Why We Must Oppose Koran Burning

Though we may find your views offensive,
God forbid we get defensive.
Our Constitution gives full immunity
To members of your faith community:

From beer commercials and sniffing dogs,
And food products derived from hogs;
And Merry Christmas, and kids who stare
At the funny hats your women wear;
And those who claim the Towers’ destruction
Was at your holy Book’s instruction.

And should some dimwit Pastor plan
To build a bonfire with your _____,
Our F.B.I. and Commander-in-Chief
Will dress him down and give him grief
While fork-tongued Imams threaten and plead
Till fear and confusion stop the deed.

A thousand concessions we’ll make with patience
To turn Land of the Free into United Nations
And with you we’ll bow down as one nation
To the god of Submission – and obliteration.

Hangin’ Danny Deever

How amazing that there was a time that the poems of Rudyard Kipling, set to music, were known throughout the English-speaking world, sung in recitals and sold as records and sheet music. I learned about these songs through my father, who used to recite some of the poems from Barrack-Room Ballads to his not-very-appreciative kids. Nice versions can be found on a CD by the American baritone Leonard Warren (1911-1960), which I have been enjoying recently. (How amazing that sea shanties were so popular during that era, cleaned up, naturally, of the obscenity which was probably their original raison d’être. I wonder what the reason was for their popularity?)

Kipling’s poems are often quoted by traditionalists for their unforgettably rhythmic and concise statements of socially conservative truths. “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” tells us that the commonsense moral platitudes of traditional society will endure when progressive utopian dreams have been dashed to pieces. “The Stranger” makes an argument for preserving ethnic homogeneity. “If–” exhorts us to live lives of truth and courage. George Orwell famously describes Kipling as a “good bad” poet and finds a strong streak of sadism in his attitude towards the “natives” of the British Empire. No matter. The Empire is no more, but Kipling’s verse lives on in the English language.

“Danny Deever,” set to music by Walter Damrosch and sung by Reinald Werrenrath in the above link, tells the story of military hanging. (One link to sea shanties, incidentally, is that it has been speculated that Kipling had the ditty “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” in mind when he composed it, although the resemblance is not very close.) Despite its bleak, gruesome theme, it somehow goes beyond merely horrifying the reader.

“WHAT are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade.
“To turn you out, to turn you out,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What makes you look so white, so white?” said Files-on-Parade.
“I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play
The regiment’s in ‘ollow square – they’re hangin’ him to-day;
They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away,
An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

“What makes the rear-rank breathe so ‘ard?” said Files-on-Parade.
“It’s bitter cold, it’s bitter cold,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What makes that front-rank man fall down?” said Files-on-Parade.
“A touch o’ sun, a touch o’ sun,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, they are marchin’ of  ‘im round,
They ‘ave ‘alted Danny Deever by ‘is coffin on the ground;
An’ e’ll swing in ‘arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound
O they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!

” ‘Is cot was right-‘and cot to mine,” said Files-on-Parade.
” ‘E’s sleepin’ out an’ far to-night,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“I’ve drunk ‘is beer a score o’ times,” said Files-on-Parade.
” ‘E’s drinkin’ bitter beer alone,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, you must mark ‘im to ‘is place,
For ‘e shot a comrade sleepin’ – you must look ‘im in the face;
Nine ‘undred of ‘is county an’ the Regiment’s disgrace,
While they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

“What’s that so black agin the sun?” said Files-on-Parade.
“It’s Danny fightin’ ‘ard for life,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
“What’s that that whimpers over’ead?” said Files-on-Parade.
“It’s Danny’s soul that’s passin’ now,” the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they’re done with Danny Deever, you can ‘ear the quickstep play
The regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;
Ho! the young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day,
After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

Kipling does something easily here that I don’t think a contemporary poet could do: he conveys the horror and tragedy of the death penalty without indicating in any way that executions should not take place. There is no question that Danny Deever is a murderer and deserves to die in disgrace, yet he is also a human being, and though his perspective is never given every soldier (including the officers) easily imagines himself in Danny’s place.

