Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Verse and Prose   [John Derbyshire]

Was that poem a stinker, or what? I called it. (And got noticed by the New York Times. They still in business?)

I had the intention to pick out for your delectation whichever phrase or sentence made the least sense, but boy, it was a crowded field. This one must surely be up there:

love with no need to pre-empt grievance

That's as close to meaningless as you can get without replacing each letter by the one that follows it in the alphabet (which gets you: "mpwf xjui op offe up qsf-fnqu hsjfwbodf").  "To pre-empt" means "to seize upon to the exclusion of others: take for oneself: appropriate" (Webster's Third). So this kind of love, unlike other kinds of love, has no need to seize upon grievance and take it for itself, leaving no part of grievance over for any other love. Which kinds of love do do the thing that this kind has no need to do?

Three hundred million people, and this is the best poet we can come up with? Sheesh.

Worse than Maya Angelou at the first Clinton inaugural? Dr. Johnson was asked to choose between two bad poets of his own time. "Sir," replied the infallible sage, "there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." Just so.

Mental exercise:  Just listening to the poem, try writing it down as you listen, getting the line breaks in the right place — I mean, the place Ms. Alexander puts them in the printed version. If you can't do this — and I defy you to — then it's not poetry, it's rhythmic prose.

Obama's own speech I thought was good bread-and-butter ceremonial rhetoric, very well delivered. This, in fact, was prime Obama:  saying nothing much, but saying it superbly well. It's a very handy skill for a President to have. Good luck to him, and us.

01/21 07:50 AMShare