Seasonal Meter Readers: Bartlet's Book of Iambic Verse

In Season 1, Episode 10 of Aaron Sorkin's television drama The West Wing, President Josiah Bartlet takes several members of his staff Christmas shopping at a rare book store in D.C. Walking down an aisle with best friend and Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, Bartlet finds a book he recognizes, and the following exchange takes place.

President Bartlet: Ooh! The Fables of Phaedrus—1886, first edition, red leather label, gilt lettering, engraved frontis. Phaedrus, you know—who was a slave but later granted his freedom by Augustus—wrote his animal fables in iambic verse.

Chief of Staff McGarry: Well, nothing says Christmas like animal fables in iambic verse.

President Bartlet: That's what I say.

"Poetry & Popular Culture" couldn't agree more. Season's greetings, all.

News Flash: Paging Edgar Guest...

In the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon is on record saying, "I myself make no distinction between 'light' verse and—what?—heavy verse."

Muldoon was speaking about Roger Angell's year-end poem "Greetings, Friends", one of the last remaining instantiations of the Carrier's Address—a retrospective ditty distributed by tip-seeking newspaper boys in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

If you want to see examples of Carriers' Addresses done up the old-school way—long, rhyming, stand-alone recaps of the year's events oftentimes penned and printed by newsboys themselves—check out the amazing collection maintained by the Brown University Center for Digital Initiatives.

Radio Rhymesters? An Interview with "Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost"

A couple of weeks back, news broke in Iowa City that the local public radio station WSUI would no longer commit to broadcasting visiting authors reading from their work on "Live from Prairie Lights." When literary luminaries such as Marvin Bell and current Poet Laureate of Iowa Robert Dana started getting all hot and bothered over the apparently dismal future of radio poetry, it got "Poetry & Popular Culture" wondering about how other poetry radio shows are also faring. So we went a-looking. Turns out, we didn't have to look (or listen) all that far. Just down the road from Iowa City, radio poetry appears to be doing just fine on KRUU 100.1 Fairfield.

Every Monday and Sunday, KRUU airs “Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost” with host Rustin Larson, who features live readings and interviews with new and established poets. "Poetry & Popular Culture" managed to catch up with Larson and chat a little bit about radio, poetry, “Live at Prairie Lights,” and the mysterious KRUU muse—Fairfield’s turn-of-the-century poet laureate Irving Toast.

Chasar: When did you first think "Aha! I need to put poetry on the radio in Fairfield," and how did you make that happen?

Larson: I said "Aha!" in April 2008. In years past I'd attempted to create a venue for poets through a magazine called The Contemporary Review. That lasted a few years and had maybe 80 subscribers at its peak. Even cheaply produced magazines cost more than what they bring in, so I eventually lost heart and gave up the project.

But I still wanted to create some sort of showcase for writers. James Moore, KRUU’s station manager, had for a long time wanted to get me on board with a show. He told me I could do whatever I wanted, so I told him I wanted to do this poetry reading/interview show. I'd made lots of contacts over the years, and my first interview was in mid-April 2008.

Chasar: What happens to poetry when it's on the radio?

Larson: Many things can happen. In a phone interview the distorted sound of a voice on the line can make a poem sound even more elegiac, kind of like a long lost love speaking from the other side. Face to face in the studio, poets give their all. They produce better than regular readings—maybe because they know it's not live but a pre-recorded show; it's almost like they’re creating short recorded books. Since it's also an interview program there isn't this sense of floating aimlessly in space. I'm there to help channel the flow of ideas.

Chasar: Was there really a Fairfield poet named Irving Toast?

Larson: Irving Toast is the true spirit of poetry that lives in the hearts of all people. In some cultures he may go by a different name, but in my household he is known as Irving, and he has a robust imaginary history I hint at in my blogs.

Chasar: The true spirit of poetry? Didn't that go out with the Edsel?

Larson: What's an Edsel? I'm kidding. The spirit of poetry is alive. There’s so much interest in poetry here in Fairfield. A fellow here has created a kind of dinner theater out of poetry at a local cafe. The Maharishi University locksmith is a poet, and quite a good one. The bookstores and coffee houses are wonderful about hosting readings, open mics, and concerts. It's not just here, though. I have nearly 1000 Facebook contacts from all over who are into poetry; many of them have literary presses or host podcasts or radio shows too. Some have appeared on my show (archived and downloadable at http://www.kruufm.com).

Chasar: How can you make a go of it when WSUI and “Live from Prairie Lights” can't?

Larson: I'm sad "Live from Prairie Lights" was canceled. It did great things for writing, and it really created an event rich in atmosphere each time folks gathered for a reading. But as my station manager says, KRUU is Local Public Radio, not National, so we're not beholden to NPR for sponsorship, consultants or dictates. We don't have any specific formula for how each slot must bring in X amount of money or listenership.

We are who shows up, and our mission is to give voice to the community—to empower folks to ask questions and create programming themselves. We have 100 people producing 80 shows a week, have logged 60,000 volunteer hours, draw 100,000 visitors to our web site, and last year had an entire operating budget of $24,000. We do it without shoestrings—via listener support, underwriting, benefit concerts, small grants, partnerships and donations.

