At water’s edge your dark cloud haunts the stream We speak of heaven, earth, and love-poem’s art You ask if I still keep you in my dream
Trees lean down in listening to us scheme Dusk douses the daylight out of its heart At water’s edge your dark cloud haunts the stream
You wonder if absence kills what we seem Does distance dim the image you impart? You ask if I still keep you in my dream
I pick a stone to pitch into the gleam Where the water’s dark shadow seems to start At water’s edge your dark cloud haunts the stream
The ripples spread in light flecks through the beam They fade. We know not whither they depart You ask if I still hold you in my dream.
Does your brute mind ever long to redeem? Did love ever hide beneath your stone heart? At water’s edge your dark cloud haunts the stream You ask if I still keep you in my dream
Poor Blind Jack the Fiddler dies because of two drunken louts who drove a set of horses too fast and landed them all in a ditch. But Jack has an important report to offer from his seat in the afterlife.
Introduction and Text of “Blind Jack”
In Edgar Lee Masters’ “Blind Jack” from the American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker reports his drama in the form of an American sonnet, also known as an Innovative sonnet (American-Innovative Sonnet).
This sonnet is the epitome of “innovative.” The poem displays itself in four movements, offering a cinquain, a tercet, a couplet, and a quatrain. The poem eschews both rime and rhythm, opting nevertheless for a surprise conclusion that is both gripping and a bit shocking but in the final analysis nothing short of fascinating.
Blind Jack
I had fiddled all at the county fair. But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire, Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses Till they ran away.
Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed.
There’s a blind man here with a brow As big and white as a cloud.
And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, Writers of music and tellers of stories, Sit at his feet, And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.
Commentary on “Blind Jack”
Poor Blind Jack the Fiddler dies because of two drunken louts who drove a set of horses too fast and landed them all in a ditch. But Jack has an important report to offer from his seat in the afterlife.
First Movement Cinquain: Drunken Louts of Death
I had fiddled all at the county fair. But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire, Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses Till they ran away.
Blind Jack begins by asserting that he had been playing his fiddle all day at the county fair. No doubt he was tired and eager to get home to rest. Jack was riding in a buckboard with two drunken louts, “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire.
The two drunks insisted that Blind Jack keep playing his fiddle. Seems they were partial to the tune “Susie Skinner.” So they insisted that Jack keep playing that song. Jack reports that they kept whipping the horses to make them run faster and faster. But the horses with horse-minds of the own then ran wild and landed the trio in a ditch.
Second Movement Tercet: Trapped by Wheels
Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed.
Jack then claims that even though he was blind he tried to save himself by jumping from the buckboard as it was tumbling into the ditch. Unfortunately, the blind fiddler became trapped by the wheels of the vehicle and was killed.
Third Movement Couplet: Finished His Earthly Talk
There’s a blind man here with a brow As big and white as a cloud.
Jack the blind fiddler has now finished his earthly tale and begins his report of things from where his soul now exists. He reveals that he has encountered another blind man, and this man’s brow is “as big and white as a cloud.” This revelation, of course, implies that Jack can now see. Otherwise, he would not know that this blind man had such a brow.
Fourth Movement Quatrain: Greek Poet, Homer
And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, Writers of music and tellers of stories, Sit at his feet, And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.
Jack, in his final movement, confides that the “blind man” with the cloud-like eyebrows is none other than the famous Greek poet, Homer. Jack does not mention the poet’s name, but his description makes it abundantly clear to whom he is referring.
Jack also reports that all types of creative writers sit at the poet Homer’s feet listening to him tell the tales that have come down to us as The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. And, of course, all flavor of musicians, especially fiddlers “from highest to lowest” place themselves among those craving to hear a good yarn.
Homer’s Appearance and How Blind Jack Would Know
Interestingly, most of the images and busts of the poet Homer that we have today do not show that he had such a prominent brow. Likely, the blind fiddler is merely exaggerating for effect. He probably surmises that extraordinary, creative folks like Homer would also be extraordinary in appearance.
Also Jack’s description raises another puzzle: was Jack able to see at some point in his life? was he not born blind? had he actually seen any of the busts and likenesses that exist of Homer?
However, if before he lost his sight, Jack had seen an image of what Homer has been considered to look like, one can only accept that his postmortem description is, in fact, pure exaggeration.
