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Capitol Ideas
Poets Galore and Subsidized Poets
Anyone still remember Elizabeth Alexander's performance at the Obama inaugural?
AFTER BARACK OBAMA was sworn in, Elizabeth Alexander read her "Praise Song for the Day." I hesitate to call it a poem because it had so little connection to poetry as that art has been understood for centuries, indeed millennia. It was so dismal that the New York Times, in its 30-page special section the next day ("Full coverage of the inauguration of the 44th president"), failed to mention Alexander or print her poem. It had all the fizz of a week-old soda. No mention of it in the Washington Post either. What a decline there has been since Robert Frost's performance at Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
Alexander's turn at the podium reminded me of those dull recitations that Garrison Keillor sometimes allows on his radio program. His designated poets speak their lines in a deliberately unemphatic voice, as devoid of energy and enthusiasm as the lines themselves are of poetry. But the audience always delivers its dutiful round of applause. We have been brainwashed into thinking that it is our civic responsibility to admire anyone who comes before us as a poet.
Maybe the time has come for us to form our own judgments, and blow a raspberry or two when absolutely necessary?
I'm surprised that Keillor clutters up his program in this way. He has good taste in so many respects. He can hold your interest with any story he tells, and mockery of intellectual pretension is his stock in trade. Perhaps it has something to do with his running gag about English majors. Many modern poets are employed by EngLit departments so maybe they're all listening in to "A Prairie Home Companion" on Saturday night, waiting to see who gets Keillor's nod.
How did Ms. Alexander become Barack's pet poet? Political connections helped; political correctness was a given. Let's call her QuotaPoet and drop all mention of laureates from now on. Congress created a "poet laureate" position in 1986, but the whole notion of laurels is at cross-purposes with modern poetry.
Not that Alexander is the laureate, yet. She is the daughter of Clifford Alexander, Secretary of the Army under President Carter. Her mother teaches African American women's history at George Washington University. (Do they have men teaching men's history?) Alexander herself met Barack Obama at the University of Chicago. No surprise, she is a professor of African American Studies at Yale.
Ms. Alexander and her ilk dwell in the sheltered world of Poetry Corner, a subset of the Academy. It is awash in more fellowships, honors, awards, grants, subsidies, and prizes than you can imagine. And don't ask about the workshops. Joseph Epstein, in his great essay "Who Killed Poetry?" (Commentary, 1988), quotes Kingsley Amis as saying that everything that has gone wrong with the world since World War II can be summed up in the word "workshop." In London, years ago, I heard Bernard Levin say much the same thing.
Alexander's poem was criticized for not rising to the occasion, and of course it did not. Adam Kirsch in the New Republic called it "a perfect kind of bureaucratic verse." But he meant that as a back-handed compliment. The "praetorian pomp" of Obama's inauguration seemed "more redolent of Caesar than George Washington." So she brought everything down to earth.
Nonetheless, Kirsch added, "it was just the kind of event that might inspire genuine poetry." But didn't, obviously. The Times reported before the inauguration that Alexander was wondering how to start a piece that will "mark an occasion as historic, has a worldwide audience and will have an immediate impact."
Well, here is how she started it—her opening lines:
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
That could hardly be more wooden. A critic with the L.A Times further commented: "Each day we go about our business" was "a strange sentiment for an occasion that on so many levels was not about business as usual."
Spot on. But the more basic point is that today's academic poetry is not about celebrating occasions or celebrating anything. It has a different agenda. It wages an undeclared war against the whole idea of poetry as it has traditionally been understood. It's a lightweight steamroller that would like to flatten the monuments of the past. We can ignore it, but it's not up to any good.
ALEXANDER HAS SAID that "music is the point" of poetry, and "the way I dive in is through music and language itself." OK, but the problem is that her lines showed her ear to be in thrall to the anti-music of the modern. Consider this line. She is eulogizing the dead, who, among other things, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. work inside of. Imagine ending a line that way and daring to call it poetry. Imagine being so culturally secure and cushioned by privilege that you can present that as inaugural poetry without fear of embarrassment. The artistic career of Elizabeth Alexander suggests that the self-esteem campaign has gone on for long enough.
