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Lowbrow Poetry Bashing
LOWBROW POETRY BASHING....Elizabeth Alexander has been selected to write a poem for Barack Obama's inauguration. In case you're wondering what we're all in for, here's an excerpt from "Autumn Passage":
On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.On the dazzling toddler:
"Like eggplant," he says,
when you say "Vegetable,""Chrysanthemum" to "Flower."
On his grandmother's suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,September zucchini,
other things too big.
Uh huh. Feel free to rip me several new holes in comments, but this reminds me of nothing so much as this. I sure hope Alexander keeps her inaugural poem short.
I take it that you've long since given away all of your old Rod McKuen records...
I am so disappointed that a Latin@ was not selected to read a poem. Just an example of Obama administration lack of sensitivity for diversity.
Eggplants and toddlers don't mix; heck, they don't even rhyme.
People will be sitting in potentially freezing weather listening to this? Ish...
Academic poetry -- who needs it?
Would of been a lot more fun if Obama had gotten a street poet.
Amiri "Someone blew up America" Baraka would have been an interesting choice!
I don't think you're on much of a limb to say that American poetry is by and large pretty dismal.
I would say that there seems to be a large streak of anti-sentimentality that I don't really care for. My favorite poets are pushovers, and they wear that shit on their sleeve. They are also, mostly, lyricists and poetry as a medium has been eclipsed by songwriting.
I went to the last Dodge poetry festival and while it was fun and there was some good poetry on tap there wasn't really anything I'd have preferred to a mediocre Stephen Merritt song.
To give Bush credit where it is due: Billy Collins was a great poet laureate.
Just how much poetry do you guys read?
My doctorate specialized in 20th century American poetry.
I find the poem touching and memorable.
I think you're being harsh, here, Kevin. I didn't much care for The Hottentot Venus which Ta-nishi Coates put up today --- perhaps I haven't given it enought thought --- but I think this is a decent poem.
If you click through and read, you see that this is all about the passing of an elder, and how the suffering connected with death is incomprehensible, that body's ability to persevere miraculous --- and I think it's rather well done. Take the vegetable/eggplant metaphor --- it first comes up as a reference to color, the bruised and comatose body in its decline. Next it is a reference to a child's incomprehension: when told his grandmother has entered a vegetative state, he thinks of eggplant, the only kind of vegetable he knows. Next the two are linked, with the idea of a September zuccini -- that's one's a bit more of a reach, but I think she gets there. Least anyone who's ever had a neighbor with a garden will get the reference to that late autumn (a link to the title) abundance, the swollen vegetables on the vine, bigger than you thought they could grow, so numerous they seem never ending.
And finally in the last stanza that idea is referenced again, a bit more abstractly --- suffering and death, growth and decay like growth and rot of vegetables in a garden
Dear Lord - what dreck that poem is. I'm going to the inauguration and I certainly hope I'm not going to be hearing that shit.
Of course, I am poetry-adverse.
My favorite poem is Sam Mcghee.
http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage...
Wasn't too impressed with the lyrics on your post, so I clicked through the link and read the whole poem...which I liked. For me, poetry is one of those art forms where I have to consciously check my cynicism at the door before entering.
Wow. I guess this makes Vogon poetry the FOURTH worst in the universe...
Looks like Rick Warren is going to have a run for his money on the "inane bullshit" meter. I understand that the heart of poetry is figurative language and metaphor, but what does any of this have to do with the president?
You kids are so wrong about Elizabeth Alexander.... Wait and see....She'll be great. And Kevin, you should have published the whole poem or nothing at all.
The whole poem is quite competent and beautiful, distilling a great amount of meaning and emotion into a very small and elegant space.
So sorry it doesn't rhyme Kevin.
Just curious what the last book of contemporary poetry you (or the other Philistines in the comments mocking what they are too ignorant to perceive the difficulty of creating) read.
Think this poem sucks? Try writing one that accomplishes what this one does. Of course that's assuming you are capable of paying enough attention (or have the intelligence) to even recognize what this poem bravely attempts and mostly accomplishes.
And to call this poem "lowbrow" without including the whole short-to-begin-with poem reveals a small-minded meanness. I expect this kind of undeservedly boastful, anti-intellectual bullying on Redstate or Free Republic but not here.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
Well I'm inherently biased because I've known Elizabeth since she was 16 -- internally I still call her "Buff" which was her nickname in those days.