I have a relative who became very involved in the anti-death penalty movement, corresponding with death-row inmates and becoming emotionally involved with them in a way that made the entire family very uncomfortable. Although I always was troubled by this relative’s actions, for her sake I found myself wishing that some of these men not be executed, and I drifted toward an anti-death penalty position. I reasoned that getting rid of the death penalty would ensure that no innocent people get executed by mistake, and that this on the balance could make society more civilized and just.

Since then, though, I’ve come to feel quite certain that although it might be best if the number of executions is kept as low as possible, “civilization rests on the hangman” (if anyone knows the source of that quotation please let me know) and guilty murderers with no mitigating circumstances need to be removed from society – completely removed, not made wards of the state. The moral and material cost to those who honor the commandment not to kill is just too great. My purpose here is not to prove this to skeptics, just to state it clearly.

What a different world Kipling inhabited. In the British Army of the 19th century, not only was murder of fellow soldiers swiftly punished, it was ritualized from beginning to end, as described in the notes to the poem. A bugle assembly called the men to witness the hanging; the condemned man had his insignia cut off and walked, to the accompaniment of a dead march, behind his own coffin to the gallows. The men of his battalion were not only forced to watch the execution but also to file past the corpse afterwards and look directly at it. The violent nature of execution was not disguised, and the entire community participated in it. I would probably be swooning like the young soldiers in the same situation, but there is an undeniable logic to the practice.

It is easy to be convinced that these executions were excessively cruel and that it is a blessing that they have been done away with in the modern military. I submit to those who feel this way the case of the Fort Hood massacre, carried out not as a personal vendetta against some rival but as an enemy assault on the Army, the American people, and really against humanity itself. I do not follow the case anymore as it is too painful to contemplate the failure of our once-honorable military to administer justice for the sake of its own people. A military execution 19th-century style would be far too kind for this killer, but it would be an acceptable resolution to the incident. More: in a military that defended itself in this manner, this crime would not have happened, because the perpetrator’s hostile jihadist beliefs would have been identified long before and he would have been handled accordingly. 43 people would have been saved from being wounded or killed – the invisible beneficiaries of a system of justice willing to carry out the grim task of execution.

Here, Kipling is no sadist, but a realist who retains his capacity for compassion. I remain struck by the strange beauty of “Danny Deever,” and also by the fact that Western culture, not long ago, not only produced poems like it but also produced composers able to craft perfect melodies for them.

“To Hope”

With thanks to the anti-Obamacare “Tea Party” protesters, who show that the American spirit still lives. – S.H.

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!

Whene’er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon’s bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

Whene’er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbidfancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!

Should e’er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country’s honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom’s shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed—
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot’s high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress’d,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil’d face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o’er my head!

– John Keats

A Bit of Local Color

The Indiana University Press has a nice series called the Library of Indiana Classics, to which belong several books by Booth Tarkington. As a Midwesterner I used to feel I came from one of the blander parts of the country, but as this series shows, Indiana in particular has produced a substantial amount of fine American literature. James Whitcomb Riley, Hamlin Garland, and Edward Eggleston were known to me; Gene Stratton-Porter and George Barr McCutcheon were not. There is so much out there to discover.

I took advantage of one of IU Press’s sales to pick up a copy of The Best of James Whitcomb Riley. The South may have the most “colorful” dialects, but Riley and the “local color” writers like Garland show that the Northern regions have their own diversity and, to re-appropriate the word usually applied to third-world people, vibrancy.

Consider Riley’s touching and very popular Civil War poem “The Old Man and Jim.” Jim isn’t much of a farmer, but shows himself to be a fearless soldier. His elderly father, never much for expressing his emotions, dotes on Jim and in the end has to bury his son, who succumbs to his wounds just as Northern victory is being announced. I’ll print the first and last stanzas here; the rest is posted here.

