Among the Intellectualoids
Inaugural Poetasters
Inaugural poetry augers in our aesthetic sensibilities.
I watched the inauguration in an overwhelmingly Republican room, yet I’d call the circumstances nothing but respectful. The interjections were few, and none of them particularly partisan, and most present accorded the proceedings close attention. All stayed for the full address and few left immediately when it was finished. The immediate subsequent comments involved criticism and praise in about equal measure.
The majority of the room didn’t exit to face their sad Bush-less lives until words even more dread than “President Obama” were spoken: the announcement of an inaugural poem, by Elizabeth Alexander. Here the crowd dropped within 30 seconds from about 15 to 3. Before commissioning a Harper’s piece on “Yet More Evidence of Republican Philistinism,” ask yourself — who with any experience of inaugural poetry could honestly blame them? And then ask yourself — why do we have to suffer through these? The answer is simple: because of Democrats.
In the 48 years since a wizened Robert Frost stepped to the microphone at John Kennedy’s inauguration, no Republican president has featured a poet at his inauguration. Anyone who sat through “Praise Song For the Day” on Tuesday has at least one reason to be thankful both for Republican rule and narrative efficiency. Democrats appear to have institutionalized the process. Carter didn’t feature a poet at his inauguration, yet had one at his inaugural gala (and is now writing the damn stuff). Clinton, naturally, offered poets at each inauguration, and now Obama brings us “Praise Song for the Day” (as if the chorus of Angels wasn’t loud enough already). And, Robert Frost aside, they all appear to have occasioned a lot of squirming in seats.
Sure, it’s true that every inaugural poet operates at an implicit disadvantage, what with the inevitable comparisons to Robert Frost. Frost’s case is sui generis — first because, no poet since could possibly match his stature (RIP Public Intellectuals), and, second, because he read a very fine poem that was… not composed for the occasion. Whatever else went through Frost’s head when writing blank, it clearly wasn’t a thrill about those dashing young men of the New Frontier. (Elton John took note of Frost-style repurposing and you should too.)
Yet I’d suggest the real reason that inaugural poems fail is not because they’re not written by Frost; it’s because they’re generally terrible. It’s difficult to find a better example of modish left earth-mother verse than Maya Angelou’s whirlwind tour of American history, from the Cenozoic era to the gay and the homeless, brimming over with condemnations of commerce along the way. Remember:
Additional inequities are not far away:
Letter to the Editor View all comments (47) | Leave a comment
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frost| 1.23.09 @ 7:45AM
I forget who said 'em, but I recall two quotes...
kinda appropriate after that idiodic exhibition the other day:
“Free-Verse,” that “poetry” which does not rhyme, doeth remind me of playing tennis without a net.
And:
The demise of a Great America? Methinks it may have all started some years ago when the hapless (but best-selling) “poet” Rod McKuen was the Howard Cosell of verse, during the dawn of Political Correctness…
Then, a third, one of several "written" by Haunani-Kay Trask (with an assist from the National Endowment for the Arts) follows:
I could kick your face
Puncture both your eyes
You deserve this kind of violence
***
Just a knife slitting your tight
Little heart
***
A fist in your painted
Mouth
***
A sworn Black promise
To shadow your footsteps
Until the hearse of violence
Comes to get you.
----------------------------further questions, anyone?
Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 8:34AM
good thing hispanics aren't as violent as, um, a Black promise, or we'd be done for.
Karsten Duncan| 1.23.09 @ 10:28AM
I think the idea of a poem at the inauguration isn't bad, it's just the actually poems that are bad. Kipling would probably provide something (I was tempted to quote one of his that seems apt, but then thought it might be tasteless).
ame| 1.23.09 @ 10:40AM
Inaugural poets except Frost offered inane pitter-patter garbage, not poetry. Angelou and Alexander epitomize is liberal collectivism educational philosophy that is destroying our students. Angelou and Alexander's poetry is the result of garbage in, garbage out. Fine Power Point skills, but no content. What makes me really angry as a former teacher of literature (I would not subscribe to the liberal philosophy of "good teachers HAVE students with good grades" and "education is a learning process that cannot be graded," is the degradation of poetry, the casting of it as pitter-patter sentimental trite inane collection of spittle. Amexander's poem reflects in perfect characterization the Obama Age - misplaced sentimental social engineering nope and dope Soros centered socialism in all its hollowness.
Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 12:12PM
and too much smut, for me at least.
but for TV viewers n rappers? not enough.
ncatty| 1.23.09 @ 1:19PM
But you liked the quartet didn't you?
Michele San Pietro| 1.23.09 @ 3:13PM
Intellectualoids? No, thank you.
frost| 1.23.09 @ 3:26PM
ame -- good post
frost| 1.23.09 @ 3:28PM
And, yes, I know you were talking about another Frost, not moi...
Everly Waverly| 1.23.09 @ 3:33PM
Oh, the thought of you makes my heart twitch-
Shakespeare
Just part of a little poem I learned in H.S., there's more, but I want to post---
It's a poem and does it make me smile and at times bend over in laughter.
I do believe that "The Professor Irwin Corey" recites gibberish that's more understandable and sensible than the poo flung at Presidential Inaugurations.
Crescent moon adorned doors open to the sustenance of the purveyors of slippery rhetoric, oh forget the sense of reality, it's warm in there. Waverly
Alan Brooks| 1.23.09 @ 10:14PM
just as well poets dont say anything, we dont want to know what gays are thinking 'Deep Down', do we?
ignorance isnt bliss, not reading bad literature is bliss.
Alan Brooks| 1.24.09 @ 10:30AM
... best poetry is the sort that doesn't give you the dry heaves.
frost| 1.24.09 @ 11:10AM
Thanks, everly -- quoting "The World's Foremost Authority" Irwin Corey -- who speals off Thanatopsis....
Biwick| 1.27.09 @ 9:05AM
I forget who wrote it (I've been trying for years to track down the poem and the name of the poet), but in an anthology of political-oriented science-fiction that he edited, Jerry Pournelle included, by way of a preface, a poem that repeatedly asked the question, "Give Money to the Government?" One part of the poem that I do remember is:
"Give money to the government?
Whatever for?
"Give money to the government?
They'd only start another war!"
When President Palin takes the oath of office, she can have that poem read. The intellectualoids already hate her as a philistine, so she might as well make them mad.
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The real reason that inaugural poems fail is not because they're not written by Frost; it's because they're generally terrible. I do agree with this!
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Anyone who sat through "Praise Song For the Day" on Tuesday has at least one reason to be thankful both for Republican rule and narrative efficiency.
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