So, it’s Memorial Day next Monday, May 31, and in my quest to find the poetry in everything, I started thinking about the relation between poetic dialogue and remembering the American war dead.
Yeah, I know, too much time on my hands.
Anyway, since it’s pretty much a truism that everything has had poetry written about it, it seemed at first blush like a simple task: find good poetry dedicated to Memorial Day. As it turns out, “good” is the key word in that sentence.
Because while there are reams of poems about dead soldiers – no I mean thousands, hundreds of thousands, likely more poems about fallen soldiers than actual fallen soldiers – it turns out that painfully few are actually worthy of the sacrifice those soldiers made.
Before we get into the pitiful details, a history lesson. Memorial Day is really a holiday custom made for poetry. Early incarnations of Memorial Day centered around post-civil war Decoration Day, honoring Union dead. The name was changed in the 1880s to Memorial Day to make it more palatable to the South, but it didn’t become common until after World War II. In fact, despite that fact that it seems like Memorial Day has been around forever, it was only in 1967 that it became official.
I put the call out to two friends steeped in poetic language and university and asked them if they could unearth some Memorial Day poetry worthy of mention. From one, I got a simple message, nothing that wasn’t over-the-top or depressing. The other, a professor in Michigan, reminded me of a whole host of early American memorial poetry. Whitman in particular wrote eloquently about the Civil War, most famously in “O Captain! My Captain.” Melville wrote some decent lines and Robert Lowell.
But the vast majority of Memorial Day poetry sounds like this, from William Henry Clay Dodson:
“And in this sunny land of ours, / Now sleeping side by side, / The Union Blue and Southern Gray / Lie buried side by side.”
Here’s another verse from “Freedom Is Not Free” by Kelly Strong:
“I heard the sound of taps one night, / When everything was still / I listened to the bugler play / And felt a sudden chill.”
It’s as we need simplistic patriotism to lessen the terrible cost of celebrating such terrible things: not the sacrifice of soldiers but the fact that they had to be sacrificed at all. Those early poets came straight at the cost of war, the honor of the dead and gallantry of the sacrifice. Now, it’s just crass platitudes and blind flag waving.
Evoking 911 is a cheap substitute for actual dedication.
But maybe that’s just the nature of poetry in relation to our modern Memorial Day – you know the weekend that starts summer, which the Indy 500 is run over, that used cars and mattresses are sold. Ugh. Maybe we deserve the poetry we get. The soldiers who died so that we could celebrate this day, however, certainly deserve better.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
On Purpose, Nick Laird, Norton, 2010, 65 pages
In “Hunting is a Hole Occupation” the Irish poet offers a flurry of images from squatting toads to being beaten in the forest and finishes his machine gun diatribe with, “I’ve come alone and naked, aching / liking my hands after eating, waiting / to learn if God exists, I hate him.” Read that out loud and listen to the matching of aching and waiting. It’s perfect timing.
Most of this slim volume works at that level with short, powerful punched that the reader rarely see coming. Sometimes, it backfires, but mostly the punches land.
B+
Friday, May 21, 2010
In defence of the worst poem ever written
It’s the Plan Nine From Outer Space of the poetry world. Remember that Monty Python sketch about a joke so funny it could never be told for fear of harming the listener? This poem is like that.
It’s a poem (and a poet) that few actually know, but nearly everyone has heard some variation, some parody or song or take on it.
It’s Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”, and I’m here to tell you that it is the worst poem ever written. But that doesn’t mean Kilmer was the worst poet. Nor does it mean we should forget it. In fact, it’s important to remember.
First, it’s not just me saying it’s the worst. It really is the worst. It is held up in popular culture and academia as the most over sentimental, most archaic, most painfully traditional English poem ever written. I know you have heard this poem. Here’s the first lines:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast
There is so much wrong with this poem’s imagery, its meter and its personification of earth’s breast feeding the tree its life. Kilmer concludes that “Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.” The poem was a giant hit in when it was first published in 1914. Kilmer gained instant fame and notoriety. The criticism also began almost immediately, with other poets like Ogden Nash penning parodies. Everyone from Our Gang to Victor Borge to Walt Disney got in the act. The poem was set to song, put in musicals and repeated in universities as the example of what a good poem should not be.
And what did Mr. Kilmer have to say about all this? Not much. He was killed by a sniper in the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.
