The Hill We Climb

13

Comments

  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited January 24
    .
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Poetry readings shouldn't be performances. They should be readings.

    Why?

    Do you feel the same way about plays? Including the extensive poetry in Shakespeare?

    I wouldn't go as far as @ECraigR but if a poem depends on a competent performer in order to be effective, then it's only accessible to people who are able to attend such a performance, whereas if a poem works in its own right just from the arrangement of words on the page, then it's accessible to anyone who can read it in an anthology. Of course you could argue that an inauguration poem is only intended to be effective for the inauguration itself.

    Well, yes, that's exactly what I'd argue.

    I think it's fundamentally flawed to judge a work of art by things it's not even trying to do - in this case to be effective on the page. It's not only this example. I frequently witness it in music, where people seem to expect every genre of music to have the same goals, and even make that mistake with different albums from the same performer.

    The goal of this poem was to be effective as spoken by its author. To the extent that accessibility is a question, well, this was a broadcast available to basically the entire country, with the video still readily available to much of the world. You talk about attendance, and yet we all knew, and the author knew, hardly anyone was going to be attending in person. She knew, we all knew, the event was being broadcast.

    To assess how the poem reads on the page is to judge it by a criterion it wasn't designed to fulfil in the first place. To talk as if there is one set goal of all poetry makes no sense to me, any more than to talk as if there is one set goal of all music or all cinema. An art form doesn't have a single fixed function in that way.

    How do you know that the poem was meant to only be performed? I first came across, and read, the poem when it was put out through the Academy of American Poets a day or two before the inauguration.

    I didn't use the word 'only'. But are you seriously trying to argue that the primary purpose of a poem written after Gorman was asked to perform at the inauguration, and actually performed at the inauguration, was not to be performed at the inauguration?

    There is a complete air of unreality in trying to question this, as you seem to be doing. Okay, so it was put out a day or two before. Where a bunch of people like yourself got a preview. But please don't try to turn that into the main event.

    Meanwhile, millions (and I do really mean millions) of people encountered this poem as a result of it being performed at the inauguration.

    It seems to be impossible to read what I’m saying charitably, but that’s fine. I’m not going to quibble over what words were used.

    It is not unreality, it is disagreement.
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Ruth wrote: »
    The inauguration of a new US president is not a religious ceremony. It's a civic ceremony in a country with no established religion where lots of people are not Christians. As such, it should not begin and end with prayer, and there should be no hymn. A hymn about Christian salvation has no place in an inauguration.

    If they're going to have hymns, they should at least stick with hymns that are about the country. "Amazing Grace" was really inappropriate.
    It's a non religous ceremony where people take an oath with their hand on The Bible and keep mentioning God, ending with " God bless the United States of America"
    Neither the Bible nor the ending “so help me God” are required by law. They are accretions of tradition, not requirement. For better or for worse, and often it is for worse, there’s lots of civil religion that has become interlaced into these things.

    Meanwhile, “The Hill We Climb” was mentioned and quoted in this morning’s sermon (on the lectionary reading from Jonah) at our place. It was the opening that was quoted:
    When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
    The loss we carry.
    A sea we must wade.
    We braved the belly of the beast.
    We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
    And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
    I wonder how many other sermons it showed up in.

    None I heard.
    And how many did you listen to?

    A couple, three or four? In this diocese we tend to not bring outside stuff in because we’re quite fraught, so admittedly a small sample. Episcopalians don’t like to stir the pot with politics et al. One of our downfalls.
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    I'm a little confused by the idea that a poetry reading shouldn't be a performance. Performative poetry is a thing. Not all poets do it, but some do, and this was clearly a performed poem, where the mix of performance and words were important.

    I'm not sure what 'the poetry world' is, but the published poets I know give performances and some take part in poetry slams. Poets who are also activists do this a lot. I have studied literature, during which time I wrote plenty of essays on poetry (not sure if this puts me in the poetry world) and there are plenty of poems where I know lines by heart, but that wasn't from hearing them read out loud once.

    There are many styles of poetry too. Comparing, say, Keats, with Maya Angelou, they are both (in my view) excellent poets, but incredibly different. In the same way that comparing the experience, history and tradition, along with the relationship to the English language, of a privileged white English man with that of a black American woman, gives you very different worlds.

