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Tuesday
Former GOP consultant and now leading Never Trumper Rick Wilson famously coined the maxim “Everything Trump Touches Dies” (ETTD for short). As various of Trump’s former lawyers face disbarment for their work on his behalf, I’ve been thinking of a literary character whose glib tongue gets him hired by a powerful man, only to ultimately be brought low by the association: Gri’ma, a.k.a. the Wormtongue.
Some of the Wormtongues who have worked for Trump—and who are now being indicted along with him by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis—are Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jeffrey Clark. Among their crimes are devising the fake electors scheme and pressuring Georgia officials to “find” more votes for Trump. For their efforts, they now face a fate similar to that suffered by Wormtongue after his boss Saruman is toppled.
Wormtongue is noteworthy for having poured poison into the ears of King Theoden and others in his court as he sought to replace truth with falsehood. In the end, he finds himself tied to his disgraced boss, wandering the landscape as a beggar while Saruman berates him:
‘Get up, you idiot!’ he shouted to the other beggar, who had sat down on the ground; and he struck him with his staff. ‘Turn about! If these fine folk are going our way, then we will take another. Get on, or I’ll give you no crust for your supper!’
The beggar turned and slouched past whimpering: ‘Poor old Grı´ma! Poor old Grı´ma! Always beaten and cursed. How I hate him! I wish I could leave him!’
‘Then leave him!’ said Gandalf.
But Wormtongue only shot a glance of his bleared eyes full of terror at Gandalf, and then shuffled quickly past behind Saruman. As the wretched pair passed by the company they came to the hobbits, and Saruman stopped and stared at them; but they looked at him with pity.
While Trump may not insult his lawyers in this fashion, he exhibits his own form of contempt by refusing to pay them. Word is that Giuliani is bankrupt and the others are looking for other sources to cover their legal expenses. As someone (I believe Never Trumper lawyer George Conway) once quipped, MAGA stands for “Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.”
The question is now whether Trump’s lawyers will rise up against him as Wormtongue does with Saruman. Jay Kuo, who authors the legal blog The Status Kuo, is predicting that they will:
These defendants may seek to tie Trump directly to the case in order to throw him under the bus before he can do it to them. For example, they could claim they provided Trump with an array of options, but he took it to the next level by choosing the most crimey path.
In the final episode involving Saruman and Wormtongue, the hobbits have just overthrown them in the battle to free the Shire and sent them packing once again. Saruman (a.k.a. Sharkey) reveals how Wormtongue, at his command, killed quisling hobbit chieftain Lotho Baggins and possibly ate him:
‘Worm killed your Chief, poor little fellow, your nice little Boss. Didn’t you, Worm? Stabbed him in his sleep, I believe. Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately. No, Worm is not really nice. You had better leave him to me.’
A look of wild hatred came into Wormtongue’s red eyes. ‘You told me to; you made me do it,’ he hissed.
Saruman laughed. ‘You do what Sharkey says, always, don’t you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!’ He kicked Wormtongue in the face as he groveled, and turned and made off.
It is at this point that this follower has had enough:
But at that something snapped: suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and then with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman’s back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane.
Will Trump’s coup co-conspirators ultimately cut Trump’s throat (metaphorically) to save themselves? Will their defense strategy consist of hissing out, “You told me to; you made me do it”? Stay tuned.
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Monday
I’m a bit dumbstruck to learn that one of the major inspirations for the Barbie movie is Milton’s Paradise Lost, although in retrospect it makes a lot of sense. Here’s what director Greta Gerwig has to say about her use of the 17th century epic:
I remember the first time when I read Milton and I realized this idea of, Paradise has no poetry. Because what do you need metaphor for if everything is literally what it is? You need this sort of separation from your environment in order to have a need for the beauty of poetry.
I don’t entirely agree about there being no poetry in Eden—I’ll give an example in a moment—but I get Greta Gerwig’s point. The aspects of the poem we are most likely to recall are (1) Satan’s fall and (2) Adam and Eve’s temptation. There’s not much drama to be found in the first humans pruning bushes and having beautiful sex.