Of course, there’s a point to all this. I lived in New Jersey for a while. (Come on, it wasn’t that bad!) If you spend more than 20 minutes in New Jersey you are likely to wonder just who the hell this Kilmer guy is. Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in Jersey. There’s a museum there, his birth house, a bunch of schools named after him and some buildings on Rutgers University. Most importantly, there is a Rest Stop along the Jersey Turnpike named in his honor. In New Jersey, that’s the equivalent of being crowded king in most eastern European countries.
But that’s not all. He has a park and a square in Brooklyn, a memorial in St. Paul, an intersection in Chicago, and a Memorial Forest in North Carolina.
He also has an annual Bad Poetry contest named after him at Columbia University.
Ed Wood does not have any intersections named after him.
So, how does the worst poet ever (or eveh for you Jersey readers) get such respect, not to mention naming rights? There’s a few reasons for this. First, Kilmer isn’t defined by that one poem. He was a powerful literary critic and lecturer. He was a brilliant journalist. In fact, it’s one of the reasons he died. He went to France to write about the war. Had he not died, he may have had the time to overshadow that one poem.
Second, he was also a deeply faithful man. At the time, he was known as the poet laureate of the Catholic Church. I’m not saying faith makes you a better poet. But maybe, sometimes, it’s not that bad just being a sentimentalist. Like his poem or not, Kilmer was earnest, he wrote what he felt.
Finally and here’s the real point, there was a time when it was ok to be a poet. The guy was a soldier. His oratory skills were compared to G.K. Chesterton. In other words he was no pantywaist, and yet, he wrote the most simplistic, overwrought poem of all time. And they still named a Rest Stop after him.
It’s a poem (and a poet) that few actually know, but nearly everyone has heard some variation, some parody or song or take on it.
It’s Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”, and I’m here to tell you that it is the worst poem ever written. But that doesn’t mean Kilmer was the worst poet. Nor does it mean we should forget it. In fact, it’s important to remember.
First, it’s not just me saying it’s the worst. It really is the worst. It is held up in popular culture and academia as the most over sentimental, most archaic, most painfully traditional English poem ever written. I know you have heard this poem. Here’s the first lines:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast
There is so much wrong with this poem’s imagery, its meter and its personification of earth’s breast feeding the tree its life. Kilmer concludes that “Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.” The poem was a giant hit in when it was first published in 1914. Kilmer gained instant fame and notoriety. The criticism also began almost immediately, with other poets like Ogden Nash penning parodies. Everyone from Our Gang to Victor Borge to Walt Disney got in the act. The poem was set to song, put in musicals and repeated in universities as the example of what a good poem should not be.
And what did Mr. Kilmer have to say about all this? Not much. He was killed by a sniper in the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.
Of course, there’s a point to all this. I lived in New Jersey for a while. (Come on, it wasn’t that bad!) If you spend more than 20 minutes in New Jersey you are likely to wonder just who the hell this Kilmer guy is. Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in Jersey. There’s a museum there, his birth house, a bunch of schools named after him and some buildings on Rutgers University. Most importantly, there is a Rest Stop along the Jersey Turnpike named in his honor. In New Jersey, that’s the equivalent of being crowded king in most eastern European countries.
But that’s not all. He has a park and a square in Brooklyn, a memorial in St. Paul, an intersection in Chicago, and a Memorial Forest in North Carolina.
He also has an annual Bad Poetry contest named after him at Columbia University.
Ed Wood does not have any intersections named after him.
So, how does the worst poet ever (or eveh for you Jersey readers) get such respect, not to mention naming rights? There’s a few reasons for this. First, Kilmer isn’t defined by that one poem. He was a powerful literary critic and lecturer. He was a brilliant journalist. In fact, it’s one of the reasons he died. He went to France to write about the war. Had he not died, he may have had the time to overshadow that one poem.
Second, he was also a deeply faithful man. At the time, he was known as the poet laureate of the Catholic Church. I’m not saying faith makes you a better poet. But maybe, sometimes, it’s not that bad just being a sentimentalist. Like his poem or not, Kilmer was earnest, he wrote what he felt.
Finally and here’s the real point, there was a time when it was ok to be a poet. The guy was a soldier. His oratory skills were compared to G.K. Chesterton. In other words he was no pantywaist, and yet, he wrote the most simplistic, overwrought poem of all time. And they still named a Rest Stop after him.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs, by Ron Koertge, Candlewick Press, 2010, 170 pages
Here’s the conceit; teenage Kevin Boland like baseball, poetry and his girlfriend Mira. Then he meets Amy at a poetry reading and likes her to. What’s a tween to do? Why write in his story in his poetry notebook of course in a series of sonnets, prose and quatrains.
And just like the first book in the series, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, Ron Koertge makes it work. A little cheesy, sure, but it’s nice to find a smart young adult book that isn’t about vampires or wizards. Koertge’s story is direct, his protagonist appears realistic, and for a teenager who likes poetry, Kevin Boland is decent role model. There’s also emails between teachers and Kevin to move the story and provide some poetry lessons.
If you’re looking for a way to get your sports obsessed kid into poetry, this may be it.
B+
And just like the first book in the series, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, Ron Koertge makes it work. A little cheesy, sure, but it’s nice to find a smart young adult book that isn’t about vampires or wizards. Koertge’s story is direct, his protagonist appears realistic, and for a teenager who likes poetry, Kevin Boland is decent role model. There’s also emails between teachers and Kevin to move the story and provide some poetry lessons.
If you’re looking for a way to get your sports obsessed kid into poetry, this may be it.
B+
The Waiting Room Reader, by the editors of CavanKerry Press, 2010, 87 pages
I like CavenKerry Press. I review their books often, because they know poetry, they respect it and they are one of the few publishers printing and promoting new poets’ works. I generally stay away from compilations, however. It’s too risky to take a stand on most compilations given the typical wide variety of styles, themes and poets. Usually there’s something for everyone, and something everyone will dislike as well.
That’s true of The Waiting Room Reader, but I decided to mention it because it comes from a press doing good work, and I’m a sucker for CavenKerry.
This is really a collection of CavenKerry poets disguised behind the conceit, literally, of a waiting room collection. We spend a lot of time sitting around hospital and doctors’ waiting rooms. So, instead of reading bad, outdated magazines, why not browse through a collection of, generally, uplifting poems of all different styles and forms. There’s no overriding theme, just a bunch of poems divided into categories like Food and Home and Daughters and Sons. Some of it’s good, some is not, but the presentation is pleasant and the idea is sound.
It’s all part of CavenKerry’s GiftBooks outreach program and copies of The Waiting Room Reader are given out to underfunded hospitals. You can buy one as well, and you should if you are interested in a decent cause. If not, at least ask your doctor to stock it instead of US magazine.
Unrated but A for idea
That’s true of The Waiting Room Reader, but I decided to mention it because it comes from a press doing good work, and I’m a sucker for CavenKerry.
This is really a collection of CavenKerry poets disguised behind the conceit, literally, of a waiting room collection. We spend a lot of time sitting around hospital and doctors’ waiting rooms. So, instead of reading bad, outdated magazines, why not browse through a collection of, generally, uplifting poems of all different styles and forms. There’s no overriding theme, just a bunch of poems divided into categories like Food and Home and Daughters and Sons. Some of it’s good, some is not, but the presentation is pleasant and the idea is sound.
It’s all part of CavenKerry’s GiftBooks outreach program and copies of The Waiting Room Reader are given out to underfunded hospitals. You can buy one as well, and you should if you are interested in a decent cause. If not, at least ask your doctor to stock it instead of US magazine.
Unrated but A for idea
The Superbowl of Slam and other musings
I’ve been hard on the slammers, I know. And while I don’t feel particularly bad about it, our local performance poets deserve a shout out for their hard work last Friday at the Bridge Café in Manchester. The New Hampshire team, named Slam Free of Die, will be one of 7 teams throughout New England heading to St. Paul in August for the National Poetry Slam.
The HippoPress's readers’ third favorite poet in the state, Mark Palos, aka The Colonel, will be coaching the five-slammer team and I’ll let him describe the atmosphere at the Bridge as the competitors vied for the five spots:
“As far as how finals went, it was one of the closest bouts I've ever seen. You could not have predicted who was going to make the team at any point. There were a couple of people who took a strong lead at the beginning and then fell back to eventually not make the team at all and two people got terrible scores in the opening round and then had huge come-from-behind recoveries to end up making the team. Very exciting. The judges were consistent (which is good) but also consistently gave low scores (which makes a loss all the tougher for those that didn't make the team). The spread between all the people who ultimately made the team was mere tenths of a point. This was one of the most blood-and-guts slams I've ever seen. Every poet had to work incredibly hard for every point. In the end, we also had to have a tie-breaker for 6th place, which is the alternate spot (since we are probably actually going to need to utilize the alternate and we didn't want the two people who were tied to have a tie-breaker later with a different panel of judges, that would not be fair). All-around, it was an edge-of-your-seat night from beginning to end. Everyone brought their very best work and the poetry as well as the performances were all top-notch.”
