At first listening both Wordsworth and Whitman offend my ears.

At first listening both Wordsworth and Whitman offend my ears. They sing a strange music — unnatural rhythms, twisted syntax that has to be reread to be unraveled. 

I have come to a peace with Whitman. His passionate wild flow of images invites surrender - OK, Walt, I’ll open my eyes a little wilder and see more of the world. And Whitman never despairs. I go to him when I’m ready to give up and then I don’t.

I’ve resisted Wordsworth for fifty years. Those stupid sunny daffodils, and the aimless wondering lonely as a cloud, Dear William, you have over-personified yourself out of millions of readers, especially me! Nature personified turns the universe into my crazy aunt, who by the way is one extremely unpleasant woman. 

Thank God, you stole that boat, and also that you dropped (“led by her” referring to Nature) from at least the version presented in this course. This Boat Stealing Episode has some real meat to it. Childhood has its pleasant moments. Rowing a boat into the night sounds fun, until the boogieman mountain shows up and haunts your dreams. 

I judge a poem by what I’m left with when the poem goes away. I have to admit, I’m left with a lot here. Wonderful images, the strength of the oar’s stroke, the glide through the water, the “troubled pleasures” of the night. I feel the painted scene as an image. It’s wonderful and complete and then the terrible nameless fear appears and for once Wordsworth doesn’t personify:

“… huge and mighty Forms, that do not live 
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind 
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.”

The darkness of our nature remains just that. 

Well, done. I may come to peace with William yet.

Wordsworth

Poetry, Marianne Moore said, creates “…imaginary gardens with real toads in them…”

I’m a retired American teacher who spent my summer leisures nourishing a backyard garden sheltered behind a six foot fence. I’m sitting there now in the middle of a fall afternoon, no lessons to write, no papers to grade. My garden is a dense leafy place with sunny spots for clusters of day-lilies and roses, and shades for ferns and hostas. The fence keeps out my neighbors and their dogs but not their cats. Two bird feeders invite in a thousand birds and their song. Chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels are also welcome. Raccoons are definitely not.

This account of my garden is very like Wordsworth’s letter - an account of the landscape and a measure of his place in Nature from the shelter of his house. The letter is as frank and commonplace as any passage from Thoreau’s writings. Thoreau pitied the man who lived in the world and had no time to pay attention to a wildflower. He found an economy and harmony in nature, two qualities reflected in both his prose and poetry. Wordsworth’s prose is proof that he knew to look out the window and frequently walk out the door.

Once he was out the door and in a poetical mood, however, things could get really weird. Icy brooks and naked trees started asking questions like “Whence come ye? To what end?” I’m more than just put off by the devise of using personification to describe the natural world. I become concerned that the writer is somehow completely out of touch with the reality of the planet, lost in his imagination, trapped in his words, unable to see the world and perhaps not to be trusted with preserving it. Wordsworth’s Nature poetry seems to be all about how Nature makes William feel and not at all about the natural world.

I’m new to studying Wordsworth, and I fear I have a long way to go toward understanding his importance. I’ve been put off by “a host of golden daffodils” and such nonsense for sixty years. Thoreau inspired my garden - a quiet place to just be in nature and partner with it. Wordsworth’s imaginary “Nature” is for me, just that - imaginary. Frankly, I wouldn’t fancy a walk with someone who hears the trees asking him questions. The tall cottonwood tree in my garden holds private conversations with the wind. They don’t need to talk to me; I’m happy just to listen in.

The Jungle EdX Course

I’ve been around too long to discuss American politics in the middle of a course, so I’ll try to subdue myself and stick to the facts of this remarkable man and his remarkable book. 

The book had a remarkable influence on American policy in the first half of the 20th Century. Both Roosevelts created Federal programs that responded to the conditions that Sinclair so vividly described in the book. 

Sinclair’s political campaign and his EPIC program may have had substantial influence on Franklin Roosevelt programs, but I don’t have knowledge of the degree. 

Sinclair’s influence on the American Humanities is clearer. The Jungle influenced a generation of American artists, writers, and film makers - Steinbeck, Sandburg, Don Passos, Capra - who provided the moral background for three generations of progress and social change that ended with the tragic and destructive election of Ronald Reagan. 

The ancient Greeks taught us that a civilization depends on the quality, courage, and the range of influence of its artists and thinkers. Sinclair’s writings had both moral truth and a vast range of influence. Simple truths, simply presented have great power. Other writers explored Sinclair’s ideas with greater depth and skill but his voice still echoes in the conversation.

Food Production

I’ve taken two MOOC’s — Dr. Yuval Harari’s Brief History of HumanKind and Dr.Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics — that deal with the ethics of food production. Both provided graphic examples of animal cruelty that could easily be avoided by changes in the food industry that can only take place if large numbers of consumers demand change.  