And yes, Milton believes that Adam and Eve had sex. After all, they needed to turn out more bush pruners. The poet does, however, draw a discrete curtain over the act, essentially saying that the two did not not have sex. Or as Milton puts it, after lying down naked side by side, they didn’t refuse “the rites mysterious of connubial love”:
…and eased the putting off These troublesome disguises which we wear, Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial Love refused…
But as for poetry, right before this scene there’s some pretty good verse, offered up as a hymn of gratitude:
Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood Both turned, and under open sky adored The God that made both sky, air, earth and heaven Which they beheld, the moon’s resplendent globe And starry pole: “Thou also mad’st the night Maker omnipotent, and though the day Which we in our appointed work employed Have finished happy in our mutual help And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss Ordained by thee, and this delicious place For us too large, where thy abundance wants Partakers, and uncropped falls to the ground. But thou hast promised from us two a race To fill the earth, who shall with us extoll Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake, And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.”
Greta’s version of this prayer might be Barbie reveling in her dream house. But where both poem and movie pick up, one focuses on what happens after the fall. What seems at first a tragedy—that’s how Barbie initially regards the introduction of discordant elements into her ideal world—eventually becomes a blessing. In Adam’s case, he learns that the first humans can appreciate God’s love even more after the fall because they will see how much God, in his love for humankind, is willing to sacrifice. Being told of this self-sacrificing love, Adam rhapsodizes,
O goodness infinite, goodness immense! That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Then that which by creation first brought forth Light out of darkness!
Adam’s excitement is not unlike Barbie’s excitement about the world that awaits her after she leaves her pink plastic paradise. Milton scholar Orlando Reade notes that the montage of the life that awaits Barbie as a real-life human is not unlike the angel Michael’s account of humankind’s future history, which he recounts to Adam prior to the couple being driven from the garden. To be sure, Michael’s account is grimmer that the film’s montage, which is not exactly filled with images of violence, sickness and death.
Gerwig points out another parallel between the film and the poem. Barbie actually reverses Milton’s genesis story. Whereas Eve is taken from Adam’s rib, Barbie precedes Ken, who owes his existence to her. Running with the idea, Reade teases out other parallels:
Ken exists in a state of perpetual anxiety, hoping only to please Barbie. In this, he resembles Milton’s Adam. When Eve is born, she falls in love with her own reflection in a pool of water. On first seeing Adam, she is unimpressed. Adam worries about her self-sufficiency and complains about his desire for her. Milton is said to have invented the word “self-esteem,” and that is exactly what Adam lacks. Fear of living without Eve compels him to eat the fruit.
In the poem, Adam and Eve have a major falling out after the fall, as do Barbie and Ken. Sin and Death enter Milton’s world whereas toxic patriarchy enters Barbie’s. But in the end, Adam and Eve reconcile and bravely go forth, as do Ken and Barbie. Ken realizes that life is much more fulfilling if he learns to define himself as himself—“Ken is me!”—rather than in relation to Barbie. He learns he doesn’t require a docile woman to be strong.
In the final scene, Ken and Barbie may not be holding hands, as Adam and Eve are, but the final lines in Paradise Lost fit their situation. There’s even a version of the tear that rolls down Barbie’s cheek as she contemplates leaving Barbie Land:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
Having previously had everything handed to her, Barbie is now going to experience what it’s like to earn a living, have children, and grow old and die. Same with Adam and Eve. Ultimately, this is what we all should want.
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Sunday
Today’s Gospel reading—where Jesus symbolically delivers the kingdom of heaven’s keys to Peter—gives me an excuse to share a wonderful sonnet about the most impetuous of the disciples. I have a special place in my heart for Peter, perhaps because he seems my polar opposite.
Whereas I tend to be deliberate and cautious, attempting to reason everything out, Peter acts on impulse. He thinks more with his heart than with his head. Perhaps it is my reticence, probably the result of my British heritage, that draws me to the disciple who often leaps before he looks. Perhaps a similar dynamic draws British poet and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite to Peter since his poem speaks directly to me.
