"Truck Vs Macbook Pro" by Jase n tonic

In the middle of an otherwise sane conversation about computer programs that construct news stories as search engine fodder, Bob – unprovoked – begins shouting nonsense.

This is the second time that I’ve ever pulled a clip out of a radio show for discussion here. I hope it’s the last time I need to do this with Bob:

“Take that, Computers! Only humans can write poetry!”

I want you to notice some things about this outburst:

1. Notice the slurred voice. Not so much in, “Take that, Computers!” but in “Only humans can write poetry!” Either Bob’s coffee is in need of a sniff-test, 0r he found an old Quaalude stash. Or his mind is slipping.

2. Notice that the interviewee, like a good radio guest, repeats what he was saying before he was interrupted – which means the crazy could have been edited out.

3. The crazy could have been edited out, and “On the Media,” as we have teased them before, is edited… by Brooke. Brooke left that in there for a reason.

Kerry and I conferred on the possible motivations for such actions: maybe there’s a bet as to who can sell the most books. Maybe Bob is really just going that crazy from having his love for Brooke go unrequited for so long.

Or maybe – and this is my preferred theory – Bob has just discovered that the government-issued rations, provided by the Soylent Corporation, are actually processed from the bodies of humans who have either become to aged to contribute to a starved society or who just have t0o difficult a time living so far below the poverty line. But now that he knows, he must, at all costs, risk his job with the police force to let the world know that it’s people! Soylent Green is people! You must tell them, oh the humanity!

That, or Brooke just wanted her intelligent, well thought out piece on Nabokov’s unfinished novel to sound even more reasoned and insightful than it would have otherwise. Which, holy crap, would sound reasoned and insightful anyway – she insists that a literary critic justify the fact that he considers Kafka to be an exception to an arbitrary rule.

By the way, I’ve always pronounced “Nabokov” “Nab-0-KAV,” whereas Brooke pronounces it “Na-BOK-off.” Who’s right? And who, other than the Nabokov family decides that?

This “On the Media” Highlights post was written by Matthew, for once in the presence of Kerry, who, while hearing Matthew edit the clip above, just sighed, “Thank God there’s an us, protecting public radio from itself.”

This effect is most pronounced when the person talking needs to explain the relevance of the subject. One of the greatest strengths of “Planet Money” is that the show’s staff is learning along with the rest of us. They’re able to explain in layman’s terms why news is important because they’re laymen themselves.

You’ll notice that “Marketplace” doesn’t take this tack. They assume you already know why almost any story having to do with money is important – money, after all, makes the world go round.

That’s great for people who already know a lot about money, just as the “Writer’s Almanac” is great for people who already care about literature, but neither program does a damn thing to explain why their subject is important, let alone bring you up to speed if you’re coming around.

Normally, Brooke, Bob, and everyone on the “On the Media” staff does a remarkable job of clueing the listener in on why their stories are interesting and relevant. Which means I need to expand a little bit on something I said last night.

I said both “the story tends to drone on into one of Bob’s favorite topics” and “Brooke, too, falters a little bit (to my ears) when talking about one of her favorite topics.”

Sadly, when they get to report on stories that they’re passionate about the result is lackluster – though their enthusiasm shines through, their real strength lies in getting us to care. When the host already cares passionately about their subject, it’s easy to forget that the audience doesn’t automatically agree.

I know that I’m not innocent of this. I like serious poetry, and I care deeply about the craft and literary criticism. But if I start talking about it to Kerry without illustrating why it’s important to the conversation, I’m met with either a blank stare or the sentence “stop being pretentious.”

Nevermind that pretentiousness implies to me a sense of forced superiority, not the excited feeling of “hey, I really like talking about this, let’s talk about this, come on, let’s go!”

Public radio – when you get past the smooth and smarmy voices – is full of people like me, who are curious and eager to just explore the world, figure out how it fits together, and to learn why that’s important. And it’s at its best when it’s slightly out of its area of expertise.

Granted, I have a friend who owns a glass studio and she makes money by teaching classes, taking commissioned work and selling her other work. But to someone like me that has a steady 9-5 office job, that seems kind of crazy.

NPR’s doing a series called “How Artists Make Money” that features a choreographer, a poet, a band, a playwright and a visual artist. All of the stories are different, but they all seem to be about the artists in question doing things a little differently. A painter sells on ebay, a poet has a day job in finance.

Thanks, NPR, for answering my lingering questions. It’s one of my favorite things about your programming.

Also, there was a story on Morning Edition today by Amanda Dyer about donations at cash registers. I’ve never heard Ms. Dyer before, so I can only assume that she’s a newbie reporter. If that’s the case, welcome! You’ll find your public radio name and worldly accent in your locker next to your thick frame glasses.

At any given second, there is so much life demanding to be lived that living becomes an exercise in constantly giving up the lives you could have. I am not very talented at letting those lives go.

Which is a huge reason I love the poetry of Dean Young. Not that he is any better or worse than me at letting go of potential outcomes, but the man knows how to express that flitting back and forth between dread and joy.

