A Letter to the Poet
Laureate
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article go to BÕManÕs Revolt.
The United Kingdom has a state-anointed top-dog
writer called a poet laureate, so the United States
has had one as well since 1985. He or she is sort of like the village
bard made famous in the French Asterix comic book series, but
on a national level.
The oddly juxtaposed adjective for English, ˆ la Ònotary public,Ó refers to the laurel tree, wreaths
made from the branches of which were used to confer honor in ancient Greece. Classical scholar and poet A. E. Housman
refers to the honorific use of the laurel twice in ÒTo an Athlete Dying Young:Ó
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
---
And round that early-laurelled
head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead.
(Mention of HousmanÕs famous poem suggests
a short digression. The untimely death
of Meet the Press host Tim Russert prompted me to
write a eulogy of sorts that was subtitled ÒTo a Journalist Dying Youngish.Ó More recently I did another parody, ÒTo a Journalist Dying Old.Ó)
An article that appeared in The Washington Post this past week reminded
me that the current poet laureate of the United States is my fellow Southerner,
Mississippi native Natasha Trethewey. We both still live and write in the South, though
not in the states of our birth. She
teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, which, for what it is worth, makes her
a colleague of the estimable Harvey Klehr and the
notorious Deborah Lipstadt. I was born and educated in North Carolina and have lived in Fairfax
County, Virginia, since 1982.
A couple of questions by The Post interviewer and her responses
prompted me to send her an email:
April
28, 2014
Dear
Professor Trethewey,
I
noted with some interest your exchange with an interviewer from The Washington Post:
What
should a great poem do?
Well, the
easiest answer to that is that it should touch not only our intelligence, but
also our heart. It should move us not just with its subject matter but also its
musicality. For my own purposes, those are the hardest things to achieve.
Is
Washington a particularly poetic city?
[Laughs] I
love Washington, and I think of it as a poetic city because it has a sense of
history. I like that I can walk up from the Dupont
Circle Metro and read Whitman on the walls. When IÕm in Washington I feel in
touch with AmericaÕs past.
I
agree with you completely on your response to the first question, although I
must note that achieving musicality is made considerably more difficult by
dispensing with rhyme and meter as most modern poets choose to do. As for
the second question, I would first note that poetry, to me, is a way of
expressing strong feeling in a compact way, and my experience with Washington,
which goes beyond yours by a considerable degree, has certainly stirred up
strong emotions in me on many, many occasions. Permit me to share with
you some examples, the first of which would have been timely a couple of weeks
ago:
April
in Washington
Around the basin
there's a ring
Of cherry
trees now
blossoming.
Showing off the city's
best,
They give the residents
a rest
From all the darker
doings there
That
constitute the normal fare.
As I observe the Asian
gift,
My spirits get a
fleeting lift.
Forgetting everything I
know,
I enjoy the annual
show,
Admiring in her
loveliness,
The
harlot in a wedding dress.
Alas,
the "everything I know" is quite a bit and very depressing and it
constitutes most of what one can find on my web site whether in prose or in verse. How it has
affected my life may be summed up with the following poem:
Overdoing
Learning
Could it be I've
learned too much?
If charged, I must
confess.
My views would be more
popular
If I
knew much less.
I might vote for the
Democrats
Or for the GOP
And not have old
acquaintances
Almost run from me.
Education's big with
them
And ignorance the foe,
Except for those
disturbing things
That
they don't want to know.
Concerning
those disturbing things, and the "darker doings" in Washington referred
to in the first poem we might plunge right in by turning the pejorative
expression "lunatic fringe" back onto those who use it on free
thinkers who have the temerity to question some of the outrageous things fed
them by the government and the mainstream press: "The Lunatic Fringe"
One
will notice in that poem skeptical reference to the official story in the case
of the John F. Kennedy assassination, the suspicious death of Deputy White House
Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., and the Oklahoma City bombing. More
assassination skepticism and the broader implications are to be found in "Converging Systems" and "Barren Summit."
Unfortunately,
"The Great
American Ostrich"
has remained unmoved by what has befallen it, and now we find our opinion
molders "Waxing
Indignant over 9/11 Truth."
The
city, itself, and not just the policies emanating from it, also has plenty of
material for poetic inspiration:
"I Wandered with a Wrought-up Mind"
And,
most recently, we have produced a paraphrase of Carl Sandburg's
"Chicago," also named "Washington, DC."
As
you can see, then, our nation's capital can indeed be a Òpoetic city,Ó and for
a lot more reasons than the one you give.
Sincerely,
ItÕs been a few days now, and I havenÕt heard
anything back. Oh well, if sheÕs
like the ones around here she probably just thinks IÕm hitting on her, or sheÕs
sized me up as someone who canÕt do anything to help her career, or both.
David Martin
May 1, 2014
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