His Meditation

[dukealien]

His Meditation


Abraham Lincoln
wishing as always
to know what’s best for
his wounded country
wondered what it should
do for the Negroes
(as he would call them)
he’d freed from bondage.

His never-finished
thinking determined
that there should be some
safe reservation
like the Sea Islands
Santo Domingo
or on the Gold Coast
where they could live in
free segregation.

In his great heart he
knew the right answer:
treating each man as
equal in worth - but
honest, admitted
that he could never
happily live with
Negroes as neighbors.

Knowing this he knew
his countrymen would
tolerate freedmen
badly because he
felt himself no more
virtuous than a
Midwestern man which
was but the truth.

[busker]

“Great heart” bring unintentionally ironic here
For a poem that ostensibly attempts to tell the facts, there’s a suspiciously large amount of sympathetic value judgement

[matsunosuperfan]

His Meditation


Abraham Lincoln
wishing as always
to know what’s best for
his wounded country
wondered what it should
do for the Negroes
(as he would call them)
he’d freed from bondage.

His never-finished
thinking determined
that there should be some
safe reservation
like the Sea Islands
Santo Domingo
or on the Gold Coast
where they could live in
free segregation.

In his great heart he
knew the right answer:
treating each man as
equal in worth - but
honest, admitted
that he could never
happily live with
Negroes as neighbors.

Knowing this he knew
his countrymen would
tolerate freedmen
badly because he
felt himself no more
virtuous than a
Midwestern man which
was but the truth.

Poem reads as a deliberately prosaic setup for a punchline that never comes
the experience was not unlike eating cold pea soup

ok I am being hyperbolic to make my point. the las stanza does gain some heat but it's not enough to excuse the boring lecture that precedes it.

"his never-finished thinking" is a standout line to cut

"felt himself no more virtuous than a Midwestern man" this is pretty darn good, why not just let the speaker be this sharp all the time?

[dukealien]

Well, always a bit of a disappointment to learn I've written rubbish.

At least my shifting evaluation of Lincoln came through, albeit identified as bias.  I've long been in a taking against Abe for the damage he did to the constitutional order, but this aspect impressed me with his honest self-evaluation.  As a gifted trial lawyer he was always a keen student of human nature, but it was refreshing to see how he applied that analysis to himself.

Lincoln's idea for Reconstruction was to "let 'em up easy," as he put it to Grant.  After his assassination, the Radical Republicans went purely punitive instead - including rubbing ex-Confederates' noses in freedmen's rights and privileges - but they couldn't sustain it and Reconstruction basically failed.    A counterfactual Lincoln Reconstruction, easier, more of a Reunion, might have taken more time, or less, but might have (as Abe put it) bound up the nation's wounds without leaving such scars.

[matsunosuperfan]

I think we both need to keep learning the same lesson: a poem is not a lecture, and it should not feel like one.

You've written prose with line breaks, that's the main issue. 

As prose it's not bad! As poetry it fails.

[busker]

a poem is not a lecture, and it should not feel like one.

I think this comment nails it.
The problem with explicit pedagogy in poetry is that there isn't enough room for a proper exposition. I'm sure you could write a book about Abe Lincoln's ambivalence towards the blacks, with a whole bunch of arguments and supporting facts. You don't have that luxury in a poem.

The other problem is that there's a lot of jumping to conclusions going on behind the poem, such as the thinking that the Reconstruction basically failed because of the Republicans and not the fact that Southern culture wasn't totally stamped out and obliterated, like you would with any normal enemy (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan), and the lands resettled wholesale with non-English speaking newcomers from Europe. It could easily be argued that Lincoln was too soft and failed, like all victors who've been too soft. Any half decent book would cover that angle, regardless of the final conclusion, but the poem doesn't do that, and clearly the author's thinking is also limited in this aspect. And so it all comes off as a half baked defence of a slave owning society, stripped of all the tassels and christmas stars.

Lincoln's idea for Reconstruction was to "let 'em up easy," as he put it to Grant.  After his assassination, the Radical Republicans went purely punitive instead - including rubbing ex-Confederates' noses in freedmen's rights and privileges - but they couldn't sustain it and Reconstruction basically failed.

[dukealien]

Thanks to the critics (or interlocutors).  Not to be defensive, but...

This idea of poetry (as non-didactic) may be too limiting.  It may be, for example, that an author could state facts (there was a butterfly, there is a chrysalis) to provoke thoughts about that situation.  The same with facts of human history, perhaps?

Stepping outside the immediate discussion, the central problem with Reconstruction was that the Federals respected Southern/ex-Confederate whites too much to carry out the Radical Republicans' project of extirpating their culture.  To accomplish that, they'd have had to re-mobilize an army the size of the GAR and do a Sherman on the whole eleven-state region.  Jefferson Davis, Saddam-like, ordered Lee to initiate guerilla warfare against that very strategy; Forrest's KKK implemented the guerilla strategy in a more limited form.  There was no way Federal forces consisting of a few regiments could deal with that, and (as Longstreet discovered in New Orleans) militias of freedmen and Unionist locals couldn't stand against Confederate veterans.