First, here’s today’s Gospel reading:
When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
And here’s Guite’s poem:
St. Peter
Impulsive master of misunderstanding You comfort me with all your big mistakes; Jumping the ship before you make the landing, Placing the bet before you know the stakes. I love the way you step out without knowing, The way you sometimes speak before you think, The way your broken faith is always growing, The way he holds you even when you sink. Born to a world that always tried to shame you, Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame, I love the way that Jesus chose to name you, Before you knew how to deserve that name. And in the end your Savior let you prove That each denial is undone by love.
I too love the idea of a divine presence knowing us better than we know ourselves. Not everyone would see firm foundation upon looking at Peter. But Jesus saw the rock within Peter and knew that he would grow into that role.
Even when we are driven, by our fear, to deny that which is most precious to us, Jesus assures us love undoes our betrayals. As Horace puts it and as his words appear on the brooch of Chaucer’s prioress, “Amor vincit omnia.”
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Friday
Since I no longer follow baseball closely, an injury to this or that player doesn’t normally catch my attention, especially if the team is not in contention for a title. In the case of 29-year-old Shohei Ohtani, however, I sit up and pay attention. I also think of Robert Coover’s 1968 novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
That’s because it too shows something bad happening to a miraculous player. More on the novel in a moment.
If you don’t know about Shohei, I’m here to tell you that “miraculous” is almost an understatement. Before yesterday’s injury, he may have been both the best hitter AND the best pitcher in the league. As Joe Posnanski wrote in the Washington Post a week ago, Shohei “is doing things on a baseball diamond that scramble the mind.”
Many have noted in recent years that the game has become almost impossible to watch, which is why we’ve seen pitchers and batters put on a time clock and a new element introduced into extra-inning games. Nothing revitalize a game so much, however, as a one-in-a-lifetime talent.
Posnanski pointed out last week that, as a hitter, Shohei was leading or was tied for the lead in the American league in triples, home runs, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. At the same time, he had allowed fewer hits per game than any other pitcher. Batter have been hitting only .185 against him, the best figure in all of baseball. Posnanski notes,
There is no precedent in Major League Baseball. The closest thing was Babe Ruth, who devoted baseball fans will know was a great pitcher before he became a legendary slugger. But even the Babe did not do what Ohtani is doing. He more or less stopped pitching once he became an everyday player. There were great pitcher-hitter combinations in the Negro Leagues, such as Bullet Rogan and Martin Dihigo. But, alas, they spent their careers in the shadows before Jackie Robinson.
In his forthcoming book Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, Posnanski has a chapter devoted to Shohei. The player presents a special problem for the author of such a book, however, as he keeps topping himself. In an early draft, Posnanski wrote about back-to-back games against Kansas City in 2022 where Shohei hit two home runs and drove in eight runs on Tuesday and then threw eight scoreless innings with 13 strikeouts on Wednesday. He later rewrote the chapter when Shohei “struck out his friend and teammate Mike Trout, the best player of the past decade, to close out Japan’s victory over the United States in the World Baseball Classic.”
Then, in June, Shohei had what Posnanski describes as “perhaps the greatest month any player has ever had.” The Japanese player hit .394 with 15 home runs in 27 games while also winning two games as a pitcher and striking out 37 batters. Then, in July, he had “the most singular day,” throwing a one-hit shutout in the first game of a doubleheader in Detroit and following that up with “two titanic home runs” in the second game. Posnanski writes, “I might be writing and rewriting that Ohtani chapter for the next decade.”
Shohei has certainly caught my interest, which is no small feat since I fell out of love with baseball years ago after having been a passionate fan, first of the Cubs and then (when we moved to Maryland) of the Baltimore Orioles. I followed the latter avidly for several years, listening to them nightly on the radio as I washed the dishes. I became disillusioned and left the sport when the Orioles’ narcissistic owner (but I repeat myself, as Twain would say*) fired the smart and witty sportscaster John Miller. The magic had gone out of the game for me.
Which is what happens in Universal Baseball Association, where the game had fallen into the doldrums. Coover’s novel anticipates sports fantasy leagues by having an aging accountant invent a game played with three dice. Plays depend on the roll, and Waugh keeps the stats while creating names and personal histories for all the players. The league has played 56 seasons when the book opens so that Waugh can think back to fathers and grandfathers who also played the game.
