What dire Offense from global Warming springs

Tim Cavanaugh | September 29, 2009

Percy Dovetonsils adores the polished poesies of Wendell Berry Good news for American poetry: Rhymes are back. Witness this evacuation of heroic couplets in condemnation of human progress by Bluegrass State man of letters Wendell Berry in El Neoyorquino.

You won't stay for the couplets (the schmendrick rhymes wonder with hunger). But you may be intrigued by what appears to be an assault on the recently deceased Norman Borlaug (under color of a familiar lamentation about fast food and pharmaceuticals), complete with post-Miltonic capitalization of Supreme Ideals:

Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that's fast or cheap to falsify
The body's health and pleasure-don't ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature's laws that still keep us alive?

I had hoped Berry (who indicates he got help with the poem from one "Wes Jackson") would commit to the genre and include a shoutout to Phoebus Apollo in italics, or even Gaia. He didn't. Points off.

I've reported. You decide if you want to read the whole thing.

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smartass sob|9.29.09 @ 3:26PM|#

You decide if you want to read the whole thing.

Uh, no. I don't believe I care to.

Tomcat1066|9.29.09 @ 3:27PM|#

I'd read the whole thing, but I'm afraid I'll lose IQ points in doing so. Based on what I read in the post, I'd have to be a freaking idiot to go and subject myself to more of that shit.

|9.29.09 @ 3:28PM|#

What I need most after lunch is an assault on my aesthetic sensibilities. Thanks a lot.

If you're going to force me to read doggerel, let it be Children's Letters to God, or something that at least is unpretentious.

BakedPenguin|9.29.09 @ 3:29PM|#

I think the demise of rhyming poetry was the fact that so much of it in the late 19th and early 20th century was doggerel, as opposed to the 18th and early 19th century, when poets like Coleridge, Shelley and Poe created great art.

Someone else want to read Berry and report back? I'll stick with this:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
...

|9.29.09 @ 3:29PM|#

I'm not sure which I hate more, poems or poets. If you can't sing, don't you dare fucking rhyme.

sorry - making sure I closed the tag.

Meta4|9.29.09 @ 3:30PM|#

"(the schmendrick rhymes wonder with hunger)."

Known as a false rhyme. Bruce Springsteen uses them all of the time. It helps if you mumble the words a little.

Lester Hunt|9.29.09 @ 3:33PM|#

Wow. You have to go to the classic anthology of bad verse, "The Stuffed Owl," to find couplets this bad.

Lester Hunt|9.29.09 @ 3:34PM|#

BTW,

Love the picture of Percy Dovetonsils. Nice touch!

|9.29.09 @ 3:35PM|#

I can't believe he didn't work in "Let them eat Cake." After all, that is the sentiment he's offering.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.29.09 @ 3:36PM|#

Understood, Meta4. I'm ripping off The Sunshine Boys: "He rhymed 'lady lady' with 'be my baby!'"

|9.29.09 @ 3:40PM|#

Meta4,

That can also be called a half-rhyme.

I've met Wendell a few times. He's a very nice guy, but the enviro-schtick is wearing very thin. Barbara Kingsolver has also flipped out on that front.

I won't even get into the Afrolachian poetry movement.

Ska|9.29.09 @ 3:40PM|#

Love the picture of Percy Dovetonsils. Nice touch!

So that's not Barney Frank with a (slightly) different hairstyle?

|9.29.09 @ 3:42PM|#

I thought it was the neighbor from Breakfast at Tiffany's

I've reported. You decide if you want to read the whole thing.

Ain't
Gonna
Happen

|9.29.09 @ 3:43PM|#

For food that's fast or cheap

Ah, for the good old days of slow and expensive food! And those subservient women who spent most of their time preparing it! Berry sounds like one of those Victorian types like William Morris, enjoying his family estate and griping about all the cheap and ugly manufactured goods the lower classes are buying. (Though Morris was an excellent designer.)

