MAKE BIG MONEY AT HOME! WRITE POEMS IN SPARE TIME!

I've been thinking about Howard Nemerov, and how big a fan of his poetry I was as a graduate student in the 1980s, when my friend Laura and I attended a poetry conference downtown at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. There were all kinds of big names there--including Katha Pollitt, Carolyn Forche, and Andrei Codrescue--and then there was Howard, skulking out at the same time as the graduate students to walk the downtown streets towards the Metro stop, and giving us paranoid looks over his shoulder as we seemed to follow him. I would have loved to have gone up to him and expressed my undying admiration, but clearly that wasn't an option.

Why have I been thinking about that conference? Because of an article in this month's Writer's Chronicle entitled "Darth Howard, Ashurbanipal & a Defense of Poetry," in which the author, David Wojohn, recounts the experience of acting as Nemerov's assistant at a Breadloaf Writer's Conference in the mid-1990s: "the Nemerov that I saw during those weeks was embittered and misanthropic. The charitable characterization would be curmudgeonly, and in some respects, Nemerov was expected to act this way--he was the conference's elder poet, trying to fill the shoes of Frost, that most curmudgeonly of curmudgeons, and his great Breadloaf predecessor." Wojohn sees how "it pained him to see students so wrong-headed and so ill-read, to have to teach people who had no knowledge of poetry written before about 1970." In short, he paints a portrait of Nemerov as an embittered human being.

I like to think that Nemerov's old-fashioned manners would have kept him from publicly expressing his disdain for naive readings of his poems preserved in the comments section of blog posts, but he was certainly capable of spewing vitriol. Wojohn observes that "the sorts of gestures that might have worked in one of Howard's satirical epigrams came across as boorish when practiced on human subjects."

Here is a satirical poem in which all the gestures seem to me to work perfectly. You don't have to be a genius to "get" this poem, but it took a certain kind of genius to be able to articulate this in the late 1950s:

MAKE BIG MONEY AT HOME! WRITE POEMS IN SPARE TIME!

Oliver wanted to write about reality.
He sat before a wooden table,
He poised his wooden pencil
Above his pad of wooden paper,
And attempted to think about agony
and history, and the meaning of history,
And all stuff like that there.

Suddenly this wooden thought got in his head:
A Tree. That's all, no more than that,
Just one tree, not even a note
As to whether it was deciduous
Or evergreen, or even where it stood.
Still, because it came unbidden,
It was inspiration, and had to be dealt with.

Oliver hoped that this particular tree
Would turn out to be fashionable,
The axle of the universe, maybe,
Or some other mythologically
Respectable tree-contraption
With dryads, or having to do
With the knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Fall.

"A Tree," he wrote down with his wooden pencil
Upon his pad of wooden paper
Supported by the wooden table.
And while he sat there waiting
For what would come next to come next,
The whole wooden house began to become
Silent, particularly silent, sinisterly so.

We can admire the seeming carelessness of the line "And all stuff like that there," and the brilliance of the oblique reference to Joyce Kilmer's most famous poem, and the cruel humor of the ending, in which the would-be poet starts to perceive he has been played by what he regarded as his instruments.

And we can all breathe a sigh of relief that we never came across this poet's field of vision for long enough that he actually turned his burning gaze our way and made an Example of Us.

Boom!

I am so angry I'm about to explode: Boom! There's been a controversy in my small town lately about a middle school teacher at the public school both my kids attended/are attending. Years ago, I heard he gave handouts on how people and dinosaurs lived together but required his students to hand them back in at the end of class, lest a parent find out that he was teaching creationism again. This year, some parents filed suit against him for allegedly burning a cross into their child's arm. He has also been accused of faith healing at a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the school. The school system has warned him not to teach his religion (some non-denominational type) in public school, but this year they asked him to take down the ten commandments from his classroom wall and remove the bible from his desk. He's tried to make the controversy all about removing the bible, but as the ACLU has pointed out, if he wants it for personal use, he could keep it IN the desk, rather than out where the students can see it (and, according to students, where he can read from it out loud during class).

Why am I so angry? Well, the teacher's supporters have been very vocal in the local newspaper, and I wanted to speak out in support of the school board. I wrote what I thought was a fairly civil letter. Here, judge for yourself:

I support the school board investigation into Mount Vernon Middle School teacher John Freshwater's advocacy of his religion in the classroom. I am the parent of a MVMS seventh-grader and a MVHS ninth-grader, and I can assure you that I would have protested had either of my children been assigned to Mr. Freshwater's classroom because I have been told he teaches creationism, rather than science.
I find it curious that most of the letters to the editor support Freshwater's position because most of the people I know do not support the teaching of a particular religion in public schools.
This case should not be about an individual; it is about one of the main ideas on which our country was founded: Freedom from state-sponsored religion.