    I found this poetry performance (which includes the words of the poem) very powerful, and very appropriate to the situation. There were many aspects of her language, and her playing with words, that I noticed as she was speaking, but I can't quote them now. I would have to see the poem to be able to discuss it in detail.

    Also, I'm a little confused as to the criticism that the poem is obvious. She is an activist. She wants her words to be absorbed by the masses, not just the poetry buffs. And she also needs her message to be absorbed on the spot, on a first hearing, not by reading and rereading and analysing at leisure, because realistically, most people are not going to do this She uses all kinds of poetic techniques, which could be analysed if you were so inclined, but she needs the message to be clear, and to evoke emotion. That is how such poetry works.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    fineline wrote: »
    Comparing, say, Keats, with Maya Angelou, they are both (in my view) excellent poets, but incredibly different. In the same way that comparing the experience, history and tradition, along with the relationship to the English language, of a privileged white English man with that of a black American woman, gives you very different worlds.
    Keats was not, at least compared to other white English male poets of his time, especially privileged. More so than Clare or Blake; less so than Shelley or Byron or even Wordsworth and Coleridge. When the conservative press of the day, or Byron, called him a cockney, they were being snobbish about his origins.
  • Thanks @ECraigR. I deleted my comment because I thought it might come across as snide, which I didn’t want. I appreciate the response.

    I’d suspect most Presbyterians would be of the opinion that if the sermon stayed solely within the text and don’t connect it with what may be going on in people’s lives—whether personally or more broadly—the preacher hasn’t done his or her job.

    FWIW, the reference to and quote from the poem this morning weren’t particularly political, except in perhaps the most general sense. The quote was actually tied to some broader points about Jonah.

  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    Dafyd wrote: »
    fineline wrote: »
    Comparing, say, Keats, with Maya Angelou, they are both (in my view) excellent poets, but incredibly different. In the same way that comparing the experience, history and tradition, along with the relationship to the English language, of a privileged white English man with that of a black American woman, gives you very different worlds.
    Keats was not, at least compared to other white English male poets of his time, especially privileged. More so than Clare or Blake; less so than Shelley or Byron or even Wordsworth and Coleridge. When the conservative press of the day, or Byron, called him a cockney, they were being snobbish about his origins.

    Yeah, it occurred to me that I could have chosen from plenty of more privileged examples, but the whiteness and maleness is privilege enough for the point I was making. Plus, he went to boarding school. And he got his poetry published. I didn't need to choose the most privileged of the privileged. That is part of the point. Do we know of any black women published poets contemporary to him?
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    It certainly does, but not at all times and in all places. Marvell's Horatian Ode may be the greatest political poem in the language, but a modern version of the Horatian Ode would have been inappropriate for the occasion.
    And I wasn’t saying in all times and all places; I was specifically saying this one time and one place.
    But I don't think that time and place was one of the places it would have been appropriate.
    The Gift Outright is a great poem, but if I'd been at Kennedy's inauguration when Robert Frost recited it I'd have been embarrassed.

    I agree that there is a problem in our culture that that kind of generalised uplift is what people expect of poetry in all contexts - but that's not Gorman's fault and an inauguration ceremony doesn't have time or space for a lecture on the workings of poetry.

  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    I thought the prayer was vrry odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    When a prayer is broadcast on national TV, it's rarely aimed at God.
  • Yep, these are preaching prayers, aimed at the people, not at God. I’m not a fan.
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    Alan29 wrote: »
    I thought the prayer was very odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.

    And what kind of prayer would consist of things that God doesn't already know?
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Ship’s quotes file, @tclune.
  • tclune wrote: »
    Alan29 wrote: »
    I thought the prayer was very odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.

    And what kind of prayer would consist of things that God doesn't already know?

    :killingme:
  • tclune wrote: »
    Alan29 wrote: »
    I thought the prayer was very odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.

    And what kind of prayer would consist of things that God doesn't already know?
    True enough.

    The distinction is, I think, the implied audience. When a prayer that begins with something along the lines of “Oh Lord, we know you have told us x,” and x goes on for two or three minutes and is then followed by “help us to remember y,” which goes on for another two or three minutes, you know that you’re really dealing with a sermon in prayer’s clothing.

  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    There have been several times the Koran has been used in the swearing-in of Muslim congressional members. I imagine if a Muslim is ever chosen to be a president or vice president, it will be used in his or her swearing-in.