Chasar: Has Garrison Keillor called you yet?

Larson: No, but it would be great to talk to him! I think his Writer's Almanac is another great example of the spirit of poetry being alive. I don't know how many hits his web site gets, but I bet it's a bunch. It's a resource I've used to find poems myself.

A version of this interview appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on Wednesday, December 17, 2008.

Chicago Politics

Appeared in the Press-Citizen on December 12

You say you like the North side best?
We’ll say we like the South.
Talk badly to the press of us?
We’ll slug you in the mouth.

Send our guy to the hospital?
Yours will show up dead.
Brag your books are in the black?
We’ll cook ’em till they’re red.

Hope to hold your convention here?
We guarantee you’ll fail.
And your guy goes to Washington?
Another goes to jail.

Punxsutawney Poetry

It's a blustery, cold and icy day here in Iowa City, the sort of day that leaves "Poetry & Popular Culture" wishing for either the end of winter or a swanky winter home in Boca Raton—or both. But finding neither, we turn for solace to one of our favorite movies about the end of winter, the 1993 Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cranky, self-centered misanthrope doomed to repeat the same day over and over until he finally learns to love humanity and thereby earns the affections of his producer Rita, played by Andie MacDowell.

In 1996, Groundhog Day earned a spot on the United States Film Registry as a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" film. Could it have been for all of the poetry in the movie? "Poetry & Popular Culture" thinks maybe so. Over the course of the story, after all, Connor learns to love humanity by learning to properly love poetry as well. In an early attempt to land Rita in the sack, for example, he quotes a verse from the French poet Jacques Brel. Later, he quotes a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem. And toward the end of the movie, as Rita dozes by his side, he is shown holding Harriet Monroe's Poems for Every Mood and reading aloud to her (Rita, not Harriet) from Joyce Kilmer's "Trees." Far be it from "Poetry & Popular Culture" to underestimate the kismetic qualities of Kilmer; when Connor wakes up the next morning, Rita is still by his side, the curse is broken, and Connor begins the rest of his life as a new man.

Our favorite scene here at "Poetry & Popular Culture," however, comes early in the movie before Phil begins the self-improvement program that sets himself on the road to existential recovery. In that scene, Rita and Phil are sitting at a table at the Tip Top Cafe where Rita watches Phil hedonistically embrace his newfound immortality by stuffing himself with rich, calorie-laden foods. A buffet of flapjacks, donuts, and frosted cakes stretches between them, and Rita stares in disbelief as Phil drinks straight from a pitcher of coffee. Here's part of their exchange.

Rita: Don’t you worry about cholesterol, lung cancer, love handles...?

Phil [lighting a cigarette]: I don’t worry about anything ... anymore.

Rita: What makes you so special? Everybody worries about something

Phil: That’s exactly what makes me so special. I don’t even have to floss.

[Here, much to Rita's obvious disgust, Phil stuffs an entire piece of frosted cake in his mouth. A dab of frosting sticks to his cheek where it remains for the rest of this exchange.]

Rita: Uh!

Phil: What?

Rita: The wretch concentered all in self,
living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying shall go down
to the vile dust from whence he sprung
unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung .... Sir Walter Scott.

[Murray laughs]

Rita: What, you don’t like poetry?

Murray: I love poetry. I just thought that was Willard Scott. I was confused.


For those of you who are curious, Rita is quoting from the sixth canto of Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Apparently, those French poetry majors—not to mention Ramis and his Hollywood collaborators—know their British poetry pretty well too.

Business Bards: The Serial Shillers

"Poetry & Popular Culture" continues to showcase the small-business poets of yesteryear—such as Dr. C.B. Weagley Veterinary Surgeon and C.G. Blatt's Photographic Emporium—who hawked their services, wares, and varying levels of expertise via poetry. Relying on their bardness to take care of their bidness, these inglorious Miltons participated in the project of America's free enterprise if not the freeing of its verse.

Today's first card (pictured here) comes to us from The Palace Saloon and Restaurant of 16 Public Square, Hagerstown, MD. Perhaps printed up around the turn of the century to advertise a change of ownership (the card notes "Formerly Bruce's" and lists David A. Wilson as the new man in charge), the pocket-sized ad also goes out of its way to appeal to the finer sex by noting the saloon includes a "Private Dining Room For Ladies."

Turn the card over, however, and the guise of family respect- ability disappears with "The Woodpecker," a bit of verse that hearkens back to the days of bawdy street ballads to not only pitch The Saloon but to inform local elbow-benders that they would find "Theo R. Helb's Celebrated Lager always on draught." If the front of the card secures a space for the ladies, then this Number 3 in a series of bawdy rhymes one could collect is used to announce The Saloon as the #1 choice for the guy's night out. Here's "The Woodpecker" in its entirety:

A wood-pecker flew in a School-house yard,
And pecked and pecked till his pecker got hard,
So he lit on the sill, just about the door,
And he pecked and pecked till his pecker got sore,
And when he looked at his pecker his countenance fell.
For no more could he peck till his pecker got well,
And now when he thinks of the School-house yard,
His head gets red and his pecker gets hard.

