Auntie's Anti-Poems

[AuntShecky]

This:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...814#post985814

engendered this:


The Moral Life of Downtown

When forceful winds conspire
to blow rickety hopes off course,
we harbor no twinkling illusions
that deadweight can learn to fly.

Still, we search for fatal glitches
within the time-wrought rig
that’s stacked against our uppity wish
to launch –and leave the ground.

It’s good for you–
but not for us–
to stay.

You expect us to wrap your ears
in angry, popping rhymes.
You glare at those of us with names
that end in “z,” in your puzzlement
over our arrival, on whether
we landed in the right way.

You ogle our Jennifers and Michelles–
not out of passion borne,
but from ugly, languid habit
that again and again swells
with life that begs its welcome.

You tilt your head toward Carlos
over there, ask him a silly question
just to hear his answer
with the lilting sounds that make you laugh.

Admit it:
you'd really, really like
us to stay for your amusement
but mostly for the work
that no one’s inclined to do.

For we are completely, totally,
one hundred percent free
to snip your grass for you,
braise your grub for you,
wipe Grandma’s nose for you,
stretched out on the sheets
that our women washed.

You want us, need us
to push your stash for you,
populate your prisons for you.

We'd much prefer to become
active by doing nothing,
each one of us a Cato, aloft in thought.

We own nothing of our own, yet grasp
the fact you'd sooner let us steal
everything you have
except your place.

You want us to stay–
stay out of your sight,
stay out of your way.

We'd purely love to snatch
your books and make a clean
break for it–
the only escape via air,

which is why we're taking off,
of course, on borrowed wings.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I get the message all right, but I don't sufficiently see or believe in the messenger.

[Jerrybaldy]

Dear Aunty
you add a draconian, victorian, authoritarian dust to this place that turns the arial black to grey. IMHO (circa Bar your equal in sanctimony)
best wishes
JerryB

[AuntShecky]

Dear Aunty
you add a draconian, victorian, authoritarian dust to this place that turns the arial black to grey. IMHO (circa Bar your equal in sanctimony)
best wishes
JerryB

Dear Jerry, I would understand your comment better if you would be more specific as to how the observation above relates to the little ditty itself.

I get the message all right, but I don't sufficiently see or believe in the messenger.

Dear Prince,
The little ditty was intended to be a companion piece to the "serious discussion" thread at the top of this posting.

My verse is was intended to be a companion piece to that essay and project which still inspires me 13 years after I originally read it.



As to your comment, I have to ask which "messenger" do you mean -- the speaker in my poem or the author of the Harper's essay who created the humanities program for poor people?

My verse is was intended to be a companion piece to that essay and project which still inspires me 13 years after I originally read it.

I'm sure you know the anecdote about the thirties era movie mogul who after listening to a pitch for an "important" motion picture about social issues said, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

[AuntShecky]

. . . . . . .

[hillwalker]

A very apt, political poem (how dare you) in the current climate of enforced austerity (over here in blighty anyway).

Presumably our politicians believe cutting funding for education and the Arts is a painless way of saving the tax payers money - those who can afford to read books or visit art galleries will continue to have the expendable income do so - those who rely on government hand-outs would probably get nothing worthwhile from it anyway..... so everyone knows their rightful place in society.

From the perspective of the writer here, one is left to assume that the class divide is as much an issue in the US, and the have-nots know it.

The most telling lines being

.....you'd sooner let us steal
everything you have
except your place.

Of course, over here revolution is fast a-coming. You read it here first.

H

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, hillwalker, for your comment. The original "serious discussion" posting and especially the companion poem are "political" only in the broad definition created by Thucydides. (I'm only just getting used to spelling that illustrious name!)

[PrinceMyshkin]

As to your comment, I have to ask which "messenger" do you mean -- the speaker in my poem or the author of the Harper's essay who created the humanities program for poor people?

I was referring to the poem itself, where I heartily agreed with the ideological points but thought they'd have registered more forcefully if I'd been presented with even one of these downtrodden people in the round.

[Transmodernism]

I want to say that I disagree with Hawkman's suggestion re altering the order of the 2nd & 3rd stanzas. The openness, the eternal possibility (and mystery?) of that "immaculate blue sky" makes for a splendid ending in my view to this immensely compassionate poem.

Hello AuntShecky! I'm new here and I can't tell you how much I have thoroughly enjoyed reading through your anti-poetry. I absolutely loved your linking of pearl-production to human suffering and how we may fail to bring forth something precious out of it (from number I-can't-remember-which). I also fully agree with PrinceMyshkin in the quote above that "immaculate blue sky" and the sentimates found at the end of #84 seem, to me, to be the best possible ending. It gives it a touch of compassion and humanity--a beautiful ending, rather than a depressing one.

(Sorry that I'm sorta commenting on stuff way back in the thread; I'm still reading through!)

[hillwalker]

Hi again Aunty - my opening comment was very much tongue-in-cheek (just in case Admin are watching) :-)

[firefangled]

There are so many bells this rings, Auntie. A very apt follow up to the essay on poverty and the humanities. The attitude at the root of exclusion damages us beyond just the poor, but that is many other stories.

