Monthly Archives: February 2009

And Your Point Is?

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Note: Originally posted on 2.8.2009, I’ve moved this back to the top because Robert Bernard Hass has been kind enough to respond in comments. I have also written a response to his comment and would love to hear the view of others, which is why I’m also going to cross-post this to the Plumbline blog.

What the hell is the point of this? I didn’t think much of Alexander’s poem either, but I tried to sketch a few reasons I thought the piece didn’t work. Jack Foley, whoever he is, has simply delivered an insult without content. Another writer at CPR (which I tend to think of as a literary organ of the rump New Formalism), makes a sronger case. Robert Bernard Hass’s objections make sense, as far as they go, but I find the assumptions underlying his conclusion problematic:

Perhaps what was most troubling about this inaugural event is that one of our most celebrated poets (Ms. Alexander was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) seemed so woefully underprepared to seize the opportunity to take poetry from the periphery of our awareness and make it more culturally relevant. With such a huge audience on hand, her inaugural moment had the potential to inspire a nation, to find, as President Obama himself has often iterated, “old ways to be new.” Unfortunately, Ms. Alexander’s poem, so devoid of the rhetorical resources poets have always relied upon to celebrate exceptional accomplishment, failed to capture the American imagination—as President Obama had done, so eloquently in his speech, only moments earlier.

An understanding of the the rhetorical situation is essential, I agree, but I suspect that no rhetoric can reconcile electoral politics with the “politics of the unconscious.” (Modern) poetry can only assent provisionally to ideology. The modern poet must write from an alienated position. It occurs to me, in fact, that those poets (like me) who see modernism in terms of a fundamental break in the culture of the West are likely to see a parallel fundamental disjunction between poetry & politics. On the other hand, poets (& readers) who see Modernism as just another literary style will tend to see the relationship between politics & poetry as, if not unproblematic, then at least not fundamentally problematic.

Hiding the Truth

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I’ve been generally pleased with the progressive policies advanced by the Obama administration, but this really pushes my buttons. I said just before and then again just after the election that the birght line standard by which I would judge Obama consisted of his actions regarding torture and wiretapping. Everything the administration has said and done indicates that they will not abuse their power in the blatent manner of the previous administration, but they are also preserving the legal structures that would allow them to do so if they chose. The Obama administration also has settled on the formula that if it happend before we got here we don’t want to look at it. I think there is a little more moral wiggle room on this one, but not much. There are short term political reasons for not going after the Bush violations of law and fundamental American valuse, but in the long run this moral rot will emerge. And since the legal structures will still be in place, the moral rot will be defended and protected as a way of defending and protecting executive power.

Wish I’d Been There

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Leonard Cohen gave his first US concert in 15 years the other night down in New York. I don’t really go to concerts any more, but this is one I’d have tried to go to if I had been just a bit closer. (Cohen will be up this way, in Ottawa in late May, but I’ll be in Vietnam.) Anyway, I’ve been a fan for many years — Cohen writes great songs and performs them with a hint of self-deprecation that I find very attractive. Like his fellow Canadian Neil Young, Cohen can write the occasional rhyme so awful that it’s unintentionally funny and he can be bathetic on occasion, but his best songs imply narratives or settings without fully specifying them in a way that is genuinely mysterious. There is also a kind of existential joy in the midst of Cohen’s usual gloom that creats a satisfying sense of irony in his work. NPR is going to make some of the songs from the concert available starting today — I’ll have to be satisfied with that.
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*Neil Young is much the worse offender in this regard, but rock is more forgiving than Cohen’s folk / cabaret mode, which puts more emphasis on the words.

Why Study the Humanities?

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There’s a piece in the NY Times this morning about the crisis in the Humanities. Why study the Humanities? Because, without a nuanced access to your own language and history, you wind up talking like George W. Bush and Bobby Jindal. And when you have only limited access to your own language and history, you make bad policy decisions, like George W. Bush and Bobby Jindal. You become proudly inhumane. You will believe nonsense. Will the Humanities guarantee humane citizens and leaders? Of course not. There are plenty of examples of cultured monsters, which you would know if you studied the Humanities. What the Humanities do is give one an opportunity to stand apart from the monsters of history, to understand and even oppose them. The Humanities give us a chance.

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Note: Here is a link to the speech Andrew refers to in his comment.