Admittedly, "The Wood- pecker" appeals to my adolescent sense of humor, but it also interests me because both poetry and popular poetry have long been gendered as spaces for female literacy and female supervision. Women were often charged with taking care of education, were responsible for selecting family reading matter (even though pops might have then taken it upon himself to read it aloud), and engaged in the practice of poetry scrapbooking more often than men did. Ezra Pound no doubt had a hand in the characterization of poetry as female when he derided popular and nineteenth-century verse alike as the kind of "emotional slither" that "Aunt Hepsy liked." A poem like "The Woodpecker," however, suggests a parallel tradition of guy poetry as well—less your angel in the household and more your lug in the pub.

"The Woodpecker" is made even more suggestive for me when I compare it to the second business card featured in this posting, pictured to the left, which advertised the Schenk Publishing Company of Keokuk Iowa, just down the road from where I write. Far from appealing to the street tradition of ballad slinging and bawdy broadsides, much less to a shot or two of rye, F.J. Schenk ties the fortunes of his business to the turn-of-the- century temperance movement that would eventually result in U.S. prohibition. Like all the social movements of Progressive-Era America—women's suffrage, the cleanliness movement, Muscular Christianity, etc.—the temperance cause inspired and was accompanied by lots of poetry like "The Booze Fighter Poem" on Schenk's card.

Like the ad for The Palace, "The Booze Fighter" is part of a series of cards that potential customers could collect, except that Schenk's card doesn't offer a poem in its entirety but just the last two stanzas which are introduced as the "Continuation and End" of the poem. Readers hoping to obtain access to the complete narrative would have had to keep a special eye peeled for more of The Hawkeye Poet's work and even swap with friends to assemble a complete set. Unfortunately, I can't give you the start of the poem—if you find it, please send it in!—but "The Booze Fighter Poem" concludes:

Then he had the tremens,
And he tackled the rats and snakes,
First he had the fever,
Then he had the shakes;
At last he had a funeral,
And the mourners had the blues;
And the epitaph carved for him was—
He blamed it on the weather,
But he never blamed the booze.

An odd couple of business bards, Wilson and Schenk not only attest to the regular presence of poetry in the turn-of-the-century's business world but to the diversity of causes that that poetry served. Whether you were pouring a tall one or hoping to ban it, poetry would have been a go-to genre, not just for Aunt Hepsy, but for the entire—and extended—family.

Good News About "Good Bad Poetry"?

Imagine the surprise over here at "Poetry & Popular Culture" to learn that one of this blog's favorite terms—"good bad poetry"—is now being bandied about by the folks over at the Poetry Foundation which, in its own words, "exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience." On the Foundation's blog "Harriet," Javier Huerta begins "Mcgonagalls All" with the November 29 declaration, "More and more I am convinced that what we need now is a revival of bad poetry" and goes on to try to distinguish between "good bad poetry or bad bad poetry."

Now, far be it from "Poetry & Popular Culture" to take particular umbrage at the Poetry Foundation's use of the term "good bad poetry"–despite the fact that Huerta doesn't cite the essay "Writing Good Bad Poetry" that appeared in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine and that was excerpted on this blog back in October. No, I repeat, there is no umbrage taken, in part because the term "good bad poetry" is an adaptation of George Orwell's term "good bad fiction." While the Poets & Writers essay did acknowledge the Orwellian origin of "good bad poetry," it's perhaps no surprise that the folks at the Poetry Foundation want to make it seem like the term originated there—in the million-dollar Chicago offices of the nation's oldest and most prestigious little magazine. After all, it's Poetry's own standard-bearer T.S. Eliot who famously quipped that while good writers borrow, great ones steal—a quip Eliot himself cribbed from Oscar Wilde.

No, "Poetry & Popular Culture" takes no offense at this, nor even at Huerta's own description of bad poetry as "a value neutral category of writing that involves the affected, the hyperconventional, the ornamental, the anticlimactic, the disproportionate." What does rankle "Poetry & Popular Culture," however, is how quickly Huerta's posting reduces the expansive category of "good bad poetry" to humorous poetry. Barely 75 words into his blog posting, and immediately after distinguishing between "good bad poetry" and "bad bad poetry," Huerta brings up the International Society for Humor Studies and, from there on out, "good bad poetry" and "humor" become inseparable. The specters of Ogden Nash, Mark Twain, and William McGonagall are raised to debate the intentionality or unintentionality of humor, while the larger category of poetry that "involves the affected, the hyperconventional, the ornamental, the anticlimactic, the disproportionate" goes entirely unexplored.

While it's nice to see the term "good bad poetry" gain some currency, it's a shame—though admittedly predictable, too predictable—to see its simultaneous devaluation at the hands of the Poetry Foundation. If the Foundation really is "committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture" as it says it is, then it should be wary of such mischaracterization and explore, instead, the many other ways that good bad poetry—and its ornament and convention—might do more than just provide a chuckle or two for the folks in the Windy City.