So what happened after this letter appeared in the local newspaper? I got a religious pamphlet sent in the mail, anonymously. No return address. Certainly no signature. ("What's next," I asked. "A flaming cross on my front lawn?") Well, what came next is this letter:

I am writing in response to Jeanne's letter to the editor and her stated support of the school board. Jeanne found it curious that most of the letters supported Mr. Freshwater because "most of the people I know do not support the teaching of a particular religion in public schools."
Maybe, Jeanne, you have surrounded yourself with people that tend to think and believe as you do. I believe this issue is about teaching what some people believe to be the truth. I am not talking about the truth of God's word. I am talking about the way many people think the earth was created. There are those that believe the truth to be that the earth came by accident, it just happened. Those people believe in Darwinism.
Then there are those that believe the truth to be that the earth did not happen by accident, it was created. These people believe in creationism. Both "isms" have scientists that support these two theories. Most people that I know believe the way I do, that the earth was created, it was not an accident.
This issue is not about religion; it is about teaching the truth. Your truth, I assume, is Darwinism, my truth is Creationism. What is wrong with teaching both theories, which are both supported by scientists? Jeanne, it takes a lot of faith to believe in a creator, and it takes a lot of faith to believe that the earth came from nothing. If you are willing to keep the teaching of Creationism out of the public schools, then let's be fair and remove the religious teaching of Darwinism out of the public schools also.

The author of this comma-spliced and otherwise error-filled letter is James Fehrman. At least he signed his letter. I don't know him, and now I don't want to know him. What I want is for one of my friends, preferably a scientist, to write a letter telling him EXACTLY what is wrong with teaching both "theories."

I am absolutely through with civil discourse, at least for today. I am in the mood for Howard Nemerov, who wrote this poem the year I was born(1960):

Boom!
Sees Boom in Religion, Too

Atlantic City, June 23, 1957 (AP) --President Eisenhower's pastor said tonight that Americans are living in a period of "unprecedented religious activity" caused partially by paid vacations, the eight-hour day and modern conveniences.
"These fruits of material progress," said the Rev. Edward L.R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, "have provided the leisure, the energy, and the means for a level of human and spiritual values never before reached."

Here at the Vespasian-Carlton, it's just one
religious activity after another; the sky
is constantly being crossed by cruciform
airplanes, in which nobody disbelieves
for a second and the tide, the tide
of spiritual progress and prosperity
miraculously keeps rising, to a level
never before attained. The churches are full,
the beaches are full, and the filling-stations
are full, God's great ocean is full
of paid vacationers praying an eight-hour day
to the human and spiritual values, the fruits,
the leisure, the energy, and the means, Lord,
the means for the level, the unprecedented level,
and the modern conveniences, which also are full.
Never before, O Lord, have the prayers and praises
from belfry and phonebooth, from ballpark and barbecue
the sacrifices, so endlessly ascended.

It was not thus when Job in Palestine
sat in the dust and cried, cried bitterly;
when Damiem kissed the lepers on their wounds
it was not thus; it was not thus
when Francis worked a fourteen-hour day
strictly for the birds; when Dante took
a week's vacation without pay and it rained
part of the time, O Lord, it was not thus.

But now the gears mesh and the tires burn
and the ice chatters in the shaker and the priest
in the pulpit and Thy Name, O Lord,
is kept before the public, while the fruits
ripen and religion booms and the level rises
and every modern convenience runneth over,
that it may never be with us as it hath been
with Athens and Karnack and Nagasaki,
nor Thy sun for one instant refrain from shining
on the rainbow Buick by the breezeway
or the Chris Craft with the uplift life raft;
that we may continue to be the just folks we are,
plain people with ordinary superliners and
disposable diaperliners, people of the stop'n'shop
n'pray as you go, of hotel, motel, boatel,
the humble pilgrims of no deposit no return
and please adjust thy clothing, who will give to Thee,
if Thee will keep us going, our annual
Miss Universe, for Thy Name's Sake, Amen.

The poem has an even greater effect if you read it out loud. I hope that at the end of it, you are not trembling with anger, as I am. It's a hard way to begin the day, but evidently somebody has to do it. I guess this is the main reason I endure the underemployed adjunct life--because I hate ignorance. I hate it with every fiber of my being. "What else could she have done, being what she was?"

But since my local paper only allows one letter to the editor every 30 days, I will have to endure this latest example of ignorance in silence. Where are the other people in this school district who hate it???