But the game has gotten stale so that Waugh feels himself just going through the motions. That is, until Damon Rutherford, a rookie pitcher and son of hall-of-famer Brock Rutherford, explodes on the scene. In the first chapter we watch Damon pitch a perfect game (!):
Henry’s heart was racing, he was sweating with relief and tension all at once, unable to sit, unable to think, in there, with them! Oh yes, boys, it was on! He was sure of it. More than just another ball game now: history! And Damon Rutherford was making it. Ho ho! too good to be true! And yes, the stands were charged with it, turned on, it was the old days all over again, and with one voice they rent the air as the Haymaker Star Hamilton Craft spun himself right off his feet in a futile cut at Damon’s third strike—zing! whoosh! zap! OUT! Henry laughed, watched the hometown Pioneer fans cheer the boy, cry out his name, then stretch—not just stretch—leap up for luck. He saw beers bought and drunk, hot dogs eaten, timeless gestures passed.
This fantasy league gives meaning to a life that is otherwise spent working for a dull accounting firm during the day and ordering home delivery deli sandwiches in the evening, along with an occasional trip to the local bar and a fling with an aging prostitute. While Waugh is unable to explain this private passion to others, they can see how his excitement over Rutherford’s achievement lights him up.
Sports can do that, structuring our time and our passions in ways that seem disproportionate to their actual importance. After all, it’s only a game.
But because sports has this outsized influence, Coover uses the fantasy baseball league to further explore the meaning of life when tragedy hits. In the midst of Rutherford’s rookie glory, Waugh twice rolls three sixes in a row, which takes him to “the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart.” Anything can happen here, from a fist fight to a fixed game. The chart, Coover explains, is what gives the game its special quality, making it “much more than just a series of hits and walks and outs.”
Unfortunately for Waugh, the chart indicates that Damon, the future of the league, has been struck by a beanball and killed. With this sudden reversal of fortune Waugh’s life, which had seemed redeemed by sports success, suddenly appears existentially and tragically absurd.
So how does Waugh cope? At first he doesn’t but instead spirals into madness, experiencing fully the bleakness of his existence.
I’m not saying that the lives of baseball enthusiasts will suddenly feel bleak with Shohei’s injury. Furthermore, there’s a possibility that he will come back from this tear in one of his elbow ligaments. I can’t see him ever having another season like the one we’ve just seen, however. I fully expect him to give up pitching.
In the novel, Waugh makes a devil’s bargain in an attempt to pull himself out of his madness. Since he happens to be the divine creator of this world (J. Waugh can be read as Jahweh), he can do what he wants. Einstein famously said that “God does not play dice with the universe,” and here is the game’s proprietor choosing, for once, not to play dice. Or rather, he deliberately fixes a throw, which is the same thing. To restore balance, he believes the pitcher who killed Damon must be killed in return, so he arranges a trip to the Chart of Extraordinary Circumstances and has him knocked off by a hard-hit line drive.
The baseball universe has now become unrecognizable, however, as the players sense strange patterns occurring within their lives. Take free will and chance out of the equation and reality begins to look much different.
Which means that Coover’s novel can provide us insight into more than sports. (Warning: I’m about to veer from sports into politics so feel free to stop reading.) Since many Americans these days like to think that they can create “alternative facts” (to quote Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway) that will correspond with their desires—for instance, they believe they can wish away climate change and Covid—we get a glimpse of what life would look like if that were true.
A quick history lesson here. Contempt for the so-called “reality-based community” was expressed by a member of the George W. Bush administration, who dismissed those who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” This official went on to say,
That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Donald Trump, of course, took “creating other new realities” to a whole new level.
So what happens in the novel? Well, the players start formulating elaborate conspiracy theories about how the world is constructed. (Waugh by this time has disappeared from the book so that we only see his mad creations.) They start noticing prophetic number combinations and repetitions of old dramas. Fatalism and paranoia begin to rule their lives.
It’s a reminder that life is much more enchanting if it is not predetermined, if we have free will. Think of how facing up to reality—including climate change and Covid—can bring out the best in human beings as we discover new sources of energy and new vaccines. Think of how interacting with other races, ethnicities, and nationalities—uncomfortable though some find it—causes us to adapt and expand in ways that confining ourselves to the familiar never does.
