80 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
80 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
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A POET NOT WELL VERSED
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By M.L. Verb
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Robert Penn Warren, recently named the first U.S. poet laureate in history, has
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the right view of the job.
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He says that if he'd "been required to compose an ode on the death of someone's
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kitten," he'd never have taken the job.
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Instead, the work for which he'll be paid $35,000 a year (more money than most
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poets earn in a lifetime from their poetry) will have more to do with
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consulting on poetry for the Library of Congress.
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Unlike England, which has had a poet laureate for centuries (well, not the same
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one, actually, but a series of them; they tend to die eventually, you see), the
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U.S. has never felt the need. One happy result of our national negligence in
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this area is that we now do not have an embarrassing collection of poems
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written on demand to commemorate some alleged national event.
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In short, although we may have lost some memorable verse forever, we are
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compensated by having spared ourselves a lot of bad poetry. For instance?
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Well, let's consider a few fragments of verse that might have been written if
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we'd had a poet laureate in the past who lacked Mr. Warren's wisdom and his
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determination to avoid writing about every little thing.
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A recent U.S. poet laureate, for example, might have laid this on us:
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ODE TO CLOTH COATS, CHECKERS, ET Al
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Poor Richard's life was an open book
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To prove that "I am not a crook."
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Or, dropping back a bit further:
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TO THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY
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He wished the nation only good
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Although his teeth were made of wood.
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Surely the poet laureate in the Civil War years would have been moved to pen
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(he or she being at the time without a word processor) epic accounts of battles
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and heroes. For instance:
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BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER
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One wore blue, one wore gray,
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While one at home favored chartreuse
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Or some such.
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After the 1948 presidential election the poet laureate no doubt would have
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taken note of the question the polltakers were asking of themselves, "What
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Dewey do?" Maybe, in part, like this:
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THE GREAT UPSET
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But Harry felt within his bones
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That polls should not be based on phones.
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After Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, our poet laureate might have offered
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something like:
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ONE SMALL STEP. . .
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As Neil set foot upon the moon
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The nation sensed the coming boon
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Of high-tech answers in the sky
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On which we could for sure rely,
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Answers swift and sure and fair,
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That will not fail us in the air.
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And what poet laureate could have ignored Reaganomics?
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TRICKLING DOWN FROM BAD TO VERSE
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He cut our taxes, he met our needs
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For missiles, guns and toilet seats;
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And when our needs were fully met
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We all but strangled on the debt.
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Robert Penn Warren is a marvelous, top-cabin, serious poet. But even the best
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poets are capable of cluttering up the page with tripe when working on deadline
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and writing about "the death of someone's kitten." So, in refusing to produce
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such trash, we can only hope Mr. Warren has set a precedent. Or at least a vice
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precedent.
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