    BTW, John Quincey Adams, the first president of the American Bible Society, did not use a Bible in his swearing in.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Alleged prayer - 'Lord, as Thou wilt have seen, in the pages of The Manchester Guardian...'

    I have sat through prayers that were clear instructions to God on what opinions He should espouse.
  • This tangent could be drawn of into (yet another) thread about the nature of prayer—what is it? What's it good for? And so on.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    This tangent could be drawn of into (yet another) thread about the nature of prayer—what is it? What's it good for?

    Not where you're going with this, of course, but now I have Edwin Starr's "War" going through my head.
  • Ruth wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    This tangent could be drawn of into (yet another) thread about the nature of prayer—what is it? What's it good for?

    Not where you're going with this, of course, but now I have Edwin Starr's "War" going through my head.

    Absolutely nothin'. Huhhh.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    tclune wrote: »
    Alan29 wrote: »
    I thought the prayer was very odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.

    And what kind of prayer would consist of things that God doesn't already know?

    Good point.
    Maybe it was the length of list of things that the Almighty needed reminding of that drew attention to it. As an RC I am accustomed to short and pithy collect-style prayers in contrast to that one.
  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    Firenze wrote: »
    Alleged prayer - 'Lord, as Thou wilt have seen, in the pages of The Manchester Guardian...'

    I have sat through prayers that were clear instructions to God on what opinions He should espouse.

    "If that point may seem a little obscure to thine ears, O Lord, permit me to illustrate it with this anecdote ..."
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    I've always found CS Lewis' take makes sense:
    “Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly.

    'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.”
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    fineline wrote: »
    Do we know of any black women published poets contemporary to him?
    Phyllis Wheatley was a generation older than Keats.

  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    tclune wrote: »
    Alan29 wrote: »
    I thought the prayer was very odd. Quite a lot of it consisted of reminding God of what he already knows.

    And what kind of prayer would consist of things that God doesn't already know?
    True enough.

    The distinction is, I think, the implied audience. When a prayer that begins with something along the lines of “Oh Lord, we know you have told us x,” and x goes on for two or three minutes and is then followed by “help us to remember y,” which goes on for another two or three minutes, you know that you’re really dealing with a sermon in prayer’s clothing.

    Plenty of Psalms are similar.
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    edited January 25
    Dafyd wrote: »
    fineline wrote: »
    Do we know of any black women published poets contemporary to him?
    Phyllis Wheatley was a generation older than Keats.
    Heh, my question was more rhetorical to make a point (though as an aside, this is interesting). I'm not sure if you are missing my point, or if you have understood it and are genuinely wanting to suggest that black American women poets and white English men poets were similar in terms of experience and privilege. I would suggest far more people have heard of Keats and of Phyllis Wheatley, and Keats is most likely to be on English curriculums.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Amazing Grace as a hymn always bothers me. The back story of a guy who did great evil and then sings all about himself. So self centered. Also sung far far too often.
    So @NOprophet_NØprofit you don't accept, respect or acknowledge the concept or possibility of repentance?

    Depends. Many people, after a lifetime of harming others, review their lives and feel guilty. Others do kind things and don't make a sack money from the suffering and foreseeable deaths of others, their whole lives. There's a difference. Newton would have been responsible for probably hundreds of deaths as 40% "loss" on ships wasn't unusual (more economic to have them die). And he would have been responsible for destroying hundreds, probably thousands, of others' lives. -- I'm also not interested in apologetic Nazis. And make no mistake, slavers were were just like them. We prosecute Nazis, apologetic or not.

    The difference, of course, between Nazis and 18thc slave-traders is that Nazis were in a position to be prosecuted, within a few years of their unprecedented violence; whereas 18thc slave-traders were regarded as just one long-established industry sector comprising the saviours and creators of the British Empire (or any other imperial empire across the globe). Incidentally an Empire still being preached and lauded by large sections of British society, including the political.

    This perhaps make it all the more remarkable that Newton stepped away in such a public fashion from what was considered a perfectly Christian and useful profession well into the 19th century. I've never read any biographies of Newton so I don't know what else, in addition to opposing slavery politically, he did to make reparation for his past. Or indeed even what he could have done more.

