Angela Manalang Gloria’s poem “To the Man I Married” presents an extended metaphor in which the speaker likens her love for her husband to her existential dependence on the earth.
Introduction and Text of “To the Man I Married”
This metaphor functions on both physical and spiritual levels, suggesting that her partner sustains and orients her life in a manner analogous to the natural elements necessary for survival.
To the Man I Married
I
You are my earth and all the earth implies: The gravity that ballasts me in space, The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries For food and shelter against devouring days.
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way And sets my north and south, my east and west, You are the final, elemented clay The driven heart must turn to for its rest.
If in your arms that hold me now so near I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon As trees long rooted to the earth uprear Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,
You who are earth, O never doubt that I Need you no less because I need the sky!
II
I cannot love you with a love That outcompares the boundless sea, For that were false, as no such love And no such ocean can ever be. But I can love you with a love As finite as the wave that dies And dying holds from crest to crest The blue of everlasting skies.
Section I
The first section of the poem adheres to the formal structure of the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a concluding couplet.
First Quatrain: The Husband as Life-Sustaining Force
You are my earth and all the earth implies: The gravity that ballasts me in space, The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries For food and shelter against devouring days.
The speaker opens with a striking declaration, asserting her husband’s indispensable role in her existence by comparing him to the earth itself. The metaphor extends through a catalogue of essential elements: gravity, air, land, and sustenance.
These earthly necessities are paralleled with emotional and material support offered by her husband, suggesting that her survival—both physical and emotional—depends as much on him as it does on the natural world.
Second Quatrain: He Provides Orientation and Final Rest
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way And sets my north and south, my east and west, You are the final, elemented clay The driven heart must turn to for its rest.
The second quatrain deepens the metaphor, portraying the husband as the source of direction and purpose in the speaker’s life. The reference to cardinal directions implies that her sense of order and orientation derives from their shared life.
The closing lines evoke mortality and rest, implying that just as the earth will eventually receive her physical body in death, her husband provides emotional and spiritual repose during life.
Third Quatrain: Acknowledging Other Affections
If in your arms that hold me now so near I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon As trees long rooted to the earth uprear Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,
Here, the speaker introduces a subtle shift. While affirming her deep attachment to her husband, she also acknowledges her intellectual and spiritual aspirations.
The allusion to Helicon, a mountain sacred to the Muses in Greek mythology, evokes poetic inspiration. Her longing for the transcendent does not diminish her love for her husband; rather, it coexists with it, just as rooted trees still reach toward the sun.
The Couplet: Coexistence of Earthly and Celestial Needs
You who are earth, O never doubt that I Need you no less because I need the sky!
The final couplet affirms the central thesis of the poem: the speaker’s need for transcendence (symbolized by “the sky”) does not negate her need for the grounding, stabilizing presence of her husband (symbolized by “the earth”).
Instead, both are essential, suggesting a balanced view of human experience as encompassing both the corporeal and the aspirational.
Section II
The second part of “To the Man I Married” diverges from the sonnet form and appears in two quatrains, adopting a more reflective tone. Here, the speaker qualifies the grand metaphors of the first section with a more tempered, realistic assessment of love.
First Quatrain: Rejection of Hyperbolic Metaphors
I cannot love you with a love That outcompares the boundless sea, For that were false, as no such love And no such ocean can ever be.
In this stanza, the speaker resists the temptation to describe her love through hyperbole. She dismisses the comparison to the “boundless sea” as false, recognizing the limitations of human emotion and language.
This moment of self-awareness introduces a more grounded view of romantic love.
Second Quatrain: Finite Love Reflecting the Infinite
But I can love you with a love As finite as the wave that dies And dying holds from crest to crest The blue of everlasting skies.
Although she renounces the oceanic metaphor, the speaker reintroduces the image of water through the wave. Unlike the sea, the wave is finite and mortal, yet it captures and reflects the sky’s infinity.
In this subtle turn, Gloria suggests that even within human limitations, love can embody and reflect transcendence.
William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely misunderstood poems of the 20th century. Many scholars and critics have failed to criticize the exaggeration in the first stanza and the absurd metaphor in the second stanza, which render a potentially fine poem a critical failure.
Introduction with Text of “The Second Coming”
Poems, in order to communicate, must be as logical as the purpose and content require. For example, if the poet wishes to comment on or criticize an issue, he must adhere to physical facts in his poetic drama. If the poet wishes to emote, equivocate, or demonstrate the chaotic nature of his cosmic thinking, he may legitimately do so without much seeming sense.
For example, Robert Bly’s lines—”Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand / Reaches out and pulls him in” / / “The pond was lonely, or needed / Calcium, bones would do,”—are ludicrous [1] on every level. Even if one explicates the speaker’s personifying the pond, the lines remain absurd, at least in part because if a person needs calcium, grabbing the bones of another human being will not take care of that deficiency.
The absurdity of a lake needing “calcium” should be abundantly clear on its face. Nevertheless, the image of the lake grabbing a man may ultimately be accepted as the funny nonsense that it is. William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” cannot be dismissed so easily; while the Yeats poem does not depict the universe as totally chaotic, it does bemoan that fact that events seem to be leading society to armageddon.
The absurdity surrounding the metaphor of the “rough beast” in the Yeats poem renders the musing on world events without practical substance.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Commentary on “The Second Coming”
William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely anthologized poems in world literature. Yet its hyperbole in the first stanza and ludicrous “rough beast” metaphor in the second stanza result in a blur of unworkable speculation.
First Stanza: Sorrowful over Chaos
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The speaker is sorrowing over the chaos of world events that have left in their wake many dead people. Clashes of groups of ideologues have wreaked havoc, and much blood shed has smeared the tranquil lives of innocent people who wish to live quiet, productive lives.
The speaker likens the seemingly out of control situation of society to a falconer losing control of the falcon as he attempts to tame it. Everyday life has become chaotic as corrupt governments have spurred revolutions. Lack of respect for leadership has left a vacuum which is filled with force and violence.
The overstated claim that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” should have alerted the poet that he needed to rinse out the generic hyperbole in favor of more accuracy on the world stage.
Such a blanket, unqualified statement, especially in a poem, lacks the ring of truth: it simply cannot be true that the “best lack all conviction.” Surely, some the best still retain some level of conviction, or else improvement could never be expected.
It also cannot be true that all the worst are passionate; some of the worst are likely not passionate at all but remain sycophantic, indifferent followers. Any reader should be wary of such all-inclusive, absolutist statements in both prose and poetry.
Anytime a writer subsumes an entirety with the terms “all,” “none,” “everything,” “everyone,” “always,” or “never,” the reader should question the statement for its accuracy. All too often such terms are signals for stereotypes, which produce the same inaccuracy as groupthink.
Second Stanza: What Revelation?
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The idea of “some revelation” leads the speaker to the mythological second coming of Christ. So he speculates on what a second coming might entail. However, instead of “Christ,” the speaker conjures the notion that an Egyptian-Sphinx-like character with ill-intent might arrive instead.
Therefore, in place of a second coming of godliness and virtue, as is the purpose of the original second coming, the speaker wonders: what if the actual second coming will be more like an Anti-Christ? What if all this chaos of bloodshed and disarray has been brought on by the opposite of Christian virtue?
Postmodern Absurdity and the “Rough Beast”
The “rough beast” in Yeats’ “The Second Coming” is an aberration of imagination, not a viable symbol for what Yeats’ speaker thought he was achieving in his critique of culture. If, as the postmodernists contend, there is no order [2] in the universe and nothing really makes any sense anyway, then it becomes perfectly fine to write nonsense.
Because this poet is a contemporary of modernism but not postmodernism [3], William Butler Yeats’ poetry and poetics do not quite devolve to the level of postmodern angst that blankets everything with the nonsensical. Yet, his manifesto titled A Vision is, undoubtedly, one of the contributing factors to that line of meretricious ideology.
Hazarding a Guess Can Be Hazardous
The first stanza of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” begins by metaphorically comparing a falconer losing control of the falcon to nations and governments losing control because of the current world disorder, in which “[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
Political factions employ these lines against their opposition during the time in which their opposition is in power, as they spew forth praise for their own order that somehow magically appears with their taking the seat of power.
The poem has been co-opted by the political class so often that Dorian Lynskey, overviewing the poem in his essay, “‘Things fall apart’: the Apocalyptic Appeal of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming,” writes, “There was apparently no geopolitical drama to which it could not be applied” [4].
The second stanza dramatizes the speaker’s musing about a revelation that has popped into his head, and he likens that revelation to the second coming of Christ; however, this time the coming, he speculates, may be something much different.
The speaker does not know what the second coming will herald, but he does not mind hazarding a dramatic guess about the possibility. Thus, he guesses that the entity of a new “second coming” would likely be something that resembles the Egyptian sphinx; it would not be the return of the Christ with the return of virtue but perhaps its opposite—vice.
The speaker concludes his guess with an allusion to the birth of such an entity as he likens the Blessed Virgin Mother to the “rough beast.” The Blessèd Virgin Mother, as a newfangled, postmodern creature, will be “slouching toward Bethlehem” because that is the location to which the first coming came.
The allusion to “Bethlehem” functions solely as a vague juxtaposition to the phrase “second coming” in hopes that the reader will make the connection that the first coming and the second coming may have something in common. The speaker speculates that at this very moment wherein the speaker is doing his speculation some “rough beast” might be pregnant with the creature of the “second coming.”
And as the time arrives for the creature to be born, the rough beast will go “slouching” towards its lair to give birth to this “second coming” creature: “its hour come round at last” refers to the rough beast being in labor.