I though the poem was perfect in its sarcasm. Though you paralleled the essay well with the content, you never forgot this was a poem with sonics, rhythm and rhyme. I liked nearly all the stanzas, but especially this one:

You want us to stay–
stay out of your sight,
stay out of your way.


In his essay, Poetry and Selfhood in Democracy and Poetry, Robert Penn Warren wrote:

The "made thing" stands as a vital emblem of the integrity of the self, whether the thing is a folk ballad or a high tragedy. But for whom? We never know precisely for whom art is, or on whom, directly or indirectly, it works its effects. But if art turns out to be, in an immediate sense, for only a minority, how can it fortify democracy?

One by one, let the bells be rung by the bells ringing. Thank you, Auntie.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you again, Prince and Hillwalker, thanks (and welcome!) to Transmodernism, and firefangled, thank you for flattering comment and especially for posting the thoughtful lines from Robert Penn Warren.

The following is partially a response to Prince's comment in #188 about the seemingly multiple P.O.V.s but also because I feel like adding this p.s.:

Beware the writer who sets himself or herself up as the voice of a nation. This includes notion of race, gender, sexual orientation, elective affinity. This is the New Behalfism. Beware behalfies! The New Behalfism demands uplift, accentuates the positive, offers stirring moral instruction. It abhors the tragic sense of life. Seeing literature as inescapably political, it replaces literary values by political ones. It is the murderer of thought. Beware!
--Salman Rushdie

Oddly enough, that passage appeared in an article in the very same issue of Harper's that featured the essay which sparked the whole debate. I can't dispute Salman Rushdie's admonition, and I daresay that even Earl Shorris would probably agree with him as well. Still, I'm sticking to my stance that the little "Downtown" poem is "political"
only in the broader sense from Thucydides.

The speaker in the poem, "we" is a collective voice-- albeit impetuous, anti-authoritarian, colloquial (maybe prose-y in a couple of places), ironic, and democratic. "We" are not specifically speaking "in behalf" of hyphenated Americans or women or Americans with disabilities or any other group that historically has been marginalized and silenced.

"We are not speaking "for" any distinct oppressed small group but rather a heartbreakingly large group in order to express in down-to-earth terms the most clear-cut dividing line in today's society: the burgeoning and seemingly unbridgeable gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots.

In the poem, the central metaphor of flight was intended to symbolize a possible escape for all of us who are culturally deprived. With few or no opportunities offered, we take it upon ourselves to deracinate their lot from the street by studying the arts and the humanities. We don't literally "snatch the books" but what is written in them. In this way,we empower ourselves, perhaps "govern" ourselves, not unlike the anecdote about the students continuing a spirited yet elegantly civilized discussion after the logic class.

Even though the first person plural voice of the poem is collective, it is crucial to remember that every human being is a unique individual, having the absolute right to maintain an autonomous identity, not merely a microdot on a graph or a part of a number in a statistical table, not just one of thousands constituting "The Poor" which is the term the ruling class often uses to lump us all together.

[qimissung]

Very apt. The idea that the arts and humanities are not of vast importance to all people is simply too ludicrous to contemplate.

I like the phrase "surround of force." You have given me something to think about and perhaps write about, AuntShecky.

[Hawkman]

Hi Auntie, I'm sorry that I've taken so long to get round to commenting.

My first thought is that the first 6 stanzas are unnecessary. They form something of a rambling preamble, and the poem doesn't really get going until S7. It would be tighter and more forceful as a more compact piece, and is still making the same point.

In S8:

For we are completely, totally,
one hundred percent free
to snip your grass for you,
braise your grub for you,
wipe Grandma’s nose for you,*
stretched out on the sheets
that our women washed."

*There is a problem with the expression here because the subordinate clause reads as though we wipe grandma's nose for you while we are stretched out on the sheets. I think that to say what I beleive you mean to say it should be:

"wipe grandma's nose for you
while she stretches out on the sheets"

Interestingly there is a debate rageing over here about whether the state should withdraw funding for students on arts and humanities courses in university to save money. They still intend to support science and technology though. It seems that the Arts and Humanities are deemed less vital to the educational wealth of the nation.

Live and be well, H

[AuntShecky]

Thank you q and Hawkman

My first thought is that the first 6 stanzas are unnecessary. They form something of a rambling preamble, and the poem doesn't really get going until S7. It would be tighter and more forceful as a more compact piece, and is still making the same point.

Nah, I need them there, in order to set up the metaphors for flight. For instance, the "rickety rig" refers both to a mechanical object --a dilapidated aircraft -- but also to the established society which perpetuates a system deliberately "rigged" against the disadvantaged part of the population.

In S8:

For we are completely, totally,
one hundred percent free
to snip your grass for you,
braise your grub for you,
wipe Grandma’s nose for you,*
stretched out on the sheets
that our women washed."

*There is a problem with the expression here because the subordinate clause reads as though we wipe grandma's nose for you while we are stretched out on the sheets.

I don't see it as a problem. The appositive, "stretched out on the sheets" refers back to the antecedent "you," the same "you" addressed throughout the poem. When I wrote that line I was thinking of ancient Patricians, lounging around on their couches.
H

As always, thanks for your thoughtful criticism.