Old man never had much to say–
‘Ceptin’ to Jim,–
And Jim was the wildest boy he had–
And the old man jes’ wrapped up in him!
Never heerd him speak but once
Er twice in my life, and first time was
When the army broke out, and Jim he went,
The old man backin’ him, fer three months;
And all ‘at I heerd the old man say
Was, jes’ as we turned to start away,
“Well, good–bye Jim:
Take keer of yourse’f!”

Think of him–with the war plum’ through,
And the glorious old Red-White-and-Blue
A-laughin’ the news down over Jim,
And the old man, bendin’ over him–
The surgeon turnin’ away with tears
‘At hadn’t leaked fer years and years,
As the hand of the dyin’ boy clung to
His father’s, the old voice in his ears,–
“Well, good–bye, Jim:
Take keer of yourse’f!”

Regardless of the utility of or justifications for war, we grieve for the young men lost or forever scarred, a loss which their countrymen feel as their own. Now, Riley’s poem reminds us of so much else that has been lost: language, memories, kinship, common culture. But we do have the poem, and the culture it came from, though badly ailing, is far from dead. It can continue to live if we work to make that possible.

How Not to Fight a War

Henry VI, Part I, I.i: messengers bring news to the English nobles of the calamitous loss of numerous territories of France, recently won by the now deceased Henry V.

Duke of Exeter:
How were they lost? what treachery was us’d?

Messenger:
No treachery, but want of men and money.
Amongst the soldiers this is muttered–
That here you maintain several factions:
And whilst a field should be dispatch’d and fought,
You are disputing of your generals;
One would have lingering wars, with little cost;
Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings;
A third thinks, without expense at all,
By guileful fair words peace may be obtain’d.
Awake, awake, English nobility!
Let not sloth dim your honours new-begot.
Cropp’d are the flower-de-luces in your arms;
Of England’s coat one half is cut away.

My Lost Youth – and the Future

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

– William Wordsworth

Until middle age I rarely thought about my country, preferring more exotic foreign cultures to my own and the Continental giants of Western civilization to the often more provincial, ephemeral figures that America produced. It was not until I realized the terrible peril my country was in (mainly after 9/11) that I began thinking again about what it meant to be American and about what I might do to help my country, or at the very least, to share in the experience of helping her.

This site is, in a way, about boyhood, for it was in boyhood that my “American” identity was formed, both in the flesh-and-blood connection to a people I experienced and in the stories and symbols of that nationhood. I know that the spiritual world I knew then was real, and that if we Westerners allow the spiritual, moral, and demographic decline to continue, there will be no more boys like my grandfather, my father, or me.

It has nothing to do with nostalgia. It has everything to do with the future.

When Wordsworth said that “the child is father of the man,” he was not only stating an obvious fact about the formation of our personalities; he was also calling for us to engage actively with the child in us, to draw upon the naïve genius of the child whose heart leaps up when he sees a rainbow. In our popular culture, the idea of “getting in touch with the child within us” may suggest a program of self-indulgence in which the goal seems to be to remain childish and irresponsible. But revisiting childhood can also be a source of strength, reminding us of who we basically are and sometimes shedding light on current dilemmas.

The Romantic celebration of personal liberation and social revolution was destructive (something Wordsworth realized early on), but I cannot give up Romanticism entirely. Surely there is something about the Romantic spirit, with its uniting of human love and spiritual elevation, with its belief in the world-changing power of the individual will, that we should retain even as we seek to re-impose a traditional order on our society.

Longfellow was another Romantic who at the same time understood the indispensability of social order. He, too, was constantly returning to his boyhood:

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

* * *

There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “My Lost Youth“

I am not sure exactly what those last two lines mean, and yet, as poetry, I know they are true. Indeed, I never realized how important my “lost youth” would become to me later in life. Whether those younger than me, with even less direct knowledge of the historical America, will be receptive to voices from the past, I have no idea. But I believe that some of them will. That will be an era I would like to live to see.

