[lit-ideas] Re: Inaugural Poetry
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:35:13 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Thu, 29/1/09, Paul Stone <pastone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Paul Stone <pastone@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Inaugural Poetry
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Thursday, 29 January, 2009, 2:24 AM
> >
> http://timothy-green.org/blog/2009/01/yes-we-can-by-marvin-bell/
> > How do you feel after reading this?
>
> I feel like I just read a really bad poem.
Paul is surely right. When I read at the bottom that the author had "served two
terms" I initially thought it might have been for crimes against literature. Or
as a senator. No, he was poet-laureate.
A general charge against this poem is that it is the US equivalent of the kind
of propaganda-poem we associate with totalitarian regimes. The second charge is
that, of course, even as agit-prop (which someone like Brecht can make into an
art-form) it is woeful - a shaming piece of sentimentalised twaddle, parading a
cliched notion of positivity that belongs in a self-help book not a poetry
anthology.
Let's take a closer look, shall we:-
"We are a people who began from a Yes,"
This opening line belongs in an advertising campaign for Microsoft or Apple.
Even Barrack (I guess) managed to avoid such empty sloganeering. Of course, the
author could be setting this up for all kinds of scrutiny, so that it is not to
be taken at face value. But no...
"A nation born of the yes in the farmland,
The yes engraved in the dirt and stone,
In the mines, in the sea, in the machines
That made girders that made cities,
In the big ideas that make us human,
In the yes that comes to every street"
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but while I've seen some pretty interesting
graffiti in some of these places, I bet no one on the list has seen a 'yes' in
any of them (Yoko Ono needed an art exhibition to get her 'Yes' shown, and
rightly so). Of course, we are at best talking here of some invisible 'yes' -
yet crassly meant to believe it is "engraved", even in "mines". It is also
apparently "engraved" in "the big ideas that make us human", which appparently
don't include avoiding offering up bad poetry
for public consumption. And indeed that it "comes to every street". When? Once
a year like Santa? And to what end?
"Where there endures a love of forebears"
Hopefully, since with the credit crunch you are probably back living with them.
"And a net for children when they fall,"
A net?! Where are these children - off the ground somewhere? Perhaps
trampolining? Perhaps in free-fall? Why hasn't anyone before thought of the
"net" as the protective device needed "for children when they fall"? Or perhaps
it is not a protective net but a punishment net? - "Look at you child, you've
fallen when you should be saying YES! NOW GET IN THE NET! I'll let you out when
I'm ready!"
"Where there was a yes to “Let’s try,”"
Now, is "yes" really better than "okay" here? Wouldn't you feel it a bit OTT?
Why not "yes, let's"? This at least reminds us of Enid Blyton and lots of other
childhood literature from Old Blighty.
"And a yes, we can do better, and a yes
That grew to enfold our largest America."
Come on. What is this "largest America"? A boast? It turns out it is the
prelude to this We-The-People litany..
"Yes to the high-rise ironworker, yes
To the diggers of tunnels and the pilots,"
Awful counterpointing of those sky-high and low-down people.
"Yes to those still on line, to the makers,
The builders, the haulers, the guardians,
To the teachers who had to make do.
It is the yes that sings, and lights up the dark.
It is the yes in the myriad colors of unity,
And in what it means to be a grownup."
I pause here to note that I actually think "gasoline rainbows" is quite good..
"In the gasoline rainbows by the curb"
Though "curb is mis-spelled imo.
"As the parent takes his child to school
And the parent takes her lunch bucket to work,"
KFC lunch bucket? That's a pretty poor role-model of a parent.
I'm feeling queasy myself. Must stop.
Donal
Somewhere over the gasoline rainbow
Have a nice day!
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