The Flaw of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”
The speaker then poses the nonsensical question: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” In order to make the case that the speaker wishes to make, these last two lines should be restructured in one of two ways:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to give birth?
or
And what rough beast’s babe, its time come at last, Is in transport to Bethlehem to be born?
An unborn being cannot “slouch” toward a destination. The pregnant mother of the unborn being can “slouch” toward a destination. But the speaker is not contemplating the nature of the rough beast’s mother; he is contemplating the nature of the rough beast itself.
The speaker does not suggest that the literal Sphinx will travel to Bethlehem. He is merely implying that a Sphinx-like creature might resemble the creature of the second coming. Once an individual has discounted the return of Jesus the Christ as a literal or even spiritual fact, one might offer personal speculation about just what a second coming would look like.
It is doubtful that anyone would argue that the poem is dramatizing a literal birth, rather than a spiritual or metaphorical one. It is also unreasonable to argue that the speaker of this poem—or Yeats for that matter—thought that the second coming actually referred to the Sphinx. A ridiculous image develops from the fabrication of the Sphinx moving toward Bethlehem. Yeats was more prudent than that.
Exaggerated Importance of Poem
William Butler Yeats composed a manifesto to display his worldview and poetics titled A Vision, in which he set down certain tenets of his thoughts on poetry, creativity, and world history. Although seemingly taken quite seriously by some Yeatsian scholars, A Vision is of little value in understanding either meaning in poetry or the meaning of the world, particularly in terms of historical events.
An important example of Yeats’ misunderstanding of world cycles is his explanation of the cyclical nature of history, exemplified with what he called “gyres” (pronounced with a hard “g.”) Two particular points in the Yeatsian explanation demonstrate the fallacy of his thinking:
In his diagram, Yeats set the position of the gyres inaccurately; they should not be intersecting but instead one should rest one on top of the other: cycles shrink and enlarge in scope; they do not overlap, as they would have to do if the Yeatsian model were accurate.
Image : Gyres – Inaccurate Configuration from A Vision
Image: Gyres – Accurate Configuration
2. In the traditional Second Coming, Christ is figured to come again but as an adult, not as in infant as is implied in Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”
Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet. And most problematic is that the rough beast is “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.” The question is, how can such a creature be slouching if it has not yet been born? There is no indication the speaker wishes to attribute this second coming fiasco to the mother of the rough beast.
This illogical event is never mentioned by critics who seem to accept the slouching as a possible occurrence. On this score, it seems critics and scholars have lent the poem an unusually wide and encompassing poetic license.
The Accurate Meaning of the Second Coming
Paramahansa Yogananda has explained in depth the original, spiritual meaning of the phrase “the second coming”[5] which does not signify the literal coming again of Jesus the Christ, but the spiritual awakening of each individual soul to its Divine Nature through the Christ Consciousness.
Paramahansa Yogananda summarizes his two volume work The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You:
In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth . . .
A thousand Christs sent to earth would not redeem its people unless they themselves become Christlike by purifying and expanding their individual consciousness to receive therein the second coming of the Christ Consciousness, as was manifested in Jesus . . .
Contact with this Consciousness, experienced in the ever new joy of meditation, will be the real second coming of Christ—and it will take place right in the devotee’s own consciousness. (my emphasis added)
Interestingly, knowledge of the meaning of that phrase “the second coming” as explained by Paramahansa Yogananda renders unnecessary the musings of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”and most other speculation about the subject. Still, the poem as an artifact of 20th century thinking remains an important object for study.
In his poem, “The Hill Maiden,” Malcolm M. Sedam has created a speaker voicing cheerful vaticination that his teenage angst-ridden protégé will one day shed her nihilism and burst into life affirming joy. The best teachers are those who can inspire as well as instruct their students. This poem represents a stellar example of that kind of inspirational educator.
Introduction and Text of “The Hill Maiden”
Malcolm M. Sedam‘s “The Hill Maiden” features a teacher dramatizing his observations about a particularly inquisitive but melancholy student. His ultimate purpose is to instill in the student the notion that she will ultimately be able to appreciate the life that she seems to disdain.
The poem plays out in three movements of unrimed stanzas. This organization allows the speaker to touch lightly on the physical reality of the subject but then move more intensely to the mental and finally the spiritual possibility of the subject’s inclinations.
Because the speaker can only infer certain facts about his student, the poem remains metaphorically and imagistically implicative instead of unequivocally literal. For example, the teacher has no exact idea what the student does at her home; thus he places her in an image of “moving among the phantom rocks of reverie.”
The teacher/speaker knows from the negativity the student has been expressing to him that she mentally resides among hardness that causes her to imagine that things are worse than they are.
Mentally she travels like a rocket through her ghostly musings until night fall when she sleeps but likely gets little rest, accounting for the nervous, brittle energy the educator perceives in his young scholar.
Likely the adolescent girl is simply suffering the turbulence of teenage angst through which most individuals of that age group must travel. But the best, most effective teachers are those who can inspire as well as instruct their students. This poem represents a stellar example of that kind of inspirational educator.
As an educator, Mr. Malcolm M. Sedam wrote poems to many of his students, always with the goal of inspiring them to high thinking and plain living. Mr. Sedam once said he felt that his function as an educator was “to kick the dirt off of his students.” By that he meant to help them see life more clearly without the fog of stereotypes, prejudice, and provincialism.
The Hill Maiden
(for Linda, over in the valley)
She is moving among the phantom Rocks of reverie hurtling through By mind bringing days into darkness Where the pull of growth rings The heart and spurs the soul
Where her wish strings questions In the mysterious night of snow Bringing a promise that only the hills can sing. Her smile waits behind a frown of swords That rend her days
In the melancholy of the deep valley Of dreams where she lives among flowers Gathering her moods that may bring peace Once the sorrow of lonely distance Has closed on hands—
The same hands that Zen-like reach To answer each knock at the door of her heart Broken to be mended by tender time. Her mind is speeding through a galaxy Of intensity where the blood rose
Will speak to her frozen will All forgiven by decree in warring winds— The nature of her plight? Without wings She will still spring into flight.
Commentary on “The Hill Maiden”
Malcolm M. Sedam’s “The Hill Maiden” features a teacher, who is also a practicing poet, dramatizing his observance of an inquisitively intelligent but extremely melancholy student.
His only purpose is to instill in the student the notion that she will ultimately be able to appreciate the life that she seems now to disdain.
First Movement: Dreaming amongst the Hills
She is moving among the phantom Rocks of reverie hurtling through By mind bringing days into darkness Where the pull of growth rings The heart and spurs the soul
Where her wish strings questions In the mysterious night of snow Bringing a promise that only the hills can sing.
The speaker begins by placing the object of his speculative musing in an image that implies sharp but dream-like rigidity. Rocks appear ghost-like through a dream-scape as they bewilder the mental musings of the young girl with whom the mature educator is engaging both as a poetry mentor as well as a teacher.
Teachers often counsel their students who seek out their advice and direction even in issues outside of the academic sphere as well as within the educational arena. Those teachers who must essentially become counselors will either direct the students to other professionals, or they will attempt to offer their own gleanings from their life experience.
The teacher in this poem demonstrates that he is the latter kind of teacher, and he has given the mind of the young student some serious analysis. Thus he not only describes her environment, but he also speculates and then foreshadows what is likely to befall the girl once she is able to erase her current adolescent fog.
Until that glowing day arrives, however, the speaker sees that the girl’s maturing process weighs heavily on her heart and soul. She is full of questions brought on by the mystery of life.
The “snow” that brings beauty as it covers the hills also brings bitter cold and slippery conditions the cause the girl to miss the music that her hill-valley home affords her.
By pointing out these images of beauty and placing them a context of mystery and difficulty, the speaker hopes to allow his charge to contemplate the possibility that life is real and offers hope to those who search its reaches with an open mind and cheerful heart.
Second Movement: Frowning Swords
Her smile waits behind a frown of swords That rend her days
In the melancholy of the deep valley Of dreams where she lives among flowers Gathering her moods that may bring peace Once the sorrow of lonely distance Has closed on hands—
The same hands that Zen-like reach To answer each knock at the door of her heart Broken to be mended by tender time.
The speaker has observed the teen’s unwillingness to show a cheerful countenance. Her bitterness “behind a frown of swords” likely often gives the mentor a shudder at the likelihood that the girl is suffering intensely.
No doubt, he believes that at this point in her life, she should be dancing merrily among “flowers” and allowing her sorrowful moods to dissolve in the “deep valley of dreams.”
But again, he returns to prognostication that once she has learned to fold her hands in wonder and listen to the love that knocks at the “door of her heart,” her melancholy will be rendered null and void as “tender time” moves her through the rough spots of her anguish.
Again, the speaker chooses beauty—”flowers gathering”—to balance the “frown.” He offers the image of the heart’s door to harmonize with the environment that will reach her with the “Zen-like” hands of mystery and the ultimate gain-of-wisdom.
Like a Zen koan, the riddle of life will remain before her as she continues to search for answers to her perplexing questions.
Third Movement: Springing into Flight
Her mind is speeding through a galaxy Of intensity where the blood rose
Will speak to her frozen will All forgiven by decree in warring winds— The nature of her plight? Without wings She will still spring into flight.
Finally, the speaker makes his most striking vaticination after asserting that his young charge has a strong mind but also a tender heart that is quick to show intense emotion.