If it takes poetry to save us from the coming superstorm, so be it. As could be expected, you ultra-far-right racist scum don't even know what progress is. I for one - and millions of others - have no interest in "progressing" to a world where summers are 140 degrees and every city from NYC to Ventura is submerged beneath the waves. The leading edge of that tragedy is something we're seeing right here in Aspen.

EJM|9.29.09 @ 3:50PM|#

Good news for American poetry: Rhymes are back.

However, Nipsey Russell ('70s "Match Game"; "Rhyme and Reason"; "Password Plus"; '80s "Pyramid"; "Your Number's Up" [as host!]) is still dead.

MattXIV|9.29.09 @ 3:51PM|#

One called Jackson, one called Berry
and betwixt the two a rhyming dictionary

|9.29.09 @ 3:52PM|#

I won't even get into the Afrolachian poetry movement.

Oh, please, please do, Sug. While we're on the subject of your compatriots, can we talk about the girl from Kentucky on ANTM? In spite of myself, I find her utterly charming.

Marc|9.29.09 @ 3:54PM|#

ultra-far-right racist scum

Has anyone claimed that handle yet?

|9.29.09 @ 3:55PM|#

Thankfully, for all my pop culture sins, I still loathe reality TV. Which one is she, I shall consult the googlatron.

Has anyone claimed that handle yet?

Yes, but he goes by Dick Hoste for short.

Oh, and this poem is worse than the shit I wrote in 3rd grade, rhyming stuff like "autumn leaves fall" with "trees standing tall". Blech. At least the non-retarded third-graders can count fucking syllables.

|9.29.09 @ 3:59PM|#

Her name is Laura. This season is only worth watching for her accent (which, indidentally, is now what I am convinced your accent sounds like); the girls are all an un-model-y 5'7" and under.

*incidentally, duh.

|9.29.09 @ 4:00PM|#

There once was an asshole called AlGore
Who demanded we progress no more
Its you he will save
when you live in a cave
and you're new stone age life you'll adore

Sorry, that "you're" above should be "your"

|9.29.09 @ 4:01PM|#

My biggest sin in the creative writing program (where you had to take classes on fiction, poetry and autobiographical writing) was that I wrote narrative poetry. Oh the weeping and gnashing of teeth. A poem that tells a story?!?! Kill him with fire!

|9.29.09 @ 4:04PM|#

ANTM?

|9.29.09 @ 4:05PM|#

I like in War Pigs when Black Sabbath rhymes "masses" with "masses."

which, indidentally, is now what I am convinced your accent sounds like

Aw, come on. She sounds half-retarted. When I'm out of state most people have no clue I'm even from the south, much less Ken-tuck-ee.

(I had a guy who grew up in Brooklyn drunkenly confide to me "You speak really well." He almost ended up in the Gowanus Canal.)

|9.29.09 @ 4:06PM|#

Another Nude Topographical Map

By Nature's laws that still keep us alive?

Aren't humans, and our ability to create all sorts of amazing shit, part of nature? Why are we expected to live like other animals. No one expects them to live like us.

jtuf|9.29.09 @ 4:08PM|#

Any one who believes we should reduce the global population is welcome to start with himself.

|9.29.09 @ 4:09PM|#

Half-retarded, but cute! Like, about to break into a homespun bluegrass tune at any moment.

And, if you fail to provide an example of your earnest, college-era narrative poetry, you're a cruel, cruel man.

ultra-far-right racist scum|9.29.09 @ 4:09PM|#

ultra-far-right racist scum

Has anyone claimed that handle yet?

Yup

No one expects them to live like us.

I'd like to see a goat cracking jokes and cursing on the Internet all day, personally. And it'd be really funny if he wore pants.

Goat|9.29.09 @ 4:11PM|#

I got fuckin' no dukes.

Luke Johnson|9.29.09 @ 4:14PM|#

Yo, Adriane Huffanan!

I want to assure everyone that, because my security team uses a special type of ammunition known as "hollow points", the bear and her cubs felt no pain.

That was nice of the security team to tell you that.

ultra-far-right racist scum|9.29.09 @ 4:14PM|#

"No one expects them to live like us."

My dog's expectation is to to live like us.

