Since I spend an inordinate amount of time mocking other people's academic faux pas (faux pases? fauxes pas? Oh, screw it. I took Spanish since I figured it would actually be a USEFUL language.) I feel that it is only fair I subject myself to the same scrutiny. We can subtitle entries in this category - Dumb Stuff I Did That Makes Me Wince. Here we go:
I was a TA during the 1992 election cycle and, like most of my peers, all excited when Clinton won. Ah, dewy-eyed youth...anyway, I remember seizing upon Maya Angelou's inauguration poem as a great example of homage to Walt Whitman, the first real (albeit self-proclaimed, at least in the beginning) American poet. The symmetry! The style! The sheer teachability of the moment! I burned with enthusiasm to demonstrate the uniqueness of American poetic themes to my Intro to Lit classes!
Oh, dear God. Compare and contrast for yourselves, dear readers.
Let's see: Exhibit A opens with a pean to dino turds. Exhibit B opens with transcendental self-centeredness--tiresome perhaps by today's cynical standards, but at least readable without asking yourself, "WTF is this person doing talking about dinosaur feces at an inauguration, for crying out loud?"
Whitman uses his being as a metaphor for the universal. Angelou describes a multicultural dream world that apparently had been brutally oppressed until that glorious election day. And for God's sake, woman, just STOP WITH THE MASTODON ALREADY! Your heavy handed non-symbolism makes me want to beat people with the jawbone of the aforementioned animal. Or with that damn rock that keeps talking. This is turning into a bad flashback, people.
Ya know, this is a lot like last weekend, when just for kicks I watched Xanadu on TV. I LOVED Xanadu. When I was TWELVE. I owned the soundtrack and skated to it constantly. It is a truly horrific movie, and when I saw it again all I could think was, "Gene Kelly! Were you that hard up for cash?"
Sigh. I hope I didn't do any lasting harm to the young minds of the nineties with this crap. The poetry, not the Olivia Newton-John movie.
Oh, who am I kidding? It's not like they were paying attention anyway.
"Dumb Stuff I Did That Makes Me Wince."
That's OK, I once bought a leisure suit... although the woman WAS to blame, Lord.
On the brighter side, I decided years ago never again to read any fiction written in the present tense and my life has been sweeter ever since.
Posted by: ManFromPorlock at December 3, 2003 02:48 PM"Xanadu"...heheheh. I remember my parents coming up to visit me @ college my freshman year and they took me to see it (after my dad had already seen it TWICE), and all I could think was, "I missed a Sunday afternoon in the dorm getting stoned for this?!" Of course, in my last year of Honors English I did a paper comparing the poetry of Miguel de Unamuno to Laurie Anderson. It was a stretch, but us English majors are pretty damn flexible, eh? Keep up the self-penetrating analysis...we can all relate.
Posted by: paula at December 4, 2003 12:53 AMMight the "dry tokens" of the dinosaurs refer to their... er... bones?
I mean, I'm open to it referring to dinoturds, but I see no textual reason to infer that, and fossilised bones are as "dry" as fossilised poop, wiht the added bonus of dried (bleached) bones being a fairly standard image.
Not that I have any particular desire to defend Angelou, but, I just don't see it.
Posted by: Sigivald at December 4, 2003 04:36 PMDid you ever see the Saturday Night Live with David Allen Grier where he played Maya Angelou doing commercials for various products? I particularly remember the Maya Angelou for Butterfinger:
Oh you might finger of crispty butter; rail on, ever foward, you crunchy, confectionary masterpiece!
That about sums it up.
Sigivald -
We actually had quite the riveting half hour discussion on that very aspect of the poem--to be honest I disremember why we reached the "dino turd" consensus, but that's what happened.
Yeah, I can see the bones argument. I wonder, though, if a poet, for whom language is a living, would fail to see that more than one reading of that word choice is possible and then leave it in if they only wanted it to be read one way.
But that's beside the point, I guess. Bottom line, turds are funny. Huh-huh. I said "turd."
Yeah, I know you're just here for the penetrating conversation, aren't you?
Posted by: BAW at December 5, 2003 10:59 AMBAW,
Me Wince. You not Wince. Nothing make you Wince, not even surgery.
Yours,
Wince