And think of how truly wonderful it is when a player like Shohei Ohtani bursts on the scene, even if only for a brief moment. We couldn’t have imagined him before he showed up but, once he did, he stand in awe. We thought we understood how reality is configured, only to discover our vision was limited.
*Twain quote: “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
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Thursday
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made creative use of a Sherlock Holmes story this past Monday: she quoted a line that everybody knows from a story that almost nobody knows. Then she applied it to Donald Trump supporters.
The story is “Silver Blaze,” about (spoiler alert) a heavily guarded horse, the favorite to win an important race, that disappears only days before the event while its trainer ends up dead. The guard watching over the horse has been drugged, but the important clue—which of course only Holmes grasps—occurs in the following passage:
The two lads who slept in the chaff-cutting loft above the harness-room were quickly aroused. They had heard nothing during the night, for they are both sound sleepers.
I should mention that, four paragraphs earlier, there is casual mention of a watchdog.
And now for Holmes’s insight:
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
The curious incident is that the dog didn’t bark, which would have awakened the stable boys. And if the dog didn’t bark, it is because the thief was someone with whom the dog was familiar—which is to say, the trainer himself. Eventually we learn that, deeply in debt, he has laid bets against his own horse and then taken it out to subtly cripple it. Fortunately, the horse’s kick kills him before he can accomplish his goal.
The dog that didn’t bark in Trump’s case is the supporters who didn’t show up at his indictments. On January 6, of course, Trump achieved spectacular results when he called upon them to turn out in force. The invitation only worked that first time, however. The following Truth Social tweet, despite its use of all caps, brought out only a handful of Trumpists:
NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!
For indictment #2, the one at the Miami courthouse, Trump tried repeating his January 6 call—“Be there, will be wild!”–once again resorting to all caps:
SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!
Again, nothing, leading Trump to refrain altogether from commanding his troops to rally for indictments three and four.In other words, first his supporters stopped barking and then he did.
And how is this a curious incident? It may be that Trump is losing his ability to create massive disruption. To be sure, his angry tweets (or whatever they’re called) can rile up individual followers, so there have been many threats from Trumpists directed at prosecutors, judges, witnesses, grand jury members, etc. Someone could still get killed.
But if this indeed proves to be the beginning of the end for the ex-president, then we may point to Trump supporters not barking as the first indication.
James Byrd of Jasper TX, lynched by three White men 25 years ago
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Wednesday
Yesterday’s Washington Post reminded us of a horrific lynching that occurred in Jasper, Texas 25 years ago, along with a follow-up report on what has occurred there since. The hate crime led to a Lucille Clifton poem, which I heard her read not long after she composed it.
Post reporter Emmanuel Felton tells what happened:
On a June evening in 1998, three White men chained a Black man by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for several miles down a twisting country road in this small East Texas town, decapitating him in the process. The next day, pieces of James Byrd’s body were found all along the route.
Clifton is often an inspirational poet, finding ways to triumph in the most desperate of circumstances. (I think of how she uses poetry to process her father abusing her as a child.) In “jasper texas 1998,” however, she is just discouraged, writing, “Hope bleeds slowly from my mouth/ into the dirt that covers us all.”
In the poem, Clifton imagines herself as Byrd’s head, speaking for his dismembered body. While his body is no longer recognizably human, the truly disfigured are the ones whom racism has twisted. “Who is the human in this place,” the speaker asks, “the thing that is dragged or the dragger?”
At such moments, bridging the racial divide seems an impossible task. “why and why and why/ should i call a white man brother?” Clifton asks through Byrd. In her current state, there seems no reason to do so, even though Jasper’s Black and White citizens—at least some of them—have come together to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Here’s the poem:
jasper texas 1998 By Lucille Clifton for j. byrd
i am a man’s head hunched in the road. i was chosen to speak by the members of my body. the arm as it pulled away pointed toward me, the hand opened once and was gone.
why and why and why should i call a white man brother? who is the human in this place, the thing that is dragged or the dragger? what does my daughter say?
the sun is a blister overhead. if i were alive i could not bear it. the townsfolk sing we shall overcome while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth into the dirt that covers us all. i am done with this dust. i am done.
