Why the United States is Destroying its Education System

Check out "Why the United States is Destroying its Education System" by Chris Hedges. Here's the beginning of his essay:

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point.

Poetry & Popular Culture Heroes: The Pint-Sized Edition

The Poetry of "Candee" Rubbers

Apparently, Connecticut born Leverett Candee (1795-1863) left the dry-goods racket in 1833—he needed a change from the business he'd been in for so long—and moved from the Constitution State to New York where he lost a bunch of money on start ups that never amounted to much. By 1842, more or less broke and, uh, stretched rather thin, he started messing around with elastic in, well, the hopes of a rebound. First it was suspenders. Then, when Charles Goodyear licensed his vulcanization process, Candee became the first person in history to start manufacturing rubber footwear. By 1894, his New Haven, Connecticut, factory was on, um, such good footing that it employed over 2,000 people and was, according to the New York Times, "one of the largest factories in the country."

Like many manufacturers, Candee's products were advertised via trade cards, like the rather thin and flimsy one pictured here, which oftentimes incorporated snippets of poetry or advertising verse. We here at the P&PC Office think this particular card must have been one of a set; titled "Autumn," it begs "Spring," "Summer" and "Winter" accompaniment. Here are the four lines of verse printed in gold lettering beneath a gold embossed picture of two figures celebrating the season's agricultural bounty:

In the cool, dark days of autumn
When the earth is damp and cold,
We should wear our "Candee" rubbers;
They are "worth their weight in gold."

Neither of the figures in the picture appear to be wearing Candee's product, though; the figure in the hat wears shoes that have highlighted-red bows on them, and the figure in back appears to be wearing heels. Why didn't Candee, uh, give 'em the boot? Probably because rubbers aren't the most attractive items to begin with. Knowing it's kind of hard to sex up a pair of galoshes, no matter how practical they are, Candee gives us a poem instead—one that's dense in alliteration (its w's, c's and d's give us something to chew on) and that diverts our attention to the proposed relationship between the value of warm feet and the value of gold that the "cold/gold" rhyme presses. Combined with the shiny gold-embossed design, the card does a pretty good job of compensating for the unattractive product it's hawking, even if its math is, well, a bit of a stretch.

Poetry On the Ropes: An Interview with Charlie Seemann, Director of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

The 27th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering—a week-long "celebration of life in the rural West" featuring poetry and music by working cowboys and ranchers young and old—came to a close on January 29 in the town of Elko, Nevada (pop. 16.980), which has played host to the event and its tens of thousands of participants and visitors lo these many years.

Shortly before the first worker's voice was heard this year, U.S. House Republicans introduced a 2011 government spending bill that proposed increasing Defense spending by two percent (up $7 billion to a total of $533 billion) and paying for that increase in part by the complete elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities ($171 million) and the National Endowment for the Arts ($161 million)—two organizations that have helped support the Gathering and cowboy poets for many years and whose combined budgets make up such a tiny fraction of the Defense budget that the P&PC office accountant can't even do the math. The P&PC interns, who have been following the Wisconsin legislature's efforts to eliminate collective bargaining (and the Maine Governor's erasure of a mural depicting Maine's labor history) are convinced that this is yet another way the Republican party is finding to silence the voices of American workers.

With this year's gathering over, however, P&PC finally got a chance to catch up with Western Folklife Center executive director Charlie Seemann (pictured here) who, for the past thirteen years, has been instrumental in organizing and sponsoring the event. Here's what he had to say.

Poetry & Popular Culture: How did the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering get its start?

Charlie Seemann: A group of folklorists interested in the oral tradition of cowboy poetry got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to do fieldwork in the western states to identify and locate cowboys who still wrote and/or recited cowboy poetry. Folklorists at various state arts councils participated in that effort, and this led to the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1985 in Elko. It was intended to be a one-time event, but everyone had such a good time they decided to do a second one. Next thing you know we've been doing it for 27 years.

P&PC: How has it changed over the years?

CS: It has gotten bigger, and the audience—made up mostly of ranching people early on—now comprises folks from all walks of life and parts of the country, people who like the authenticity of the event, the camaraderie and the values represented in the poetry and music.

P&PC: What makes it authentic?

CS: Participants are selected by peer committees of cowboy poets and musicians taking into consideration the applicants' ranching and/or cowboy backgrounds and connections.

P&PC: What surprised you about this year's Gathering?

CS: It was good to see more young folks participating, like the Marshall Ford Swing band from Austin, Texas.

P&PC: What qualifies someone to be a "cowboy poet"?

CS: According to legendary cowboy singer Glenn Ohrlin (pictured to the left), first you have to see how well someone rides. It's pretty straightforward: first you have to be a cowboy, and then you have to write poetry about being a cowboy and cowboy life. [P&PC note: Ohrlin was a 1985 NEA Heritage Fellow]

P&PC: How about cowgirls? Do they write poetry too?

CS: Of course! There are some great women poets, like Linda Hussa, Doris Daley (first picture below), Yvonne Hollenbeck, Linda Hasselstrom (second picture below).

P&PC: Can you give me an example of a good cowboy poem?