    At the time he made his repentance it appears to have acted upon him in such a way to work towards eliminating the evil of slavery. His sincerity of repentance of course we can all have our opinion about. Ultimately, at this distance of time the only opinion on Newton's repentance that really matters is God's.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    fineline wrote: »
    if you have understood it and are genuinely wanting to suggest that black American women poets and white English men poets were similar in terms of experience and privilege.
    I think I'm trying to make a point about intersectionality or thereabouts: privilege is a continuum and while Keats was above most black women of his day (there's a portrait of Queen Charlotte Sophia, wife of George III, on the Guardian website today) he by no means enjoyed a secure position of privilege.

  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    I took the weekend to sit with this, but I have to say I'm really saddened by the attitude that a poem performed by a young, Black, American woman is being dragged here. It spoke to the Black American experience, using Black American spoken word styles, and was immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the form. Which was many, if not most, Americans. It sang to us. We're looking for more work from her, we're quoting it to one another, we are excited by her. If you're not a part of this conversation, that's fine, but please don't denigrate it. This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.
  • amybo wrote: »
    I took the weekend to sit with this, but I have to say I'm really saddened by the attitude that a poem performed by a young, Black, American woman is being dragged here. It spoke to the Black American experience, using Black American spoken word styles, and was immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the form. Which was many, if not most, Americans. It sang to us. We're looking for more work from her, we're quoting it to one another, we are excited by her. If you're not a part of this conversation, that's fine, but please don't denigrate it. This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.

    Thank you.
  • amybo wrote: »
    I took the weekend to sit with this, but I have to say I'm really saddened by the attitude that a poem performed by a young, Black, American woman is being dragged here. It spoke to the Black American experience, using Black American spoken word styles, and was immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the form. Which was many, if not most, Americans. It sang to us. We're looking for more work from her, we're quoting it to one another, we are excited by her. If you're not a part of this conversation, that's fine, but please don't denigrate it. This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.

    Well done. Not American, but it spoke to me.
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    amybo wrote: »
    This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.

    I thought the poem was well-done, but I find the notion that anyone who didn't must be racist tiresome and manipulative.
  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    I didn't say you were racist; I said that your nitpicking- specifically claiming it's not poetry (?!) appeared to come from a place of white supremacy. Which it does. Not liking it is cool, and it would be shitty to call someone racist for not liking it. But devaluing it in this context means you have some work to do.
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    amybo wrote: »
    I didn't say you were racist; I said that your nitpicking- specifically claiming it's not poetry (?!) appeared to come from a place of white supremacy.

    I did not interpret your comments as directed at me. I do, however, find the racist trope a tad heavy-handed, although I will accept your suggestion that you were referring to the white supremacists who aren't racist.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    @tclune said
    ..... white supremacists who aren't racist.

    Is there really such a thing? I can’t think of any examples whatever.

    Please explain.
  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    Wow. One can hold white supremacist ideas without considering oneself a racist. For example, one could grade an entire art form by eurocentric standards and not fit the garden-variety "racist uncle" trope that has passed for a definition of racism amongst lazy white people.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    edited January 25
    I don’t buy it.

    One can be deeply racist without fitting any trope.

    White supremacist ideas are inherently racist whether espoused by a garden-variety uncle or a Cambridge professor, or anything on between.

    White supremacist ideas are overtly racist. Many racist attitudes are subtle and unconscious, but not this example.

    You can start with the dictionary definition - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white supremacy
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    Boogie wrote: »
    @tclune said
    ..... white supremacists who aren't racist.

    Is there really such a thing? I can’t think of any examples whatever.

    Please explain.

    I was being sarcastic.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    Phew!
  • amybo wrote: »
    Wow. One can hold white supremacist ideas without considering oneself a racist.

    One can be a racist without considering oneself a racist. This is irrelevant.
  • amybo wrote: »
    Wow. One can hold white supremacist ideas without considering oneself a racist. For example, one could grade an entire art form by eurocentric standards and not fit the garden-variety "racist uncle" trope that has passed for a definition of racism amongst lazy white people.

    People can, and often do, grade art forms with respect to what they find familiar. Is the fact that I can't see artistic merit in Damien Hirst's habit of displaying bits of dead animal a personal failing, a cultural deficiency, or a reasonable comment on much of what passes for "modern art"? People buy his rubbish for millions of pounds, so presumably some of them think it worthwhile. Mr. Hirst and I are both white British men, so it doesn't seem reasonable to blame either racism or sexism for my contempt for his oeuvre.

