James Weldon Johnson‘s “A Poet to His Baby Son”
The poet James Weldon Johnson has created a speaker whose baby son gets a wild-eyed stare that can look “through the ceiling of the room, and beyond,” leading the father to suspect that he might have a budding poet to contend with.
Introduction with Text of “A Poet to His Baby Son”
James Weldon Johnson’s speaker in “A Poet to His Baby Son” offers a tongue-in-cheek complaint that his baby son might be contemplating becoming, like his father, a poet.
A Poet to His Baby Son
Tiny bit of humanity,
Blessed with your mother’s face,
And cursed with your father’s mind.
I say cursed with your father’s mind,
Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back,
Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot,
And looking away,
Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond.
Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet?
Why don’t you kick and howl,
And make the neighbors talk about
“That damned baby next door,”
And make up your mind forthwith
To grow up and be a banker
Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter
Or—?—whatever you decide upon,
Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts
About being a poet.
For poets no longer are makers of songs,
Chanters of the gold and purple harvest,
Sayers of the glories of earth and sky,
Of the sweet pain of love
And the keen joy of living;
No longer dreamers of the essential dreams,
And interpreters of the eternal truth,
Through the eternal beauty.
Poets these days are unfortunate fellows.
Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way
Or new things in an old language,
They talk abracadabra
In an unknown tongue,
Each one fashioning for himself
A wordy world of shadow problems,
And as a self-imagined Atlas,
Struggling under it with puny legs and arms,
Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load.
My son, this is no time nor place for a poet;
Grow up and join the big, busy crowd
That scrambles for what it thinks it wants
Out of this old world which is—as it is—
And, probably, always will be.
Take the advice of a father who knows:
You cannot begin too young
Not to be a poet.
Commentary on “A Poet to His Baby Son”
The speaker’s baby son gets a wild-eyed stare that seems so penetrating that it can look through things. The speaker playfully then muses that the kid might be demonstrating qualities that could lead him to becoming a poet, like his father. The speaker appears to be somewhat dismayed by that thought, for he is concerned about the current trend in poetry’s emphasis on non-poetic subjects.
First Stanza: A Distressing Possibility
Tiny bit of humanity,
Blessed with your mother’s face,
And cursed with your father’s mind.
In the opening three-line stanza, the speaker is having a little talk with his infant son. He calls the baby boy a “[t]iny bit of humanity” and describes him as looking like his mother but thinking like his father. The speaker is happy with the first quality but distressed over the second.
Second Stanza: Poetry as a Curse
I say cursed with your father’s mind,
Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back,
Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot,
And looking away,
Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond.
Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet?
The speaker is so distressed over the fact that the baby has his “father’s mind” that he calls the child “cursed” with that quality, repeating that lined in both the opening stanza and the second.
The speaker then begins his exposition of the reason for thinking the baby may be cursed. Before dropping the bombshell though, he relates that the baby can do baby things like lying quietly for extended periods on his little back, while playing with toes. These are a little-baby activities that the speaker finds charming.
But the speaker also senses a musing quality in the baby’s stare; the little one seems to be staring with such contemplation that he can see through the “ceiling” and “beyond.” This searching stare suggest to the poet that his baby is contemplating becoming a poet when he grows up.
Third Stanza: Anything but Poetry!
Why don’t you kick and howl,
And make the neighbors talk about
“That damned baby next door,”
And make up your mind forthwith
To grow up and be a banker
Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter
Or—?—whatever you decide upon,
Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts
About being a poet.
The speaker then rhetorically queries his son, suggesting that he “kick and howl” and annoy the neighbors to get them to exclaim and swear because of the unwelcome noise. Such behavior he suggests would ensure that his son might decide to be a enthusiastic individual and become some professional such as a “banker” or even a “politician.”
The speaker insists that no matter what the kid does, he should never ever consider the notion of becoming a poet. Because the father is a poet, he would know all of the disadvantages that profession can confer.
Fourth Stanza: The Modernist Bent
For poets no longer are makers of songs,
Chanters of the gold and purple harvest,
Sayers of the glories of earth and sky,
Of the sweet pain of love
And the keen joy of living;
No longer dreamers of the essential dreams,
And interpreters of the eternal truth,
Through the eternal beauty.
Poets these days are unfortunate fellows.
Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way
Or new things in an old language,
They talk abracadabra
In an unknown tongue,
Each one fashioning for himself
A wordy world of shadow problems,
And as a self-imagined Atlas,
Struggling under it with puny legs and arms,
Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load.
In the longest stanza, the speaker details his reason for dissuading his son from becoming a poet. The poet/speaker is decrying the modernist bent of poets.
These modernists do not compose songs of beauty, such as those of “the gold and purple harvest.” They avoid remarking and making any references to “the glories of earth and sky.” These poets seem to avoid taking note of their environment.
But worse still is that these modernist poets are no longer interested in exploring and dramatizing love with all of its joys and sorrows. They no longer compose songs devoted to revealing the joy just living can offer. They seem to have ceased dreaming about essential realities. These new poets avoid interpreting”eternal truth / Through the eternal beauty.”
Instead of all these endearing qualities that have infused and sustained poetry and poetry lovers for centuries, these new poets have become “unfortunate fellows.” They have become confused and display only befuddlement stammering out ” old things in a new way.”
The poet describes the claptrap of modernist poetry: They speak a kind of magician logic in a made-up language. They are no longer individuals with self-determination.
These modernists are fabricating a word-salad world of “shadow problems.” They represent themselves as “a self-imagined Atlas” “with puny legs and arms.” They bitch and moan about their victimhood.
Fifth Stanza: Not a Good Place for Poets
My son, this is no time nor place for a poet;
Grow up and join the big, busy crowd
That scrambles for what it thinks it wants
Out of this old world which is—as it is—
And, probably, always will be.
It is then for the reasons spelled out in stanza four that the poet proclaims that in the current environment and with unhealthy, nasty trend, it is simply not a good time nor place to become a poet.v
He suggests to the infant that he grow up and join the genuine activity of trying to be successful in acquiring what the needs and want, trying to have actual achievements, instead of bemoaning the lie of predetermined failure. The speaker asserts that this world will always be this same old world. And this poet/speaker’s experience tells him that it is not currently a place for a poet.
Sixth Stanza: The Voice of Experience
Take the advice of a father who knows:
You cannot begin too young
Not to be a poet.
Finally, the poet/father/speaker admonishes the baby son to follow his warning because it is coming from “a father who knows.” He then cleverly turns his phrasing: “You cannot begin too young / Not to be a poet.”
The Trend of Victimology in Poetry
This poem is playful, yet serious. The speaker is only musing on the possibility that his son is contemplating becoming a poet, but he uses the poem as a forum to express his dismay at the way poetry was becoming a cesspool of victimology and self-aggrandizement at the expense of truth and beauty. This poet was living during the period of time that saw identity politics beginning to take hold of the arts.
For my own take on art’s decay through post-modernism please visit, “Poetry and Politics under the Influence of Postmodernism.”
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