CS: Buck Ramsey's "Anthem." (Listen to "Anthem" here.) [P&PC note: Ramsey was named a National Heritage Fellow by the NEA in 1995.]

P&PC: Awesome! What, for you, is the difference between hearing a poem aloud and reading it on the page?

CS: The personal connection with someone reciting is much more immediate and intense.

P&PC: What's the younger generation of cowboy and cowgirl poets like?

CS: There are young ranch kids and young working cowboys from local and regional ranches. Their tastes in poetry and especially music differ from older generations and are more influenced by popular culture.

P&PC: What happens to the Gathering if it loses Congressional funding through the NEH?

CS: That would be unfor- tunate, but that funding comprises only about 1.9% of our total organ- izational budget, so the Gathering would continue but we would need to increase fundraising from other sectors to make up for the loss.

P&PC: Um, if I plan on attending next year, do I have to wear spurs?

CS: Not unless you want some real cowboy to kick your ass.

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Poetry & Popular Culture

Here's a cool little postcard poem wishing you all the luck o' the Irish for St. Patty's Day 2011. Printed to look as if it were written out by hand, "Four-Leaf Clover" is signed by its author, poet and short story writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) who was born in Kansas, grew up in Oregon, married in Portland, and later moved to Washington state where she became active in civic and political affairs. On the subject of divorce, she wrote, for example, the "real evil was not that divorce was too easy, but that marriage was too easy, and that there should be a law preventing marriage before the age of thirty." Higginson was named Poet Laureate of Washington State in 1931, a post that was apparently eliminated sometime thereafter but officially brought back to life in 2011 with the appointment of Samuel Green following passage of Washington Substitute House Bill 1279. Higginson's papers—18 boxes of them at least, all awaiting scholarly investigation—are now at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies located at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

We here at P&PC like the look of this postcard for a number of reasons, starting with its appearance of having been personally handwritten by Higginson herself (pictured here), whose facsimile autograph stands in lieu of a commercially printed byline and copyright notice. This handwritten front, we think, encourages the postcard's user to view the writing of his or her own personal handwritten message on reverse as poetic in orientation as well—an invitation that this particular postcard's (unidentified) user seems to have accepted. "This is a beautiful thought," he or she writes in pen to an unnamed recipient, "and I want you to just try out this thought for yourself, and don't get nervous or to [sic] tired, 'for quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'"

Those of you who read your Bible don't need to be told that the phrase "for quietness and confidence shall be your strength" is from Isaiah 30:15; what's kind of cool, though, is how the sender is perhaps motivated to quote scripture by Higginson's own allusion to 1 Corinthians 13 in "Four-Leaf Clover" ("One leaf is for hope, and one for faith / And one is for love, you know"). As both writers sample and thus personalize Biblical passages, we have a really funky bit of communication in which the sender uses his or her own Biblical reference (Isaiah) in conjunction with Higginson's poem and its Biblical reference (Corinthians) to encourage the recipient to "try out this thought for yourself," which is pretty much an extension of the invitation we think the handwritten look of the postcard presented in the first place.

It is fair to say that "Four-Leaf Clover" got around. According to one source (1911's Studies in Reading by James William Searson and George Ellsworth Martin), "no other little gem of the language has been more widely appreciated and more warmly loved." Apparently, it was written in 1890 and published in Portland's West Shore magazine. Then it was published in McClure's (1896), The Outlook (1898), the Northwest Journal of Education (1898), Friends' Intelligencer and Journal (1898), American Cookery (1899), Oregon Teachers' Monthly (1902), the Journal of Education (1911), and Sunset (1918). Higginson included it in her book of poems When the Birds Go North Again (1899), and it was reprinted in Annie Russell Marble's Nature Pictures by American Poets (1899), Edmund Clarence Stedman's An American Anthology (1900), The Listening Child (1903), Robert Haven Schauffler's Arbor Day (1909), The Home Book of Verse (1912), and a range of school readers and publications for educators. It was also, Searson & Martin report, put to music "by at least fifty composers."

This is what happens when you don't copyright a poem: it goes viral. May you be so lucky this St. Patrick's Day.

Dignify the Breath—with Poetry?

Last October, P&PC brought to you the Magic Song Restorer, a 1930s-era tin of bird food and poetry designed to help nurse your under-the-weather feathered friend back to health. Who knew such poetic magic came in a pocket-sized tin for humans as well? If you're looking to fool "the wifey's sniff," then Breethem's "breath neutralizer" (three images following) might be just the thing....

LeBron James and the Poetry of "I Rise": A Guest Posting by Liz Jones-Dilworth

Back in October 2010, as the shadow cast by the huge middle finger of LeBron James still darkened most of greater Cleveland, Nike aired a 90-second commercial (watch it just below) meant to both capitalize on, and rehabilitate, the King's image as he settled into cozy South Beach alongside Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Alluding in its title "I Rise" to Maya Angelou's famous poem "Still I Rise," the commercial features LeBron trying on a number of different personae including—at just over the 1:09 point—that of a beatnik soul poet (pictured here). Mind you, this wasn't the only link connecting LeBron and poetry from around this time. Not to be outdone by Nike, the Miami Herald held a much-publicized LeBron poetry contest which interested the P&PC office very much. We tried to give you an inside report on that event, but our requests for an interview with contest judge and sports writer Dan Le Batard were repeatedly ignored. Who knows why—maybe he found out that some of us on staff are from Cleveland.

