The Rev. Dr. Joseph S. Pagano writes, in a letter to the New York Times Magazine:
Molly Worthen states that “John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake.” Actually, there was only one person executed for his religious opinions in Geneva during Calvin’s lifetime. This was Michael Servetus. Calvin arranged for the accusation and arrest of Servetus, but it was the City Council that prosecuted the case and condemned Servetus to be burned alive. Calvin, as a habitant, a legal resident alien with no right to vote or to hold any public position, was excluded from the dispensation of civil and criminal justice. Calvin tried to have the mode of execution changed to the more humane beheading. The city council ignored him.
A real humanitarian, Calvin. As for Mark Driscoll, he’s just another authoritarian prick from Pricksville.
The pope sanctions Holocaust denial. Not that I give a shit about the pope. He strikes me as increasingly irrelevant.
NPR abets John Boehner’s lie. In its noon newscast on Saturday NPR played a clip of Rep. John Boehner citing a CBO report as evidence against the efficacy of the Obama stimulus plan. No such CBO report exists. [See also, this post from Digby.]
NPR’s execrable Juan Williams, helped along by sentimentalist Scott Simon, advanced the developing conventional wisdom that Now That He’s Sitting Behind The Big Desk, predisdent Obama has come to Understand That Doing Away With Torture Isn’t So easy & that, well, really, we all know we will have to keep using torture. What is it with these guys in the media? Sadists much? They then ended by turning Obama into a sentimental symbol of the victory of civil rights, thus turning a policy debate into a feel-good moment for white folks. Ain’t we special, now, electing a black man & all. Let’s give ourselve a big ole pat on the back. (And by the way, he’s gonna have to torture them nasty Muslims no matter what he says.) [See also.]
The war in Iraq was & remains unwinable: “Second, Biden’s prophesy is still correct. The trap was always that a new president had to keep a large number of troops in Iraq or risk the place falling apart — and risk being blamed for what happened if it did. The escalation was pretty much designed for just that purpose. It was politically crafted to create the illusion of “victory” which could only be maintained by maintaining the occupation.” [Emphasis added.]
More conventional wisdom: Look, everybody knows you can’t have civil liberties & be safe from terrorists–take your choice.
I am sick of my own anger. Sick of its taste. Sick of its smell. Sick of its metalic high-pitched whine like tinitus. Sick of turning it over in my fingers like a dirty pill of bread. Sick of seeing it first thing every morning when I wake up, standing between me & the light streaming through the window. I have decided to let it go. I have reached the age at which enmity is not merely too much trouble, but a terrible burden to lug toward the grave. And so — though I have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness, nor have I joined a twelve-step program — I want to apologize to all of you, those I remember & those I have forgotten.
Most of my resentments & angers have been literary. That would be funny if it were not so sad. So, I hope I will not bring down too much embarrassment on my enemies — many of whom may not even know of their honored position! — by naming them. So: To Linh Dinh: I have reread the poems. I was wrong. I was showing off, talking out of my ass. Sorry. To Dana Gioia: I have slandered your name around the internet for years. I’ll never agree with your poetics, but my animus was personal — I resented your relationship with my teacher Donald Justice. To Mark Jarman: We will continue to disagree about poetry & religion & the relationship between the two, but my anger was personal, not literary. I apologize. To Kent Johnson: You raise the art of being annoying to its highest aesthetic perfection, but always, I think, in the service of art. I should have recognized this before now. I withdraw my objections. To Alison Croggon: It was just petty status-seeking & I’m sorry. I behaved childishly. These are the ones I remember; there are certainly others, to whom I issue a blanket apology. (Email me — I’ll put you on the list!) Anyway, I’m through carrying this stuff around with me. In the words of the immortal Van Morrison, I’m going to “throw it down, on the burning ground.” Finally, I want to be clear that I seek nothing in return for my apology, neither recognition nor forgiveness, neither big wet kiss nor little peck on the cheek.
Coda: Some kinds of anger are legitimate. I’ve not gone soft in the head, I hope. I think political anger is often warranted, for instnace, but my political angers have been largely impersonal. Anger at friends is another matter & will certainly require another sort of apology. I continue to believe in the possibility of aesthetic judgment; but I hope, going forward, to keep myself from allowing literary taste to bleed over into personal animus.
I think there is something weird about Adam Kirsch’s response to the poem Elizabeth Alexander composed & read for the Inauguration yesterday, but I can’t say I find the poem very interesting. That is, I find something 0ff-putting in Kirsch’s tone, but I can’t disagree with his evaluation of Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day.” The Rev. Joseph Lowrey was, on the day, a better poet than Alexander. Kirsch does name the central problem — poetry’s relation to power. It is the mark of modernity & certainly of post-modernity that will not allow poetry to serve political power, at least not directly, or well. Isn’t it interesting that the prayer, as a form, is more flexible & able to accommodate shifts between the formal & the demotic than the poem on this occasion? Kirsch writes that “the poet’s place is not on the platform but in the crowd.” I agree, but I think he doesn’t fully acknowledge the contradictory situation in which Alexander found herself, stuck in an impossible position between two demands, each of which negates the other.
I was also struck by the difference in delivery. The postmodern American poet must eschew anything that smacks of oratory — any of the sort of rhetoric that refuses irony — for irony is the surrounding condition of post-modernity. Of all the post-Frost inaugural poems, I’d say Miller Williams‘ is the most successful. It comes closest to being down in the crowd, not up above it, to extend Kirsch’s conceit. Frost, of course, was unable — in the wind & glare — to read the bad poem, “Dedication,” that he had written for the occasion, but was saved by memory & read “The Gift Outright,” as good a poem for such a ceremony as it’s possible to imagine:
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
Note: Here is another discussion of Alexander’s poem, by Carol Rumens, in The Guardian.
I have a new poem, “Ballad of Crows & God,” in The Sun, a magazine I rediscovered last summer & have been enjoying since subscribing. In many ways it’s an old-fashioned magazine, with its emphasis on autobiography, first person point of view, and direct expression of feeling; all of these characteristics are tempered with a certain reserve, or elegance, however, that makes for an attractive editorial voice. If you see this issue (February) be sure to check out Ellen McCullough Moore’s short story, “Final Dispositions,” as well as my poem. I haven’t finished reading the issue, but there are no doubt a lot of other things worth reading, too. (Note: well, actually it’s an old poem I completely rewrote last summer at the Blue Mountain Center, whre the resident murder of crows kept me entertained — & woke me early.)