That the “blood rose” will speak itself undeniably to the girl’s will portends that all of her negativity and nihilism will be “forgiven” as she continues to navigate through the conflicts that life bestows on all searching souls.
Then the speaker offers the question that he is likely very content to answer. The frustrating situation that befuddles the young scholar’s mind and heart has been implied by all the imagery that went before, but then what will eventually be the path chosen by and/or for the student?
She will be able to navigate through all the trials and tribulations as a bird that so easily lifts it wings to the wind and takes to the air through the abundant space of sky.
The speaker is not so naïve as to insist that such navigation will come easily, but he does remain assured that the path will open to the girl, and she will become willing to follow it. Thus the speaker can conclude affirmatively that “Without wings, she will still spring into flight.”
Offered by a beloved and well-respected mentor, such faith in a young scholar’s ability to navigate life is bound to redound in blessings, despite the pitfalls and rough spots that her life, no doubt, will place sphinx-life before her mind and heart.
“There is a price to be paid for criticizing Obama.” —Jack Cashill
Barack Obama’s “Pop”
In Barack Obama’s “Pop,” the speaker is sketching what appears to be a father-figure—likely Frank Marshall Davis—and offering a glimpse into the relationship between the two. Obama called his maternal grandfather “Gramps,” rendering it unlikely that the father-figure in this poem is Stanley Dunham.
Introduction with Text of “Pop”
The spring 1981 issue of Feast, Occidental College’s literary magazine, published two poems, “Pop” and “Underground,” by erstwhile literary prodigy Barack Obama. According to Jack Cashill, long-time researcher of Obama’s literary efforts, Obama’s writings [1] suffer from, “awkward sentence structure, inappropriate word choice, a weakness for clichés,” and “the continued failure to get verbs and nouns to agree.”
Obama’s poems suffer from similar language indignities but also include further issues relevant to poems, such a faulty line breaks, confusing mixed metaphors, and inappropriate use of surrealist images.
Although readers can forgive a 19-year old for adolescent scribblings in non-sense, especially in poems published in a college lit mag, what they cannot do is discern that this particular adolescent was showing any potential to produce a future writer.
Likely, the future, and now former, occupier of the Oval Office could have become a capable interpretive reader, and it is possible that Barack Obama would have served more admirably as an actor [2] than writer or president.
Barack Obama possesses a unique charm that could have been employed in creative ways, if he had kept his focus on the humanities and entertainment fields instead of politics and government. The Obama administration, tainted by incompetence and corruption [3], has altered the American political landscape more intensely than any other in American history.
For this misdirection, Barack Obama is less to blame than his handlers, beginning with political American terrorist Bill Ayers, continuing with political hacks David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.
His coterie of political advisors steered him in a direction that has enriched Obama and that coterie financially, instead of enriching society in a humanitarian field of endeavor. The former president’s piece titled “Pop” consists of one 45-line versagraph [4]. The piece’s awkward, postmodern codswallop represents much of what is despicable and destructive in most postmodern art.
Pop
Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pass. I listen, nod, Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Beige T-shirt, yelling, Yelling in his ears, that hang With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling His joke, so I ask why He’s so unhappy, to which he replies… But I don’t care anymore, cause He took too damn long, and from Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face To mine, as he grows small, A spot in my brain, something That may be squeezed out, like a Watermelon seed between Two fingers. Pop takes another shot, neat, Points out the same amber Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and Makes me smell his smell, coming From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem He wrote before his mother died, Stands, shouts, and asks For a hug, as I shink, my Arms barely reaching around His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause I see my face, framed within Pop’s black-framed glasses And know he’s laughing too.
Commentary on “Pop”
The man addressed in Obama’s “Pop” is likely Frank Marshall Davis, long thought to be Obama’s biological father [5]. Barry called his Grandfather Dunham “Gramps” [6], not “Pop.”
First Movement: Sheltered Young Man
Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery eyes, that Glance in different directions, And his slow, unwelcome twitches, Fail to pass.
The speaker places his father-figure in his usual chair where the latter is watching television, enjoying his “Seagrams, neat.” The man, called Pop, begins accosting the young man by flinging at him a rhetorical question: “What to do with me?”
The speaker asserts that Pop thinks his young charge is just a “green young man / Who fails to consider the / Flim and flam of the world.”
Pop counsels the young man that the latter’s sheltered existence is responsible for the young man’s failure to recognize the “flim-flam” world. The speaker then stares at the old man, who exhibits a facial tick, while his eyes dart off “in different directions / And his slow, unwelcome twitches.”
Frank Marshall Davis Is “Pop”
While many reviewers of this poem have interpreted Pop to be Stanley Armour Dunham, the maternal grandfather who raised Obama, the former president’s hagiographer, David Maraniss, in his biography, Barack Obama: The Story, reveals that the poem “Pop” focuses on Frank Marshall Davis [7], not Stanley Armour Dunham.
And the details of the poem all point to the truth of that revelation.That Obama’s grandfather, who raised him, would be addressing such an issue with his young charge is untenable. If the boy is incapable of considering the “flim-flam” of the world, whose fault would that be? It would be the person who raised the kid.
Obama’s relationship with Frank Marshall Davis, however, provides the appropriate station for such a topic of conversation. Davis took it upon himself to help the young Obama see the world through the lens of a black man in America.
Again, if “things have been easy for” the young Barry, it has been the grandfather who made them easy; thus, for the grandfather to be accosting the boy for that supposed flaw would be absurd.
Obama’s grandfather introduced the boy to Davis for the purpose of providing Barry with the advice of an older man who had lived the life of a black man in America. The Dunhams were heavily invested in identity politics as likely members of the Communist Party, as was card carrying member, Frank Marshall Davis [8].
The grandfather was of the inclination that he could never guide a young black boy in certain areas but that Davis could. Whether that sensibility is accurate or not is the topic for another day, but the topic being discussed by the speaker of this poem precludes the poem’s addressing Obama’s white grandfather.
Faulty Line Breaks
Many of the bad line breaks [9] in the poem demonstrate the amateurish nature of the poetaster, who makes the rookie flaw of ending several lines with the definite article “the.”
About Obama’s use of line breaks, poet Ian McMillan sarcastically observes [10]: “Barack likes his line breaks, his enjambments: let’s end a line with ‘broken’ and start it with ‘in’ just because we can!”
Second Movement: Surrealistic Encounter
I listen, nod, Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Beige T-shirt, yelling, Yelling in his ears, that hang With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling His joke, so I ask why He’s so unhappy, to which he replies… But I don’t care anymore, cause He took too damn long, and from Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face To mine, as he grows small, A spot in my brain, something That may be squeezed out, like a Watermelon seed between Two fingers.
The speaker then employs a surrealistic style as he continues to describe his encounter with Pop.
The speaker listens politely, nodding occasionally, as the old man declaims, but suddenly the speaker is “cling[ing] to the old man’s “[b]eige T-shirt, yelling / Yelling in his ears.” Those ears have “heavy lobes,” and the old man is “still telling / His joke.” But the speaker then asks Pop, “why / He’s so unhappy.”
Pop starts to respond, but the speaker does not “care anymore, cause / He took too damn long.” The speaker then pulls out a mirror from under his seat.
The confusion here mounts because the speaker had just claimed he was clinging to Pop’s shirt and yelling in the old man’s ear, which would have taken the speaker out of his seat. This confusion adds to the surreal nature of the episode.
After pulling out the mirror, the speaker asserts that he is “laughing, / Laughing loud.” What he does with the mirror is never made clear. But during his outbreak of laughter, Pop “grows small” shrinking to a “spot in [the speaker’s] brain.”
That tiny spot, however, “may be squeezed out, like a / Watermelon seed between / Two fingers.” This shrunken seed image of the speaker’s pop implies a level of disrespect that is quite breathtaking as it suggests that the speaker would like to eliminate Pop from his mind.
Third Movement: Smelling the Stain
Pop takes another shot, neat, Points out the same amber Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and Makes me smell his smell, coming From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem He wrote before his mother died, Stands, shouts, and asks For a hug, as I shink, my Arms barely reaching around His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause I see my face, framed within Pop’s black-framed glasses And know he’s laughing too.
The speaker observes that Pop “takes another shot, neat,” but he probably means that the old man took another sip; it is not likely that the father-figure is measuring out each swig with a shot glass.
With this swig, Pop “points out the same amber / Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and / Makes me smell his smell, coming / From me.” During the exchange, while clinging to Pop’s shirt, the speaker has stained Pop’s shorts.
And Pop wants the speaker to realize his blame for the stain. At least, that’s one way to interpret the smelling the stain scene.
Others have inferred a sexual reference in the “smelling” scene, but that requires too much of a stretch, that is, a reading into the text what is not there and not implied.
Pop then changes TV channels and “recites an old poem / He wrote before his mother died.” He then rises from his seat, “shouts, and asks / For a hug.”
The younger man realizes his smallness in comparison to the size of Pop: “my / Arms barely reaching around / His thick, oily neck, and his broad back.” But the speaker sees himself reflected in Pop’s “black-framed glasses.” And now Pop is “laughing too.”
The reference to a poem written before Pop’s mother died also eliminates Grandfather Dunham as “Pop.” Dunham was only eight years old, when he discovered the body of his mother who had committed suicide.
The notion that an aged man would be quoting a poem that he wrote before he was eight years old is patently absurd. Plus there is no evidence that Grandfather Dunham ever wrote any poetry, while Frank is famously known as a poet, as well as his other endeavors in political activism and pornography.