But gee Kevin, one of the best things about the end of the Bush administration is we can go back to valuing science and reason and competence and excellence. Whatever else you might think about Buff errrr... Elizabeth Alexander, she's a highly regarded poet and deservedly so. So no more snarky posts about her work.
Instead get back to writing snarky posts about the last days of the clown show.
I was all set to back you up, K, cuz I love trashing pretentious academic poetry. But read in its entirety, this is pretty good.
Explaining the message doesn't make this poetry. We all get what she's talking about. Strictly Hallmark cards.
Arturo Bandini,
In Kevin's defense, I think he was describing his poetry bashing as "lowbrow", not the poem itself.
On the other hand there's no doubt that Mr. Drum should have quoted the poem in its entirely, if at all. I'm agnostic on a lot of modern poetry, but the fragment definitely sounds worse than the whole.
Yeah, Kevin, I gotta say that even though I am pretty tone-deaf about poetry presenting that snippet is not really a fair test of the author or reader.
As a snippet it is a puzzle which makes no sense at all.
In its entirety, with maybe a little hint thrown in (somebody died, geddit?) it is good, very good. I didn't find it too abstract really, once I saw the whole thing.
And for God's sake I'm an electrical engineer. If I can 'get it' so can anyone. I think.
Mark R was right. American poetry is dead, completely eclipsed by songwriting. Springsteen should have been the poet of choice.
thersites, dammit to hell!
Arg. Here is my poetry:
thersites pwns Tripp again.
Tripp leaves disgruntled with smile.
Happy holidays!
Arturo,
"Lowbrow" in the title of this post modifies "bashing", not "poetry".
I.e. Kevin is being ironically self-deprecating about his failure to appreciate Alexander's highbrow (is there any other sort these days?) poetry.
Geeze, I can't even do Haiku correctly! Son of a . Good thing I can talk binary I guess.
All I can think of is big zucchini's.
Big zucchini
Little zucchini
Black mans
White mans
More
Eggplant nuts
Purple butts
Dropping to the
Floor......
Another chapter for Hoffstadter's "Anti-Intillectualism in America".
Assuming he's still alive, they should have pulled Gil Scott-Heron out of rehab. Ishmael Reed could have lit up some sedentary butts.
One way or another, does anybody really care about the inane trappings? I wish the New World Order had just started sans banana republic style fanfare about five minutes after the Electoral College certified the vote.
Philistines!
I am not offended by the poem, but some of the defenders of the poem are sickening.
Sorry for my tirade but poetry makes me ANGRY!
And why can't modifiers just modify the next word instead of skipping words and shit.
Oops. I've probably just further offended jimmy.
Arturo: The others are right. "Lowbrow" referred to me, not Elizabeth Alexander. I'm keenly aware that I couldn't write anything like this.
On the snippet thing, though, give me a break. It take two seconds to click the link and read the whole thing if you want to. Excerpts are generally fair use, but swiping entire works isn't.
I would have thought Obama's rightly vaunted pragmatism would hold for the inauguration, but I can't think of any pragmatic poetry off the top of my (middle-brow) head. Or just maybe...
Light fuse
and
get away.
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.
It even sounds like a rationalization for the Rick Warren cock-up.
When did random line-breaks replace metre and rhythm in poetry?
When did random line-breaks replace metre and rhythm in poetry?
Some time in the 50's, I think.
Arturo at 7:40: It's called a noun phrase. As in "[modifier] poetry bashing."
Kevin at 8:24: Fair enough. I retract my 4:33 snark.
"larger than vanished skyscrapers"
Cheap!
I heard an interview with her on NPR recently. Vapid.
Kevin,
Stick to politics and economics...please. Art is about expression. If you're not moved by an artistic expression, that's ok. And remember, there's bad art, boring and average.
But you've shown yet again, just like your post about Joshua Bell last year, that you're intimidated by an expression that you don't understand.
Your post is actually quite normal in this country by the majority of Americans who don't spend their time in the arts. Maybe Obama has chosen a shitty poet who sucks. Or maybe, if you spent some time on the subject, you might be a little more open to nuance and message.
I just don't trust your acumen when it comes to the arts, since you've never - EVER - written anything cogent about the arts.
Stick to politics and economics, please. It suits you better and keeps hidden your lack of knowledge about the arts.
For those that didn't click to read the poem in its entirety, here's how it ends:
glory of grown children's vigil
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates
even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns
florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.
I actually think it's a great poem. Thanks for the link Kevin.
