t see the entire person–in all his complexities, virtues, and foibles–you just see the race. By doing this, you artificially flatten the person, and thus you literally lie to yourself, for you intentionally deny the truth that a great man can have within him both grandeur and vice. If you want to be better than Whitman, rid yourself of the habits of mind that in him resulted in the beliefs that you now find offensive. The ability to separate the wheat from the chaff is a sign of intellectual maturity. Thus, discarding the wheat because you can’t bear the chaff does not punish Mr. Whitman; it punishes you.

This post was published before finals, but I missed it until today. It also ties to my belief that literature is essential. From this Jag Bhalla Scientific American post:

It is in our nature to need stories. They are our earliest sciences, a kind of people-physics. Their logic is how we naturally think. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival. . . .

Any story we tell of our species, any science of human nature, that leaves out much of what and how we feel is false. Nature shaped us to be ultra-social, and hence to be sharply attentive to character and plot. We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories. They are a key way in which our ruly culture configures our nature.

One Poem For National Poetry Month 2013

It's National Poetry Month, so I thought it might be a good idea to post at least one poem. I have always enjoyed teaching this one.

 In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
by Wisława Szymborska

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

I Love It When Literature Makes The News

Both NPR and Politico report that poet Richard Blanco will read a poem during President Obama's second inauguration.  From Politico:

The Presidential Inauguration Committee on Wednesday named the Inaugural poet, who will appear at President Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony on Inauguration Day. Richard Blanco will be the country’s youngest Inaugural poet and also the first Hispanic and first member of the LGBT community to serve in the position, according to a statement from the committee:

The cynic in me sees this choice a stroke of pure genius. It's a nod to the Latino community in general, and it's a sign that Democrats are willing to reach out the Cuban-American community in particular. The latter group has tended to be solidly Republican.

On the other hand, the fact that Blanco is gay will certainly drive Obama's most ardent and vitriolic opponents into a dither. I can't wait to read Brad Ford's and Steve Sibson's take on this choice. It's always fun to see people foaming at the mouth. (As a side note, I think that some of Obama's critics on issues like drones and the usurpation of civil liberties need to get more coverage. I wonder if that coverage would occur if they did froth at the mouth more often.)

The only possible downside for President Obama is the fact that including a poet may anger Secretary of Education Arne Duncan along with the testing and Common Core folk who think literature is a waste of time. In order to make them happy, Obama would have had to ask Bill Gates to do a public reading of the new Windows tech manual..

Cynicism aside, here's "Burning in the Rain" one of Blanco's poems that was published in the New Republic in 2011:

Someday compassion would demand
I set myself free of my desire to recreate
my father, indulge in my mother’s losses,
strangle lovers with words, forcing them
to confess for me and take the blame.
Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet
by sheet on the patio and gathered them
into a pyre. I wanted to let them go
in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding
beside the azaleas and ficus bushes,
let them crackle, burst like winged seeds,
let them smolder into gossamer embers—
a thousand gray butterflies in the wind.
Today was that day, but it rained, kept
raining. Instead of fire, water—drops
knocking on doors, wetting windows
into mirrors reflecting me in the oaks.
The garden walls and stones swelling
into ghostlier shades of themselves,
the wind chimes giggling in the storm,
a coffee cup left overflowing with rain.
Instead of burning, my pages turned
into water lilies floating over puddles,
then tiny white cliffs as the sun set,
finally drying all night under the moon
into papier-mâché souvenirs. Today
the rain would not let their lives burn.

Quotation Of The Day: Bob Dylan Poet? Edition

From this Ian Bell post:

Writing about all of this, I reached a couple of rough conclusions. First, it seemed to me that the 'problem' of Dylan and poetry was poetry’s problem. It stands as a difficulty, in other words, for those who claim to define the form, even by a process of elimination, in an age that has witnessed the collapse of formalism.

Second, I thought I could see and hear something inherent to recent American verse in Dylan’s performances of the words. It struck me that there is a line of descent from the 'stepped triadic' of William Carlos Williams, to Ginsberg’s 'breath unit', to 'Like a Rolling Stone'. There is an identifiable tradition at work, in other words, one founded ultimately in American speech.

How do you arrive at a major literary artist, one who in no sense compares with the standard songwriter, one who employs the strategies, allusiveness and metaphorical density of poetry, yet who isn’t – cannot be? – a poet? As I say, the arbiters of verse have a problem, not least in the era of 'open form'. The name of the problem is Bob Dylan.

