Auntie's Anti-Poems

[Hawkman]

What a wonderful rant! But I have to wonder at the loss of gratuitous artistry... Let me take an engineering analogy. When Bazelgette built the great steam powered pump houses to expel the effluvia of London's population, he created great baroque palaces in cast iron and gleaming brass. For the age in which he lived, time and labour were much, much cheeper. Go a little further back and great artists required patrons to support and finance their imaginations. Further back still, there was slavery, be it the villain craftsman in thrall to a fudal overlord or some poor sod grafting for the Ceasars. Even education is an expensive luxury, so few from the proletariate are now able to appreciate the mysteries of language and the sage like bards who plied their art in letters. Everything is colloquial and couched for the lowest common denominator to ensure a fast turn around and a quick buck. Erudition is a dirty word because, counter-intuitively, it hinders communication with a general public who don't understand the words! Hey, Ho! I blame Hemingway and LBJ!

[deryk]

Very well said, but why LBJ (I have my reasons, but I'm wondering what yours are)? I'm curious.

Edit: Never mind, his victimizing proceeded himself well enough.

[PrinceMyshkin]

An extraordinary rant but a rant all the same, thinly disguised as poetry when it would do better as a reasoned essay, where the strong points you make might not need to be made so artfully.

[Bar22do]

Hawk is right, one can't be erudite and communicate these days... and one has to be erudite to get all your poem's references (well, except Pygmalion and da Vinci Code and perhaps Voltaire... ); otherwise - what a rant indeed (I went on too long an apnea while listening to what N was ranting on about!) oh, Auntie!...
I've only just surfaced, fascinated and speechless. What an effective poem, if you care to judge from my reaction...
Warmest regards as always,
Bar

[AuntShecky]

I was hoping somebody would catch that the piece was about one of only three famous Americans named Dwight--
the first, nicknamed "Ike," a distinguished WWII generaland former President of the U. S. of A, the second, nicknamed "Doc," a phenomenally brilliant pitcher on the baseball mound and plagued by (in my opinion) a tragic personal life, and the third is Dwight MacDonald, noted leftist ("individualistic anarchist"), film critic, editor,
and most notably writers of cultural essays, the most influential of which is "Masscult and Midcult." That's the Dwight, Dwight MacDonald" to whom this poem is dedicated.

Thanks for all of your comments, and I'll comment on the comments anon. Right now the room where Pong 2.0 (the pc) is being used for the purposes for which it is intended, which means I've got to log out and scram (for now.)

[AuntShecky]

Here are some replies to your wonderful responses to
#254, an elegy/encomium (without fulfilling any of the criteria of those forms) to Dwight MacDonald. I felt freer about posting it, since Blank_Verse's (admittedly better) piece about Charles Simic.

Omg! I'm one of the dumb ones here. I really would be the last person on earth to get it Aunty! I guess you don't watch mindless sitcoms either....(praise be to you!)

I thoroughly disagree with your second line and also the third and fourth. I watch sitcoms all the time (or used to.)

Typo on line 54.

I found line 45 (I think!) but can't find the typo. Would you please be more specific so I can correct the thing?

What a wonderful rant! But I have to wonder at the loss of gratuitous artistry... Let me take an engineering analogy. When Bazelgette built the great steam powered pump houses to expel the effluvia of London's population, he created great baroque palaces in cast iron and gleaming brass. For the age in which he lived, time and labour were much, much cheeper. Go a little further back and great artists required patrons to support and finance their imaginations. Further back still, there was slavery, be it the villain craftsman in thrall to a fudal overlord or some poor sod grafting for the Ceasars. Even education is an expensive luxury, so few from the proletariate are now able to appreciate the mysteries of language and the sage like bards who plied their art in letters. Everything is colloquial and couched for the lowest common denominator to ensure a fast turn around and a quick buck. Erudition is a dirty word because, counter-intuitively, it hinders communication with a general public who don't understand the words! Hey, Ho! I blame Hemingway and LBJ!

Thanks, Hawk. Dwight MacDonald, who died in 1982, wrote the essay "Masscult and Midcult" in 1960, I believe, and was responding to the culture of the 50s (mostly) rather than that of LBJ. MacDonald admired Hemingway's earlier works, but thought The Old Man and The Sea to be "middle-brow" (there's a reference to that in my piece.

An extraordinary rant but a rant all the same, thinly disguised as poetry when it would do better as a reasoned essay, where the strong points you make might not need to be made so artfully.

Not a "rant," more akin to Blank_Verse's poem about Charles Simic, even though his posts are superior.

I didn't want to post it as a "reasoned essay," because every time I put prose on the LitNet, everybody gets pissed
off.

Your philosophical musings are always in the form of verse, aren't they, Prince? I, for one, am really glad that they are. Same with The Dunciad and with Macflecknoe.[

Wouldn't it be great if 30 years after our demise somebody wrote a poem about us?

And Bar, you're the one of the most erudite LitNutters I know!

[deryk]

I found line 45 (I think!) but can't find the typo. Would you please be more specific so I can correct the thing?

It's very difficult for one to spot something so minor, once it has already been committed.

for a individualistic anarchist,

The indefinite article is incorrect. For a second, I thought it might have been intentional, given the subject, but somehow that didn't strike me as your style.

[AuntShecky]

The indefinite article is incorrect.
.

Oh my God-- you're right! I'll fix it right away. Many thanks from your red-faced auntie.

