After President Biden’s farewell debate I had a problem. It was evident that Donald Trump would win. I fantasised that he would offer me the post of Poet Laureate, and I wondered if I would accept. Washington DC is hot and muggy, and it is across the country from my home in Los Angeles.
On the other hand, it would be a signal honour to be tapped; and, more important, a chance to partially fulfil a debt not only to my country, but to Mr. Trump, and those who’ve stood up in its defence. I was reminded of the story of the Shadchan, the traditionally Jewish matchmaker.
He comes to the Goldbergs’s house and asks if they would entertain a marriage offer for their son, Shmuel, from Princess Margaret of Great Britain. The Goldbergs go into conference.
“Yes, she is not Jewish, but on the other hand, her family is quite religious; yes, she is older than he, but they tend to live long…” and so on.
They come back to the Shadchan and announce: “Yes, we would entertain an offer for our Shmuel from Princess Margaret.”
“Great,” the Shadchan says, “my job is half done.”
Now, after Mr. Biden was deposed, I was saddened by a third alternative: that Mr. Trump would be defeated, and I would be baulked of my maidenly demure followed by acceptance of his proposition. May God defend the United States, and restore that freedom from which all others flow: freedom of speech, and most importantly — may the deity take note — freedom of my own.
What does a Poet Laureate do? I don’t know, but I suspect the job might entail a semantically supportable fulfilment of its title: to sing the country’s praises, or present the work of those who have. It would be hudspadik to flog my own works from an official pedestal, which left official endorsement of the works of others. My problem in this second case is this: most of that passing as American poetry leaves me other than fulfilled. That represented to school children of old was largely drivel — Walt Whitman and Robert Frost’s work would not be out of place on greeting cards. Whitman’s grand but unfortunate contribution to the genre was the abandonment of rhyme, form, and rhythm.
That passing as poetry, for some time, has been drivel celebrating the writer’s (and, so the reader’s) superiority to mere form. And content. No. Whitman heard America singing, and he sang about it himself, as did Carl Sandburg; but poetry would have been better off if they’d limited their singing to the shower.
There, however, I would be, on day one of the restoration, on the podium in my ceremonial robes, all dressed up with nothing to say. But, in my fantasy, I had a job to do, and my job was to do it. Who, then, were the poets — for certainly, there were many who could both write and who praised our country.
I name: Huddie Ledbetter, Hank Williams, Randy Newman, Johnny Mercer, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Carol King, Leiber and Stoller, Bob Dylan.
Irene Goodnight
Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene
I’ll see you in my dreams.
This by Lead Belly, is as good as anything written by Yeats, who was the greatest poet since Shakespeare.
The poets above wrote the American Songbook, which is the soundtrack of our lives. It was said that 80% of the kids born between 1950 and 1965 were conceived to the music of Frank Sinatra, much of which was written by Johnnie Mercer: viz, “It’s a quarter to three, there’s no one in the place except you and me.”
The poetry of Sandburg, Emerson, Whitman, and so on, is icky. Who needs it? Not I.
But, you might object, the songs above, most of them derivative of the blues, are sad. Indeed they are, and life is sad. And the blues are the spark of the soul in that sadness.
Tragedy is that celebration of life as God-given sorrow and the possibility of finding strength and dignity within it. The celebration of the joyous, in these songs, is also praise — as the Rabbis wrote — just as it is forbidden to do that which is forbidden it is forbidden not to do that which is permitted.
A Change is Gonna Come, Bring it on Home to Me, a Change is Gonna Come, Blowing in the Wind, God Bless the Child, Up on the Roof, Baby Please Don’t Go.
The American experience is, finally, tragic. Not because our country is evil, but because it is a country. It is the vast conglomerate of separate groups with not only different opinions but with irreconcilable differences. And yet, the differences must be reconciled, and however much effort is expended toward that goal, there will still be injustices, tragedy, crime, and error.
The great poetry of America was born in the middle passage and persisted to become the music of our world.
Our country was named for the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Amer is similar to, and maybe derivative of, marah: the Hebrew for bitter. Moses, in his turn, was prohibited from entering Canaan because of his actions at the bitter waters. God told him to address the rock and waters would pour forth. Moses, instead, struck the rock, twice. The incident was not mentioned until Moses stood on the heights overlooking Canaan. God told him he was not to enter, because of his disobedience.
But, mythologically, he was not punished, but spared the experience of his people living in freedom.
At the conclusion of Deuteronomy, Moses sings a song of leave-taking, and presentiments of blessings and peace. He was quite mistaken, as was proved when his charges crossed the Jordan.
The Song was continued, here, by the blues.
God bless America.
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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/