And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

The Peaceful Warrior-King: Enemy of Progress? (More on The Lady of the Lake)

O minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?
‘Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,
Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep,
Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep?

(Lady of the Lake, Canto I)

Most wars, I suppose, are caused in one way or another by a territorial conflict between two peoples. It is simply a fact of life that to be a people requires that there be some territory that belongs exclusively to that people. Historically, the differences between even similar peoples have been sufficient to cause much bloodshed. We Americans have our own experience of civil war to show how fragile peace and national unity can be.

Walter Scott, in The Lady of the Lake (1810) (1), portrays a 16th-century conflict between James II, King of Scotland, who is attempting to bring the Border region under control, and a (fictitious) rebellious Highland clan, the Alpine, led by Roderick Dhu, vengeful and cruel, yet honorable in his way. The “lady of the lake” is the beautiful Ellen with the angelic singing voice, living in hiding on an island in Loch Katrine under Roderick’s protection. Her father is Douglas, former Earl of Bothwell and attendant to the king, who has been banished from his estate due to suspected hostile intentions towards the throne. Douglas and his daughter seek reconciliation and peace, but the volatile Roderick, hearing reports of a mustering of the king’s followers for war, summons his clan to war. Ellen is pursued by both Roderick and one James Fitz-Hugh, who has wandered into Highland territory while hunting, but she refuses them in favor of her beloved, Malcolm. After a duel in which Fitz-Hugh kills Roderick, Douglas and Ellen achieve peace by surrendering themselves to the King – where a final surprise awaits them. The king restores Douglas to his rightful position and orders an end to the hostilities.

Grounding his story in the contrast between the Gaelic-speaking, not-quite-civilized Highland Scots and the “Saxons” or Anglicized Scots under James, Scott paints a romantic picture of warriors on both sides, extolling their courage, vitality, and masculine beauty. Fitz-Hugh, for example, is portrayed thus:

On his bold visage middle age
Had slightly press’d its signet sage,
Yet had not quench’d the open truth
And fiery vehemence of youth;
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare,
The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire,
Of hasty love, or headlong ire.
His limbs were cast in manly mould,
For hardy sports or contest bold;
And though in peaceful garb array’d,
And weaponless, except his blade,
His stately mien as well implied,
A high-born heart, a martial pride,
As if a Baron’s crest he wore,
And sheathed in armour trod the shore. (Canto I)

Yet Scott in no way glorifies fighting for its own sake, unless in the pastime of hunting – and even here a noble stag is supposed to be given a fair chance to flee. Indeed, the most “martial” figure of all, Roderick, is rejected by Ellen for his savagery and vengefulness:

…I grant him brave,
But wild as Bracklinn’s thundering wave;
And generous – save vindictive mood,
Or jealous transport, chafe his blood:
I grant him true to friendly band,
As his claymore is to his hand;
But O! That very blade of steel
More mercy for a foe would feel:
I grant him liberal, to fling
Among his clan the wealth they bring,
When back by lake and glen they wind,
And in the Lowland leave behind,
Where once some pleasant hamlet stood,
A mass of ashes slaked with blood. (Canto II)

Although the poem’s immediate subject is the conflict between Fitz-Hugh and Roderick, it is really about the effort of King James to peacefully consolidate his rule. This rule the poet considers legitimate, although tainted by the king’s flaws – a certain rashness of character, and inclination to chase fair maids. His reign has been harmed by ambitious nobles who have falsely denounced Douglas and others to him. The king declares that his purpose is to “watch…o’er insulted laws” and “to right the injured cause.” Thus he made a fair judgment of Douglas:

Calmly we heard and judged his cause,
Our council aided and our laws….
…Bothwell’s Lord henceforth we own
The friend and bulwark of our Throne. (Canto VI)

At the same time, the reconciliation is achieved not only by adherence to law, but by a spirit of loving-kindness native to the king and personified by Ellen, who in some small way turns the heart of each man in the story away from rash warfare. Not that Ellen is a pacifist, as the last lines of this passage suggest:

Her kindness and her worth to spy,
You need but gaze on Ellen’s eye;
Not Katrine [the lake], in her mirror blue,
Gives back the shaggy banks more true,
Than every free-born glance confess’d
The guileless movements of her breast;
Whether joy danced in her dark eye,
Or woe or pity claim’d a sigh,
Or filial love was glowing there,
Or meek devotion pour’d a prayer,
Or tale of injury called forth
The indignant spirit of the North.