[AuntShecky]

“Today’s Theme Will Be ‘What Being an American Means to Me’ “

God could have made me
beautiful or privileged or brilliant,
but instead He made me plain
and poor and just smart
enough to know what
I was missing. He also
made me American, right down
to the soft and gooey, genial core.

All of this comes with the territory
of the good ol’ U. S. of A.: rugged
and wild at bottom yet always refining,
redefining what is possible-- Hell!
Even the impossible is probable
in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

We believe, deep down in our spongy,
artery-hardened heart (of hearts) we can
eat anything we want and not get fat, can
own anything we want to have – We can!
because it is our God-given right,
our sacred right (as Americans.)

It means we have to Sacrifice.
We have to devote our entire lives
to the Heaven-sanctified quest--
that holy grueling grail-- to seek
through markets, within dim-
witted schemes, down between
fuzzy cushions of comfy couches
the Mean Green, the dough-
re-mi, the root of every
necessary evil. (We do this,
preferably, legally.)

When we're not upending
every rock, rifling every pocket
in the world for money, we're busy
seeking answers–
not any old answer, not necessarily
the right answer, but the answer
we happen to be seeking.
Not sure what it looks like,
or sounds like, or smells like,
we'll know we've found The Answer
when we find the one we like.

That’s my theme
on “What Being an American
Means to Me.” What’s
the hold-up with my gold
star and my “A”?



Here's the much more dignified and definitely less sarcastic
original.

[Hawkman]

I loved the idea of holy gruel, definitley spiritual food for thought Good fun this, Auntie! I think you may be a little hard on yourself though - I've put a gold star in the post!

Live and be well. H

[deryk]

I cannot punch my way out of this paper bag. As someone who spends too much time inside the U.S. secondary school system, this is nothing but a series of stiff reminders. The recalcitrants and deviants eat the authorities for breakfast and are rewarded in kind for their efforts. We'll be praying to them soon enough. /end hyperbole

Addendum: This poem inspired me to start writing from personal experience once more.

[Bar22do]

Well, I'm not American, but think your anti- could apply to many other countries in the world... is it because of globalization...
best as always, Auntie, Bar

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, Hawk, Deryk, and Bar.
The ditty was not really a parody of Langston Hughes's work as it doesn't fulfill the criteria of a parody, i.e. following the form of the original exactly. It's not even in the same spirit; except for the penultimate line of his poem, Langston's much greater work is not as cynical and sardonic in tone as this current posting.

For the past couple of decades, high school English classes have included Hughes's poetry in their curricula, wisely so. I do suspect, however, that it has been chosen for the wrong reasons. True, his work can fall under the category of "multi-cultural;" it is also true that adolescents can "relate" to Hughes's subjects. I would prefer that Hughes had been chosen simply because his work is good--which it is.

For instance, "Theme for English B" isn't strictly autobiographical. The poem is dated 1951--possibly date of pub. rather than the year he wrote it. Hughes was not a student at the time, though; he had graduated from Lincoln University in 1929. The poem, therefore, is not strictly autobiographical. The details, such as the local NY place names, could be "emotions recollected in tranquillity," in a way. Neverthess, there is absolutely no doubt that the theme of racial inequality which affected Hughes his entire life is handled so intelligently, skillfully, and subtly in his poems, cf. "Mother to Son" --"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair." The mother, not Hughes himself, is the speaker in that poem.

What I love about "Theme for English B" is how it makes gentle fun of a common school assignment, and the clichéd instruction: "Make it come out of you." Even more than that is the willingness of the speaker to meet the "instructor" --a representative of the white establishment- half-way:

But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

How about that word "somewhat"? It speaks volumes. Hughes's lines are deceptively simple and straightforward, yet imbedded multi-levels of meaning can be found beyond a literal reading. Every time I read something by Langston Hughes I see something new, similar to the experience I have when reading Robert Frost.

So, Deryk-- as you say, you're going to use "personal experience" in your creative writing. In one sense, that's all we can do, but I hope you try to do it in the way as Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. When we say "self-expression," it's always better to emphasize the "expression" over the "self." At least, that's what yours fooly tries to do.

But I don't always succeed.

[deryk]

So, Deryk-- as you say, you're going to use "personal experience" in your creative writing. In one sense, that's all we can do, but I hope you try to do it in the way as Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. When we say "self-expression," it's always better to emphasize the "expression" over the "self." At least, that's what yours fooly tries to do.

Undoubtedly. My problem has always been when I try writing from that mode, I end up deconstructing myself into oblivion. So I'm left without either expression or the self but just a shadow of meaning.

[AuntShecky]

{Continuing with themes in #253 and #264 (above^^^), this piece owes its title to a dialogue balloon from One Big Happy, the daily comic strip created by Rick Detorie.}

“Staring failure in the face and calling it ‘winning’–- that’s the closest thing we have to an American religion.” –Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone


“Selfish Steam”

To heaven floats a mist above the flame.
Incense of self expands the boiler’s girth.
The Faithful worship ideals of their worth
and genuflect on mention of their names.
Contrary fact’s been banished from the frame
where good works have vanished (as in their dearth.)
This faith alone rushed, streaming since their birth
and dreaming righteously. Still, tardy fame –-
as curriculum vitae lacks its turn–-
has dammed up aspiration in the lungs.
The puffy aye deflates; the stove’s gone cold.
Now, dismally, baptismal fonts must spurn
the sinless air, full-steaming in the young,
to damn esteem in pots boiled dry and old.