“Shink” Is Obviously a Typo and “Know” Is Likely “Now”
Much has been made of the obvious typo in the line, “For a hug, as I shink, my.” The word is obviously “shrink.” Pop had shrunk to the size of a watermelon seed a few lines earlier, and now the speaker shrinks as he realizes how much smaller he is than Pop.
It is quite possible that in the last line “know” is an additional typo, for the word “now” would be more appropriate. It would be nonsensical for the speaker to say he “knows” Pop is laughing when he is right there looking into his face. But it makes sense for him to report that during the hug Pop also begins to laugh.
Interestingly, the editors of the New York Times quietly corrected the “shink” to “shrink” when they published the poems on May 18, 2008, in an article under the title, “The Poetry of Barack Obama [11]”. The editors did not correct the obvious error “know” for “now” in the last line.
Sources
[1]Jack Kerwick. Jack Cashill’sDeconstructing Obama. American Thinker. February 25, 2011.
This commentary on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” offers an alternative reading to the sycophantic interpretation given by postmodernists who subscribe to the prevailing ideology of victimhood. The curse of identity politics soft censors such stances; thus they remain rare.
Introduction with Text of “Southern Cop”
While the speaker in Sterling Brown’s “Southern Cop” seems to be exposing and rebuking racism, he actually engages in racism himself. This widely anthologized poem features the following scene: A rookie cop named Ty Kendricks has shot a man who was running out of an alley.
The poem does not report the reason that the man was running nor the reason that the police officer happened to be at the scene. However, the report clearly states that the man’s reason for running was not because of any guilt on his part. It is useful to keep in mind that the caveat stating that one is innocent until proven guilty applies to all citizens—even those who are running.
The speaker of the poem purports to represent the outraged citizenry, whose emotional reaction is so powerful that the speaker must turn to verbal irony in order to convey that outrage. The outraged speaker assumes that his audience is as offended as he is and thus will agree with his statements on all levels.
But the speaker also assumes that a racist audience will take him literally, even though brushing away the irony would demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of his intentionally ludicrous exhortations. The ideas that because Ty Kendricks was a rookie in the process of proving himself and that the citizenry should decorate him for shooting an innocent man cannot be taken literally.
The ideas of proving manhood and decorating a cop for shooting an innocent man are clearly absurd. The ideas are absolutely preposterous, yet the speaker does not suggest the course of action society should take in dealing with Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop, who likely made a mistake, without consideration of the race of the victim.
What does this rookie cop deserve? Who is to decide? An angry, disorderly mob? The speaker’s emotion becomes magnified with each stanza from the first line of the first stanza that would appear not to be ironic at all but quite literal to the first line of the last stanza that is undoubtedly filled with irony.
About half-way through the poem the irony becomes obvious. And the speaker then sets center stage his ironic barbs in his effusion.
Southern Cop
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot.
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Commentary on “Southern Cop”
This irony-filled drama portrays a bundle of rage and racism. The attitude of the speaker weighs in at least as heavily as the actual event that the speaker is decrying.
Stanza 1: Forgiveness Is Good
Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot
The first stanza opens with the speaker seemingly quite controlled as he suggests that he and his milieu “forgive” the young cop named Ty Kendricks. The invocation of the Christian value of forgiveness offers no clue that the speaker would not, in fact, forgive this rookie cop. Of course, the biblical injunction demands that trespassers be forgiven.
However, in this particular scenario, what is the speaker suggesting be forgiven? He is urging forgiveness of Ty Kendricks the rookie cop who shot an man because he was running out of an alley. The speaker does not reveal the reason that the man was running, nor what caused the cop to shoot; the speaker is simply asking that the rookie be forgiven.
Stanza 2: Understanding Is Also a Good Thing
Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous. Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man.
Next, the speaker asks that he and his listeners “understand” the rookie cop. Of course, they should try to understand both the perpetrators of crime and the enforcers of law. Otherwise, justice cannot prevail without understanding.
But then the speakers’s audience is apprised of what they are being commanded to forgive and to understand: the man was surely dangerous/guilty because he was running. Not only that, the rookie Ty Kendricks now has the opportunity to show himself to be a man.
Because running does not equal guilt, and the notion of proving manhood by shooting someone is ludicrous, it now becomes clear that the speaker is engaging in verbal irony to portray his true message. This speaker does not, in fact, want his audience to forgive nor understand Ty Kendricks, the rookie cop.
What does the speaker hope to accomplish with his use of irony? He intends to brand Ty Kendricks a racist and elicit sympathy for the man shot by this cop. Of course, the man who was shot deserves sympathy, but the speaker offers no evidence that Ty Kendricks was a racist cop.
That fact that Kendricks shot a man running out of an ally does not equal racism, despite the fact that the running man was black. All things being equal, Ty Kendricks would likely have shot any man of any race in this situation.
Stanza 3: Condoning the Killing of an Innocent Man
Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the Negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate.
Condoning this apparently despicable act of a rookie cop shooting an innocent victim becomes a near surreal request. But because the speaker is engaging in irony, he does not intend his listeners to “condone” but instead to “condemn” the rookie cop.
The cop’s reaction of shooting the running man became just another “unfortunate” event by the time the cop learned the reason for the running. But what is the efficacy of forgiving, condoning, and decorating a cop for a bad shoot?
The ironic use of the terms means that the speaker is in reality suggesting that his listeners continue to hold a grudge and to condemn cops, even those who might have mistakenly shot someone. The intensity of this verbal irony may possibly encourage speculation that the speaker is even attempting to instigate rioting, burning buildings, and killing other cops.
Stanza 4: Pity for All Involved
Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan.
Finally, the speaker appears to return to some semblance of humanity, asking that he and his listeners “pity” this poor rookie cop. Of course, the cop deserves pity. Or more accurately, he deserves sympathy and support. Taking the life of a fellow human being causes emotional damage—even to the most well-adjusted veteran law enforcement officer.
And taking a human life constitutes a serious, deeply spiritual offense against Creation and the Creator, even though that Creator has arranged Creation to require such an offense at times. Even man’s law allows for self-defense.
But notice that the speaker is still in his own racist venue, as he applies his final acerbic barb of irony: he does not, in fact, want his audience to pity that rookie cop. Instead, he wants his readers to pity only the family of the deceased man: they stood there crying and moaning the loss of their loved one.
The speaker asks us to pity the rookie only because that rookie has to listen to that crying and moaning. By stating ironically that the pity should apply to Ty Kendricks and contrasting his situation with that of the deceased man and his family, the speaker is implying that any loss suffered by the cop remains negligible.
But suffering cannot be compared and contrasted especially in such a callous way. There is no way of calculating and weighing the suffering on either side: it’s a lose-lose situation.
Ultimately, there is no pity for Kendricks from this speaker and his ilk—only a hollow attempt to portray the cop as a criminal, not simply a human being who has made a mistake.
The Issue of Racism in the Poem
A cursory reading of Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” may result in the assumption of the stereotypical view that cops shoot young black men because they are black. An example of such a reading includes the following:
Sterling A. Brown’s poem “Southern Cop” published in 1936 is an extremely powerful piece of poetry in American history because it cuts at the heart of racism in America. Unfortunately, many of the points Brown makes are still relevant today. In fact, this poem could have been written after any number of recent events, Ferguson perhaps being the most well known, and it would be as pertenant (sic) as ever.[1]
The claim that this poem parallels the situation in “Ferguson” is patently false. The shooting in the poem “Southern Cop” and the shooting in Ferguson have nothing in common. In the “Ferguson” shooting, the race of the cop who shot and the race of the victim are known. In “Southern Cop,” the race of the cop can only be assumed—and then only prejudicially.
The “Hands up, don’t shoot!” claim, following the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by white cop Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, has been debunked repeatedly; yet its basic impetus has refused to be abated [2] [3] [4] [5]. In fact, the only racism discoverable in the poem”Southern Cop” comes from the speaker, who identifies the victim as a “Negro” but does not ever mention the race of the cop who shot the “Negro.”
Because the stereotype of white racist cops, especially southern cops, is so ingrained in the culture, the speaker feels no need to identify the race of Ty Kendricks, who could as likely have been of any race. But because of the assumption that the cop is white, the speaker demonstrates his own racism by his utter contempt; he is deliberately attempting to pit the race of the shooting victim against the race of the shooter.
The speaker demonstrates sympathy only for the “Negro” while he attempts to promote hatred and contempt for the cop.
Before the late 1980s in the United States, the terms “Negro,” “colored,” and “black” were accepted widely in American English parlance.
While the term “Negro” had started to lose it popularity in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that the Reverend Jesse Jackson began insisting that Americans adopt the phrase “African American.” The earlier more accurate terms were the custom at the time that Sterling A. Brown was writing.
Suggestion for Students Writing Papers on Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop” and Other Sensitive Issues
The following advice applies to students attending most American colleges and universities. Exceptions are Hillsdale College and a few others, where the First Amendment and other constitutional protections are still operative.
The current prevailing societal emphasis on identity and the politics of racial victimhood insures that my critical stance in this commentary is deemed unacceptable and will be at least soft censored, if not completely canceled.
So if you take such a stance in your classes, you are likely to be graded down or even censored—at best. At worst, you may be labeled racist, even expelled.
Therefore, please consider your options when writing on sensitive subjects like this one. Know your professors’ biases and use caution in crossing them.
However, the best outcome is that you are in position to take legal action against those professors who violate your constitutional rights. With such endeavors, I wish you all the best success.
Anne Frank Is Not a Metaphor: On History, Citizenship, and the Danger of False Analogies
Visual posted on Facebook: “Somewhere in a attic, a little girl is writing about ICE.”