The lawfulness and humaneness of the civilizing order are understood to be Christian qualities, contrasted with the rougher ways of the Highlanders, still partly pagan.

A search of articles on The Lady reveals that it was being taught in middle schools in the 1930s; I am not sure exactly when it fell from favor. There is no doubt, though, that neither its content nor its style would have commended it to educators in the later 20th century. Scott’s extolling of traditional virtues like faith, chastity, valor, and honor in a hierarchical world of inherited positions did not reflect the modern egalitarian ideal. The actions of his characters were motivated largely by their given roles and their virtues or lack thereof; there was little of the psychological complexity favored in modern literature. And the flowery, descriptive style with its redundancy and its heavy rhymes was no longer considered to be good writing.

Not only that, Scott was under suspicion of being a source of dangerous ideas – of popularizing a fantasy code of honor that Mark Twain almost literally blamed for the Civil War. The famous passage, from Life on the Mississippi, is quoted in this recent, very derogatory article from The Atlantic:

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still.

There may be aspects of Scott’s writing that merit Twain’s criticism (which in any case is deliberately exaggerated and probably more applicable to Scott’s imitators); but The Lady contains nothing that can be understood as a call to brash rebellion, let alone to acts of terror. It is true that the portrayal of the loyalty-unto-death bond uniting the members of Clan Alpine remind one the “band of brothers” rhetoric of the South during the Civil War:

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honour’d and bless’d be the ever-green Pine!
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line! (Canto II)

But Scott ultimately calls for peaceful union under a just ruler, and Roderick in the end pays the price for his ill-considered rebellion (I do not venture here into the question of whether or not that epithet should be applied to the Southern venture). Why should Scott’s message not have continued to be passed on to young Americans, in their English classes and in Classics Illustrated?

Alas, we – or at least our intellectual class – came to believe that Scott’s ideals, and ideas, were not nuanced enough. Scott, said people like Twain onward, portrayed people according to absurd, unlivable ideals instead of as they really are; in doing so, he impeded, or at least failed to help, the progress of the human race. Our real mission was now to transcend boundaries of clan, nation, and race so we could leave behind, once and for all, the ridiculous conflicts which these engendered.

But it was not Scott who lacked subtlety; it was us. He understood the importance of kinship and race, and who controls a narrow swathe of land, and the right of a traditional people to defend their way of life. (Though not supportive of rebellion, he certainly admired the unique virtues of the Highlanders.) He denigrated mercenary soldiers, who “drew not for their fields the sword,” fighting instead for money and adventure. He had a vision of peace between different peoples, but it was peace with mutual respect and with borders, transgressions of which would be punished. And he rightly looked to history as key to understanding the soul of a people, and saw music and poetry as coming from that same soul.

The peaceful life most of us still enjoy in the United States is not the result of our valuing “tolerance” and “diversity.” It is the product of a civilization built up by a linguistically, culturally, and racially homogeneous people, a civilization set up to enforce and propagate a transcendent moral order – just as Scott’s King James sought to do. When we begin to understand this again, Scott will no longer seem so alien to us – and his stories and songs will speak to us once again. We will come, once again, to value and cultivate a sense of personal and national honor. Meanwhile, the true aliens among us, whom we are currently inviting into our society far more quickly than we can “assimilate” them, will become clearly visible for what they are. A nobler and greater culture will become possible.

