“Shut Up and Rhyme”
[Guest post by DRJ]
Driver at Amused Cynic finds political and poetry gold from James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal “Taste” Section:
“Heather and I sat down near the back of the small hall, and things soon took what I feared was a disastrous turn. The mistress of ceremonies, poet Daniela Gioseffi, opened the proceedings with a vulgar rant about Beltway politics — specifically, her glee over the “fall” of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, then the Republican congressional leaders. (Rep. DeLay had just been indicted, and Sen. Frist was under investigation for insider trading.)
It was then that I said I came to hear poetry, not politics — although according to a contemporaneous account I emailed to a friend, I said it in a mutter rather than a shout. Evidently I muttered loudly enough to get Ms. Gioseffi’s attention, because she replied, expressing incredulity that not everyone at the Bowery Poetry Club would share the same political outlook. I believe I repeated that I came for poetry and not politics — possibly shouting, as Ms. Bauer reported. Ms. Gioseffi said, “You can’t be politically disengaged and be human.”
At this point I definitely shouted: “Oh, so people who disagree with you aren’t human?” She answered that this was neither the time nor the place for such contention. “I agree,” I said. If only she had thought of that before opening her mouth.
***
At the reception after the reading, Heather wisely tried to steer us clear of Ms. Gioseffi, but this proved impossible. The peremptory poet confronted me and demanded: “Are you the man who was laughing rudely while I was talking?”
“I’m the man you said was subhuman.”
“There has never been a Republican in here before,” she informed me. It seems I had broken a barrier.”
There’s more on this at the Amused Cynic link (here) and the WSJ link (here).
Washington DC politics sounds tame compared to its poetry.
— DRJ
OK, just for fun: name 10 good poets actually worth reading. I’ll start:
1. Kipling.
[hint, Robbie Burns is still available, guys; move fast!]
ras (fc54bb) — 1/25/2008 @ 8:58 pmThat was hilarious. That incident sounds like me and my wife. She is always tugging at my arm trying to tell me to just keep my mouth shut when someone pops off on a political rant and subjects everyone to their irrelevant and unwanted political opinions. Sometimes I do.
Brett King (1b40e1) — 1/25/2008 @ 9:05 pmIf you refrain even occasionally, my girlfriend would love to be your girlfriend. 😎 I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when other people start ranting about subjects of which they know nothing. (I should be the only one allowed to ramble on endlessly. Isn’t that in the BOR or the Constitution or something?)
Jay Curtis (8f6541) — 1/25/2008 @ 9:26 pmThe secret to being a successful jerk is picking your victim carefully. If I had been Ms. Gioseffi, I would have responded to Taranto’s “I came to hear poetry, not politics” with, “The door you came in from opens from both sides, asshole”.
nk (eeb240) — 1/26/2008 @ 1:09 amWhat’s almost worse is when people put their politics *into* their poetry which is not only despicable but leads to pretty bad “poetry” (cf. Toni Morrison).
OK, just for fun: name 10 good poets actually worth reading.
Whaaa? Only ten? Nuh uh. In addition to all the standard Dead White Males (you all know who they are) there’s also Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. Special mentions just for funkiness are Gerard Manley Hopkins and e.e. cummings.
Conspicuously OFF the list are Allen Ginsberg and Toni Morrison, but honorable mention goes to Philip Levine just for his awesome poem “To a Child Trapped in a Barbershop”
Wish I could teach a class on poetry on a liberal campus. That’d be fun. I’d call it: “The (Mostly) Dead White Male Express.”
On second thought, that title looks like a Princess Bride riff, doesn’t it? Hmm…
no one you know (1ebbb1) — 1/26/2008 @ 7:26 amI like this one. Language warning but it should have special resonance with gun nuts.
nk (eeb240) — 1/26/2008 @ 7:41 amAlso just for fun, a great parody of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”.
no one you know (1ebbb1) — 1/26/2008 @ 7:46 amRoses are red
Jim Treacher (592cb4) — 1/26/2008 @ 7:47 amViolets are blue
I could use the door
Then again, so could you
And speaking of parodies, nk, that was a pretty funny one.
no one you know (1ebbb1) — 1/26/2008 @ 7:49 amAs a Spanish Prof I have to toss in:
Dr T (340565) — 1/26/2008 @ 8:33 amNeruda (especially his early pre-commie stuff)
Gabriela Mistral
Garcilaso de la Vega
and
Lorca
people still write poetry? more surprising, people still go to listen to it.
gabriel (180095) — 1/26/2008 @ 9:07 amGen. Farrell’s parody of “Naming of Parts” (#6) really was quite good. Did you all happen to catch his C.V. at the end? It’s beyond extraordinary, and worth filing away for the next time someone says the military is where the undereducated are exploited. Not mentioned in the resume is that at least part of Gen. (then Sgt.) Farrell’s service in Vietnam with the 5th SFG (Abn.) was as a MACV-SOG recon man—the small teams that monitored the Ho Chi Minh Trail across the border.
It’s fun to imagine a meeting between the two poets….Gioseffi and Farrell.
driver (faae10) — 1/26/2008 @ 9:46 amRupert Brooke:
Peace 1914
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
He could have written this just after 9/11.
Or
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
This wouldn’t pass in the PC world of poetry today.
Michael (f6d161) — 1/26/2008 @ 9:57 amOK, just for fun: name 10 good poets actually worth reading. I’ll start . . .
That guy from Nantucket.
tired (15a966) — 1/26/2008 @ 10:22 amAnother difference between the left and the right – when the left calls the right “subhuman,” we can laugh about it.
I was an English Lit/History double major.
After a couple of years, it wasn’t as funny.
Oddly enough given my background, I can’t think of a lot of poets to refer to. I tended to prefer poets that excited the imagination to flights of fancy (Shelley, Byron, Milton) than the classical standards of judging poetry.
Also poetry from ancient cultures (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) for the same reason.
Merovign (4744a2) — 1/26/2008 @ 11:18 amOn the favorite poets list, I like Jim Treacher.
DRJ (517d26) — 1/26/2008 @ 11:22 amObviously Ms. Gioseffi, an insipidly self-centered woman whose self-promotion is embarrassing, is yet another contributer to the bad rep of American poetry.
‘”OK, just for fun: name 10 good poets actually worth reading. I’ll start . . .
That guy from Nantucket.’
Heh.
Dana (dbafed) — 1/26/2008 @ 11:35 amIt’s a girl from Nantucket
The guy is a hermit named Dave
nk (eeb240) — 1/26/2008 @ 2:21 pmThere was once a man named Billy,
nk (eeb240) — 1/26/2008 @ 2:32 pmWho thought all the fuss was just silly.
He said, “Everyone rants,
Because I took it out of my pants.
But biblically, I was faithful to Hilly”.
The girl from Nantucket had a penis so long she could suck it?
Jim Treacher (592cb4) — 1/26/2008 @ 4:30 pmDifferent Natucket joke. There are a lot of them, apparently.
Merovign (4744a2) — 1/26/2008 @ 5:10 pmWinters in Nantucket must be very boring.
Another Drew (8018ee) — 1/26/2008 @ 5:22 pmThe girl from Nantucket had a penis so long she could suck it?
If she was reasonably pretty,
nk (eeb240) — 1/26/2008 @ 5:49 pmAs many as she wanted.