    We had several people arguing over whether Ms Gorman's work qualifies as poetry or not. Personally, I don't care about that. I don't care whether you call it poetry, a spoken word performace, or a space cowboy - those are just labels, and you're trying to ring-fence patches of a fuzzy landscape with bright lines and say "this is a poem, that isn't" where no such distinction really exists.

    I care about "was it any good", and to me, it was. Like much poetry, it comes over much better as a performance than being read as dry words on the page, and I think there was pretty uniform agreement that Ms Gorman performed it well.

    As to the piece itself, I thought it was good. I thought it captured the challenges that America faces quite well, but did so in a way that was aspirational, hopeful, and encouraging. Somebody early on in the thread said that it was the high point of in inauguration, and I'm inclined to agree. It was a call to arms for an administration with a lot of work to do.

    I don't know whether weight of numbers makes much of an argument or not, but I can tell you that most of the chatter after our zoom church service this weekend was about her, and all of it was excited by her work. "Did you hear the poet?" people asked, "Wasn't she good?"

    And given that she was what everyone was talking about, I'd say she did her job, and did it well.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    amybo wrote: »
    I took the weekend to sit with this, but I have to say I'm really saddened by the attitude that a poem performed by a young, Black, American woman is being dragged here. It spoke to the Black American experience, using Black American spoken word styles, and was immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the form. Which was many, if not most, Americans. It sang to us. We're looking for more work from her, we're quoting it to one another, we are excited by her. If you're not a part of this conversation, that's fine, but please don't denigrate it. This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.

    As Mousethief said, well done, and thank you. It's been particularly relevant to read it again today, the day we observe the start of the displacement of the First Peoples from their lands, lands for which they had cared , and which in turn had cared for them, for tens of millennia.
  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    amybo wrote: »
    Wow. One can hold white supremacist ideas without considering oneself a racist.

    One can be a racist without considering oneself a racist. This is irrelevant.
    I agree; thank you. I'm just not about to start slinging that word around here; it means so many different things to so many different people. I don't think this is the place to parse it - and I'm not really willing to bring it to hell.
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    Dafyd wrote: »
    fineline wrote: »
    if you have understood it and are genuinely wanting to suggest that black American women poets and white English men poets were similar in terms of experience and privilege.
    I think I'm trying to make a point about intersectionality or thereabouts: privilege is a continuum and while Keats was above most black women of his day (there's a portrait of Queen Charlotte Sophia, wife of George III, on the Guardian website today) he by no means enjoyed a secure position of privilege.

    Okay, but I'm still not sure why you felt the need to make the points you were making, in the light of what I was saying. We all have people who are more privileged than us, so we can all argue our lack of privilege. To me, that is irrelevant. I am of course aware of intersectionality. I could argue, if you like, that Boris Johnson is lacking in privilege compared to some. (Intersectionally, I have the privilege of better hair than Boris, and a nicer nose!) Some members of the Royal Family will be less privileged compared to others. Everything is relative.

    But here we are talking about poetry and the traditional male white canon of literature, where, regardless of variations of privilege amongst said white males, and bickering and power games amongst them, they have still ruled the roost, as it were, and society's power structures have meant systemic oppression of non-white non-males. My point was specifically about the apparent expectations that Amanda Gorman's poetry should fit a norm, a rather narrow set of values, which seems to be a white male tradition, and where the norms of white male poets have been revered as the standard by which other types of poetry needs to be judged.

    Keats was tutored in literature, in poetry. His poetry follows in a white British tradition of poetry - you see the influences of his white male British heritage. And no reason why he shouldn't, but equally why would Black American woman want to follow in that same tradition, when her own heritage and tradition and experience, and relationship to language and literature, is vastly different? And particularly when her poem specifically addresses race issues. It would undermine her message considerably if her poetry were written to please the white men who have studied those traditional white male poets considered 'the greats.'
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    amybo wrote: »
    I took the weekend to sit with this, but I have to say I'm really saddened by the attitude that a poem performed by a young, Black, American woman is being dragged here. It spoke to the Black American experience, using Black American spoken word styles, and was immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the form. Which was many, if not most, Americans. It sang to us. We're looking for more work from her, we're quoting it to one another, we are excited by her. If you're not a part of this conversation, that's fine, but please don't denigrate it. This was a Black woman who was able to speak with a Black voice to all of America, an amazing feat; and the nitpicking here reeks of white supremacy.