Notes

(1) The former popularity of the poem is suggested by the fact that it was the source of the last name of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass as well as the source of the Ku Klux Klan’s idea of cross burning (though that practice has little connection to the ritual described in the book). Schubert set a number of songs from The Lady to music, including the famed “Ave Maria;” and the “Boat Song,” also known as “Hail to the Chief,” is the source of the tune played for our President today. It is also the source for Rossini’s opera La donna del lago.

What Made the Harp Go Silent? Rediscovering Narrative Poetry

One major loss in our culture that is not widely remarked upon is the death of narrative and recitative poetry. I got to thinking of this subject while reading Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake (1810), a romantic narrative of some 120 pages taking its background from the 16th century conflict between King James V of Scotland and some rebellious clans of the Highlands.  It features several memorable scenes including a duel to the death between the chief protagonist and antagonist, and is colored by Scott’s usual themes of chivalry and honor. The poem was hugely popular not only in Britain but in the United States for over a century, but now is essentially forgotten. This fact should surprise us more than it does. Why do poems like this, widely read and loved well into the 20th century, now seem even more alien than those of Shakespeare?

My position is not that of an aficionado who wants to share his passion with others. To the contrary, I am not a highly experienced reader of poetry. It took considerable time and more than one reading before I became comfortable with The Lady. The problem is partly the archaic language, but even more, modern readers are not at all trained to enjoy the leisurely cinematic rolling out of events and scenes meant to be savored more for the way they are told, than for suspense or depth of character.

I was always more inclined to the humanities than to the sciences, but I never had any appreciation for poetry, except such as was found in song lyrics. The little I read in school didn’t capture my imagination much. The discussion of poetic devices gave the impression that poetry is an obscure intellectual exercise in which a poet decides, for instance, “I’ll use alliteration here to intensify the pathos,” and the reader’s task is to identify the techniques. Robin Williams portrays the harmful effect of such instruction beautifully in his role as a teacher in the film Dead Poets Society. In the film, he has his students read the introduction to a poetry textbook which declares that the value of poetry can be calculated and charted on a graph. Williams then tells the boys that is nonsense: the real purpose of poetry is “to woo women” and then has them tear out the offending introduction from the book.

I did know people who loved poetry fiercely. At college, I knew a girl who wrote deeply personal and sometimes cryptic free-form poems. She seemed to use it for self-expression, or as a kind of therapy. I was impressed by her intense involvement with poetry, but couldn’t relate to it myself. Then there was my father, who had written poetry in his youth and could recite famous poems by heart. (He did think Dead Poets Society was a great movie, which makes me wonder about his original motivations!) This, too, was impressive, but also seemed rather eccentric and pedantic – again, not something I could relate to.

Not too many years ago, I had a small breakthrough when I realized that there is no trick to reading poetry – you can just read it as you do a novel or essay, for its content. Sure, hearing it read aloud would be better, and knowledge of the poetic forms helps, but the primary content of the poem – its language – is perfectly accessible through reading. So I began reading some of the great poets again, and, perhaps aided by greater maturity, was able to do better with it.

I think that part of the modern ideal, is close to that of my college friend, who would have agreed with Emily Dickinson in seeing the individual, subjective, emotional response as being the most important thing. Of course, Dickinson’s statement is wonderful and true in its own way:

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.

If not about deep emotional states expressed in original language, modern poetry, like other modern art, seems to be preoccupied with itself, interested in de-familiarizing ordinary experiences and playing with different layers of meaning. An example from Richard Wilbur:

A Measuring Worm

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back….

Interesting, but hardly evocative of a Dickinsonian ecstasy.