On the other hand, readers may simply interpret Jack’s ability to see after death as the soul’s immutable ability and that Jack is now able to correct all the images that do not push forth the big and cloud-like brow that belongs on Homer.
Suffering rewards at last with lasting joy Leading the soul through darkest night Where time can never dim nor strife destroy
Hearts grows strong though wounds employ Their ancient thrusts of doubt changed to light Suffering rewards at last with lasting joy
These mortal eyes no more a toy Of fear. Behold! Thy sacred sight Where time can never dim nor strife destroy
Thine eye with mine own no shadow can cloy For only one truth links our vision bright Suffering rewards at last with lasting joy
Thou dost dwell where time doth not alloy Thou art the dawn outshining death’s cruel night Where time can never dim nor strife destroy
From highest mountain to valley’s convoy Thy voice doth make all darkest shadows bright Suffering rewards at last with lasting joy Where time can never dim nor strife destroy
The speaker in T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is bemoaning the spiritually dry direction to which his culture is headed.
Introduction and Text of “The Hollow Men”
One of T. S. Eliot’s most anthologized poems “The Hollow Men” offers up a dreary prospect for the speaker’s generation. Art seems to be dying because of a spiritual dryness that whispers despair, loneliness, and hopelessness.
More dire than his comedic drama “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and nearly as devastatingly ugly as his horror-filled “Preludes,” this poem sinks itself so deep into melancholy from the hollow men-stuffed men straw-headed disasters to the final flailing attempt at prayer.
The two opening epigraphs included before the poem set the tone for a soulless, tragic-comedic farce that ultimately results from the blandness against which the speaker rails. The first epigraph, “Mistah Kurtz–he dead,” is a quotation from Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness. The second quotation, “A penny for the Old Guy,” refers to Guy Fawkes Day, when children beg for pennies to buy trinkets to commemorate that day.
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz—he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I We are the hollow men We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom Remember us – if at all – not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer –
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of this tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper.
Reading by T. S. Eliot
Reading by Marlon Brando
Commentary on “The Hollow Men”
The speaker in T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” bemoans with ugly, degrading images of the bland, vapid world into which art and culture seemed to be moving. Eliot’s prescience remains remarkable; he so clearly predicted the sad state of Western art and culture that resulted from the postmodern era ethos.
First Section: A Scarecrow Culture
I We are the hollow men We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom Remember us – if at all – not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
The speaker describes himself and his culture as hollow yet stuffed. They are stuffed with straw. They resemble scarecrows. Their voices are dry, and when they whisper to one another, their words lack meaning, are as empty as “wind in dry grass / Or rats feet over broken glass.”
These men are shapeless, colorless; their life force is paralyzed, and when they move, as to gesture, there is simply no motion. Their compatriots who have died are likely not to remember them as violent souls but instead as “the hollow men / The stuffed men.” The ugly images have begun and will carry the message of lack of hope or any brightness on the horizon.
The contorted images of the painful yet anesthetized walking dead ignite the fire that burned into postmodernism its virtual absence of desire for beauty and truth. As art explodes into personal effusion, the culture suffers from neurosis as admirers become less and less inspired for making life worth living.
The postmodern conundrum rattles its empty gourd producing only a faint whisper of anything resembling sound; night terrors embalm the living—all this while egos become more and more bloated through arrogance and false intellectual arguments.
Second Section: Non-Functioning Eyes
II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer –
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
The speaker asserts that in this dry, dead world, people cannot look at one another. Although the eyes may function properly, they still focus only on a broken column. Voices are as the eyes, virtually useless as if they were in the winds singing. The voices are farther away than a fading star.
The speaker then shifts from mere statement to a slight command, supplicating to be “no nearer / In death’s dream kingdom.” He also asks to wear the garb of a scarecrow. Essentially, he is praying that death does not take him yet. He is not ready for that “final meeting, / In the twilight kingdom.”
The attempt to insert a prayer rings as hollow as the men described in the poem. The speaker’s prayer remains a secret wish that he can outlive the present dismaying trend of emptiness that seems to be overtaking his culture.
He does not desire that “twilight kingdom” but craves that life would spring up around him, instead of the desert that is forming from the dearth of sensible thought. The atmosphere seems to shed it electric color, becoming a mausoleum for dead letters.
Third Section: What to Pray to?
III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
The speaker now turns to describing the landscape, which is dead; it is cactus land where stone images are raised. Only dead men pray here under the twinkle of a fading star. He asks, “Is it like this in death’s other kingdom?”
