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POEM READ
“What is it about poets,” asks wronwright, “ that makes them open their big fat mouths and say bad things about Republicans?” He speaks of Nikki Giovanni, whose gubernatorial verse recently earned press attention:
If Ken Blackwell becomes Ohio’s governor, don’t look for Nikki Giovanni to be appointed the state’s poet laureate.
Giovanni shocked the crowd Saturday as she read her dedicatory poem on Fountain Square by referring to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, as a “son of a bitch” and a “political whore."
Wronwright continues, in comments: “I’d bet she’s in the Humanities Department of some large state-funded university too.” Man, that’s the safest Ohio-related bet since October 19th 2004. Rob Crawford quickly located the evidence:
Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.
UPDATE. In other literary developments, Melbourne University creative writing student Jenny Sinclair is worked up about Wikipedia:
On Wikipedia, Australian literature exists in a patchy, arbitrary fashion, depending on whether someone has bothered to create an entry or not.
What do you expect, Jen? Wikipedia doesn’t pay grants.
(Via MF)
Harharharhar, I’ve got a vision of Ms Giovanni scribbling her poems in a darkened coffee shop, beret canted to the side, all serious-faced in the smokey room, saying, “I’ve just got to finish this poem… help me out, what rhymes with douche-bag?”
Posted by lumberjack on 2006 10 15 at 02:43 PM • permalink1: The nice part is that, at VT, she’s basically a token hard-leftie. I’m a Tech alumnus, and I can assure you it’s one of the most conservative public universities around (in addition to being a generally damn fine school).
Something about being out in the mountains of Southwest Virginia tends to filter out much of the most common strains of university-related political lunacy.
Ozzie Arts, never fully appreciated. You want some Ozlit...here’s some Ozlit:
Geebung Polo Club, by Banjo Patterson
It was somewhere up the country in a land of rock and scrub,
That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.
They were long and wiry natives of the rugged mountainside,
And the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn’t ride;
But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash -
They had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
Though their coats were quite unpolished, and their manes and tails were long.
And they used to train those ponies wheeling cattle in the scrub:
They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club.It was somewhere down the country, in a city’s smoke and steam,
That a polo club existed, called the Cuff and Collar Team.
As a social institution ‘twas a marvellous success,
For the members were distinguished by exclusiveness and dress.
They had natty little ponies that were nice, and smooth, and sleek,
For their cultivated owners only rode ‘em once a week.
So they started up the country in pursuit of sport and fame,
For they meant to show the Geebungs how they ought to play the game;
And they took their valets with them - just to give their boots a rub
Ere they started operations on the Geebung Polo Club.Now my readers can imagine how the contest ebbed and flowed,
When the Geebung boys got going it was time to clear the road;
And the game was so terrific that ere half the time was gone
A spectator’s leg was broken - just from merely looking on.
For they waddied one another till the plain was strewn with dead,
While the score was kept so even that they neither got ahead.
And the Cuff and Collar captain, when he tumbled off to die,
Was the last surviving player - so the game was called a tie.Then the captain of the Geebungs raised him slowly from the ground,
Though his wounds were mostly mortal, yet he fiercely gazed around;
There was no one to oppose him - all the rest were in a trance,
So he scrambled on his pony for his last expiring chance,
For he meant to make an effort to get victory to his side;
So he struck at goal - and missed it - then he tumbled off and died.By the old Campaspe River, where the breezes shake the grass,
There’s a row of little gravestones that the stockmen never pass,
For they bear a crude inscription saying, “Stranger, drop a tear,
For the Cuff and Collar players and the Geebung boys lie here.”
And on misty moonlit evenings, while the dingoes howl around,
You can see their shadows flitting down that phantom polo ground;
You can hear the loud collisions as the flying players meet,
And the rattle of the mallets, and the rush of ponies’ feet,
Till the terrified spectator rides like blazes to the pub -
He’s been haunted by the spectres of the Geebung Polo Club.Posted by crittenden on 2006 10 15 at 02:48 PM • permalinkRob Crawford quickly located the evidence
Damn it. I just knew should have found it myself. Now I have to share credit with Crawford. Damn that Googley thingy and their hard to understand instructions.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 03:07 PM • permalinkJenny should apply for a public-funded research grant to cover the cost of her getting Wiki up to date.
Posted by neoZionoid on 2006 10 15 at 05:09 PM • permalinkBanjo Patterson is indeed a great poet but he doesn’t count as ozlit.
He rhymes.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 10 15 at 05:59 PM • permalinkAm I sensing a certain lack of respect for the yartz in this thread? How about the great poet Anon. who I am hoping might convert a few of you philistines…
There was a young man from Leeds
Who swallowed a packet of seeds
Great sprouts of grass
Shot out of his arse
And his cock was covered in weedsPosted by Margos Maid on 2006 10 15 at 06:12 PM • permalinkI’m not a big fan of The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak’s politics, although I admit he can draw well. But isnt this a bit extreme, even for a cartoonist writing a (funny?) essay in The Oz today?
Well I’ve got a word or two for you ad guys out there. You’d better stop talking to me through the speakers attached to my computer because I’m starting to hear messages and they’re not the ones you intended to get across. I’ll listen harder next time but the message I swear I heard coming through—crystal clear—this morning was, “now mate, I want you to go out and buy a gun and start shooting ad guys because they’re evil, Bill, real evil. Demon possessed, they are. Now go on, off you go."http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20586294-7583,00.htmlDamn it. I just knew should have found it myself. Now I have to share credit with Crawford.
HAH!
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 15 at 08:02 PM • permalinkNikki is certainly a sublime poet, but she’s got a long way to go before catching up with my favorite
Consider the subtle beauty of these couplets:Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dogIt weird, I know, but somehow this whole thread scares me…
I know—it’s the memory of all those sweet sheilas from the Geebung Polo Club; from whose open doors I exited, their morning coffee steaming, all rumpled hair and swollen lips, clutching terry-cloth against the dawn’s chill; will he call? Will he call?
What a jerk.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 16 at 02:33 AM • permalinkGosh, Floss, sorry to introduce the exploding owl of rueful youthful associations. That’s a Paterson subtext I’m not familiar with. I thought it was about, you know, class warfare and manly bloodshed ahoof. But as part of the Great Australian Diaspora I get most of my Oz culture remotely.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 10 16 at 08:44 AM • permalinkHate to raise any more disturbing associations, Floss old pal, but I need to know what this one is all about.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 10 16 at 10:31 AM • permalinkThe Geebung to which I refer above was (is?) a very popular music/booze venue in nearby Hawthorn (Melbourne).
And no youth, I, in the early ‘90s—but rather a single Yank in his 40’s with significant disposable income, the gift of the gab and a dab hand at 6 & 12 string finger-style guitar (Kottke, Kaukonen, Fahey, Doc Watson, et alii).
As to #24, you’ll be after a dinky di Aussie to exlain that one, Jules.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 16 at 04:48 PM • permalinkOK, all clear now ... re #24 I just figured, Freudian like, if the Geebung Polo Club calls up memories of polo play, as it were, I gotta know what Mulga Bill’s Bicycle evokes.
Anyway, as a married Yank in my 40s that Geebung scene sounds real good but currently offsides.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 10 16 at 09:24 PM • permalink
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So she’s a “University Distinguished Professor” in the Humanities Department of an engineering college. Isn’t that kind of like being the best basketball player on the New York Yankees.