BTW, If Strom Thurmon had been elected president in 1948, America would have been much better off.

|9.29.09 @ 4:16PM|#

And, if you fail to provide an example of your earnest, college-era narrative poetry, you're a cruel, cruel man.

Then consider me cruel.

I made it past the first round of The Yale Series of Younger Poets, but not the 2nd. That was the year W. S. Merwin wanted to award it to no one because none of finalists displayed any sense of narrative.

Grr.

Jennifer|9.29.09 @ 4:16PM|#

The poet doth deserve a firm rebuke;
his whining couplets make me want to puke.
While his existence makes me feel annoyed,
when he drops dead I shall feel schadenfreude.

At least it rhymes, bitchez.

|9.29.09 @ 4:18PM|#

I subscribe to the New Yorker because they occasionally have some stories that are amazing. But lately it's been a real drag. Elizabeth Kolbert, the yuppie enviro-wacko, has been getting free reign and Malcolm Gladwell has been mediocre. The last few months it's been almost exclusively lefty circle-jerking, hilariously fallacious economy-pontificating, and Obama-fellating. I haven't even bothered to read it. The issues just go straight from my mailbox to the magazine holder. I probably won't renew it because I can't even stomach the table of contents anymore.

Hendrick Hertzberg *barf*

|9.29.09 @ 4:23PM|#

I made it past the first round of The Yale Series of Younger Poets

Well, that's too impressive to provide any quality lulz anyways.

Attorney|9.29.09 @ 4:27PM|#

That crap is McBeef bad.

Joette|9.29.09 @ 4:43PM|#

For shame on those of you who besmirch the good name of doggerel by lumping this in the same category. Good doggerel is at least catchy. This is... *shudder* ...I can't even think of a word bad enough. Ugh.

|9.29.09 @ 5:01PM|#

Well, that's too impressive to provide any quality lulz anyways.

Meh. I think 100 people make it through the first round. Basically everyone that doesn't send in a manuscript scrawled in crayon on butcher paper.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.29.09 @ 5:03PM|#

And, if you fail to provide an example of your earnest, college-era narrative poetry, you're a cruel, cruel man.

Hear hear. Narrative poetry roolz. That's what should be making a comeback. Though it's also true that college-era anything pretty much sux, and shouldn't be making a comeback.

But one of these presidential elections, Reporter Number 1,457 traveling with one of the candidates will realize, "I could just write this whole thing up in 100 pages of ottava rima, and it would be a faster and more entertaining read than any of the 400-page campaign accounts it will be competing against."

|9.29.09 @ 5:13PM|#

Woe to the Earth
The couplet's lawful prey
When half-assed poets prosper
And agronomists decay

Spartacus|9.29.09 @ 5:23PM|#

I've reported. You decide if you want to read the whole thing.

Not just no, but hell no.

A Man from Nantucket|9.29.09 @ 5:51PM|#

Where would I be
without poetry?

Jeff P|9.29.09 @ 5:52PM|#

There once was a man from Peru
Whose limericks would stop at line two

Jeff P|9.29.09 @ 5:55PM|#

On cool Autumn nights
I enjoy a nice warm sake
and a nice piece of fish
before taking part in bukkake

twv|9.29.09 @ 5:56PM|#

The rhymes are nowhere nearly as bad as the rhythm. The poem is bad because it almost defies eloquent recitation, except as very bad prose.

|9.29.09 @ 6:10PM|#

The poet doth deserve a firm rebuke;
his whining couplets make me want to puke.
While his existence makes me feel annoyed,
when he drops dead I shall feel schadenfreude.

At least it rhymes, bitchez.

8.5

Bonus point for working in schadenfreude.

|9.29.09 @ 8:03PM|#

But only if you used "annoyed-a"

Jennifer|9.29.09 @ 9:07PM|#

Only if you insist upon pronouncing it the way HITLER and the NAZIS did, Cooper. But I (unlike you ultra-far-right racist scum) am against Nazis and all they stood for.

So there.