He refers to this world as death’s dream kingdom and beyond death as death’s other kingdom. Thus he wonders what the soul experiences after death. Also, he wonders if the soul will be alone, if trembling with tenderness, will lips still be able to kiss and will they be able to pray, and will they pray to broken stone?
The image of praying to “broken stone” reveals the hard, harsh reality of a grand failure to pray to a living Creator. The postmodern mind virtually obliterated spirituality from life and art, to such an extent that nothing was left to seek.
Full of themselves with ego-tripping maniacal arrogance, those hollow creatures made God in their own filtered image and then with cock-sureness announced that He was the one Whom they found wanting.
Fourth Section: Dry, Hollow, Stuffed, Empty
IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of this tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
Returning to the eyes, the speaker laments again that these dry, hollow, straw-stuffed men cannot see. They exist in a place where the stars are dying; they find themselves in this hollow valley, which is nothing more than this “broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.”
This group of hollow men meet for a last time where they “grope together / And avoid speech.” They are gathered on a riverbank, and despite the river’s being swollen, they remain dry and sightless.
However, there may be a glimmer of hope that might reappear as the perpetual star or “Multifoliate rose,” which would emerge from death’s twilight kingdom—the place between death’s dream kingdom and death’s other kingdom, a kind of purgatory.
Despite the constant drum beat of spiritual dryness in the poem, it leaves open the possibility that true spiritual striving could open itself again in the hearts of certain seekers. Because the hollow men remain sightless, they likely will never open their eyes, even though they could, or the speaker at least seems to keep a glimmer of hope alive.
Fifth Section: A Lunatic Rant
V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper.
The speaker sounding rather like a lunatic—after all, such a state of dryness, hollowness, stuffed-with-straw bitterness could lead its victims nowhere else; thus he recites nursery-rime-like ditties, such as, “Here we go round the prickly pear,” which is likely suggested to him by “Here we go round the mulberry bush,” but instead of a fruit tree, the speaker chooses a cactus to further symbolize the dryness of his theme.
The speaker then makes a set of assertions that ultimately form the basis of the philosophical stance taken in the poem: “Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.” Everything on this earth is covered and disguised by a shadow.
That shadow is the illusion that humankind is separated from its divine origin. This world operates as if it belongs to the kingdoms of death, but in fact, “Thine is the Kingdom.” The speaker affirms that ultimately the Divine Reality is the only reality that controls all the imaginary kingdoms of humankind.
Flighty from his intoxicating philosophy, the speaker descends again into a nursery-rime-like chant, repeating three times, “This is the way the world ends,” and finally claiming that it ends “Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Possibly serving as Fred Hoyle’s motivation for the naming of the Big Bang Theory of origin, the speaker having experienced the nothingness of modern life finds it likely that the end of this drab existence is not worth so big a spectacle as would be produced by a bang.
Instead of a big bang at its end, it will probably just snivel and sob itself to death. Thus despite the insertion of a hopeful thought and prayer, the piece concludes with virtually the exact same pessimism with which it began.
yes, the particles are in bloom tonight, but the wine will not pop out in red on my face, I think, because, I am already flushed with the excitement of seeing you again. I am sorry, I am speaking so fast, I seem to think I have so much to say, so much you must want to hear, after all, here we are, and it was you who finally e-mailed me and said we must talk, that you need to tell me all these things that had backed up in your heart and you were ready to flood me with all those explanations, and you hoped I would agree to see you, you knew you have been an ass again, maybe I would not care any longer to hear, because after all, I have e-mailed you many times, and been met with that cold silence, and I have e-mailed you about needing closure, and you wouldn’t give it so I took it, and naturally, well, naturally you are unsure, maybe I have stopped being the kind-hearted soul you remember, and maybe I have just become indifferent to anything you have to say, but you would really like to explain, you think you can now, and you hope I will agree to see you, we can finally be the kind of friends you have wanted all along to be—
I sip my coffee, it is cold. that flood may never wash, I fear.
Barbara Guest holds a prominent place among poetasters such as Robert Bly, Pablo Neruda, Charles Bernstein, Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco, and Margaret Atwood. Her piece “Red Lilies” flames out from the first singed line, snuffing itself out with a pilot light going out on the stove.
