Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

[Allow me to make a value judgement on a poem, something I usually refrain from doing because art has inherent value and interpretation is subjective anyway.]

I came into NPR’s Fresh Air midway through the program today and was interested because they were talking about a dead female poet (I immediately hoped that it was SP) and an unpublished poem that the interviewee had copied while the poet was in the hospital and published without her express permission. Not knowing the name of the poet, I—perhaps unlike NPR’s reviewers—was able to listen without bias:

“Breakfast Song”

My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with you.
Today I love you so
how can I bear to go
(as soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly death
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy breath
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I’ve grown accustomed to?
–Nobody wants to die;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know it’s true.
It’s just the common case;
there’s nothing one can do.
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue
early and instant blue.

Now I ask: Is this a good poem? I tended to think not so much, although it is not without merit (the interviewer especially liked “ugly death / in that cold, filthy place”). But there’s something juvenile in the sing-song melody of “Today I love you so / how can I bear to go / (as soon I must, I know)” and “Nobody wants to die; / tell me it is a lie!”

What Professor Tratner (the book-burner) said about T.S. Eliot was that his poetry is so good because he takes really bad poetry (e.g. “Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky,” which could easily, predictably, and horribly conclude with something like “Like a big cherry pie”) and infuses it with weird, out-of-place, and unexpected language and images (the following line is, of course, “Like a patient etherised upon a table”). Eliot sets you up for something awful and then, defying your expectations, makes it interesting and strange. I had hoped that that’s what “Breakfast Song” was getting at, but I was let down.

In the course of the interview, it was revealed that the secret dead female poet was none other than Elizabeth Bishop (perhaps most known for “One Art”—”The art of losing isn’t hard to master”—which is a good poem). Bishop, who was a lesbian (the interviewer suggested that the poem was probably directed to a woman, completely ignoring the notion of a speaker whose purposes may differ from those of the poet’s), tended to shy away from personal inclusions of her life in her poetry, which could explain why this poem went unpublished. Perhaps her reason for not publishing overtly personal poems is that they weren’t very good.

I think that the NPR people were just too caught up in the excitement of a private Bishop poem and were willing to value it not for its poetic excellence but for its supposed insight into Bishop’s life and because, published 20 years after her death, it serves as the poet’s voice reaching from beyond the grave to lament the certainty of her death.

As my last entry mentioned, there was this (enormous) Barack Obama rally at Independence Mall on Friday night. It was his largest rally yet, with approximately 35,000 people in attendance—and I was one of them.

You wouldn’t have known that there were that many people there from where David and I stood in the thirdish row of the second class ticket-holder field. The first class people with the blue tickets got to crowd around the stage, or they even had room to move around and still see Obama. There were, at least, people worse off than we were—down the hill and across the street with no possible hope of seeing him.

So, I met David in line with some interesting Democrats Abroad Canada person around 4. He was brilliant enough to think to go get us the orange/salmon/pink/coral tickets that so many people in line were holding. It turned out, later, that those tickets were required for the line we were in. The doors opened faithfully around 6pm, and everyone poured into the barricaded field. There were pretzels and water bottles for sale as well as porta-potties; these became increasingly inaccessible as more and more people entered the field and crowded to the front.

For about two and a half hours, we sat on the ground on Clean Coal tee shirts that advocates had given out for free (even if I don’t support coal as a power source, they made nice mini-picnic blankets). There were some too-young-to-vote-aged children there, but not nearly as many as had come to the Bill Clinton rally at Bryn Mawr for the 2006 elections, so it didn’t feel like my spot was in jeopardy thanks to a bunch of kids who wouldn’t make a difference in the election anyway. We had also happened to befriend a lone man from New York, so the three of us were reading or playing video games on the ground.

At a little after 8, when someone around us had predicted the event would start, announcements began. Only a couple of people were announced before what would seem like endless music began. Even though Obama was not even at the event yet, everyone stood up and crowded forward. I left my empty water bottle on the ground, vowing to throw out at least two water bottles on my way out to make sure that I hadn’t contributed to the litter on the ground even though I wasn’t willing to hold the bottle for two more hours. We managed to push and be pushed forward to, as I said, about the third row of people. There just happened to be a bunch of people 5′9″ and taller in front of me who did not like to be cramped. (I really didn’t understand all the people complaining about space, though—you have to expect to be squished against other people. At least they’re all Obama supporters.)

About an hour later, Obama finally came onto the stage. I was able to see him for almost all of his 25- (more like 15-)minute speech if I stood on tiptoes, but at least they had fixed the speakers so that we could all hear him.

I didn’t really have room to jot down any direct quotations, but he said some pretty expected things about how the country started in Philadelphia and how it was now up to us, in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, to bring about change. He did address Clinton’s efforts. One of the things he said that I remember (probably because I later saw it quoted in a CNN article) was that Clinton believes that the “say-anything, do-anything” politics of Washington can’t be changed, so we might as well nominate a candidate who knows how to play the game. Obama, however, is committed to changing the politics of Washington.

Despite the shortness of the speech, the entire crowd was revitalized from its sourness and tiredness at having spent five and a half hours standing around waiting. At least we had been fortunate enough to have perfect weather.