Jennifer|9.29.09 @ 9:09PM|#

Except Volkswagens. Those are kind of cool.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.29.09 @ 9:26PM|#

The best reason to use foreign words is so you can mispronounce them.

|9.29.09 @ 9:29PM|#

Miss Dovetonsils is holding a creative writing seminar along similar lines at Yale:

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/09/visual-arts-advancing-cc-dialog/

|9.29.09 @ 10:12PM|#

Only if you insist upon pronouncing it the way HITLER and the NAZIS did, Cooper. But I (unlike you ultra-far-right racist scum) am against Nazis and all they stood for.

Guilty as charged. I like my coffee like my jackboots and uniforms.

Smith|9.29.09 @ 10:41PM|#

I just followed a link to a magazine called "Reason" which apparently equates "burning the world" with "human progress." Then I watched like 50 commenters agree.

What? That sounds too ridiculous to be true? Well, it happened!

To recap:

First, Wendell Berry condemned things that any person in their right mind would condemn, such as burning the world.

Then, Reason declared that those things equal "human progress."

Lastly, a bunch of morons had themselves a little Two Minutes Hate against the crazy madman who thinks burning the world is a bad thing!

Jennifer|9.29.09 @ 10:46PM|#

Wendell Berry condemned things that any person in their right mind would condemn, such as burning the world.

I also condemn things that any person in their right mind would condemn, like poetry with all the rhythm of an epileptic seizure.

Jay|9.29.09 @ 11:01PM|#

Here is a copy of the leaked Cap and Trade Bill being negotiated behind closed doors in the Senate:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12300793/Leaked-Cap-and-Trade-Bill

|9.29.09 @ 11:18PM|#

I like my coffee like my jackboots and uniforms.

I like my jackboots and uniforms. You have to say one thing for the Nazis, they sure knew how to dress.

|9.29.09 @ 11:31PM|#

Smith, we don't take shoddy science for granted. And the "science" behind human-driven climate change--what little there is--is rife with data integrity problems, politically-driven grant recipients, and general scandal.

If you really want me to go over it for the eightieth time, just say the words and I'll oblige.

D-FENS|9.29.09 @ 11:38PM|#

There once was a man from Peru
Whose limericks would stop at line two

There once was a man from Verdun

Smith|9.30.09 @ 12:00AM|#

DanD, your rant about science doesn't address what I'm so fascinated by, which is the blogger here equating the things Wendell Berry is criticizing with "human progress." The blogger didn't say "Wendell Berry would be right to condemn those things if they were true, but they're not true, he's just been fooled by bad science." He said, rather, that by condemning those things, Berry condemns human progress.

Again, if this site is going to be called Reason, it would help if you'd all brush up on your reasoning skills a bit.

|9.30.09 @ 1:12AM|#

I think this blog post is more about mocking someone for writing bad, pretentious, PC poetry than anything else. You'll certainly see plenty of articles examining the problems with the modern green movement elsewhere on this site, but mocking the overweening ego of a self-appointed "artiste" on behalf of the planet deserves space too.

Of course, if you want to defend the artistic merit of the poem, please go ahead.

Anonymous|9.30.09 @ 3:08AM|#

Again, if this site is going to be called Reason, it would help if you'd all brush up on your reasoning skills a bit.

Hello, my name is Smith, and I've been sober for one hour and twelve minutes.

+HoM&Ms|9.30.09 @ 3:16AM|#

"By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that's fast or cheap to falsify...
Why not survive
By Nature's laws that still keep us alive?"

Smith, I think those are the bits that make it sound like Wendell is condemning human progress. I'll just ditto PapayaSF @ 3:43pm.

Also, I don't know if he understands the meaning of the word "falsify".

|9.30.09 @ 4:00AM|#

Percy Dovetonsils. Classic Kovacs.

|9.30.09 @ 8:45AM|#

I will gladly read more of Wendell any time - but no more of this column. The author and fans seem to be about as real as the picture that accompanies it.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.30.09 @ 11:49AM|#

I just followed a link to a magazine called "Reason" which apparently equates "burning the world" with "human progress."

