Political Poetry Incorrectness

Anders Carlson-Wee had a fourteen line poem called “How-To” published in The Nation magazine on July 24, 2018. Should we say, “good for you, Anders! What a coup!” Why no, we should not. We are not allowed. If we congratulate Anders, or if we have enjoyed the poem in any way, we are as bad as he is. The preferred response these days is to throw up one's hands and shout, “j'accuse!” Such a poem is no longer to be tolerated.

Here is the offending poem, in its entirety:

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,

say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower

themselves to listen for the kick. People

passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee

funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely

to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know

you is. What they don’t know is what opens

a wallet, what stops em from counting

what they drop. If you’re young say younger.

Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t

flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough

Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,

say you sin. It’s about who they believe

they is. You hardly even there.

(My sincerest apologies to the Copyright Gods, although I don't think that Anders would mind. I'm on his side, after all.)

The poem caused a giant shit-storm in multiple communities and among desperately sincere social justice warrior wannabes. There were letters to the editor and torrents on social media, and the kerfuffle made the New York Times this morning. The two main problems were identified as: 1) a white poet attempted to use black vernacular; and 2) an able person included the word, “crippled.”

Let's look at the cripple problem. The complaints seem to have revolved around the mere use of the word “cripple,” which is now judged to be disparaging and ableist language. Ableist! Can you even imagine? That is a word now! For all I know, poor Anders may himself have a limp, or even mild cerebral palsy, but I don't think even that would excuse him in today's hypercritical climate. No, the world must be purged completely of such words, all of them. I have never seen a list published; please let me know if there is such a list. Let me know so that I can ignore it, when appropriate.

I would probably use the term “handicapped” myself, at least in my personal discourse. Or maybe “disabled.” Handicapped, after all, includes mental and emotional conditions that rise to the level of pathology. Even there, one could be mentally handicapped without being mentally disabled. There are gradations to everything. What's a poor writer to do?

How about the cultural appropriation problem? How about it? Is it a cultural emergency when a white writer attempts to use “black vernacular?” That is a slippery slope. Does that mean that we must remove “Huckleberry Finn” from the catalog? Or must we only purge it of all dialog sections. How about a suburban, Harvard educated black American poet? Would she be able to use the black urban vernacular of big city thug life? That's a serious question. Here's another one: if she were writing a novel, would she be able to use the vernacular English of a white housewife from another part of the country? How about the broken English of a recently arrived immigrant? Would the ethnic information about the immigrant have any bearing on her permission to “attempt to use” it?

What a fucking mess.

The poem is a first person narrative. Are we now to impose all of the constantly shifting rules of political correctness on every character in every fictional narrative? Oh, honey, that ain't going to happen.

Can we agree that there is a difference between using offensive words in personal conversation, live presentations, dialog presented in quotes in fiction writing, and third person fictional narratives? There is also a difference when the word is used in poetry, with similar gradations if the word is used in the first, second, or third person. Each situation requires viewing through a different lens.

If I write a novel, and one of the characters uses the totally offensive term, “nigger,” in quoted dialog, am I to be publicly condemned and required to apologize from the deepest depths of my heart and soul? That is going to happen within a year or so. You may wish to begin sharpening your knives in preparation.

I think that it's a pretty good poem. I'm no critic, but if I were assigned to debate the proposition, I'd rather have the “this poem is fine” side than the “this poem is a racist, ableist abomination” side. I've written poems myself that are a lot more offensive than this one. I wrote them for effect; I chose the words carefully. I stand before you now as a licensed, experienced attorney, and I've been some kind of junior academic for over ten years, teaching university classes. Before that I was a worker at various jobs, many unsophisticated. Before that I was a teenage borderline hooligan in the Borough of Queens. Before that I was a boy in a very rough working class neighborhood of New York City. Which of these vernaculars am I still permitted to use? How about in fictional narratives or poetry? How about in blog posts about the old days? In my own speech, I was never comfortable with “nigger,” but it was a commonly used word in my milieu. Not only as a noun, but as an adjective, “niggerized,” which applied to anything that had been decorated in an elaborate way, no longer being limited to having anything to do with black Americans. (A white man could have a niggerized motorcycle, with lots of chrome and extra lights and reflectors.) We definitely called stupid people stupid back then, and cripples were cripples, and that was universal. Interestingly, faggots were not homosexuals. They were boys who would not fight back or stand up for themselves. Am I barred from reminiscing about these old customs? It's my own vernacular, after all.