As soon as Obama dropped below the level of the crowd, having stepped off the stage, everyone turned around and pushed toward the exit. On the way out, I located my original water bottle about 20 feet back from where we had ended up. I threw it and another water bottle out on the way.

Instead of taking the subway back to Drexel, we joined the insane crowd of people flooding down Market Street. The crowd on the right spilled out into the street. Beeps from cars were originally celebratory, but eventually became more frustrated with the inability to drive among the people. There was even one person trying to turn a corner who had (Hillary) Clinton bumper stickers—needless to say, she was stalled by the mob of Obama supporters. The crowd was alive with spontaneous outbursts of “Yes, we can!” and “Obama, Obama!” It continued through City Hall (it looked like Obama supporters were storming City Hall, actually) before dispersing on the other side. Everything was so alive and energetic, it was amazing.

Philadelphia really loves Obama.

I was fortunate enough to attend a rally with Michelle Obama at Haverford College on Tuesday. She’s practically my new favorite person.

As eloquent as Barack is, she too is a very good speaker, though in a different way. She seemed really down-to-earth, sometimes even lapsing into an accent (what does the South Side of Chicago sound like?). She had very good control over the crowd, talking through our clapping to get us to be quiet so that she could move on with her speech.

She opened with a very funny summary of the campaign so far, catching up those of us who didn’t know by saying that she’s “married to this guy who’s running for president.” She went through all of the things that people said were really important—fundraising, the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday—until Barack was successful at them, after which they were devalued. One of her recurring images was the bar of American standards that everyone’s trying to reach that keeps moving once they think that they get to it.

She moved on to the more serious matter of education, (appropriately) sentimentally bringing in her hopes for her two daughters. She told of her and her brother’s education in the local public schools in the South Side of Chicago and how they both went to Princeton. She said that she tells this story because she wants everyone who “see[s her] to know what an investment in public education looks like.” Everybody clapped. She lamented that the dream jobs that people want to go into don’t even earn enough money to pay for the college degree required to go into those jobs. The focus on college tuition had to be because she was speaking at a college, and she went on to say that she and Barack had just recently finished paying off their college loans and asked, “When’s the last time you’ve seen a president of the United States who hasn’t paid off his [college] loans yet?” (She’s really very funny.)

She talked about the experience that Barack has from having traveled to so many countries while he was growing up (including a funny bit about his childhood, being raised by a teenaged, white, single mom in Kansas in the 1960s, saying that his mother was definitely a dreamer—another part of her speech was that American kids should be able to have the biggest dreams imaginable without being told “no”) and his seven-way race for state senate which he won.

Like much of Obama’s campaign, her speech was mainly pro-Obama (as opposed to anti-Clinton*), and ended in a positive direction. She asked us to “imagine a president of the United States of America who understands and respects other cultures” and, in talking about her and Barack’s upbringings, said, “We learned things like truth and honesty actually matter.” Her final note was that America is not where it needs to be yet, but that Obama would be a great step in pushing it in the right direction.

Throughout the speech, she kept asking “Am I telling you something that you don’t know?” and suggesting “Maybe I’m out of touch” when talking about working class people. I hadn’t quite gotten the effectiveness of this rhetoric until I realized its connection with the Obama elitism complaint, but it always got applause from the audience. The biggest round of applause and cheering, besides for when she entered and left, came when she called out to us as Pennsylvanians.

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Barack Obama is having an open rally downtown tomorrow night, and I’ll be damned if I don’t try to get in and see him. I’ll certainly post if I do.

On Radio Times this morning, the guest speaker said the cliché that this is an election of firsts—the first African American leading candidate, the first female leading candidate,… and the first time someone as old as John McCain is running. So, not just Colbert, but more serious news programs as well can’t find anything unique about McCain besides his age? Ha!

*Are the lawn signs everywhere “Hillary,” or is that just in Pennsylvania? Can the Democrats really endorse a candidate whose last name they’re afraid to put on their advertising because of its Republican-unification nature?

Going back and forth to Bryn Mawr at the times that I do, I often get caught in the regular pre- and post-school school zone speed limits. There is even one school that I pass that has its school zone lights on for what seems like the entire day (I drive past that school around 11:15 when I’m running late, and am made even later by having to drive at 15mph).

To incorporate the title: Because I am driving so slowly in the school zones, I find that I don’t really need to pay attention to the road. Instead of waiting for the next stop light, which I may or may not hit, I use the school zone stretch of road to change cds; get a drink; make sure I didn’t forget anything important; put shoes on or take them off; and, hell, even memorize poetry.

Further, there is more need to pay attention to your exact speed in a school zone: You want to get as many msph as allowed without going over and risking the higher fines for speeding in a school zone. So, naturally, some of the focus has to be directed at your own speedometer.

The problem is that most of the time (especially at 11am), there aren’t even any kids around who might get hit by the cars. I think that it’s probably out of frustration and spite that I often don’t pay attention in the school zones.

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There will probably be a much more substantial and important and interesting post coming up in the near future. I just have to beat the game….