In the past, some of those inside the poetry citadel have responded to criticism by saying: "Oh, you just don't like modern poetry." Joseph Epstein had a good riposte, and he also identified the underlying problem, or one of them.
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
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frost| 3.3.09 @ 6:16AM
Un-huh, I recall myself shaking my head, almost giggling, that this weird exhibition should be a part of a presidential inauguration? Pathetic!
Aside from its other ingredients (or the lack thereof), there was one sage who said words to the effect that: "Poetry which doesn't rhyme is like playing tennis without a net." Even worse when loaded with Pabulum Puke crap...
Robbins Mitchell| 3.3.09 @ 7:08AM
You want real poetry?...I'll give you real poetry....I once heard a recording of British Poet Laureat John Masefield reciting his poem 'Sea Fever'....."I must go down to the sea again,to the lonely sea and the sky...and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.".....made me want to climb the rigging right then and there
Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:03AM
Elizabeth Alexander should have recited the poem, "The poet and the jackass."
Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:04AM
Elizabeth Alexander should have recited the poem, "The poet and the jackass."
Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:06AM
My apologies for the dbl. posting, bad fingers, bad fingers.
Wankel| 3.3.09 @ 8:26AM
Oh well, at least it was a step up from the mutterings of Maya Angelou. Then again, maybe not...
Trotter| 3.3.09 @ 9:16AM
I'm still laughing at Laura Ingraham's spoof of the Alexander "poem".
Seriously, how have we gotten to this point in our Nation's history that Angelou's and Alexander's works are deemed worthy of presidential inaugurations? Good grief, talk about dumbed-down. If Barry wins a 2nd term, it should simply play the clip of Eddie Murphy on SNL doing his "Landlord" poem. At least that made sense.
Gene Schmidt| 3.3.09 @ 9:23AM
The popularity of the singer/songwriters of the 1970s was, I think, a reaction to the underwhelming emtions that modern poetry aroused in most individuals. Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell may or may not have been creating significant art, but at the very least their lyrics addressed recognizably human concerns---love, family, place in society, etc. Modern poetry, in contrast, had simply become murky and incomprehensible during this time.
Appleby| 3.3.09 @ 9:31AM
Obama? Inauguration? When was that?
Oh, right, I took that day off from work, where they were fawning and fainting (and we are in Kanukistan, with our own government trembling on the edge of the abyss -- slated to collapse in 7 days) and after my charity stint in the morning, I took my computer into the shop for a tune-up, shut off all my electronics save the stereo, put on some new CDs containing love songs of the 1930s and 1940s, and spent the day reading a Dorothy Sayers mystery.
Oh, and as an English major, had I been paying attention to that farce, I would have read something from Matthew Arnold.
Or possibly "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff," with its trenchant couplet:
"Thus malt doth more than Milton can/to justify God's ways to man."
frost| 3.3.09 @ 9:37AM
The demise of a Great America?
I read somewhere that 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…
There again, perhaps it was Richard Bach and J. L. Seagull.
Or Barbara Hershey renaming herself Seagull...?
Anyway, am reminded that one bad poet's 'work' doesn't make sense, 'cept to another bad poet... or, as Michael Moorcock said: "The ideas of Byron and Shelley have probably caused more young men to lose their lives in hopeless, idiotic, romantic causes than the ideas of Karl Marx. Romanticism is the disease of the Modern Age."
Your witness...?
Mimi Evans Winship| 3.3.09 @ 9:39AM
As a versifier of conservative mien,
I know my readership is lean.
I don’t aspire to modern poetessness.
My goal is merely to repossess
Some modicum of whimsy, some tiny scrap of wit.
Am I a P.J. O’Roark of poesy, or perhaps a little bit
Of R. Emmett Tyrrell in rhyme serene,
Skewering the modern scene.
I flounder in a PC sea,
Determined to recapture poetry.
Mimi Evans Winship
whiterb| 3.3.09 @ 9:43AM
I wish somebody would ask Obama if he was inspired by the poem.
And if so why? Would somebody just ask basic questions please ?
whiterb| 3.3.09 @ 9:47AM
When I grow up and become president Mimi will be asked to give the inauguration poem.
frost| 3.3.09 @ 9:49AM
I check back to see if any new interesting inclusions may have been added/offered... and, lo-and-behold, already: Mimi, I love you. Great stuff.