And about that visual someone has responded: “The little girl is more than likely also a U.S. citizen, same way Anne Frank was a German citizen by birth.”
Every generation inherits Anne Frank. The girl herself, however, was taken from the world before she could grow old, but her diary, her voice, and the moral weight of what happened to her live on becoming what should remain a lesson from history. That inheritance carries a responsibility: to remember accurately, and to resist using her life as symbolic for experiences that are not, in fact, the same.
A social-media analogy comparing a hypothetical child hiding from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ) to Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis may feel emotionally compelling, providing those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) a sugar high with morally superior comfort, but it is not historically accurate. Worse, it blurs the very lessons Anne Frank’s life and death can teach.
From Whom Was Anne Frank Hiding?
Anne Frank was born on June 12,1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany [1]. That fact is often cited as proof that citizenship offers little protection in times of fear. But this framing skips a crucial truth: Nazi Germany destroyed the meaning of citizenship itself.
By the mid-1930s, the Nazi state had redefined citizenship along fallacious racial lines: the Nazis mandated that the Jews were an inferior “race.” Thus, Jews were no longer citizens in any meaningful sense.
Through the Nuremberg Laws and later decrees, they were stripped of legal protection, civil rights, and finally nationality [2]. In 1941, Jews living outside Germany—including Anne Frank—were formally denaturalized. They became stateless by design.
Anne Frank went into hiding not simply because of a disputed legal status, but because her existence had been criminalized. If discovered, she faced deportation to a camp where survival was unlikely because death was often immediate. There was no appeal process, no sympathetic court, no lawful path to safety. The state was not merely enforcing policy; it was pursuing annihilation.
Citizenship There and Then vs Citizenship Here and Now
To say that Anne Frank was “a citizen too” is technically true but morally empty, because Nazi citizenship was revocable at will. It offered no shield against racial ideology or state violence. Law existed only to serve the power of the state.
U.S. citizenship operates on a fundamentally different premise. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, [3] citizenship is a constitutional status that cannot be stripped by executive agencies, racial classifications, or political moods. A U.S. citizen—child or adult—cannot be deported. This fact is not a matter of discretion; it is settled law.
When U.S. citizens are wrongfully detained in immigration enforcement actions, those incidents represent violations of law, not expressions of it. They trigger lawsuits, judicial review, and public accountability. The existence of legal failure is not the same as the absence of law altogether. Anne Frank had no such protections to fail.
What ICE Is—and What It Is Not
ICE is a civil immigration enforcement agency operating within a functioning legal system. Immigration violations are civil matters. Proceedings involve hearings, attorneys, appeals, and oversight [4]. Like any system, it is imperfect, at times harsh, and open to criticism—but it is not genocidal, therefore, not analogous to Nazism.
ICE does not target children because of race or religion. It does not operate death camps. It does not seek the eradication of an entire people. These distinctions are not rhetorical conveniences; they are moral boundaries. To erase them is to misunderstand both the Holocaust and contemporary America.
The Cost of Misusing Holocaust History
Holocaust analogies demand care. The Holocaust was not simply “government overreach.” It was a state-engineered genocide, carried out with bureaucratic precision and ideological obsession. Its victims were not caught in administrative systems; they were hunted.
When Anne Frank is invoked casually—when her hiding place becomes a metaphor for fear in general—her story is diminished. She becomes an emotional device rather than a historical person. And history, once blurred, loses its power to warn. Remembering Anne Frank accurately does not weaken moral arguments today; it strengthens them. Precision is not coldness; it is respect.
Criticism without Distortion
One can grieve for children harmed by any administration policy. One can argue and should argue passionately for reform. One can condemn cruelty where it exists. None of that requires invoking Nazis.
In fact, such comparisons often signal a failure of imagination: the inability to describe injustices on their own terms. When every wrong becomes the Holocaust, the Holocaust becomes just another talking point—and present wrongs become harder, not easier, to address.
What Anne Frank Still Teaches Us
Anne Frank teaches us what happens when law collapses into ideology, when citizenship becomes conditional, and when fear is turned into policy. She does not teach us that all fear is the same, or that every state action is equivalent. She deserves better than metaphorical reuse. She deserves remembrance grounded in truth.
History does not need exaggeration. It needs honesty, proportion, and care—the very qualities Anne Frank herself brought to the act of writing, even while hiding from a world that had decided she did not belong in it.
How Partisan Politics Distort Analogies
Part of why we see comparisons like this so often is the way modern political arguments work. Some commentators and social-media voices exaggerate threats to generate outrage. In today’s highly polarized climate, opponents are often treated not just as political rivals but as moral (even mortal) enemies.
This kind of exaggeration—exemplified by the phenomenon labeled “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in popular discourse—turns ordinary policy debates into emotional theater.
Opponents the Trump administration interpret every government action as an existential threat, and thus, they reach for dramatic analogies, even when those analogies are historically inaccurate. Using Anne Frank as a metaphor or symbol for any kind of fear or injustice is part of this pattern: it signals outrage, but it distorts reality.
This distortion heralds a twofold danger: it trivializes real historical suffering, and it undermines possible criticism of current policies. One can oppose ICE, advocate for children, and call for reform, but the conversation becomes less productive when hyperbolic, false comparisons replace honest, careful, accurate analysis.
Sources
[1] Anne FrankThe Diary of a Young Girl. Translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, Bantam Books, 1993.
[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Nuremberg Laws.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2023.
[3] United States Constitution, Amendment XIV.
[4] David Weissbrodt and Laura Danielson. Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell. West Academic Publishing, 2017.
Minimalist Gesture and the Aesthetics of Refusal: Fragmentation, Surface, and Postmodern Quietude in Contemporary Poetry
Contemporary postmodern lyric sensibility is often characterized by fragmentation, semantic restraint, and an explicit refusal of narrative or interpretive accumulation.
A small selection of poetic fragments disseminated via social media by Tom Koontz,* who self-identifies as working across literary and visual modes provides a concentrated example of this literary phenomenon.
Fragment as Method
This essay approaches these fragments as fully realized instances of an aesthetic that privileges gesture over development, surface over depth, and notation over argument. This aesthetic, furthermore, situates the poet’s fragments within a lineage of postmodern minimalism and considers their relationship to nihilism, Zen-inflected quietism, and the modernist critique of romantic transcendence.
Aligning with longstanding postmodern uses of fragmentation as a structuring principle, the literary fragment [1] has long occupied an ambiguous position in literary history, oscillating between ruin and revelation, failure and form. In contemporary postmodern practice, however, the fragment increasingly asserts itself not as a remainder of a larger work, but as a fully intentional aesthetic unit. Koontz’s recent poetic postings exemplify this orientation with notable consistency.
Rather than aspiring toward narrative coherence, cumulative argument, or sustained metaphorical development, these texts embrace separation as a guiding principle. Each fragment stands independently, neither demanding nor rewarding contextual integration. The resulting effect is not incompletion but a deliberate, self-contained minimalism: a gesture that simultaneously asserts presence and declines elaboration.
This study recognizes the Koontzean fragments as exemplars of postmodern nihilism [2] in which meaning is neither promised nor pursued, and the textual surface itself constitutes the work’s principal significance.
In this respect, the fragments offer a particularly instructive case of contemporary poetic practice, in which restraint, discontinuity, and aesthetic detachment are elevated into a formal strategy—allowing the reader to witness an intentional refusal as a measure of poetic method.
Theoretical Context: Postmodern Nihilism and Minimal Demand
The term postmodern nihilism is employed here descriptively rather than polemically. Consistent with observations on the digital constraints shaping contemporary minimalist verse [3], it denotes an aesthetic disposition in which meaning is neither interrogated nor dramatized but flagrantly bypassed. Unlike modernist negation, which often emphasizes the loss of transcendence, postmodern nihilism accepts absence as a neutral condition, notable in its undisciplined indifference, while remaining modest in conceptual ambition.
Within this framework, minimalism functions not as compression but as strategic substitution. Brevity replaces argument; spacing replaces development; tone replaces insight. The fragment becomes a site where poetic authority is implied through restraint rather than exercised through elaboration.
The Koontzean fragments align closely with this tendency. They do not strive to say more with less, but rather to say little and stop, achieving a consistency admirable in its punctiliousness, if restrained in expressive reach. The reader is not asked to excavate meaning so much as to register atmospheric effect and tonal gesture, themselves notable as formalized strategies.
Fragment One: Gestural Insistence and the Subtlety of Absence
She laughed. I was very blasé
The speaker in this fragment stages an interpersonal moment while declining to elaborate it. Laughter appears without context, motivation, or consequence, and the speaker’s response presents emotional detachment as a completed posture rather than an experience subject to inquiry.
The lexical choice is notable. The term “blasé” already denotes a condition of saturation or indifference, and its modification by “very” operates less as a conventional intensifier than as a tonal signal, reinforcing attitude rather than sharpening meaning.
The line break isolates the adjective visually, encouraging the reader to register the affective stance itself as the fragment’s primary content, independent of gradation or narrative cause.
In this respect, the fragment exemplifies a minimalist poetics in which expressive sufficiency is achieved not through semantic precision but through the confident assertion of mood.
Emotional detachment is treated as self-evident and complete, requiring no calibration or further qualification. The effect is one of cultivated neutrality—formally coherent, if deliberately inattentive to finer distinctions of degree or development.