Sadly, the Washington Post story shows the poem to be predictive, with current day Jasper focused on forgetting the incident:
But now, 25 years later, the horrific attack that once galvanized this community is barely discussed. Byrd is not mentioned in the local school district’s Texas history textbooks and he’s absent from the Jasper County Historical Museum, which opened in 2008. His family says their efforts to keep Byrd’s memory alive, including a push to open a museum in his honor, have largely been met with lackluster support from local officials. Few people showed up at a Juneteenth event they held this year to acknowledge the anniversary of Byrd’s murder.
It’s as though Jasper wants the dust to be swept under the rug. As reporter Felton observes,
The town’s collective amnesia reflects the worst fears of racial justice advocates about what may follow George Floyd’s 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer. Byrd’s death, like Floyd’s, was supposed to represent a turning point in American history, but it has been relegated to a footnote even in his hometown, they say.
No wonder Clifton sounds so discouraged. If things like this keep on happening, then the only true equality we can hope for is one day becoming indistinguishable dust. “We therefore commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” reads the Anglican burial service.
And if that’s the case, then one can understand why even a fighter like Clifton would say, “i am done with this dust. i am done.” Along with the dust through which Byrd has been dragged, Clifton could also be talking about humanity. As in, “I’m fed up with people!”
Even as the poem captures the poet at her most discouraged, however, her composing it is itself a refusal to fully surrender. To be sure, poetry, as truth, has to give full weight to those moments when we are down and despairing; we can’t just skip over them. But having acknowledged this, we must also acknowledge that African Americans, despite all that they have suffered, have refused to stay buried by dust for long.
For instance, writing about her revelation (this at her father’s funeral) that there is hope even after one has been sexually abused, Clifton proclaims,
only then did i know that to live in the world all that i needed was some small light and know that indeed i would rise again and rise again to dance.
While Byrd can’t rise again from the dust—his tragedy should remain with us always—the rest of us can keep fighting, keep dancing, to create a world where Jasper, Texas doesn’t keep happening. Hope and realism must combine forces.
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Tuesday
One problem with MAGA’s rhetoric of violence is that different figures compete for who can sound the most bloodthirsty. While it’s difficult to decide who wins the prize, Ron DeSantis’s “We’re going to start slitting throats on Day 1” is up there. The reference is to downsizing the federal bureaucracy.
Incidentally, this is a man who has investigated violent death. As a 27-year-old Navy lawyer in 2006, he was on the team looking into three Guantanamo prisoners found hanging from their necks, their hands and feet bound and rags in their throats. (The lawyers found no evidence of foul play.)
Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman recently wrote an article for MSNBC’s on-line magazine that puts the escalating rhetoric in perspective. Although the January 6 insurrection failed, what remains is MAGA’s thirst “to solve their problems with spasms of redemptive violence.” This thirst, Waldman adds, is “being fed every day, by elite figures on the right who believe they can harness the bloodlust they reinforce for their own ends.”
Waldman glumly concludes, “And we don’t yet know whether next time will be even harder to contain.”
I first came across the notion of redemptive violence in Richard Slotkin’s series of studies on the frontier myth of the frontier, which included Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860; Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890; and Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Slotkin’s central thesis is that, throughout our history, many have regarded “the redemption of American spirit” as being achieved “through a scenario of separation, temporary regression to a more primitive or ‘natural’ state, and regeneration through violence” (Slotkin’s italics).
“The core of that scenario,” Slotkin explains, is
the symbol of “savage war,” which was both a mythic trope and an operative category of military doctrine. The premise of “savage war” is that ineluctable political and social difference—rooted in some combination of “blood” and culture—make coexistence between primitive natives and civilized Europeans impossible on any basis other than that of subjugation. Native resistance to European settlement therefore takes the form of a fight for survival, and because of the “savage” and bloodthirsty propensity of the natives, such struggles inevitably become “wars of extermination” in which one side or the other attempts to destroy its enemy root and branch.