A large portion of poetry in the English language, though, is what I will call narrative poetry. I have a very nice collection of it edited by Kingsley Amis, entitled The Faber Popular Reciter. (1) Poems of this type were “learned by heart and recited in class, or performed as turns at grown-up gatherings; they were sung in church or chapel or on other public occasions” (p. 15). This sort of poetry required “absolute clarity, heavy rhythms and noticeable rhymes with some break in the sense preferred at the end of the line.” Also, “[s]ubject-matter must suit the occasion by being public, popular, what unites the individual with some large group of his neighbours” (p. 16). Amis is talking about poetry as a civilizational practice, poetry as part of the common, living heritage of a people.

And these poems can be enjoyed by boys who like sports and guns (a large part of the imagined readership of this blog) as well as by sensitive college girls. It includes the old favorites, like “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere“:

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, —
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

The form cannot be written today (1978), wrote Amis, because

Clarity, heavy rhythms, strong rhymes and the rest are the vehicles of confidence, of a kind of innocence, of shared faiths and other long-extinct states of mind. The two great themes of popular verse were the nation and the Church, neither of which, to say the least, confers much sense of community any longer. Minor themes, like admiration of or desire for a simple rustic existence, have just been forgotten. The most obvious cause of it all is the disintegrative shock of the Great War. (p. 18)

We still know, on some level, that a national poetry is needed. Indeed, the Obama inauguration featured a reading of a poem that quite accurately reflected the current state of the American “nation” that elected this president – a collection of strangers, alien to each other:

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

The fact that it was beyond-parody awful has everything to do with the fact that production and consumption of poetry – or any art of any depth – requires an audience with shared values and understandings. For poetry, in particular, it requires a common language, and not just in the sense that Sonia Sotomayor and I both speak English, but a common mother tongue, including a shared heritage of stories and experience, a familiarity with conventional forms, and, to a certain degree, a shared ancestry. All of this was the case for the English-speaking peoples when Scott’s poem was written.

I would like to see a revival of narrative and recitative poetry. The Vanishing American website has been instructive and inspirational for me in its author’s featuring of important patriotic and declamatory poems, which she often does on significant dates, giving us a chance, at least in this “virtual” world, to have a national, communal poetic experience.

As for the Lady of the Lake, maybe next time I can say something about it. Suffice it to say for now that whatever flaws it may have, the notions of honor and chivalry it presents are by no means ludicrous, and the author’s admiration for the virtues of warriors is by no means a celebration of war and bellicosity, but quite the opposite.

For now, a tribute to the power of poetry from the end of the poem, sung by the narrator to his “muse” from whom he has fancifully borrowed an abandoned Celtic harp:

Much have I owed thy strains on life’s long way,
Through secret woes the world has never known,
When on the weary night dawn’d wearier day,
And bitterer was the grief devour’d alone.
That I o’erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own. (Canto VI)

Notes

(1) Kingsley Amis ed., The Faber Popular Reciter, London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

The Temptation, the Mad Compulsion

Billy Bragg, one of my favorite singers once upon a time, had the following lines which came back to me recently:

The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again

(“Must I Paint You a Picture”)

He was talking about love affairs – and describing the sort of affair those of my generation experienced so commonly, left on our own with no pressure to make a commitment, and indeed encouraged to “experiment.” I imagine the scenario is no less common today.

Yet the warning applies equally to the reckless stresses we are placing on our society. A conservative thought from Bragg, whose political philosophy was nevertheless precisely that described by Robert Frost in the following lines:*

A Case for Jefferson

Harrison loves my country too,
But wants it all made over new.
He’s Freudian Viennese by night.
By day he’s Marxian Muscovite.
It isn’t because he’s Russian Jew.
He’s Puritan Yankee through and through.
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens:
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it all made over new.

A nice description of the radical impulse! I believe Frost was thinking of the radical 1920s or maybe ’30s here.

The compulsion to destroy seems to rule our society today – though there is now much less of any solid society remaining to be smashed. Let’s hope for a revival of the conservative impulse – to save what we can of what we have left.

*Bragg has continued to struggle with his conservative side, as shown in his book The Progressive Patriot (which I originally learned of from the Oz Conservative, and left a comment).

God’s Grandeur

A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written in 1918:

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.