Introduction and Text of “Red Lilies”
In Barbara Guest’s “Red Lilies,” the speaker creates in eight versagraphs observations that stack up in her mind transformations of frivolity and motion. The ragged mind that concocts blistering stench pushes the envelope to the edge of oblivion. Poetry movements rage and range on difference, and sometimes the difference becomes so different that it is a whole other species from its ancestors.
Nonsense has its place in both the literary and non-literary worlds, but when it masquerades as the genuine, it is time to call it out for what it is. Beginning poets love to wallow in the abstruse filth of nonsense; it gives them a sense of elitism that high-brow guff may prove the holier-than-thou crowd is with-it, that is, socially and/or culturally up-to-date, in style in fashion.
What Barbara Guest needed was more critical responses like that of Matthew Cooperman, who remarked in his otherwise fawning essay titled “Envy and Architecture: On Barbara Guest’s Realisms,” “we can never quite fall into her worlds as the words get in the way.”
Let that thought sink in: if the words in a poem—made of words—”get in the way,” what happens to the poem? The following piece is an example of what happens. It ain’t pretty, but it is thoroughly postmodern (see “Poetry and Politics under the Influence of Postmodernism.”)
Also, Denise Levertov, as a Norton editor, rejected a Guest manuscript, offering an accurate description of Guestian swill, that it displayed “the typical chic flipness of the NY School” and that “often a poem of yours has seemed to me like an unrelated series of poem-seeds, none of them developed.”
As this surrealistic piece of wonder plays out in its eight raggedy, uneven versagraphs, its postmodern flavor lends itself too easily to satire as well as mockery—a conflated practice that I have employed in this commentary with genuine zeal and unrestrained alacrity.
Red Lilies
Someone has remembered to dry the dishes; they have taken the accident out of the stove. Afterward lilies for supper; there the lines in front of the window are rubbed on the table of stone
The paper flies up then down as the wind repeats. repeats its birdsong.
Those arms under the pillow the burrowing arms they cleave as night as the tug kneads water calling themselves branches
The tree is you the blanket is what warms it snow erupts from thistle; the snow pours out of you.
A cold hand on the dishes placing a saucer inside
her who undressed for supper gliding that hair to the snow
The pilot light went out on the stove
The paper folded like a napkin other wings flew into the stone.
“Red Lilies” at 4:06
Commentary on “Red Lilies”
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t know if he really likes you.
First Versagraph: Fried, Scrambled, or Otherwise
Someone has remembered to dry the dishes; they have taken the accident out of the stove. Afterward lilies for supper; there the lines in front of the window are rubbed on the table of stone
The speaker observes that the dishes have been dried and infers that someone must have remembered to dry them; she also observes that the accident has been removed from the stove. The speaker then invokes a brief reference to the poem’s name-sake, “Afterward lilies for supper. “
Now that the accident has been taken out of the stove, the cook is free to prepare the lilies in any style the eaters will like, whether scrambled, fried, or any other number of ways including completely raw. She then notes that “rubbed on the table of stone” are “the lines in front of the window.” She remains emotionless regarding the rubbing of the stone table, as well as caring little about the lines in front of the window.
Second Versagraph: Birds of a Paper
The paper flies up then down as the wind repeats. repeats its birdsong.
The speaker then diverts her attention from the kitchen; some papers outside flying about have caught her eye. She must report on this momentous act. The wind is causing the paper to “fl[y] up,” and it keeps it up until the speaker’s mind becomes bored with the notice and decides that instead of mere paper, the wind is “repeat[ing] its birdsong.”
One might have thought that actually birds repeated their songs; however, this speaker has corrected that notion: it is the wind, not the birds, that repeats the birdsongs. This notion plays out in utter sincerity while the speaker takes further mental notes.
Third Versagraph: Arms Cleaving to the Night
Those arms under the pillow the burrowing arms they cleave as night as the tug kneads water calling themselves branches
Another mental jog lands the speaker’s attention on a memory of lying in bed with her arms nestled under the pillow. But these arms are creative; they “cleave / as night” would as it engulfs a boat in water, and these arms are so clever that they are calling themselves branches. The similarity between human arms and branches has not escaped the sharp eye of this speaker.
The world becomes a murky tangle of limbs and water, songs on the wind still spilling into the open air of night, when all things may look silvery and rested on the brim of consciousness.
Fourth Versagraph: Oh, So Clever! Tree Metaphor
The tree is you the blanket is what warms it snow erupts from thistle; the snow pours out of you.