Fragment Two: Composed Stillness and the Practice of Observational Neutrality
winter trees across the green of the hospital
Here, the fragment turns outward, presenting a static visual composition. The hospital—a site traditionally charged with narratives of illness, recovery, and mortality—is rendered primarily as a color field. Human presence remains implied but abstract.
The fragment’s restraint is central to its effect. Trees are seasonal but not symbolic; the hospital is visible but not inhabited. The image resists narrative activation, offering composed quietude, executed with consistency, if limited in interpretive scope.
By declining to specify circumstance or response, the fragment allows meaning to remain ambient and formally self-contained, exemplifying a disciplined aesthetic posture. Its steadiness is admirable in its precision, if modest in narrative ambition.
Fragment Three: Lyric Abstraction and Imagined Depth
love bathes
in a patch of sunlight
on the bottom of the sea
at the bottom of my heart
The speaker in this fragment reaches most overtly toward lyric elevation. The abstraction “love” appears without relational context, existing as a condition rather than an action. Its passivity suggests stillness rather than struggle.
The conjunction of sunlight and the sea floor produces a striking image of depth and illumination, despite the impossibility assigned the sun’s nature. Rather than functioning as a worked conceit, however, the image operates atmospherically, gesturing toward profundity without insisting on coherence.
The parallelism between “the bottom of the sea” and “the bottom of my heart” establishes a rhetorical symmetry that links external vastness and internal feeling. The connection is formal rather than experiential, allowing the two spaces to echo one another without narrative mediation.
The fragment exemplifies a postmodern lyricism that trusts abstraction and spatial metaphor to generate resonance independently of lived detail. Depth is invoked rather than developed, leaving the reader in a contemplative rather than interpretive posture.
Fragment Four: Composed Stillness and the Politics of Inaction
duck coming in— head up / butt down splash land
The speaker in this fragment introduces movement but maintains the prevailing stance of detachment. The duck’s landing is rendered through clipped phrasing and visual markers that emphasize immediacy over significance.
The slash in “head up / butt down” functions kinetically, mimicking the bird’s adjustment in descent. “Splash land” concludes the fragment with a percussive finality that registers the event without reflection.
As elsewhere, the speaker refrains from symbolic framing. The duck is not invested with metaphorical weight; the moment is not elevated into insight. The fragment records and releases the image with minimal demand on the reader.
Fragment Five: Domestic Sacrament and the Aesthetics of Shared Attention
a fiery goblet brimming with dew
we break fast in the orange light
my toast: you drinking it all in
This fragment stages a morning ritual that aspires to sacramental intimacy while remaining resolutely noncommittal. The image combines elemental excess with condensation, a paradox that gestures toward depth without clarifying its stakes. The image is evocative but static, functioning more as atmospheric garnish than as a vehicle of thought.
The act of breaking fast “in the orange light” situates the scene within a familiar lyric register of dawn-as-renewal. Yet the poem resists complication: the light is neither interrogated nor transformed. The conclusion redirects attention outward.
It thus converts the moment into an affirmation of the other’s receptivity rather than an exploration of the speaker’s consciousness. What emerges appears to be a polished vignette whose restraint reads less as discipline than as abdication. The poem knows when to stop, but not why it began.
Fragment Six: The Earnest Vessel and the Consolation of Illumination
I fashioned a bowl of my life, ardent with shadows
you filled it with fresh sunshine
Here the speaker mobilizes a container metaphor to frame the self as a crafted object, weighted with ardor and darkness. The gesture is recognizably confessional, yet its abstraction neutralizes the specificity such a posture typically demands. The bowl signifies interiority without permitting access to it.
The introduction of the second person enacts a familiar economy of redemption, wherein the self’s darkness is redeemed through an external, undefined presence. Sunshine functions as an all-purpose corrective, unburdened by complexity or cost.
The fragment’s appeal lies in its emotional legibility, but this legibility is also its limitation. By resolving tension through a single luminous substitution, the poem forecloses inquiry. What remains is a pleasing symmetry that unsettles rather than reassures, offering metaphor as pressure rather than as consolation.
Fragment Seven: Repetition as Contemplative Substitute
moonlight on the far fields
moonlight on the doorstep
This piece consists entirely of mirrored observation, invoking moonlight across two spatial coordinates. The repetition suggests stillness and attentiveness, inviting the reader into a posture of quiet perception. Yet the poem’s reliance on duplication substitutes structural echo for analytical development.
The shift from “far fields” to “the doorstep” implies a movement from distance to proximity, but the poem declines to register any corresponding change in perception or affect. Moonlight remains moonlight, uninflected by scale or intimacy.
The fragment’s economy is precise, but its restraint verges on evasive. By offering equivalence where difference might matter, the poem achieves a surface calm that resists interpretation. The result is a musing that gestures toward contemplative depth while remaining content to rest in visual symmetry alone.
Fragment Eight: Cosmic Undressing and the Poetics of Suggestion
undressing on the other side of the sun
This fragment relies almost entirely on suggestion, compressing its effect into a single, enigmatic image, which invokes intimacy, transgression, and cosmic distance in equal measure, yet declines to anchor these resonances in any discernible experience.
The line breaks orchestrate suspense, encouraging the reader to supply meaning that the poem itself withholds. The image gestures toward transcendence or erotic revelation, but its abstraction insulates it from scrutiny.
Such reticence may be read as sophistication, though it risks functioning as a refusal to think through the implications of its own metaphor. The poem’s power resides less in what it articulates than in what it leaves unsaid, a strategy that flatters the gesture while absolving it of responsibility.
Fragment Nine: Typographical Zen and the Performance of Emptiness
sitting empty
this zen
barn
holds nothing
tolls all
The speaker in this piece presents emptiness as both theme and technique, arranging sparse language into a vertical architecture that mimics negative space. The barn, emptied of contents, becomes a symbolic container for negation itself. The visual pacing reinforces the poem’s aspiration toward contemplative blankness.
The concluding turn introduces a wordplay that gestures toward metaphysical resonance. Yet the pun resolves too neatly, converting absence into aphorism rather than sustaining tension.
The fragment’s discipline is evident, but its emptiness feels carefully curated rather than arduously achieved. Zen functions here as an aesthetic posture, offering the appearance of depth through subtraction, while sparing the poem the labor of philosophical risk.
Fragment Ten: Witness without Transformation
i was watching, when the swans began to sing
This effusion hinges on an act of watching interrupted by an unexpected phenomenon: swans that sing. The surreal element promises rupture, yet the poem’s syntax and tone absorb the event without disturbance. The speaker remains a passive observer, unchanged by what he records.
The lineation slows the moment, encouraging a hushed attentiveness, but the poem declines to explore the implications of its own strangeness. Singing swans appear not as a challenge to perception but as an ornamental flourish, a borrowed emblem of wonder, even as it alludes to a long debunked phenomenon.
What distinguishes the fragment is its refusal to risk consequence. Observation is treated as sufficient poetic labor. In this way, the poem exemplifies a contemporary lyric posture in which the marvelous is noted rather than metabolized, and attention replaces insight as the terminal value.
The sophomoric lower case on the first person singular pronoun adds a pinch of spice to the otherwise bland misfortune of assigning swans a talent that they sorely lack. Again, the special provenance of this fragment proves worth its weight in gold as the piece represents the surface quietude of the postmodern mindset.
Zen Quietism and Romantic Misunderstanding
Taken together, these fragments articulate a coherent aesthetic of refusal. They do not seek to persuade, console, or illuminate. Instead, they model a mode of poetic attention that values blank stares, surface musing, and attachment to a misunderstood exotic.
This sensibility bears resemblance to Zen-inflected minimalism, though it also recalls T. S. Eliot’s critique of the “romantic misunderstanding” of Eastern philosophy: a tendency to mistake mere silence for profundity and absence for insight.
In these Koontzean fragments, such restraint rarely signals deliberate discipline; instead, it more often manifests as the default posture of an aesthetic content with superficial resonance.
Yet this resonance, too, may be understood as part of their achievement. As Azambuja has traced in the broader tradition of Zen’s impact on American poetic cosmology [4], such poems do not argue for meaning; they quietly decline it. Their consistency in this regard is glaring.
Exemplarity without Aspiration
These fragments offer a concentrated illustration of a postmodern poetic mode that trusts minimal gesture to stand as expression. Their significance lies not in what they say, but in how clearly they enact an aesthetic that asks poetry to do very little—executed with commendable consistency, even as it remains restrained in design.
They do not aspire to a collective reality, nor to logical development, and they definitely defy resolution. Instead, they remain faithful to an ethic of sufficiency, in which noticing replaces knowing and gesture substitutes for assertion—a practice that is as noteworthy in its formal fidelity, as it is limited in any muse-inspired reach.
As such, these pieces function less as individual poems than as exemplary instances of a contemporary poetic disposition [5]—one that finds confidence precisely in the decision to stop, executed with a restraint notable for its formal rigor, even as it remains circumscribed in execution, ambition, and imagination.
*Fair Use Notice: Fragments by Tom Koontz (@tomkoontz.bsky.social) reproduced under fair use for purposes of commentary, in accordance with U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 107).
The Lost Art of Poetic Persuasion and the Rise of Propaganda
The art of poetry, once central to cultural formation and moral imagination, has largely vanished from the public consciousness of the twenty-first century. Yet its techniques survive, not in poems, but in political speeches that seek to persuade, mobilize, and command allegiance. What once elevated the soul through truth now often manipulates the will through propaganda.
Historical Transcendence
Poetry historically functioned as a discourse for transcendent truth—or revealing shared characteristics and/or experience of the ineffable. That discourse was articulated through rhythm, rime, metaphor, image, and moral vision. Its purpose was not merely aesthetic but revelatory, offering insight into human nature and cosmic order.