    I agree. I'm a Brit myself, but I agree, and this is what I am trying to explain in my posts, and am bewildered when, rather than people engaging with the points I'm making, I'm being countered with 'Ah, but white males can be lacking in privilege too!' It really seems some people are missing the point that they are interpreting this poem (understandably, perhaps) through the eyes of white British male traditions of poetry - and indeed white British traditions of nitpicking with a sense of superiority! - rather than taking it and engaging with it for what it is, a poem from and within a very different tradition, culture and heritage, following different conventions and values.
  • edited January 27
    That seems like a UK perspective to me. I was raised on E. Pauline Johnson, "A dash of yellow sand, Wind-scattered and sun-tanned; Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;" (which is on a plaque at Beaver Glen beach, Prince Albert National Park, though it is about Lake Eirie not Waskesui.) And Earle Birney among others.
  • I told my wife about comments by amybo and fineline, and she had an electric reaction, as she loved the poem in the inauguration. And the notion of "dead white men" is fairly familiar. Good stuff.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    fineline wrote: »
    rather than people engaging with the points I'm making, I'm being countered with 'Ah, but white males can be lacking in privilege too!'
    It wasn't my intention to counter you or to nitpick and I apologise.

  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    I don't think I was given any poetry to read by anyone but white men until I got to college in the 80s, and then it was still very much the exception. When I was a junior university faculty member in the 90s chairing a department curriculum committee, I pushed through an English major curriculum change that required students to take at least one class covering works by writers outside the then still very dominant white male UK/US canon. It was a contentious meeting, and the eventual vote in favor was not unanimous. Later, one of the most senior tenured English professors sent a proposal to the School of Humanities curriculum committee, where I represented the English department, for a class on popular 19th-century American literature; the idea was, he said, to get outside the literary canon. Every writer on his syllabus was a white guy -- he included something from William Jennings Bryan but left off Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was outsold in the US only by the Bible in its time. (The other committee members asked what I thought, and I nixed it. The prof was really steamed at me, but I figured if the old guard wanted to be in charge of the curriculum, they shouldn't make the newest member of the department do so much committee work.)

    I left academia a long time ago, and I would hope things are different now, but given the way professionals at a small university in California were behaving in the 90s, I'm guessing that a fair number of Americans who don't read and teach literature for a living, especially people who don't recognize the use of literary devices in rap, especially white Americans, and especially Americans of a certain age, still have ideas about poetry that are heavily if not solely influenced by moribund versions of the canonical tradition I was taught. In the 90s I was having to show students how poems that didn't have rhyme and meter were still poetry; Walt Whitman simply being included in tomes like The Norton Anthology of American Literature did not convince them. Friends who teach literature at community colleges tell me they still run into this.

    But I am hopeful that there will be more change. I see teachers on Twitter sharing lesson plans for "The Hill We Climb." Poets.org says their traffic saw its biggest surge ever on the day of the inauguration, and that people looked up other poets besides Gorman, including the current American Poet Laureate. Gorman's works were at the tip-top of the Amazon US best-seller list last time I looked. She has been commissioned to write and perform a poem for the half-time show of the Super Bowl. That's a first, and a heckuva lot more people watch the Super Bowl than watch the inauguration.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Without wanting to counter anybody or take advantage of a place of superiority, the idea that poetry should rhyme seems to me a value of poetic traditions other than the white male canon. There's one tradition that includes things like Daffodils and The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck and If and O Captain My Captain and If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking; and another that includes The Old Cumberland Beggar and Tithonus and Goblin Market and Harp Song of the Dane Women and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and Because I Could Not Stop for Death. There's some overlap of course.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Besides a handful of poets who identify as New Formalists, I don’t think many poets feel regular rhyme and meter are absolutely necessary anymore in English poetry, and I’d hazard a guess that such a view has been standard since the 60s or earlier.

    As for the teaching of black and minority poets, that’s to be commended and encouraged especially since many great black and minority poets remain critically neglected. However, in my undergraduate and graduate degrees in English literature across two universities I’ve never had a class where a black or minority author wasn’t assigned. For those classes that were focused on time periods when black authors weren’t extant, like 18th century poetry or the development of the novel, then black critics and theorists were assigned. Of course I’ve no way of knowing how standardized my experience may be understood.
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