Remaining with the clever tree metaphor, the speaker blurts out, addressing herself employing the “self-reflexive you,” “The tree is you.” She then decides that if the tree is herself, then the blanket warms it. The blanket warms her when she is a human body, so now the blanket also warms her as she morphs into a metaphorical tree.
Then by fantastic luck, “snow erupts from thistle.” The speaker has landed full throttle in a tinseled universe, and she could not be more elated, because now “the snow pours out of you.” She becomes like thistle, enjoyable bristling with natural verve.
Fifth Versagraph: A Saucer of Breathlessness
A cold hand on the dishes placing a saucer inside
The speaker then notices surrealistically that some cold hand now is in the process of placing a saucer somewhere inside something. She has not, at this point, determined where the saucer is going to be relocated, but she seems breathless with anticipation.
As she wonders, at this point, what difference it is going to make, she gleams out of ethereal wonder that a hand so cold could ever place itself on dishes, as she accepts each bit of jetsam flowing into her brain. Flotsam may hang or loom as traces of bilge hurry by.
Sixth Versagraph: The Naked, Clintonian Truth
her who undressed for supper gliding that hair to the snow
Surprisingly, miraculously, and yet again surrealistically, the cold hand has placed the saucer inside the speaker. She did not see this coming; thus she placed the act in the following versagraph.
She had “undressed for supper” and has been “gliding that hair to the snow.” Neither the speaker nor the reader could not have wished for better news, but then, she is sure that she, like Hillary Clinton, regarding telling the truth, said, “I’ve always tried to. Always. Always..”
For this speaker, however, the naked truth is like finishing off supper in her birthday suit. Sprites and candles may glide more easily but hair that glides to the snow is better than yesterday stew.
Seventh Versagraph: Oh, the Inhumanity
The pilot light went out on the stove
Unceremoniously, the stove, despite having the accident removed from it or maybe because of the accident itself, suffers the indignity of having its pilot light extinguished. This occurrence could be either advantageous if the gas somehow ceases to escape, or disastrous, depending on the proximity of a lighted match.
The speaker becomes agitated but continues to report only what she truly understands. If moss grows on the north side, she is certain she did not observe the green stuff on another side.
Eight Versagraph: Return of the Wind-Throttled Paper
The paper folded like a napkin other wings flew into the stone.
But the speaker refuses to anticipate any likelihood of an explosion, as her mind once again returns to the wind- throttled paper that caught her eye a few versagraphs back; the paper has miraculously folded like a napkin. And the stone table is now being bombarded by other wings.
Likely, some wind giant with hands like cork-screws has fashioned that bleak napkin. Otherwise, the speaker seems certain that when “other wings” fly into stone, they will not only break but become the bones of cherubim stunted on the horizon but chilling in the pockets of red lilies.
Barbara Ann Pinson was born on September 6, 1920, in Wilmington, North Carolina [1].
She married Stephen Guest, her second husband, in 1948, but they divorced in 1954. She married and divorced twice, with her third husband leaving her a widow. She held on to the second husband’s name, likely because that is name, under which she had become well known.
Guest graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943. Guest’s poetry career earned her inclusion in the New York School of writers, along with the ilk of James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, John Asbury, and Frank O’Hara [2]. This group of writers had come to despise the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell.
The New York School opted to take their inspiration from painters such as Larry Rivers, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. The more abstract, even the more nonsensical the work, the more this group salivated over the prospects.
Deeming poetry not the place for ideas, they instead focused on individual words instead of meaningful groups of words. Unlike William Carlos Williams, who concocted the notion, “No ideas but in things,” this group believed no ideas ever, no images, just language [3].
Guest’s illustrious career includes the winning of several prestigious awards [4]: the Longwood Award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and the San Francisco State Award for Poetry. She also benefited from a grant, offered by the National Endowment for the Arts.
About Barbara Guest’s poetry, Matthew Cooperman writes, “. . . we can never quite fall into her worlds as the words get in the way” [5]. In an otherwise piece of flattery, this gem is quite a testimonial for one whose words were the only focus—like saying of Vincent van Gogh, ”. . . we can never quite fall into his worlds as the paint gets in the way.”
Barbara Guest died on February 15, 2006, in Berkeley, California [6].