In contrast, modern political rhetoric consistently borrows poetic devices while discarding poetry’s practical, etherial center. An important distinction between poetry and propaganda lies not in technique but in intent. Poetry aims to reveal truth through beauty of shared experience, while propaganda aims to impose belief through emotional coercion. This inversion inserts a profound cultural and political danger upon the culture.
The “cosmic voice” in poetry exemplifies the highest function of language as truth-telling. Poets such as Emily Dickinson and Rabindranath Tagore speak from a vantage point that transcends time, space, and merely personal, temporal interest by remaining true to their own felt experience. Their art invites contemplation rather than compliance.
Narrowing of Vision
By contrast, political persuasion narrows vision instead of expanding it. While employing supposedly elevated diction and often ridiculous, sweeping claims, it constricts thought to a prescribed moral frame. What appears poetic in form becomes propagandistic in function. It limits the world view to us vs them, even as it touts unreasonable and unrealistic visions of collectiveness and togetherness.
Aristotle distinguished rhetoric as the art of persuasion, separate from poetry, which he viewed as an reflected image of universal truth [1]. Modern politics collapses this distinction by weaponizing poetic techniques for rhetorical domination. The result is speech that sounds elevated but functions coercively.
The decline of poetry education has contributed to this confusion. Citizens no longer trained to discern metaphor, irony, and symbolic language become vulnerable to emotional manipulation. Without poetic literacy, propaganda passes for profundity.
Political speeches frequently invoke collective destiny, moral urgency, and historical inevitability. These elements mirror the cosmic voice but lack its grounding in transcendent truth. Instead of illuminating reality, they overwrite it.
The cosmic voice speaks from deep intuition aligned with self-evident moral law. Propaganda speaks from strategic calculation aligned with power. Though their cadences may resemble one another, their spiritual origins differ radically.
A Shared Humanity
Walt Whitman’s expansive voice celebrated the unity of the American soul without demanding ideological conformity. His poetry invited readers into shared humanity rather than partisan allegiance [2]. Modern political rhetoric reverses this impulse.
Totalitarian movements of the twentieth century demonstrated the lethal potential of propagandistic language. Adolf Hitler’s speeches, saturated with mythic imagery and rhythmic repetition, exemplify corrupted poetic form [3]. Beauty of language became an accomplice to brutality.
George Orwell warned that political language is designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable” [4]. His insight underscores how poetic devices, stripped of ethical restraint, become tools of domination. Language ceases to clarify and begins to conceal.
The American founding generation understood the moral weight of language. The Federalist Papers, though persuasive, relied on reasoned argument rather than emotional spectacle [5]. Their restraint contrasts sharply with contemporary political performance.
Prioritizing Applause Lines
Modern speechwriters often prioritize applause lines over logical coherence. Repetition, chant-like phrasing, and simplified behavioral binaries replace substantive argument. These techniques mirror incantation more than deliberation.
Propaganda thrives where citizens abandon critical thinking for emotional identification. It offers belonging in exchange for obedience. Poetry, by contrast, invites solitude, reflection, and inner awakening. The cosmic voice requires humility before truth. Propaganda requires submission to narrative. One liberates the mind; the other enslaves it.
Media amplification intensifies this danger. Televised and digital platforms reward emotionally charged language over nuanced thought. Political speech increasingly resembles performance art devoid of contemplative depth. The poet speaks across centuries; the propagandist speaks to the moment. Poetry endures because it aligns with permanent truths. Propaganda expires when power shifts, leaving cultural debris.
Spiritual Realization over Persuasion
Paramahansa Yogananda’s poems and poetic prose exemplify language joined with spiritual realization rather than persuasion [6]. His words expand consciousness rather than direct behavior. Such writing resists political appropriation.
When political speech adopts cosmic imagery, it often falsifies transcendence. Appeals to “history,” “the people,” or “the future” replace genuine moral reasoning. Abstract collectives become moral/ethcial authorities. This substitution erodes individual conscience. Citizens are urged to surrender judgment to the supposed inevitability of political progress. Poetry affirms the inner reality of awareness; propaganda suppresses it.
The labeling of persuasive political language as “poetry” obscures its manipulative intent—especially when displayed in poems. Calling propaganda poetic grants it unearned authority and legitimacy.
Precision in language is therefore a civic necessity. Freedom depends on the ability to discern truth from emotional coercion. When citizens mistake propaganda for poetry, they become susceptible to ideological captivity. Liberty erodes quietly through linguistic corruption.
Absence of Classical Rhetoric and Poetry
Education in classical rhetoric and poetry once fortified citizens against demagoguery. Its absence leaves a vacuum filled by spectacle and slogan. Cultural amnesia thus becomes a political liability. The cosmic voice unites humanity by revealing shared being. Propaganda divides humanity by enforcing ideological boundaries. Poetry heals; propaganda fractures.
Political movements that rely on constant rhetorical escalation reveal their fragility. Truth does not require perpetual amplification. Only falsehood fears silence. The recovery of poetic literacy is therefore an act of resistance. Reading true poetry reawakens discernment and humility. It trains the ear to recognize authenticity.
Citizens must relearn to ask not how language makes them feel, but whether it aligns with reality. Emotional intensity is not evidence of truth. Poetry teaches this distinction; propaganda erases it.
The survival of the American republic depends on linguistic vigilance. Freedom requires citizens capable of resisting seductive falsehoods. Propaganda must be recognized, resisted, and rejected. True poetry remains a guidepost for this resistance. Its cosmic voice reminds humanity of higher order beyond power. In reclaiming poetry, citizens reclaim freedom.
Sources
[1] Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher. Project Gutenberg. Accessed January 9, 2026.
[2] Walt Whitman.Leaves of Grass. Project Gutenberg. Accessed January 9, 2026.
[3] Victor Klemperer. The Language of the Third Reich. Bloomsbury Academic. 2006. Internet Archive. Accessed January 9, 2026.
While his poems littered the literary landscape, the late Robert Bly tainted the art of translation. The man was both plagiarist and poetaster.
The Exacting Art of Translation
Translation is an exacting art, requiring knowledge of the target language as well as the language into which the work is to be translated. A modern plagiaristic scourge is tainting that art, and poetaster Robert Bly has remained a leading perpetrator of that scourge. Another egregious example is that of Ursula K. Le Guin, who purported to treat Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching.
To be fair to Le Guin, she does not label her work a “translation” and even admits that she does not read Chinese. But publishers, promoters, and reviewers often claim that the Le Guin treatment is a translation.
About the literary acumen of poetaster Robert Bly, critic and translator Eliot Weinberger has opined, “Robert Bly is a windbag, a sentimentalist, a slob in the language.” Describing much of the output of Bly’s drivel, Weinberger writes,
Not since Disney put gloves on a mouse has nature been so human: objects have “an inner grief”; alfalfa is “brave,” a butterfly “joyful,” dusk “half-drunk”; a star is “a stubborn man”; bark “calls to the rain”; “snow water glances up at the new moon.” It is a festival of pathetic fallacy. [1]
Weinberger is especially annoyed, however, that so many college students who hanker after becoming poets tend to choose Bly as their model. And they do so because “a Bly poem is so easy to write.” Unrestrained by technique, Bly engages “pointless and rarely believable metaphor (who else would compare the sound of a cricket to a sailboat?)”
Weinberger detects in Bly a “lack of emotional subtlety” that also likely attracts the immature minds of students. He suggests that Bly’s ability to write English has been “warped by reading too many bad translations.”
One might add that not only reading bad translations has warped Bly’s facility with the English language, but also his unsuccessful attempts to “translate” those works has warped the imaginations of other readers for decades.
For a significant part of Robert Bly’s literary career, the man has been “translating” the works of poets who write in Spanish, German, Swedish, Persian, Sanskrit, and other languages.
Bly, however, does not read, write, or understand any of the languages he supposedly “translates.” So the result of his so-called “translations” is simply revisions of the translations of others. According to Robert Richman,
Bly sought to revolutionize the art of translating poetry . . . Knowing the language well wasn’t the most important factor in translating poetry, Bly insisted, since “[w]hat you are essentially doing is slipping for a moment into the mood of the other poet. . . into an emotion which you may possibly have experienced at some time.”
In truth, Bly’s ideas about translation merely allowed the translator, as James Dickey put it, to take “as many liberties as [he] wants to take with the original, it being understood that this enables [him] somehow to approach the ‘spirit’ of the poem [he] is translating. [2]
Robert Bly takes a translation by someone who actually knows both the target language and English, who has actually translated the poem, changes some words, and calls his product a translation. An extended example of Bly’s fraudulent translation scheme is his publication titled The Kabir Book [3].
The poetaster revised forty-four of the genuine translations from One Hundred Poems of Kabir [4], by Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nobel Laureate, and Evelyn Underhill, renowned spiritual writer and recipient of numerous honorary degrees. Bly would have his readers believe his revisions of the translations of these outstanding creative thinkers better represent Kabir. Bly’s folly leads him astray.
In Bly’s introduction to The Kabir Book, he claims that the Tagore-Underhill translations are “hopeless.” He does not explain what he means by “hopeless.” But he does claim that his purpose for re-translating some of the poems is to modernize them, put them into contemporary language.
However, he has attempted to fix that which was not broken. His claim that the Tagore translations are “hopeless” reveals part of the problem with Bly. If he found them “hopeless,” then obviously there is no way he could understand them well enough to improve on Tagore’s translations. Instead of merely modernizing the language, he loosens the diction, causing it to descend into a talky, laid-back kind of style that is not appropriate for its purpose.
