July 18, 2014

Woke blessing the rain.

Some apologist for the idiot McCrory suggested that the nonentity was appointed Poet Laureate because there was no reason such an appointment should please only the elite. I considered this concept with more favor than I expected. Now, it is clearly not the reason for the appointment– the reason is that McCrory cares so little about poetry that he took the first name attached to someone he owed a favor anybody flung at him– but the idea that poetry belongs to the masses, and there is no immediately obvious reason why the good poetry beloved by the few should have precedent over the bad poetry beloved by the many, is intriguing. Only a politician would take that concept very far, though. A mediocre engineer or a mediocre doctor or a mediocre chef would never (but for cases of cost-cutting, which hardly counts in anything to do with poetry) be preferred over excellent ones, EXCEPT in the realm of politics, where excellence of character or of mind doesn’t count at all, or is a detriment. Politicians are so used to operating in situations where actual worth doesn’t count that merit-blind decisions are the rule of any day. That some poetry should be “better” than others is a foreign concept to some, and I do understand why. I am a teacher in order to correct such notions, in order to point out the excellence of the excellent, but I do recognize the thinking. Giving people with bad taste in poetry their own laureate is actually a rather charming concept, though one would think bad taste is rather over-rewarded already. The word “elite” dropped into any conversation skews, or ends, thought, but one must remember that “elite” means “better,” even now. This “better” is objective, and not a class issue at all, says this scion of factory workers from Akron. If a person chooses the worse art over the better, it is exactly the same as finding the wrong solution to an equation or building a crooked wall. We have not helped ourselves by blurring the distinctions between good and bad, between right and wrong. We have not made some great egalitarian, non-judgmental utopia: we have given up the quest. Besides, no one is more judgmental than the ignorant.

Met with W, whose project for graduate school with Antioch I am to mentor. She wants to organize a reading centered on animal rights. She is very serious about this, and we had a discussion over chai, because of my not really knowing where the parameters of animal rights thinking are these days. I know for myself, to edge toward the radical frontier of this party would be to fill my life with too many contradictions to function.