In the poet’s garden that day stood they Holding forth as though no ties bound her heart Youthful eyes woke her readiness to stray From sacred vows and from her oath depart Her hand cool a moment before grew warm She felt the urge vanquish the wage of sin What justice waits for one who dares to harm The sacred vows held deep beneath the skin? He said his mate for six weeks would be gone His scribbled their address a burning lure— She chose his arms betraying hearth and home Her flaming mind a vessel still impure Let retribution clean that garden’s soil Grant forgiveness for which her heart must toil
He says, ‘now we are holding hands, no longer separated,’ She hesitates, ‘yes,’ and her palm moistens, a palm that Was ice cold only a moment ago, she wants him, she’s Sure of that, but she has a husband, God, what can she
Say to make this right? maybe she has no husband at all— Maybe she is only 18 and still a virgin—no, decades And children have filled her pages, but he is young, Much younger than she is, and he is not a virgin,
‘I am staying at this address,’ he hands her the address, ‘She will not return for six weeks, we can meet there, alone, If you like,’ ‘I like, I will meet you there,’ she is not shy, His hat covers his head, and please notice that the faces
Are not distinguishable, let’s keep it that way for her family And for her who will return to him in six weeks.
Poetaster Charles Bernstein calls for poems that are “bad for you.” He has written“The Ballad of the Girly Man,” a fine example of poem that is definitely not good for you and is terrible for the world of literary art.
Introduction and Text of “The Ballad of the Girly Man”
Charles Bernstein’s essay, “Against National Poetry Month As Such” [1], castigates the Academy of American Poets’ attempt to enhance the reputation of poetry annually every April. He crows: “The kind of poetry I want is not a happy art with uplifting messages and easy to understand emotions. I want a poetry that’s bad for you.”
The piece “The Ballad of the Girly Man“ offers a stunning example of a poem that is, indeed, “bad for you.” The piece is merely political propaganda masquerading as a poem. “The Ballad of the Girly Man” is little more than a piece of doggerel which could certainly tickle the fancy of certain politicos who would be inspired as it feeds their utter ignorance, encouraging their emotion-filled reactions to world events of which they have little understanding.
This piece of doggerel “The Ballad of the Girly Man” appears as the final offering in Bernstein’s collection, titled eponymously, Girly Man [2] . Vacuous poetry begets vacuous literary criticism; thus, in her response to the radical Islamist attacks of 9/11/01, Professor Eun-Gwi Chung offers her thoughts on Bernstein’s 30th published collection.
The following from her diatribe “‘The Falling Man’ to Girly Man: American Poetry after 9/11 and the Logic of Mourning” [3] trivializes the genuine emotion of mourning while revealing herself as a mere sycophant of the father of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement:
Bernstein’s prompt responses to what happened to America are meaningful not as therapy or commemoration, but as the song of an ethical, political troubadour questioning the logic of mourning. As a form of manipulating and re-conceptualizing American political discourse, his poetry constructs an alternate path where a new real is explored.
The notion of “questioning the logic of mourning” spews out a base hatred of humanity. Each human being’s mourning is off limits to critics. Those who impose a “logic” onto a human emotion can be called none other than tyrannical thought police. Thus, there is nothing “ethical” about a buffoonish poetaster who would attempt to make such out-of-bounds judgments about his fellow human beings.
Chung’s shameful critical analysis perfectly reveals, however, the empty rhetoric of the poem; thus, having provided that service, her critical effort might legitimately be considered a resounding success.
The Ballad of the Girly Man
—For Felix
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
A democracy once proposed Is slimmed and grimed again By men with brute design Who prefer hate to rime
Complexity’s a four-letter word For those who count by nots and haves Who revile the facts of Darwin To worship the truth according to Halliburton
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap
So be a girly man & take a gurly stand Sing a gurly song & dance with a girly sarong
Poetry will never win the war on terror But neither will error abetted by error
We girly men are not afraid Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence We think before we fight, then think some more Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise
So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war
The girly men killed christ So the platinum DVD says The Jews & blacks & gays Are still standing in the way
We’re sorry we killed your god A long, long time ago But each dead solider in Iraq Kills the god inside, the god that’s still not dead.
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
So be a girly man & sing a gurly song Take a gurly stand & dance with a girly sarong
Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap
So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
Commentary on “The Ballad of the Girly Man”
Originally in this piece of doggerel, the Schwarzeneggerian term, “girlie,” is spelled three different ways: girlie, girly, and gurly. Kudos that the poet or editor or whoever managed to pare down those spellings to two for his published collection titled, Girly Man.
