Ever since 22-year-old Amanda Gorman delivered her poem, The Hill We Climb, at President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, people have asked me how I reacted to it.
To respond, I have to distinguish between me as a sentient human being, and me as a technician with words.
As a human being, I endorse her message 100%. I’m inspired by WHAT she said, and the context in which she said it.
As a technician with words, though, I have to deal with HOW she said it. So I approach her poem, any poem, differently.
Many people, I suspect, would wonder why it was called a poem. She didn’t read it the way people expect to hear poetry. Every line wasn’t same length. Every line didn’t have four beats. Every line didn’t end with a rhyme…
Typically, simple rhymes like moon, June, and spoon. Maybe even triune.
Rhymes do not a poem make; they are the icing, not the cake.
A fixation on rhyme identifies the amateur poet.
Rhymes and rhyming
That was not true in the past, then, when people read poetry out loud.. They demonstrated their erudition by reciting poetry to an admiring audience. Poets used rhymes as a memory aid. The pattern of rhymes helped the orator remember what came next.
But we don’t declaim poems anymore. We’re more likely to read poetry in meditative silence.
In that context, rhymes often become toys for poets to play with. Composers, especially. Here are just two from Cole Porter: “Too hot/ not to cool down…” and “Lithuanians and Letts do it/ let’s do it…”
In fact, Amanda Gorman did use rhymes. Lots of them. But she hid them in her text: “If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright...” – that line alone contains four rhymes.
Or, later, “The dawn is ours before we knew it./Somehow we do it.”
Sometimes she rhymes long lines with shorter ones:
“Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid./
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade,/
but in all the bridges we’ve made.”
Graphic detail
Gorman is not a Wordsworth or an Eliot – not yet. She likes too much the abstract noun, the generic description: inception, redemption, illumination, intimidation…
I want her to put flesh and blood onto those generic labels – to render them incarnate, if I may use an abstraction myself.
As Poet Laureate, Masefield didn’t wax eloquent about sea voyages. He described a “dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smokestack…”
Carl Sandburg didn’t philosophize about weather. He gave us an image: “Fog creeps in on little cat feet.”
Dylan Thomas didn’t enthuse about awe, or sleep; he wrote of “pebbles in the holy streams…” and “owls bearing the farm away.”
Real-life detail makes poetry, not flowery generalization.
Canadian poet James Deahl once led a workshop on writing and editing poetry. “Knock out all your adjectives and adverbs,” he said. “If your nouns and verbs still move the reader, you’ve got a poem. If they don’t, you’ve got an essay.”
I don’t say that, in any way, to denigrate Amanda Gorman’s effort. I’m filled with admiration. When I was 22, my poems dealt with little more than my hormones.
Ringing the changes
Remember, I'm addicted to words the way some people are addicted to drugs, or power. I want poetry to give me an ecstatic high. Gorman’s poem comes close, but doesn’t quite fly me to the moon.
Still, I love the way she uses the rhetorical device of repetition, while working subtle changes into the pattern, like English bell ringers:
“That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried...”
Or later,
“We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover...”
And she ends with another great example:
“There is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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YOUR TURN
Quite a few of you readers continued the theme, from the previous week’s column, about the significance of coincidences. Or “Godincidences,” as Leslee Whalley called them. I appreciated those letters, but I’m not going to include them today, because I have more than enough letters dealing – pro and con – with my perception of the Biden inauguration.
Pat Eller wrote, “Thank you for your wise comments about America's inauguration day. As a US citizen, hearing comments from other countries helps us know how we are progressing after such a disaster of having the Capitol invasion and Trump's four-year reign.”
Bob Rollwagen was hopeful: “During the first impeachment, the conclusion was -- let the voters decide. They did. January 6 was the day the Republican Party illustrated its true purpose -- white supremacy. It is sad that some Canadians illustrated short-sighted planning by taking advantage of decisions made during the past presidency that were based on one man’s hate. I, and I am sure many, knew that every decision based on that hate would be reversed at the first opportunity. Hopefully, we and they will clean house over the next few years as the opportunities arise.”
On the other hand, Tom Watson argued, “There may be no underground army hoping to resurrect the Civil War, but there are, at the last count I could find, 165 well-armed civilian militia groups across the U.S. As we have seen, all it takes is incendiary speech from misguided leaders to ignite them. Can you imagine Republicans objecting to metal detectors being installed so that guns aren't carried into congressional chambers? Can you imagine wanting to carry a concealed handgun into a congressional chamber?”
Avivah Wargon also thought I was being too optimistic:: “Michael J. Sandel, a political philosopher who teaches at Harvard, writes about the ground the white working class has lost in the U.S. over the past 40 years because of the rise of a meritocracy and globalization, as well as other economic and social movements, how that led to support for Trump--and how it has to do with far more than just racism. His book is not the easiest read, but it is worthwhile and thought-provoking.
“This morning, CNN played some snippets from TV stations that support the right (Trump), snippets being aired now, and they were chilling. Biden was being called a ‘socialist radical.’ I want to agree with you (that half of the U.S. is not pitted against the other half), but the virulence and irrationality of the opposition is very frightening.”
Several of you thought I had brushed off the January 6 attack too lightly.
Jane Wallbrown wrote, “Reading the FBI reports of many who have been arrested for Jan. 6, they thought they were leading a revolution. They expected to get to Pence and hang him up. True.... they were few compared to the thousands who were just there believing that Trump won the election and wanting Congress to know this was all unfair.
“[To the] congress people locked in their room, with guards pointing guns at the door where people were trying to break down the door, it WAS insurrection that they were hearing. People on video felt they were acting as people did for the American Revolution against the British. A minority? Yes. Trump told them to ‘get’ Pence if he didn't stop the certification process. ‘Hang him up!’ was heard. The vast lot of people outside the building were likely as you said, but not the few hundred inside Congress.”
Also Dick Best: “Were the troops on duty at the inauguration concerned about insurrection? Possibly not, because they knew they had more than enough support to overcome mobs bent on attacking the inauguration. Such was not the case two weeks sooner. We came way too close to losing way too much.
“Is it over? Unquestionably not. If we don't deal strongly with the perpetrators and their in-power supporters, what happened here unsuccessfully is the textbook example for how to do it successfully the next time. As to the argument that this was not a true insurrection because the actors did not have a substitute government to put in place, that is simply irrelevant. They wanted Trump back in full power, and all his minions with him. Sounds like a plan to me.”
And finally, there were comments related to the parallel I drew with Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.”
Lowell Courtney lives in Northern Ireland: “Your description is accurate to a T. But we got through.
“I hear people moaning about Covid. World War II was 6 years; the Troubles almost 25. Not all of us will get through Covid -- but the race will survive. If nothing else, it serves as a sharp reminder of our mortality and very temporary sojourn here, and of the urgency of giving much more than getting.”
Isabel Gibson: “A few years ago we visited Ireland before a niece's wedding there. Crossing from the Republic into Northern Ireland on the highway was a non-event. The road signs changed from Gaelic first to English first; the distances went from kilometres to miles.
“After all the years of the Troubles, if that beautiful island can accomplish so much in 25 years, it gives me hope that the current divisions in the USA -- which go well beyond a cohort of aging white males being loath to give up their privilege -- can also be resolved without further violence.”
James Russell put it succinctly: “I’ve always thought that the ending of ‘the troubles’ was a sort of miracle in itself, given the entrenched positions and eye-for-an-eye versions of vendetta-Christianity each side seemed to hold so dear.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns