[lit-ideas] Re: Inaugural Poetry
- From: Paul Stone <pastone@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:03:54 -0500
Donal: 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.
As I read it, I could almost picture an agitated speaker with a
handkerchief wiping his sweating brow after each "yes" and breathing
the deep-intake of a Southern Evangelical "da-uuuuuuunh", much like a
squeak on a poorly played gut-string guitar between notes. Oh, the
[dis]harmonics that are produced! This poem stinks. Shouldn't the
poet-laureate of Iowa (huh?) be talking of corn and the crop yield? or
maybe the flooding in Ames last year? or the ice storm in early Jan of
'98 (I drove through that, and believe me, a nice poem would have
helped me as I saw the dozens of cars in the ditch while I gripped my
steering wheel tightly). In case anyone gets the wrong idea, YES, I am
trashing, YES, the idea that, YES, a poet-laureate of an individual
state is a necessity... YES!
paul
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