I like Mark Palos. I like that he came in third in the voting of state’s best poet behind Robert Frost and Donald Hall. He competed in the national competition in 2008 and 2009, and I like that he has friends on his Facebook page named Damage Manch-Vegas, and Jazzman Lewis and Laura Yes Yes. It’s all very exciting and creative.
So, kudos to the new team. You can check out updates on their Facebook page, Bridge Poetry, and once The Colonel works out the details, we’ll feature some of the winners in this column and see if their work is as interesting as their names.
In other reward-driven poetry news, the Library of Congress just this week announced that nominations are open for the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize. I know what you’re thinking, who the heck is that? She was LBJ’s daughter, and she liked poetry and she worked at the Library of Congress and blah, blah, blah... who cares. The point is that every two years the library gives $10,000 to an American poet for the best book published in the last two years.
Sounds great right? Well, the nominations have to come from publishers. That’s a ton of money for poets, and it seems a little disingenuous to put those choices in the hands of the publishers who will likely use the notoriety of the award as a way to push an author they want to sell more books. Asking a publisher to nominate the best book is like asking a dad to nominate a favorite child. What do you think the odds are that the dad is going to pick somebody else’s kid? Seems a bit obvious.
On the other, any reward is a good reward to a poet.
The HippoPress's readers’ third favorite poet in the state, Mark Palos, aka The Colonel, will be coaching the five-slammer team and I’ll let him describe the atmosphere at the Bridge as the competitors vied for the five spots:
“As far as how finals went, it was one of the closest bouts I've ever seen. You could not have predicted who was going to make the team at any point. There were a couple of people who took a strong lead at the beginning and then fell back to eventually not make the team at all and two people got terrible scores in the opening round and then had huge come-from-behind recoveries to end up making the team. Very exciting. The judges were consistent (which is good) but also consistently gave low scores (which makes a loss all the tougher for those that didn't make the team). The spread between all the people who ultimately made the team was mere tenths of a point. This was one of the most blood-and-guts slams I've ever seen. Every poet had to work incredibly hard for every point. In the end, we also had to have a tie-breaker for 6th place, which is the alternate spot (since we are probably actually going to need to utilize the alternate and we didn't want the two people who were tied to have a tie-breaker later with a different panel of judges, that would not be fair). All-around, it was an edge-of-your-seat night from beginning to end. Everyone brought their very best work and the poetry as well as the performances were all top-notch.”
I like Mark Palos. I like that he came in third in the voting of state’s best poet behind Robert Frost and Donald Hall. He competed in the national competition in 2008 and 2009, and I like that he has friends on his Facebook page named Damage Manch-Vegas, and Jazzman Lewis and Laura Yes Yes. It’s all very exciting and creative.
So, kudos to the new team. You can check out updates on their Facebook page, Bridge Poetry, and once The Colonel works out the details, we’ll feature some of the winners in this column and see if their work is as interesting as their names.
In other reward-driven poetry news, the Library of Congress just this week announced that nominations are open for the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize. I know what you’re thinking, who the heck is that? She was LBJ’s daughter, and she liked poetry and she worked at the Library of Congress and blah, blah, blah... who cares. The point is that every two years the library gives $10,000 to an American poet for the best book published in the last two years.
Sounds great right? Well, the nominations have to come from publishers. That’s a ton of money for poets, and it seems a little disingenuous to put those choices in the hands of the publishers who will likely use the notoriety of the award as a way to push an author they want to sell more books. Asking a publisher to nominate the best book is like asking a dad to nominate a favorite child. What do you think the odds are that the dad is going to pick somebody else’s kid? Seems a bit obvious.
On the other, any reward is a good reward to a poet.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Happy birthday Mr. Corwin
Ever heard of Norman Corwin? Me either, though I feel foolish for not. Mr. Corwin celebrated his 100th birthday Monday. There were a few stories here and there – NPR mostly, as it turns out Corwin did series of radio plays for NPR when he was a mere youngster in his 80s.
Norma Corwin is a name pretty well lost in the annals of time now, which is a shame I guess. I mean just a quick Google search lists his Academy Award, Peabody Medals, Golden Globes and Emmys. He is an inductee into the Radio Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and that’s where he fits into this column.
When it comes to the Golden Age of Radio, Corwin is a peer to Orson Wells. He was an inspiration to Rod Sterling and Norman Leer. His nickname is the “Poet Laureate of Radio.”