This original oversight, however, signaled a confused mind, for there is no literary merit in three different spellings of this word that features importantly in the title and the rest of the work, in which it becomes a mantra.
The spelling of the term used by the SNL skitsters, Hans and Franz, and then by Schwarzenegger was spelled, “girlie.” Bernstein appears to prefer “girly” and “gurly”—so those two spellings grace his collection title and poem in that collection.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s“Girlie-Men”
A Saturday Night Live skit featuring comedians Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon dramatizes the Arnold Schwarzeneggeresque type body builders, Hans and Franz. Mimicking Schwarzenegger’s accent [4], they label folks without their muscular frame, “girlie men.”
Governor Schwarzenegger referred to the SNL skit by humorously labeling the members of the California congress [5] “girlie-men” because they would not pass his budget.
Bernstein’s employment of the term, “girly man” remains flimsy and contrived, without literary value. The propagandistic lines, “A democracy once proposed / Is slimed and grimed again / By men with brute design / Who prefer hate to rime,” fall in line with such slogans like “Bush lied, people died.” Those who have continued to accept as truth that particular slogan have remained blissfully unaware of the multiple sources that demonstrate that President George W. Bush did not lie [6].
War Propaganda
The poem is taking aim at the Iraq War, of course, not simply the California congress’s failure to pass the budget of the governor. However, the poem’s speaker is employing the term “girly man” to ironically single out the correct thinkers—those of the Michael Moore ilk that yammer propaganda such as “Complexity’s a four-letter word / For those who count by nots and haves / Who revile the facts of Darwin / To worship the truth according to Halliburton.”
One might wonder if Bernstein, like the hypocritical Michael Moore and his ilk, may be benefitting from ownership of somestock [7] from the evil Halliburton, even as they all denigrate the company’s reputation.
For this propagandistic exercise, the lines, “The truth is hidden in a veil of tears / The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear,” becomes a mantra of sorts. This feckless couplet repeats itself three times, and then again a fourth time in reversed lines, as it concludes the piece. Capitalism, of course, is a culprit for these miscreants: “Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store / The rich get richer, the poor die quicker.” These lines also repeat, mantra-like.
Ultimately, the girly men are far superior to those who are not girly men: “We girly men are not afraid / Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence / We think before we fight, then think some more / Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise.” Sounds quite lovely though utterly naïve in facing radical Islamic jihadis: After all that listening, thinking, compromising, and making art, you will be just as dead after your recalcitrant jihadis have slit your throat or dazzled you with bullets.
A Class-Baiting Ditty
The poem features a little ditty coupled with the mantras of ad hominem attacks and class-baiting: “So be a girly man / & sing a gurly song / Take a gurly stand / & dance with a girly sarong.” Note that “girly” becomes “gurly” in the second and third line, yet it remains a mystery what the altered spelling indicates. A sarong is a garment that in many parts [8] of the world both men and women wear; therefore, it remains unclear why wearing a sarong is a “girly” thing to do.
The purpose of this piece of doggerel soon becomes laughably apparent. It offers a sense of self-righteousness to the so-called superior “girlie-men”—who not really girlie-men at all but are, in fact, the real men. These real men, whom the Republican governor would label “girlie-men,” are far and away superior to those who follow a different political religion, according to this poetaster.
However, in the end, turning propaganda on its head will have to wait for a different “bad for you” piece. With ideological bullet points, the yapping remains ungrounded in historical reality. The blind political stance without any reference to actual world events becomes yet another victim of disingenuousness and hasty posturing.
A man of this word, however, Bernstein has foisted upon the world of poetry a poem that is, without doubt, “bad (for you).” At least, he has been consistent and true to his officious, pandering claim, yet without any genuine sense of purpose.
In her sun-bright garden, they that day stood— Tomatoes burned red and bright with desire Golden marigolds flashed out passion’s mood Rooted deep in her lust that bloomed like fire Stifling her tongue with whispers soft with lies His blue gaze as deep as the painted sky His seeds her lust did bind in tender ties Now her verse flames with shame she can’t deny Retribution scalds her heart guilty red She seeks a brush to swish away the taint Grace divine can snuff out the lust instead No word of humankind can quash the feint Though colors bright may stir beneath her skin— Gold, blue, and white alone can clear the sin