And in his poem, “Resignation Letter,” Young deals with lost opportunity and death with the same even hand of a man who had to drop something else to do it, writing that “The student moves to the next blank, leaving the previous unfilled. So much life we cannot have, or find, or repeat. Yet so much we have had, and found.”

I have to get ready for work now, which means putting this post, which feels largely unfinished, to bed. I’m tempted to dwell upon what this post might have become, but that behavior is strongly anti-productive.

You get used to it anyway.

But listening to “Morning Edition” this morning, Kerry and I heard this terrible limerick regarding a judge’s reaction to a lawsuit whose “short and plain” allegations stretched to 495 pages, with an eight-page title.

Dave Eggers should watch out. Someone’s stepping on his gloriously long-winded groove.

Oh, the limerick?

Plaintiff has a great deal to say,
but it seems he skipped Rule 8-a.
His complaint is too long,
which renders it wrong.
Please rewrite and refile today.

It’s bad, owing in no small part to the fact that it’s not even dirty. Then there’s the harsh masculine rhymes, but whatever. It should still be dirty. It’s a damn limerick.

That crime? Overdramatic high school girls memorizing poems and reciting them as though they were all–even the funny poems–death scenes from Greek tragedies. Part of the Poetry Foundation’s National Poetry Month celebrations includes a nationwide recitation contest for high schoolers called Poetry Out Loud.

It’s funny, sure, that these kids are misguidedly dramatic. But it’s also a little offensive to my sensibilities.

I have to worry that maybe leaving my craft in the hands and throats of people like this maybe isn’t the best idea ever. When I write poetry, which is a lot, I don’t want it to be read in “the Poetry Voice.” I–and most writers I dig–just try to catch the ordinary flow of speech.

So adding these stentorian tones that these kids, like so many young Dylan Thomases, seem to think is automatically a part of poetry just creates this ridiculous spectacle of even the most ordinary poems. They’d make William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Tell You,” which, while richly layered, is JUST A LETTER AND SHOULD BE READ OUT LOUD AS SUCH, into some vast King Lear victory soliloquy.

Take New Jersey finalist, Alison Strong, who chose to read Sylvia Plath’s “Fever 103.” In this story from All Things Considered, where she says that “It’s very easy to get a little overdramatic with that poem.” No kidding. I imagine her dressed up as Annette Benning’s character in “American Beauty,” holding her hand precisely three inches in front of her face and perfectly vertical to stifle an ‘oh GOD I am SO NAUGHTY’ giggle when she says:

I flailed my arms around and I was screaming and it was RIDICULOUS.

Ridiculous? Really? I’m sure that’s a little harsh, Ms. Strong. Your faulty parallelism was a bit ridiculous, but I’ll let it slide. I wasn’t much better on the radio.

Elizabeth Blair reports that Strong also read Allen Ginsberg’s “Supermarket.” Which, I have to say, she didn’t. There is no way. There is no Ginsberg poem called “Supermarket.” She read Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California.”

I’m just not sure poetry should be taught like drama rather than, oh I don’t know, poetry?

Never mind the fact that I only started reading and writing poetry to impress a girl in my high school theatre class. Or that it totally worked.

Read like speech. Not like Dylan Thomas, drunk and rocking back and forth in front of the gramophone’s recording mechanism, pleading “do NOT go GEN tle into THAT GOOD NIGHT.”

Or do, if you’re reading that poem. Leave it to Dylan Thomas to turn one of his own poems, which happens to be the most affecting father-son poem ever, into sheer overdramatic hilarity. And then collapse to drown in the gutter.

The declared the winner last night, and All Things Considered reported it this afternoon. But I don’t have the heart to listen. Please, stop the madness.

The submissions guide on “This American Life’s” Web site says they don’t do poetry very frequently, as they “find that it’s hard to do poetry or drama on the radio without sounding corny.”

Depending on your point of view, this shows either an ignorance or an intimate knowledge of the career of Garrison Keillor.

Despite their hesitancy to use poetry in their broadcasts, the tail-end of this last week’s “This American Life” had a section on William Carlos William’s famous poem, “This is Just To Say.” You know the one. About the plums.

There’s some interesting play with the poem, and if you’ll follow the jump, I’ll reward you with a link.

In this episode, poet and reporter for “Marketplace” Sean Cole:

explains that this is possibly the most spoofed poem around. We asked some of our regular contributors to get into the act. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Goldstein, Shalom Auslander and Heather O’Neill, all came upwith their own variations of Williams’s classic lines.

I was surprised to find that Sarah Vowell’s was not my favorite, given the big boy-girl thing I have for her. Starlee Kine’s though, seems to draw heavily from her recent experiences – also covered on another episode of “This American Life” – and makes the same kind of non-apology I feel like I should make to my last ex-girlfriend. It’s touching, really.

But they also mentioned Kenneth Koch’s “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams,” which I happen to be memorizing for a poetry class. And because it’s relevant, I’m going to try, right here, to transcribe it from memory. If I mess up, let me know in the comments. Here goes:

“Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams”

1.
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do,
and its warm beams were so inviting.

2.
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3.
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4.
Last evening, we went dancing, and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the Doctor!

(image credit: “Ira_Glass_005” by Flickr user kuer90.1)