I was struck by the line in the PBS program “Now” from nearly a decade ago: “We grown millions of chickens that can’t stand up so that we can eat chicken McNuggets while we drive our car.” McDonald’s recently announced that its nuggets would soon be made from uncaged chickens.

Is there a balance to the universe that causes the amount of selfishness and cruelty and the amount of community and compassion to always stay equal to each other?

Reading this book, I find that this America is the same America I live in 100 years later. I’m rethinking my concept of history.  I think my generation believes that the arch of history blends toward justice. I’m no longer sure that’s true. Perhaps believing that the balance between good and evil must be constantly maintained,would produce a better result for the greater number.

Big Ideas are important

Big Ideas are important. Geoffrey Pullum argues that the rules of grammar can never be absolutely strict or absolutely loose. This is a bigger idea than it may seem at a glance. First, it suggests that in the real world grammar must be flexible to be functional. Secondly, it implies that there is no  Eternal Grammar Truth. Rules, usage, function will change over time according to their situation and century.

I functioned as a Middle School English teacher for thirty-some years. It’s a great age to introduce really big ideas like - The rules are always changing, and doubt what you hear, question everything because Eternal Truths are hard to sort out.

Hopefully, you are asking: How did I try to get those big ideas in their young heads while teaching basic grammar? (Good! someone must have taught you to question everything.) First, I made them diagram hundreds of sentences. Sentence diagrams are intricate and difficult to do. They have lots of rules. When completed they are beautiful visual proofs that English has a structure, a framework under the surface. However, staring at a diagram of a sentence with lots of complex and compound clauses and modifiers — you begin to doubt the rules. See, you can move things around and the meaning changes! Is there something more to language than rules?

Finally, to affirm their doubts, I taught a few weeks of Latin. I used the excellent and engaging Cambridge Latin series.  Here all the rules are sorta different and sorta the same. The words are familiar; the order is not. I rarely found a student who rejected Latin Lessons. It was too much fun, and I cheated by having a closet full of togas and props.

When my students left me, they knew language had a basic structure, but that it was flexible and changed over time. The bright ones also had a lot of questions about the whole thing.

A Thunderstorm of Adjectives

A dark summer night, a curtain of heavy rain, thunder confuses the senses and then a bright flash of light from the window reveals the garden: branches are down, heavy chairs have blown into the rose bed, an electrical wire is sparking in the grass. 

The summer before the presidential primaries is usually pretty dull in the United States. Most years in both parties a few candidates, who have been expected to run for years anyway, finally announce that they do in fact want to become President of the country. This summer has been different. Donald Trump, an American billionaire, entered the race with a thunderstorm of predicate adjectives: I am smart, I am rich, successful, and powerful. I am strong.

Everyone else running for the office is stupid, incompetent, powerless, weak, and the worst. Trump avoids specific details and ideologies that require complex descriptions. He is a huge, classy, straight-shooter. His speeches consist of simple boasts stated simply, exactly in the manner and vocabulary of a ten-year-old bragging on the playground. 

We are a nation of immigrants, but there is a growing minority who are scared and want to close the doors for good. Trump’s followers like the sound of a bully who says he’s big and strong and he’ll beat up the foreigner who tries to get in our neighborhood. Pick up your baseball bats, guns, and lynching ropes. Elect Trump and America will beat the crap out of Mexico, China, and the so-called Islamic State.

Nearly a third of Republican voters say they will vote for Trump, thankfully that’s less than a sixth of all American voters. He will never be elected, but this summer’s thunderstorm of adjectives has produced lightening flashes that reveal a dangerous mess in our backyard. 

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

I began the week thinking about two versions of the children’s song “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” and ended up thinking about politics. 

 My granddaughter’s version:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Running through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bopping them on the head!

Unfortunately, bopping field mice is definitely not within the boundaries of the Good Fairy’s moral code and when Little Rabbit refuses to cease his “bopping” activities, she turns him into a Goon.

The version that my wife and I remember is rather different:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head!

 George Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist who writes about  how language creates metaphorical moral frameworks that shape how we reason. Bopping is annoying. Bashing is murderous.  The difference in the two verbs is the wide chasm between two imagined worlds, two very different metaphors - in one there are annoying rabbits, in the other darker world there are murderous ones.  If I was a field mouse, I know which imagined world I would choose to live in: Could I have the one with the Bopping, please.

I’ve had the misfortune of listening to a lot of American politicians lately. One group seems to clearly live inside the metaphor: Government is Evil. Actually, in their metaphorical framework a lot of things are Evil. Evil is out there and it will bash you and so will Government, big or little, because Government is Evil.

The other group seems to occupy the metaphor: Government is Community. Within this framework Big Community and Little Community aren’t scary words. Even though there are a lot of boppers out there, if we work together we can solve a lot of problems.

 A couple of facts:

For millions of years, people have needed community to survive.  

Rabbits are herbivores; field mice aren’t on their diet.