A literature professor, Slotkin turns to narrative to track the myth, starting with early Indian captivity narratives and Daniel Boone stories and the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville. He concludes, in Gunfighter Nation, with the western and crime genres, both in literature and film. Over the years, Indians have been replaced in this frontier drama with immigrants, labor activists (“socialists”), Muslims, LBGTQ+ folk, and, above all, urban Blacks. Sometimes the rhetoric is broadened to include all Democrats, with Waldman providing examples:
The audience for conservative media imbibes the rhetoric of violence every day. Michael Savage, one of the most widely heard radio hosts in the country, says that because of LGBTQ acceptance and other perceived left-wing excesses, “I’m willing to pick up arms. I can’t take it anymore.” Right-wing media stars laugh and cheer about violence directed at climate activists. A popular far-right podcaster tells his listeners that if the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would “violently overthrow” the American government.
Waldman observes,
Wherever vigilantism looks like a tool the right can use against the left, it will be venerated and even turned into law. Republican legislatures have passed laws shielding people who mow down protesters with their cars from civil liability. Country star Jason Aldean’s single “Try That in a Small Town” imagines urbanites bringing their criminality to rural areas and being met with a violent response.
“[A]re we supposed to be surprised,” Waldman asks, “when the fantasy of violence turns into actual violence?”
Pop culture, especially vigilante narratives, continue to feed the fantasy, while the “actual” shows up in mass shootings, white militia activity, police misbehavior, and attacks on government agencies and officials. For far too many Republicans, dreams of regeneration seem to require, to repeat Slotkin’s words, “temporary regression to a more primitive state.” Elections are regarded as “savage war” where the Democrats must be destroyed “root and branch.” Every tactic becomes permissible.
But just as popular culture bolsters the myth, so do many thoughtful authors–from Hawthorne and Melville through Faulkner and O’Connor to Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison–help dismantle it, exposing its perniciousness. By teaching students about the nature of narrative, we help free them from its harmful aspects.
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Monday
Despite rightwing accusations that the U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team (USNWT) lost in the World Cup’s round of 16 because they were too “woke,” yesterday’s final between the stalwart English and the incandescent Spanish made clear what really happened: the rest of the world has caught up. I don’t think anyone could have beaten La Roja this year, given its sublime passing and its ability to turn from defense to offense in a microsecond. But why let the improbability of an aging U.S. squad pulling off a three-peat get in the way of your political rage?
As basketball-great-turned Blogger Kareem Abdul-Jabbar puts it, it’s as though the American right was rooting for Casey to strike out:
The classic American poem “Casey at the Bat,” chronicling the hometown disappointment when their team hero strikes out, failing to win the big game, has been subverted by right-wing commentators and politicians giddy at the U.S. women’s soccer team losing in the World Cup round of 16. Shockingly, there finally is joy in Mudville—not because the mighty Casey got a hit, but because he struck out. The hometown fans wanted their team to lose. Crazy, I know.
Foremost among those rooting against the U.S. was, of course, Donald Trump, who took the occasion to taunt Megan Rapinoe—winner of both the Golden Boot and the Golden Goal in 2019—for missing a penalty shot in the shootout:
The ‘shocking and totally unexpected’ loss by the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to the our once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden. Many of our players were openly hostile to America – No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.
Others followed:
“I’m thrilled they lost,” said former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “You don’t support America, I don’t support you.”
So being critical of Trump is apparently not supporting America.
But let’s look at Jabbar’s “Casey” allusion. Although the U.S. team had a certain swagger, that’s just the way it is with great teams. If anyone really behaves like Casey, however, it’s Trump himself. Following the law is as beneath him as strikes are to Casey:
And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped— “That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one!” the umpire said.
Actually, come to think of it, Casey’s crowds are not unlike Trump’s, with one critical difference:
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore; “Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted someone on the stand; And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
The difference, of course, is that Trump would have riled up this crowd, not calmed it down. “If you see somebody with a tomato, knock the crap out of them,” he once told a crowd. What better way to avoid accountability than have the umpire removed?
“Casey at the Bat” is a classic case of hubris, of pride going before the fall. But in sports, losing eventually happens to everyone. And unlike Casey and the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, Trump doesn’t have a record of accomplishment to justify his swagger.