HT: Prairie Progressive

Quotation Of The Day: Poets Edition

From this Charles Simic post in the New York Review of Books:

In a country that now regards money as the highest good, doing something for the love of it is not just odd, but downright perverse. Imagine the horror and anger felt by parents of a son or daughter who was destined for the Harvard Business School and a career in finance but discovered an interest in poetry instead. Imagine their enticing descriptions of the future riches and power awaiting their child while trying to make him or her reconsider the decision. “Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?,” the trial judge shouted at the Russian poet Josef Brodsky, before sentencing him to five years of hard labor. “No one,” Brodsky replied. He could have been speaking for all the sons and daughters who had to face their parents’ wrath.[emphasis mine]

The bolded sentence rings true, and if I may so bold to paraphrase Lincoln, one wonders how a nation so conceived and so constituted can long endure.

Quotation Of The Day: Poet Laureate Edition

I missed the announcement that the United States has a new Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey.  I'm totally unfamiliar with her work, so I'll trust Charles McGrath who reports:

Ms. Trethewey’s great theme is memory, and in particular the way private recollection and public history sometimes intersect but more often diverge. “The ghost of history lies down beside me,” she writes in one of her poems, “rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.”

The following poem was published in 2010.

Vespertina Cognitio

by Natasha Trethewey

Overhead, pelicans glide in threes—

         their shadows across the sand

                  dark thoughts crossing the mind.

Beyond the fringe of coast, shrimpers

         hoist their nets, weighing the harvest

                  against the day's losses. Light waning,

concentration is a lone gull

         circling what's thrown back. Debris

                  weights the trawl like stones.

All day, this dredging—beneath the tug

         of waves—rhythm of what goes out, 

                  comes back, comes back, comes back.

United States Has New Poet Laureate--Philip Levine

From the Los Angeles Times, Philip Levine, an 83 year old poet who spend 34 years teaching at Cal State Fresno, has been named America's poet laureate.

Philip Levine, an award-winning poet who taught at Cal State Fresno for 34 years, has been named the new U.S. poet laureate. Levine will succeed W.S. Merwin and begin his yearlong tenure as poet laureate in October.

Levine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1995 for his collection "The Simple Truth," the National Book Award in 1991 for "What Work Is" and in 1980 for "Ashes," which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, as did "Seven Years From Somewhere.". . . 

The U.S. poet laureate is selected by the Librarian of Congress in Washington, D.C. Joseph Brodsky, Rita Dove and W.S. Merwin, the current poet laureate, are among those who have been accorded the honor. The duties and responsibilities of the poet laureate, who receives a $35,000 stipend, are largely ceremonial, but a poet who wishes to do so can undertake any projects he or she likes during his tenure.

The Christian Science Monitor lauds Levine as a working man's poet.

The Library of Congress may have given Americans a much-needed hero when it named Philip Levine the United States Poet Laureate earlier this week. Levine’s working-class background and impressive accolades – including the Pulitzer Prize – make him the perfect role model both for struggling writers and for millions of Americans who wonder if the whole world is spinning out of control, taking their money and dreams along with it.

Both papers excerpt poems that support CSM's analysis.  From the LA Times, "What Work Is"

   We stand in the rain in a long line
    waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
    You know what work is—if you’re
    old enough to read this you know what
    work is, although you may not do it.
    Forget you. This is about waiting,
    shifting from one foot to another.
    Feeling the light rain falling like mist
    into your hair, blurring your vision
    until you think you see your own brother
    ahead of you, maybe ten places.
    You rub your glasses with your fingers,
    and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
    narrower across the shoulders than
    yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
    that does not hide the stubbornness,
    the sad refusal to give in to
    rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
    to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
    a man is waiting who will say, “No,
    we’re not hiring today,” for any
    reason he wants....

From CSM, “Detroit Grease Shop Poem”:

Under the blue
hesitant light another day
at Automotive
in the city of dreams.
We're all here to count
and be counted, Lemon,
Rosie, Eugene, Luis,
and me, too young to know
this is for keeps, pinning
on my apron, rolling up
my sleeves.
. . . .

The roof leaks
from yesterday's rain,
the waters gather above us
waiting for one mistake.
When a drop falls on Lemon's
corded arm, he looks at it
as though it were something
rare or mysterious
like a drop of water or
a single lucid meteor
fallen slowly from
nowhere and burning on
his skin like a tear.

A large number of Levine's poems can be found at Poem Hunter.

Poetry and Science Fiction

Who knew science fiction produced verse like this?  (HT IO9)

I especially love the last two lines of this poem.

1. Attack of the Crab Monsters by Lawrence Rabb
Lawrence Rabb wrote one of best scifi poems of all time based on, no fooling, a Roger Corman film. You can see the film - it's precisely what it sounds like - but the poem is a better use of time. It takes us on a tour of the usual silly monster-movie cliches such as a heroine who walks around in underwear, and explains how human consciousness is tranferred into a crab monster bodies before building up to a final emotional punch at the end.

And everyone is surprised
and no one understands

why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to say those last two lines to my wife one day.