He is most famous, in fact, for a poem. The 65th anniversary of the broadcast of “On a Note of Triumph” is Saturday. That single broadcast, which celebrated the Allied victory in Europe on VE Day was broadcast to 60 million people. Guys like Studs Terkel and Carl Sandburg heard it. Sandberg called it the most important radio broadcast ever.
Folks from that generation can quote whole verses. It brought people to tears. It made them proud to be an American. It helped them remember the terrible toll of World War II. It did everything a poem, and a poet, is supposed to do – it created a moment of collective consciousness, when regular people from New York City to New Mexico came together in a moment frozen forever in time.
It is also a dreadful poem. The verbiage is overwrought. The lofty patriotic verses literally smother the grandiose metaphors. Here’s a typical verse:
Lord God of trajectory and blast
Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.
So it got me thinking about the lesson for today. And that is, what is eternal art anyway? This poem, so important then, is barely remembered today. It’s no longer a poem, it’s history; a literary footnote. (To be fair to Corwin, his body of work is deep, complex and worth study.)
Yet Whitman’s Leaves of Grass for example, also deeply American, also overwhelmingly popular, also able to move readers to emotional depths, is considered one of the classics, a poem among poems. High art.
I'll tell you why with an example. A few years ago, at the start of the Iraq war, a collection of anti-war poetry was released, and many modern poets contributed. I forget the title right now, but it’s no matter. The poems were forgettable. Why? Because poetry is not supposed to address you directly – it is not supposed to look you in the eye and stare you down.
Oh you’ll remember it for a while if it does, just as people remembered “On a Note of Triumph” for many years after. But a word of advice to all you “anti” and “pro” poets out there – anti-war, anti-government, pro-America, pro-religion.
Poetry should circle around. Poetry should be seen out of the corner of the readers’ eye. A poem should sink in, not shout out. It should be worn like an old hat, not saluted like a crisp flag. It should be about something, and about everything, and about anything.
Years after you read a good poem, you may be sitting at a traffic light, eating at a restaurant, playing catch with your kid, when you remember. NPR should not have to remind you.
Norma Corwin is a name pretty well lost in the annals of time now, which is a shame I guess. I mean just a quick Google search lists his Academy Award, Peabody Medals, Golden Globes and Emmys. He is an inductee into the Radio Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and that’s where he fits into this column.
When it comes to the Golden Age of Radio, Corwin is a peer to Orson Wells. He was an inspiration to Rod Sterling and Norman Leer. His nickname is the “Poet Laureate of Radio.”
He is most famous, in fact, for a poem. The 65th anniversary of the broadcast of “On a Note of Triumph” is Saturday. That single broadcast, which celebrated the Allied victory in Europe on VE Day was broadcast to 60 million people. Guys like Studs Terkel and Carl Sandburg heard it. Sandberg called it the most important radio broadcast ever.
Folks from that generation can quote whole verses. It brought people to tears. It made them proud to be an American. It helped them remember the terrible toll of World War II. It did everything a poem, and a poet, is supposed to do – it created a moment of collective consciousness, when regular people from New York City to New Mexico came together in a moment frozen forever in time.
It is also a dreadful poem. The verbiage is overwrought. The lofty patriotic verses literally smother the grandiose metaphors. Here’s a typical verse:
Lord God of trajectory and blast
Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.
So it got me thinking about the lesson for today. And that is, what is eternal art anyway? This poem, so important then, is barely remembered today. It’s no longer a poem, it’s history; a literary footnote. (To be fair to Corwin, his body of work is deep, complex and worth study.)
Yet Whitman’s Leaves of Grass for example, also deeply American, also overwhelmingly popular, also able to move readers to emotional depths, is considered one of the classics, a poem among poems. High art.
I'll tell you why with an example. A few years ago, at the start of the Iraq war, a collection of anti-war poetry was released, and many modern poets contributed. I forget the title right now, but it’s no matter. The poems were forgettable. Why? Because poetry is not supposed to address you directly – it is not supposed to look you in the eye and stare you down.
Oh you’ll remember it for a while if it does, just as people remembered “On a Note of Triumph” for many years after. But a word of advice to all you “anti” and “pro” poets out there – anti-war, anti-government, pro-America, pro-religion.
Poetry should circle around. Poetry should be seen out of the corner of the readers’ eye. A poem should sink in, not shout out. It should be worn like an old hat, not saluted like a crisp flag. It should be about something, and about everything, and about anything.
Years after you read a good poem, you may be sitting at a traffic light, eating at a restaurant, playing catch with your kid, when you remember. NPR should not have to remind you.
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