To defend Casey further, even the greatest batters fail more often than they succeed. If, in the major leagues, you register an out no more than seven out of every 10 times, you can wind up as the batting champion. As for the USNWT, it’s those who mock a team that has won four of the nine world championships that come across looking small.
For “American carnage” Trump, it fits his narrative that America is turning into Mudville. You can bet that, on his watch, he’ll make sure that there are no bands playing somewhere, or men laughing or children shouting. And definitely no light hearts.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright, The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout, But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.
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Sunday
This past May journalist Josie Glausius wrote about how she turned to poetry when her 12-year-old son was dying of a rare form of brain cancer. The poem that meant the most to her was one that alludes to one of next Sunday’s Old Testament readings, the one about infant Moses in the river.
Before turning to it, here are some other ways poetry served her. She reports that she read him poems her mother had read to her as a child, including Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) and John Masefield’s “Cargoes.” She says her son listened “rapt and smiling,” after which they would talk about the meaning of the poems.
I love these choices. With the Shakespeare sonnet I can imagine her son feeling sorry for himself (“I all alone beweep my outcast state”) but then moving on to a more positive vision:
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The Masefield poem, meanwhile, would have helped him imagine his unknown journey as sailing to exotic lands with strange-sounding names. It would have appealed to his vision of adventure, which was also the reason why he liked Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” which his mother recited to him in his final hours when he was lying unconscious. She explains what the poem had meant to him:
My son had learned the words to Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem by listening to me recite it to him and his twin sister at bedtime. A brave, bright, imaginative, optimistic boy, he loved the drama of the poem and the courage of the “beamish boy” as, with his “vorpal sword” in hand, he defeats his “manxome foe.”
During the illness, Glausius started a poetry group on WhatsApp, which she called “Poetry Is Medicine.” As she had discovered during earlier crises, “the rhythm of poetry can soothe my anxieties. With just a word or a phrase, a poem can reach the hidden places that prayers or well-meaning advice cannot.”
Her friends in the group responded by sending her poems that reached deep:
One sent “Chinese Foot Chart,” by Kay Ryan: (“Look, / boats of mercy / embark from / our heart at the / oddest knock.”). Another carefully translated the Hebrew poem “Apple of Imperfection,” by Varda Genossar: “First speech is the speech of love … last speech, silence.”
After her son died, there were yet other poems. One friend sent her Raymond Carver’s “Late Fragment,” his last published poem:
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
The poem “offered me some small comfort,” Glausius wrote, “because I knew that even in my son’s darkest hours, he was always loved — and still is — and was never for a moment alone.”
Another friend sent her Calista Buchen’s “Taking Care”:
I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, its okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we’ve returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I’m with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small.
And then there was Carl Sandburg’s “Theme in Yellow,” which she appreciated because the title “contains my son’s favorite, ‘cheerful’ color.” She particularly liked the passage,
When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs
But the poem that reached the deepest was about infant Moses. Here’s the relevant section from the Biblical story:
When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him…
Glausius says she read Spanish poet Luis Alberto de Cuenca’s “Moses” (trans. Gustavo Pérez Firmat) by her son’s grave eight days after his death. Like some of the other poems that consoled her and her son in his final months, it imagines death as a journey. Along with the basket story, in also alludes to the parting of the Red Sea and other divine interventions:
Give me your hand. We have to cross the river and my strength fails me. Hold me as if I were an abandoned package in a wicker basket, a lump that moves and cries in the twilight. Cross the river with me. Even if this time the waters don’t part before us. Even if this time God doesn’t come to our aid and a flurry of arrows riddles our backs. Even if there is no river.
I love how we’re uncertain whom the poem addresses. When Glausius read the poem at the graveside service, was she asking for God’s help while imagining herself, like her son when he was a baby, as a “lump that moves and cries in the twilight.” The river in this case would be her son’s death, which she doesn’t want to turn away from–and which God has not forestalled by divine intervention.
Or did she see herself asking her son to give her strength, the parent-child relationship momentarily reversed? It could be that she’s asking him to help her stay upright at the moment when her strength fails her.
The power that lies in making such a request is that one feels less alone. One imagines that someone is listening and reaching out a hand.
