America, it's hard to get your attention politely

"Patriotics" is my favorite fourth of July poem, and possibly my favorite poem about America. Dr. Baker was my senior writing project director at Denison and is an inspiring teacher and writer. His class on Whitman and Dickinson is one of the major reasons I decided to study nineteenth century American lit. He taught all of us many meaningful lessons, but unfortunately the only two things I can remember him saying are:

1. Emily Dickinson makes Sylvia Plath look like a Disney character.

2. Gin and tonics are great summer drinks.

He took my writing group out for a drink right before graduation and ordered a gin and tonic, and for the entire first year of my M.A program I ordered gin and tonics when the students went out (which wasn't very often). I thought they were really gross, but they seemed literary to me after Dr. Baker ordered one. I figured it was either that or straight vodka like Esther orders at the beginning of The Bell Jar. Oh 22 year old Heather, so much to learn.

Now I am old and I love gin and tonics, and I still love this poem. I usually teach it at the beginning of my American lit classes to begin a discussion about American culture. Students usually read it as a pretty straightforward critique of America: the war mongering, the class discrepancies, the innocent victims of capitalism and personal violence.

Then we talk about the last line and I ask for the two possible meanings of the word "agape." It can mean "with the mouth wide open as in surprise or wonder" or it can mean the highest form of spiritual love, the love of Christ or the unselfish love of people towards each other. That usually makes the conversation more complicated.

Like my relationship with America. But I will let Dr. Baker explain.

Patriotics by David Baker

Yesterday, a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,

out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.

America, it's hard to get your attention politely.

America, the beautiful night is about to blow up

and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops

is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,

and pointing cars across the courthouse grass to park.

It's the Big One one more time, July the 4th,

our country's perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war,

we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,

spray the streets and neighbors' yards with the machine-gun crack

of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.

It's hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,

the entire county must be here---the acned faces of neglect,

the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,

jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy

all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight

when we attack the calm and pointless sky. With terrifying vigor

the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal

halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.

We'll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow

get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others

in the back rooms of our courts and malls--yet what

will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war

but her family's own? The comfort of a welfare plot,

a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers' dreams come true as

nightmare.

So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:

red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague

of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.

America, I'd swear I don't believe in you, but here I am,

and here you are, and here we stand again, agape.

Swallowed and digested

"Years ago I was much entertained by a story told at the Chicago Woman's Club by one of its ablest members in the discussion following a paper of mine on 'The Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall.' She said that when she was a little girl playing in her mother's garden, she one day discovered a small toad who seemed to her very forlorn and lonely, although she did not in the least know how to comfort him, she reluctantly left him to his fate; later in the day, quite at the other end of the garden, she found a large toad, also apparently without family and friends. With a heart full of tender sympathy, she took a stick and by exercising infinite patience and some skill, she finally pushed the little toad through the entire length of the garden into the company of the big toad, when, to her inexpressible horror and surprise, the big toad opened his mouth and swallowed the little one. The moral of the tale was clear applied to people who lived 'where they did not naturally belong,' although I protested that was exactly what we wanted-to be swallowed and digested, to disappear into the bulk of the people." -Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House

Sometimes it seems like Franklinton is swallowing us whole this summer. People are shooting each other. Families are screaming in the streets. Chickens are pecking each other to death. It has been a rough couple of weeks.

I am reading about Jane Addams for the chapter I am working on now. It takes me a long time because I can identify so much with her, a privileged women who loved literature and culture but felt drawn to a life in the slums. A lot of scholars suggest that too close of an identification with your subject leads to bad analysis. I'm sure a lot of scholars would also suggest that constantly stopping your work because kids are knocking on your door leads to bad analysis, too, so I try not to think too much about it.

Here is to disappearing into the bulk of the people!