To the extent that this poem has any interest at all, it's because Berry's critique is so insanely broad. He doesn't want us to meet the demand for inexpensive food. He wants six billion people to be fed out of "gardens." He wants us not just to limit but to abandon the use of internal combustion, which has been responsible for the greatest advance in human welfare since the invention of fire.

For that matter, does he approve of fire? (At least, as anything other than a lazy rhyme with "higher?") As Bill Gates said of the Unabomber, I don't know what technology he wants us to go back to. But the poem provides a clue, with its invocation of the "Wheel of Life," a literally Medieval concept. So maybe astrolabes and bloodletting are OK?

In any event, this poem is manifestly critical of progress.

But you're right. We can all agree that "burning the world" is as bad as kicking puppies and torturing infants. Kudos to Berry for daring to stand against it.

|10.7.09 @ 8:06AM|#

You say he wants six billion people to live out of gardens. What do you think most of the world lives out of? Super Wal-Mart? I have to tell you that you are quite amiss here. Most of the world lives off of the land they live on. Where do you think people in rural areas of the developing world get their food from? Really? Reason people!

Tim Cavanaugh|9.30.09 @ 11:50AM|#

And of course, fire was tamed, not invented. Double dumbass on me.

Jennifer|9.30.09 @ 12:39PM|#

Tell me, Tim, what's your stance on a worldwide nuclear holocaust exterminating all of humanity: for or against?

Smith|9.30.09 @ 7:23PM|#

+HoM&Ms -- Okay, my mistake, it's not Berry's opposition to burning the world that you all take offense to, but 1) his opposition to greed, 2) his opposition to poisonous artificial mockups of food being marketed to the public as "fast food" and 3) his support for acknowledging that we are dependent on the laws of nature (which, again, anyone with the ability to Reason must acknolwedge.)

Tim Cavanaugh -- We already know you think the poem is critical of progress. We already know that because you already said it. But since Berry doesn't mention progress in the poem, what's happening here is that you're equating the things he is actually critical of with progress. And I'm simply expressing my amazement that you think things like greed, or being in denial of the fact that we live on a planet and are subject to the laws of nature, or burning the planet in question (and the obsession you all have with global warming as some kind of hoax or conspiracy is irrelevant here, because Berry never mentions global warming--the image of "burning the world" could just as easily be interpreted as referring to us burning through all the natural resources the world has provided us as if they are endless. For example, we literally burn oil. We burn it in such quantities that there isn't much of it left, which is a problem since we've made ourselves completely dependent on it) are signs of "human progress". And on a site called "Reason" no less.

See, most people would see criticism of destroying the things we depend on for survival (such as food, and the things we need in order to grow food, and the resources that the civilization we've built is dependent upon) as quite reasonable. You see it as "progress", which defies all reason.

That's all I'm saying. Change the name of your site to "Fanatical Religious Belief That We Depend On Nothing In Order To Live". Don't call it "Reason", because then you just look silly.

MattXIV|10.1.09 @ 5:01PM|#

such as burning the world.

If you give a man a fire, you'll keep him warm for a day, but if you light man on fire, you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life.

MattXIV|10.1.09 @ 5:02PM|#

Close damn tag!

Kevin Cutrer|10.5.09 @ 9:54AM|#

Re: narrative poetry -- Well, it did make a comeback, of sorts, in the 80's and 90's, with the publication of the small magazine The Reaper. And there are plenty of fine narrative poets out there--David Mason, B.H. Fairchild, Jared Carter, Alfred Corn, are just a handful. It just doesn't happen to be the current trend, which means you have to dig a little to find it.

|10.7.09 @ 8:00AM|#

I suppose the majority of you are correct in criticizing Mr. Berry's poetry, as I can see how inventive and challenging your common vernacular is by your coments. What have you done? Have you challenged anyone in your life in a way that will encourage them to actually change something for the better? Have you offered any real corrective criticism to society? Have you done anything important? Well, yes, I guess you have. You have criticized someone else's work, and have assumed that your criticism itself is work. Bravo. Bravo for creating clouds upon clouds of useless smoke.

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