The profound spiritual significance that these works have for the yogi-saint Kabir and his followers has been transformed into a libertine, 1960s-style free-love fest instead of the divine union of soul and God, as is their purpose. Because the poet Kabir was a God-realized saint, his poems and songs reflect the deep spiritual significance of his state of consciousness.
Kabir’s poems essentially perform two functions: the first is to express and describe the Ineffable [5] in words as nearly as possible through the saint’s devotion to God, and the second is to inspire and instruct his followers.
According to yogic philosophy [6] and training, the yogi who has succeeded in uniting his own soul with God has risen above all earthly, physical desires. Such a saint has only two desires left, and those two desires correspond to the above purposes ascribed to Kabir’s songs: to continue to enjoy union with God and to share it with others.
T. S. Eliot Recognized the “Romantic Misunderstanding”
Western thinkers, philosophers, and poets such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence have attempted to explain Eastern religion to the West. But T. S. Eliot noticed that he had great difficulty trying to understand Eastern philosophy. And Eliot admitted his difficulty and at the same time observed that what was passing as Eastern philosophical analysis was “romantic misunderstanding”:
And I came to the conclusion seeing also that the ‘influence’ of Brahmin and Buddhist thought upon Europe, as in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Deussen, had largely been through romantic misunderstanding . . . [7]
I suggest that this misunderstanding is evident in Bly’s version of the Tagore-Underhill translations. And because of the lack of understanding, Bly was unable to do what he claimed he was doing, making the poems more accessible to the modern reader.
Bly claims he had become fond of the “interiors” of the poems he chose to “translate,” but in reality his fondness rests on his own misunderstanding of what those “interiors” actually mean.
Robert Bly’s folly becomes apparent with the following “translation” from The Kabir Book:
Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates; the new love opens them. The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep. Kabir says: Fantastic! Don’t let a chance like this go by!
From One Hundred Poems of Kabir, the Tagore-Underhill translation follows:
The lock of error shuts the gate, open it with the key of love: Thus, by opening the door, thou shalt wake the Belovèd. Kabir says: ‘O brother! Do not pass by such a good fortune as this.’
Bly’s version has transformed the meaning from God-union to human sexual copulation. Yogic philosophy claims that intense love for God awakens the soul and aids it in its search for God-union. The Tagore-Underhill translation has retained this spiritual significance.
“The lock of error” signifies the human’s mistaken belief that he is separate from God. Therefore, “love” opens the “gate” of separation. By opening the gate, the devotee awakens the soul to the “Belovèd”—capitalized because it refers to God.
Because the yogi’s goal is to awaken his desire for God, Kabir as the yogi-guru admonished his followers not to pass by such good fortune as can be found by unlocking his heart of love to God.
In Bly’s version, the poem promotes a human sexual opportunity. Few readers can pass by “iron gates” without their calling to mind Andrew Marvell’s “Coy Mistress.” And there is little doubt about what Marvell’s speaker was seeking with his coy mistress.
More importantly, “Belovèd” of the Tagore-Underhill version becomes in Bly’s “the beautiful woman asleep.” This kind of misrepresentation is a prototypical example of what T. S. Eliot meant when he claimed that Eastern influence on the West had come through “romantic misunderstanding.”
After transforming the Supreme Being into a beautiful woman, Bly has the yogi-saint cry: “Fantastic! Don’t let a change like this go by!” This mind-numbing act is an abomination, revealing an ignorance that would be funny if it were not so utterly misleading.
Bly’s Translation Career Based on Plagiarism
What Bly has actually accomplished in his “translation” career amounts to a large body of plagiarism of the original translators’ works. In addition to plagiarism instead of actual translation, Bly has misrepresented, distorted, and vulgarized the works of poets and translators, whose works he obviously has not understood.
Bly once quipped that American readers “can’t tell when a man is counterfeiting and when he isn’t.” That Bly got away with his “counterfeiting” in the literary world is an disgrace and has damaged the art of literature in the minds and hearts of many readers for several decades. The poetaster’s counterfeiting of the art of translation may likely be his most egregious contribution to the bastardization of literary studies.
Nevertheless, Robert Bly continues to be lauded as a sacred cow of the literary world. Critics, scholars, and commentarians tend to shy away from offering any negative criticism of such individuals, lest their own reputation suffer. Therefore, the counterfeiting unfortunately continues long beyond its origin.
Sources
[1] Eliot Weinberger. “Gloves on a Mouse.” The Nation. Vol. 229, No. 16. November 17, 1979. Print. Also available on Enotes.
The speaker of a poem is seldom the poet. A poem is a dramatization similar to a play. The speaker is a created character, crafted by the poet to speak the message of the poem. Even when a poet shares sentiment with the speaker, they should be considered separate entities.
Poet and Speaker of a Poem: Seldom the
While referring to the speaker of a poem, it is always more accurate and safer to say, “the speaker” instead of “the poet” because the speaker of a poem is not always the poet. A poem is a crafted performance, a portrayal, or a dramatization similar to a play. The speaker is quite often a created character, just as the characters who are on display in a play are created characters. Most poets keep a heartfelt, sincere fondness for their poems.
They give in to no compunction about claiming the importance of their life experience, their personal goals, dreams, and heartfelt struggles that inform their poems. Quite frankly, poetry could not be created without such profound feelings and struggles experienced by the creators of poetry.
But poets quite often create characters through which to expresses that experience and those struggles. Thus, the safer answer to the question—”Who speaks the poem?”—is “the speaker speaks the poem.”
Even if the speaker is obviously delving into her own feelings and situation, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, it remains more accurate to refer to the speaker of the poem as “the speaker” rather than “the poet,” “Elizabeth,” or “Barrett Browning.”
Speaking through Characters
Often poets may claim that their poems are their children; thus, it is important to keep in mind that children and their parents are not the same. Children may, and often do, hold very different ideas, beliefs and attitudes from those of their parents. A poem’s speaker may profess very different attitudes from the poet who wrote that speaker into existence—many times for that exact purpose.
Even though poets are close to their poems, they may not always place biographical information in their poems. Poets may not always reveal their exact beliefs in their poems. Like playwrights, poets usually create characters through which they speak in their poems.
Arthur Miller during Paddy Chayefsky’s Funeral at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City, NY, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)
Readers are not likely to confuse the characters in a play with the playwright. Thus, no one would make the mistake of thinking that Willie Loman, the character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is Miller himself. Miller has explained that the Loman character is, in fact, based on the experiences of one of Miller’s uncles.
Image d: Langston Hughes – Carl Van Vechten – The New Yorker
Yet because Langston Hughes has written in his poem titled “Cross,” “My old man is a white old man / And my old mothers black,” readers often surmise that Langston Hughes himself had a white father and a black mother. Both of Hughes’ parents, however, were black. Hughes has created a character in his poem, just as Arthur Miller created Willie Loman in his play.
The Speaker’s Voice
While discussing a poem, the reader is always on more solid ground if he refers to the person vocalizing the words as “the speaker,” instead of “the poet.” A poet can give his character any ideas or beliefs that are necessary for the execution of the poem’s purpose. According to Anna Story, discussing this issue in “How to Tell Who the Speaker Is in a Poem,”
The speaker is the voice or “persona” of a poem. One should not assume that the poet is the speaker, because the poet may be writing from a perspective entirely different from his own, even with the voice of another gender, race or species, or even of a material object. [1]
In his poem “Cross,” Langston Hughes explores the idea of how an individual of mixed race might feel. So he created a mixed race character and let him speak. Hughes, himself, cannot be testifying as to how that person feels, because he does not actually have the experience himself. But he is perfectly capable of exploring the idea, the “what if” situation that poets engage in quite often.
A Caveat: Observation vs Inner Sturm und Drang
Langston Hughes’ “Cross” would likely have been a better poem had he not chosen to engage the first person. Some issues simply cry out for authenticity that speculation of this kind cannot provide.
Hughes’ message could have remained somewhat similar, but he would have avoided the twofold issue that he would be mistaken for a mixed race individual and that the plight of the speaker remains under a cloud of doubt.
Image e: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
That fact does not detract from what other poets have achieved in their character creation. For example, Emily Dickinson assumes the persona of adult male to express the experience of “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” and her portrayal remains genuine.
Unlike Hughes’ “Cross,” Dickinson’s speaker is reporting on an observation, not a deeply felt inner turmoil. Whether the speaker in Dickinson’s poem were a boy or a girl at the time of the observation matters very little, but if the poem had delved into deep seated feelings that the observation caused, it would have been less authentic to speak through the opposite sex.
Inner turmoil can be very differently experienced depending on the sex of the individual. As Paramahansa Yogananda has explained, females are guided more by feeling and males by reason; although both sexes possess both feeling and reason. In postlapsarian humanity, those qualities need to regain their balance and unity [2].
Exploration and Creativity
Poets, as well as novelists and playwrights, often explore feelings and thoughts and situations that they have not personally experienced. They often explore and dramatize beliefs that they do not necessarily hold.
For this reason, it is always safer to assume that the poet is creating a character rather than merely testifying, that he is exploring ideas rather than merely elaborating his own beliefs, thoughts, or feelings.Even though the poet may, in fact, be testifying and issuing her own beliefs, thoughts, or feelings, it is still more accurate and safer to assume that the poem is being spoken by a character, rather than by the poet.
Linda's Literary Home 
