Scathing Misanthropy Finally Achieved
It finally happened. I've written my very own "telling a student off" poem. And, it's a half-way good poem. Because, you know, I got The Question again.
"Headline: Student Irritates Lit Prof"
Why do we have to study literature at art school?
We won't use it in our careers.
You will tell stories -- what do you think you will "animate"?
You will make metaphors -- that's what stories are.
You will live in metaphors -- The Long War.
You will need to think with sophistication: The War of Civilizations.
Metaphor teaches paradox : paradox teaches complexity.
Shut up.
We learned how to analyze in high school.
You failed the first two papers in this class.
You people
bore me:
aggressive, unrepentant stupidity
bores me.
All oppression
bores me.
I begin, the moment
your "mind" meets breath,
breath teeth,
to rehearse the rich pageant
of life's tapestry --
warp of philosophy,
woof of poetry,
the shimmer and whack of imagination,
keeps us alive in dark times --
that you refuse to know
and
resent me for showing you.
I did not betray you reading
Homer and Bergson and Murdoch and Graham.
Nor did they when they wrote.
We were trying to love you.
Why do we have to document our sources? Rappers just sample.
My mind belongs to you no more than my body,
and would joyfully destroy you for trying my possession.
God, how dull are your eyes,
even when you question authority
you look sleepy, dispirited,
more your conversation,
more your certainty.
Dull, predictable, ugly,
the same little lazy rebellion every semester,
for generations.
Oh, even your irritations are boring,
have no rhythm, tension,
swoop and shock of flightful words,
evoke no patience,
empathy, motherly wish to abate the pain.
Your tedium renders me Zeus-like:
restless, turgid, rapacious.
People have died, die now, will die,
even here,
for the chance to read poetry,
or fiction, or philosophy, or journalism,
or history, or funny jokes,
to feed on the unfolding
of uncertainty -- where freedom is --
where you will never follow.
"Headline: Student Irritates Lit Prof"
Why do we have to study literature at art school?
We won't use it in our careers.
You will tell stories -- what do you think you will "animate"?
You will make metaphors -- that's what stories are.
You will live in metaphors -- The Long War.
You will need to think with sophistication: The War of Civilizations.
Metaphor teaches paradox : paradox teaches complexity.
Shut up.
We learned how to analyze in high school.
You failed the first two papers in this class.
You people
bore me:
aggressive, unrepentant stupidity
bores me.
All oppression
bores me.
I begin, the moment
your "mind" meets breath,
breath teeth,
to rehearse the rich pageant
of life's tapestry --
warp of philosophy,
woof of poetry,
the shimmer and whack of imagination,
keeps us alive in dark times --
that you refuse to know
and
resent me for showing you.
I did not betray you reading
Homer and Bergson and Murdoch and Graham.
Nor did they when they wrote.
We were trying to love you.
Why do we have to document our sources? Rappers just sample.
My mind belongs to you no more than my body,
and would joyfully destroy you for trying my possession.
God, how dull are your eyes,
even when you question authority
you look sleepy, dispirited,
more your conversation,
more your certainty.
Dull, predictable, ugly,
the same little lazy rebellion every semester,
for generations.
Oh, even your irritations are boring,
have no rhythm, tension,
swoop and shock of flightful words,
evoke no patience,
empathy, motherly wish to abate the pain.
Your tedium renders me Zeus-like:
restless, turgid, rapacious.
People have died, die now, will die,
even here,
for the chance to read poetry,
or fiction, or philosophy, or journalism,
or history, or funny jokes,
to feed on the unfolding
of uncertainty -- where freedom is --
where you will never follow.