I stand four-square for artistic freedom. Anders Carlson-Wee should be free to write his poem in any manner that he sees fit. It's his Goddamned poem! Those are his words! To oppose his right to express himself in his own art is nascent fascism. It's a mini-book-burning. Leave the man alone. Making him, and the poor poetry editors at The Nation, grovel, begging for forgiveness, makes you look ridiculous. That our culture has descended to embrace this kind of drum-head rhetorical criminal trial makes us all look ridiculous.

So, that's how I really feel about it. Some days I'm very happy to have a blog.

Literary Criticism

I have a book, “The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry,” and I’m just reading through it again. It’s highly entertaining. Many of the usual suspects, but many names that I’d never heard before. I bought it years ago, and I wrote many notes in the margins. Notes like . . .

Being actually crazy may be an advantage.

I’m not sure about this, but she makes it work.

Tell us how you REALLY feel.

I like this guy but he can try too hard.

Wanting to be crazy cannot deliver insanity.

How do you spell poser, poseur? This is all an act, but she sure fooled a lot of people. Or is fooling.

It’s all self-mythologizing and desperate.

What a fucking joke.

As a poet, J.D. was a great actor.

Wow, I abase myself. This shit has melody, rhythm and harmony, brother.

Very self-congratulatory intro, but I like the poetry very much.

Self-conscious and not very good.

Wow!

Woah, cowboy! Give them doggies a break.

All kind of cloying and precious.

All through this period there was a lot of self-conscious, pseudo-post-traditional piffle . . . D.B. comes to mind.

This has great rhythm; it’s a good read.

Ambitious, and suffers for it.

Oh, yes! On the ragged edge of narrative looking off into dreamland.

Back to earth she loses something and starts to sound like me.

This is great “out loud” poetry.

Not very good.

A little better, but still all a little self-conscious outsider wannabe.

Oh, please. Just be yourself. The Beats are dead.

My first favorite in the book. (Page 219.)

Read and learn, Grasshopper.

Cut-ups, probably.

Conversational and readable . . . is that a good thing?

An evidently famous two-bit St. Augustin, a self-aggrandizing and embarrassingly desperate hipster wannabe.

Way too pleased with himself to be either hip or cool.

Does it matter if any of this actually happened?

I like this guy. This stuff is playful.

Unpretentious and readable.

Flippant and unimportant and not funny.

Not very good.

This reflexive rejection of private property grows tiresome.

Get over yourself.

So what?

Suitably obscure.

I start out not wanting to like some of these poems. One like this, as I read it, it gets better and better.

I like this one very much.

Nice neutral tone. Droll.

This one is great! I think that I always discounted him because of his dull presentation. I should go and READ his songs.

This is terrible.

This worship of the drunken obvious must stop . . . it has never been cool to be a sloppy drunk in a vacuum.

Horrible.

Saved by the story . . . otherwise?

I like this poem very much – you can dance to it.

Very enjoyable, maybe there is hope.

Why do I like this poem? Naturalistic but deep.

Nothing could live up to this intro. The poem sure doesn’t.

It sounds good in the air but I don’t understand how the text dispersal improves the poem. (Except that it’s “modern,” the one thing that it couldn’t avoid if M. wanted it to.)

Silliness mistaken for poetry – infects the world with silly poison.

This is it, isn’t it? This is why we go on.

Bah!

Do lots of poets do this kind of self-promotion? Or does (the editor) just like this kind of advertisement?

So impressed with himself, he is, at such length . . . the need to self-mythologize.

(Some Prison Poets)

Still living? “You are hereby sentenced to twenty years on death row.”

Thumbs down.

Good poem, but I hope he’s back in the can.

Country Club jail writer. Could be a good career move.

He’s pulling time, but it’s killing me.

Jailbird, I like this one. I have one of these too, “My Father.” Good subject, we all have one.

Jailbird, boring.

W.W. loves me more than most living persons, and has more confidence in me than does anyone else alive or dead. Thanks, Walt. I love you. 

"Staggeringly Slapdash Effusions"

I noticed recently that a guy named Bruce Bawer, some kind of critic, has described the poetry of Jack Kerouac as "staggeringly slapdash effusions." 

Not being familiar with Kerouac's poetry, I went and read some of them.  They reminded me a lot of my own poetic efforts.  So I could easily see Mr. Bawer's point, because to call my poems "staggeringly slapdash effusions" would be putting it mildly. 

I do think that Kerouac's novels are very good though, they certainly have lasting merit.  Even the late ones, like "The Vanity of Delouz."  He'll be remembered, perhaps in spite of the poetry.  Not like some people.