Mike | 3.3.09 @ 11:05AM
Let me see if I have this right: the DOW sank below 7000 wiping out 50% of its former value, AIG posted the largest loss in U.S. corporate history, we still don't know if we are going to avoid going into a world wide depression and Mr. Bethell is worrying about a poem. You wonder why I consider AmSpec the right wing equivalent of Comedy Central?
Mike| 3.3.09 @ 12:15PM
What hideous drivel! Elizabeth Alexander is a poster child for the anti-affirmative action argument. When she finished the crowd had no idea the fat lady had sung, and it delayed its obligatory applause for several uncomfortable seconds. Pathetic.
Jim| 3.3.09 @ 3:08PM
None of us wonder Mike and quite honestly do not care. Mi Grandiose Amigo
Why, I wonder, would one find a diversion, respite if you will, from the daily mantra of "the sky is falling," bothersome.
Ben| 3.3.09 @ 3:24PM
I taped the inauguration ceremony as a matter of historical significance. During the reading, there is a kid sitting near Mrs. Obama. The look on his face is classic. It was the same as mine was. It said "huh?"
Mack Hall| 3.3.09 @ 5:32PM
Yes, I worry about a poem. Humans live because of economic activity, but not FOR human activity. We life for truth and beauty. Keats shows us beauty; government-approved poets show us drivel.
Niel Rosenthalis| 3.4.09 @ 1:14AM
As a current college student (english and spanish double major, creative writing minor), and as a writer of poetry, I'm concerned with this article's claims. Part of me wants to agree with the skepticism of this article. I mean--this inaugural poem WAS really pathetic. A huge letdown, especially since it was an opportunity to show poetry to a huge audience, get them interested in poetry. And that's what the poetry community gives the country as a good example of poetry? The head of the Poetry Foundation (bless them) called the selection of Alexander "perfect."
I'm in a poetry workshop class now--should I not be? I'm refusing to not publish; in order to not be cynical about writing, you must be cynical about publishing (to paraphrase Alan Shapiro). And I'm working on learning the tools of the trade, so to speak. I'm trying to become a meaningful poet--well, I'm trying to be the best I can be. I completely agree that there is a lot of crap floating around that passes for good poetry. That it passes for poetry makes me quite nervous about the future of poetry. And if given the same opportunities, would Eliot and Frost have applied for all these grants and fellowships (et cetera)? Or would they have stuck to their day jobs?
Thank you for writing this article, though I wish I could come away from it with a clearer sense of what to do about the problem. I guess I'll just keep reading the masters (Keats, Bishop, Plath, Eliot, Frost, maybe Rich) and learning all I can from them.
I hope this ship rights itself again.
Hammer of the Dogs| 3.4.09 @ 10:31AM
There was once a young man from chicagya,
who wanted the US to be just like Kenya,
Where we live in mud huts, eating berries and nuts,
and use cowchips to warm our rear endsya.
irv| 3.5.09 @ 7:07PM
I recently read a book of personal letters written by Raymond Chandler. He complained in the early fifties that critics couldn't tell quality, they just liked whatever was about the correct subjects. It could have been written today.
Chandler was not a very good poet but having had the benefit of a classical education, he knew it.
Alan Brooks| 3.11.09 @ 3:13PM
then why come here Mikey boy, if you want SERIOUS doom and gloom? what's wrong with a poem now and then?
don't stay up at night worrying about AIG, the 50 percent losses, or the possible depression--
you need your beauty sleep.
Bill Boyd| 3.22.09 @ 12:15PM
I was a fiction writer in a writer's workshop back in the 70's. The poetry side of the shop was where the real competition lay. Those who failed to get into the poetry workshop but who did gain admission to the English graduate program were especially suspicious of the accomplishments of those who had supposedly made the poetical grade. Among all those struggling poets, I can recall only one who really stood out. As for me, I have yet to produce even the mediocre American novel, much less the great one. My unfinished latest attempt sits in a memory card on my Pocket PC, and all I regularly produce are emails which occasionally inspire criticism from my boss for being too sarcastic and or praise from a co-workers for an insightful turn of phrase regarding some controversy in the IT department.
gfhfgh| 12.2.09 @ 1:44AM
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