Still, despite the Lake Erie-sized chip on our shoulder, we remained curious about this poetic streak in what we can only call LeBronsville. So we turned for some answers to Liz Jones-Dilworth (pictured here, bio at the end of this posting), who completed her dissertation on 21st-century performance poetry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. Jones, who is now the VP of Operations for a public relations firm, was more than happy to weigh in. Here (following the video) is what she had to say.



Just ask Homer: a poem is a pretty good way to make a hero. Nike’s “I Rise” commercial, featuring basketball star LeBron James, uses a variety of poetic techniques—from old-school anaphora, refrain, rhyme, and allusion to contemporary hip hop samplings and multi-track, multi-voiced layering. Perhaps wondering what in the world to do with their $90 million James contract after he was declared the sixth most-hated sports personality in September 2010, Nike ultimately chose a poetic strategy to redeem him.

The poetic structure of the commercial, which does not resemble a typical advertising jingle, lends weight and seriousness to James’s character. The ever-repeating “should I?” gives us the sense that the speaker is a complicated man wrestling with existential questions of identity and modern morality. And, on the surface, the poem-within-the-poem moment seems in tune with that message. James introduces the segment by asking, “Should I read a soulful poem?” He’s dressed all in brown, from brown sunglasses to a narrow-brimmed hat to his turtleneck. He stands in front of a brown stage curtain and reads to a silent off-camera audience. He holds a single white piece of paper.

Then, we see a man playing bongos to accompany him, and hear a smattering of polite applause.

Wait a second, you may be saying. What are the bongos doing in there? Bongos haven’t been in style in the spoken word scene now for a good, what, fifty years?

Suddenly, James’s “soulful” poem seems suspect. What's going on here? Is the commercial making fun of poems? Imagine someone who knows little about poetry refusing to go to a poetry performance. Are they imagining someone just like this—playing bongos? And what, if anything, is James-as-poet meant to reveal about who he “really” is?

The poetry James reads is an excerpt from Maya Angelou’s 1978 “Still I Rise":

. . . shoot me with your words
[ . . . ]
You may cut me with your eyes,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

In its attachment to Nike and LeBron, the power of Angelou's original poem is diminished if not entirely undercut. "Shoot" and "cut" acquire basketball and advertising connotations (shoot a basketball, shoot a commercial, cut across court, cut to a closeup) that reduce the social and gendered violence of "shoot me with your words" and "cut me with your eyes" to simple trash talk and gamesmanship. Similarly, "air" becomes a brand name, an act of commercial broadcasting, and a basketball style, not a figure for woman's survival and triumph. Admittedly, the ad is a really savvy, thought-out deployment of Angelou's poem; Nike obviously has a poetry critic (albeit a cynical one) on staff. But one nevertheless can't help wondering, how can the poem be soulful if it’s really all about basketball and shoes?

James is portrayed not just as a poet, but as a television personality, an actor, an ad man, a student, a basketball player, and a construction worker. And really, none of these roles are taken very seriously—he acts in silly westerns and cop shows, and there aren’t too many real-life construction workers who’d tear up a basketball court with a loader while people were standing on it. As a brand, Nike creates heroes—performer-athletes with strong personalities. Nike is the poet, not LeBron.

The pink suits and fat doughnuts, squeaky microphones and bongos may invite us to laugh at the absurd, ever-changing faces of James. Yet when he says, “Maybe I should just disappear” and the screen blacks out, the impulse seems suicidal—and possibly reminiscent of Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which ends "Or does it explode?" The relentless “should, should, should” from the hero worshippers is tinged with a hatefulness that possibly threatens James’s career, his identity, and his soul. Ultimately, though, it's the commercial (or the poem) that brings or sings James back to life—back to the screen and the court where he (supposedly) belongs. Paradoxically, while Nike argues for allowing LeBron to be his own man, it does not present a clear image of who that man is other than a basketball player.

As Nike keeps bringing LeBron's complex human individuality back to the court and to the subject of advertising, it doesn't treat him any differently than it does the vocabulary of Angelou's poem; everything comes back to basketball and commercials. Thus, even though both Angelou and LeBron are presented as poets, neither is given a byline in "I Rise." That distinction is reserved for the poet—the maker of heroes and the maker of meaning, Nike itself, which signs off with an autograph everyone knows: the swoosh.

Liz Jones-Dilworth currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she is the VP of Operations at Jones-Dilworth, Inc., a PR firm specializing in start-up tech firms (a.k.a., the poetry of spreadsheets). Her dissertation, The Role of the Poet: The Performance of Poetry at the Beginning of the 21st Century, discusses the public roles and performance styles of Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Beau Sia, and Patricia Smith and grew out of her own experiences performing, coordinating, and publicizing poetry in a variety of venues. For her take on writing a dissertation and completing graduate school, check out Becoming Doctor Jones.