I have never voluntarily read a poem in my life that wasn't on a greeting card, but this is a wonderful poem. Nothing academic about it. By eerie coincidence, I just awoke this morning from a not very pleasant dream about the last days of my late father, and the poem feels like a bookend to that dream.
Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,..
Methinks she will not mind your criticism of the poem, as the lines above on the link suggest.
Anyway, as others have said, I think the poem needs to be read in its entirety, and if one does that it will be found to be quite moving by most people, even though I do not particularly like the references to zuchini and eggplant.
Vinson: I've never denied that I'm a philistine, and there's certainly no reason you should trust my poetic judgment. But what's your problem with my Joshua Bell post from last year? I was bashing Gene Weingarten, not Bell.
Kevin should have quoted the whole poem, or nothing. It's easy (and lazy, and sometimes cruel or poltically motivated) to snark at snippets of non-contextual speech. If people click through to the complete poem they'll find it's really very good.
I teach rhetoric and creative writing, and I'm way too familiar with poetry haters (and fear-ers, and don't-get-it-ers). I've had students argue that Walt Whitman isn't a "real poet" because he doesn't rhyme!
Whatza matter? Don't u undertstand ART, Man?
Excerpts are generally fair use, but swiping entire works isn't.
Sorry Kev, I gotta stand with the others on this.
I take your point but it was misleading to complain about a poem and then take a snippet out of context. I'm no expert but I think a quote with attribution would have sufficed, but what do I know.
And Canid, you tell anyone dissing Walt Whitman that they don't know beans about candy.
And I thought the point of art was to provoke a feeling, so if you are angered by poetry then alright then, there ya go. That's called irony.
Here is the world's shortest poem, entitled "Fleas."
Fleas
Adam
hadem.
Not mine.
To keep the harping on Kevin going, I definitely thought that the poem excerpted was the actual inauguration poem. "In case you're wondering what we're all in for" made it seem like you knew what we were actually in for.
I retract my earlier snark about "inane bullshit" (or at least wish I could)
Look, just because you don't understand poetry, don't take it out on the rest of us. Go eat your donuts and watch Survivor or something.
Some people are giant September zucchini-heads.
But not in a glorious way.
Nothing more to add to the discussion. Just wondering if Kevin thinks he has enough new ones yet.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the response and my apologies for the "Joshua Bell Bash" comment...:) Actually, I don't remember exactly your take on it, just that it was one of your most participated-in posts, and my recollection was that it was another anti-art, I-don't-get-expression, kind of responses. Mostly, now that I'm remembering, it was in response to most of your commenter's responses.
Since my memory is getting worse the older I get (which drives my wife mad, of course), I shouldn't have bashed-without-reviewing (BWR for short)...
Maybe you want to repost it so we can all have a go at it again?
But seriously, I think there's nothing wrong with bringing up cultural and artistic topics here, but can we at least spend some time digging up other, more "expert" takes on these things? I mean, if you really wanted to get into it, you could research what some experts in the field of poetry have to say about said poet, and then we can have a go at it. Or, you can throw out an idea with the caveat that you don't know squat about the topic, and hence you can't make a smart, educated opinion about the matter, but that you'd like to be schooled by your readers...that sort of thing.
We're all philistines on certain subjects, but there's no need to put down something just because you don't understand it, you dig? ;)
The reason I feel strongly about this is because "elitism" has been attacked by the right for far too long. It's a total bullshit argument, since sports "elitists" - those who know every little thing about every sport - aren't looked down upon. Nor is your plumbing "elitist" - who knows everything about leaks. Do we look down on the sports and plumbing elites? Of course not! Or how 'bout the "Small Town Elitist," who only knows about small-town ways? Do we look down on them? Then why on earth do we look down on the elite poet, or elite painter, or elite musician, or elite dancer, or any of the elite artists out there? Or the elite critic, who spends his or her time learning about an elite subject.
C'mon, Kevin! You're no philistine. You are smart and educated and have very interesting thoughts on many matters. I'm sure you would be able to carry those "elite" qualities into the arts if you chose to spend the time on them. So don't sell yourself short - - just get more involved with learning about the arts before posting more dumb posts on artistic subjects...:)
And remember, as Duke Ellington said about music, "There are only two types of music (art) - good and bad."
Just spend some time with the arts, people, before you bash it...that's all I'm asking!
best,
vinson.
New York City - an elite cultural outpost...
Perhaps you'd prefer some (bad, because there are decent ones) country-and-western song, like the current occupant?
Or -- here's an idea -- perhaps you could read the entire poem?