bad verse is bad verse
Addendum before the text:
So, Google must have been playing tricks on me because previously, no matter the search, all it would show me of Gorman was page after page about "The Hill We Climb." Except for the poets.org page. Now, of a sudden, it is offering me other fare, and I get a look at what Gorman is capable of besides "Hill." Which is nice to see, considering how bad "Hill" is. For example, there are the five poems from her then upcoming book posted on The New Yorker site [link]. And, as said, I am pleased to see that she does write other things better than "Hill." Which is not to say I change my opinion on "The Hill We Climb." That mess is among the worst pieces of published verse I have ever seen. (Well, I include there things published in online mags.) There is a large difference between "Hill" and the bits on the New Yorker page. And that should be recognized.
Not that I see in those bits any sign of excellence. They are of the average fare for what is published today. Which is to say, rather mediocre. Unlike what the article writer says, they are neither "bold" nor "oracular." (But, then, forbid a poetry book reviewer to pass up the chance for grotesque hyperbole, their own "poetry.") They have their weaknesses, through and through. I would not have minded doing a post on them alone to show those weaknesses. In truth, were I to pick up this book blind in a store I would never buy it. Though, they are still head and shoulders better that "Hill," which is an absolute trainwreck, and makes me wonder if she wrote that calamity on a three day bender two days before it was due.
Do I now regret my post about "The Hill We Climb"? Absolutely not. It needs to be pointed out just how very bad that bit of verse is. The single greatest comeback to the people who defend "The Hill We Climb" is that it is so bad it is indefensible. Even if you want to say Gorman is a decent poet (and I would not say that from the New Yorker bits, I would say only she is an average versifier), even if you wanted to defend her, you have to start by accepting that "Hill" is miserably bad. It may be an outlier in her work, but it is, as I show below, a amateurish failure at verse.
To say, after a brief exchange I had with an FB friend, it is to be noted that I agree with such as Yeats and Auden: politics and poetry are oil and water. The more a writer wants to politics, the worse the poetry will be, the less it will be poetry. The best "political" verse may have a political subject, but they are not themselves political. The more political a verse is, the more it tends to, as I say below, "dead father" poetry. If I may risk aphorism, True poetry is about the human soul, and when you bring in politics, you no longer tread on those grounds.
Recently an essay on the Chained Muse site [link] was brought to my attention, wherein its author, Adam Sedia, brought to task Amanda Gorman and her inauguration poem, "The Hill We Climb."
Now, I watched the inauguration and, granted, inauguration poems have a tendency to be not very good. Such is the recent history of them. But even as she was reading it I was yet struck by just how really, really not very good Gorman's verse was. It was terrible. Remarkably so. Laugh out loud so. And I thought, in the days after, when transcripts became available online, to do a post here about just how not at all good "The Hill We Climb" is. But, to be honest, it seemed to me a little too easy a target. Fish in a barrel, and that. And when something is that bad, it is hard not to come off as vicious. It would not, after all, be merely pointing out a flaw here, a weakness there. To speak about "The Hill We Climb" would be to say, quite bluntly, "This is wholly awful stuff and the lot of it should be tossed in the bin," and without kindly amelioration (for such would be mostly impossible). So I let it pass.
So why take it up now? Well, three reasons. First, there are some things in Sedia's post that I would like to give word to on their own, even if briefly. Second, perhaps he does not do so well a job at showing just how bad "The Hill We Climb" is, and for that it opens the door to many of the comments defending "Hill." So, third, perhaps it is worth, after all, giving a line-by-line demonstration of just how bad the verse is. Of course, one need only look at the inanity of those comments that follow Sedia's post to know however the proof, some people will still blindly defend the verse. Yet, by looking that those comments, you get a decent showing of just how ridiculous and grossly fallacious those defenses can be. But maybe a line-by-line would end most of those.
And, if may add a fourth, perhaps a show of solidarity is merited.