That, however, was not in the poem.  At most, it might have made thoughtful readers ponder Lincoln's problem - I make no claims about that being its intent, it just lays out some thoughts about Lincoln's predicament and his reasons for it.  Perhaps it could be more visual - he picks up a pen, dips it in black India ink, and writes a note to himself about the proposed colony on San Salvador, or his Navy's troubles with "contrabands" in the Sea Islands.  Does that sound like something that might pass muster, if well done?

[busker]

That, however, was not in the poem.  At most, it might have made thoughtful readers ponder Lincoln's problem - I make no claims about that being its intent, it just lays out some thoughts about Lincoln's predicament and his reasons for it.  Perhaps it could be more visual - he picks up a pen, dips it in black India ink, and writes a note to himself about the proposed colony on San Salvador, or his Navy's troubles with "contrabands" in the Sea Islands.  Does that sound like something that might pass muster, if well done?

The question remains - what is the poem trying to do?
If it's just telling the facts, then why do you need a poem? A wikipedia entry would do the job better.

If it's explaining or putting forward a point of view, a message, what is that message? 

If it's that 'in the end, Lincoln too didn't want to live alongside blacks as equals, and therein lies the irony', then the 'great heart' etc undercuts that message. It's confusing. Sure, he had a great heart (did he? it was other men and their children who were dying, not him...but that's another story) compared to, say, Leopold II, but that's not saying much. 

If the message is that 'Lincoln was all right, but knew that his countrymen were utter and rabid bigots', then the lack of a value judgement on said countrymen is puzzling. It's like writing a  poem sans irony humanising the commanders of Belzec, Sobibor, Maidanek, Chelmno, Mauthausen, Belsen, and Treblinka.

They looked and talked and walked and quacked like humans, we don't need further reassurance about that, so what's the point?

[matsunosuperfan]

A pairof excellent, explicitly political poems I think of as models, hopefully of some use to the poet:

The Colonel
by Carolyn Forché

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them- selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.



The Parade Ends
by Reinaldo Arenas

Passing through the exploding streets,
since the pipes are ready to give out
passing around the buildings we need to dodge,
since they are falling onto us,
between the hostile faces scrutinizing and sentencing us,
between the closed establishments,
closed markets,
closed movie theaters,
closed parks,
closed cafés.
Exhibiting already dusty signs (justifications) occasionally,
CLOSED FOR REFORMS,
CLOSED FOR REPARATION.
What kind of reparation?
When will this alleged reparation, alleged reform end?
When at least
will it begin?
Closed... closed... closed...
everything closed...
I arrive and open the innumerable locks, run up the improvised stairwell.
There she is waiting for me.
I discover her, remove the canvas and contemplate her dusty and cold
dimensions.
I get rid of the dust and caress her.
With the slightest brushes from my palms, I clean her back, her base, her
sides.
I feel desperate, happy, at her side, before her,
I run my hands over her keys, and rapidly, everything is set in motion.
The ta ta, the jingling, the music starts, little by little, already much
faster,
now, at the greatest velocity.
Walls, trees, streets,
cathedrals, faces and beaches,
cells, mini-cells,
giant cells,
starry night, naked
feet, pine groves, clouds
hundreds, thousands,
a million parrots
piano stools and a vine.
Everything shows up, everything arrives, everyone comes.
The walls expand, the ceiling disappears and, naturally, you float,
you float, float ripped apart, swept along,
elevated,
taken, transported, eternalized,
saved, for the sake of, and
for this miniscule and constant cadence,
for this music,
for this incessant jingling.

---

what I mean is, the job is still "make song"

[dukealien]

Well.  I'm beginning to understand what the real message of the poem is, and that (not why) it isn't getting across.  The idea that Lincoln could be good and compassionate while also taking his fellow men - all of them - as they were, simply doesn't compute to (some) readers.  In modernity, "Who says A must say B" is taken as a given rather than one ideological  doctrine among many.

Maybe an argument against this doctrine can be made in emotional, story-telling, fictionalized poetic terms.  Which is to say, an argument that human relations need not always be political, that give-and-take is possible even on popular issues.  It will be rejected by some, but if even one reader takes the point rather than giving up in confusion, it will be worth the effort.  Something about a family Thanksgiving dinner where there are no villains, perhaps.

Musk and the Dark Side.  Hmmm...

[busker]

“ The idea that Lincoln could be good and compassionate while also taking his fellow men - all of them - as they were, simply doesn't compute to (some) readers. In modernity, "Who says A must say B" is taken as a given rather than one ideological doctrine among many.”

People are complex. Hitler was a vegetarian. Where’s the poem in that bland statement of fact?

[matsunosuperfan]

“ The idea that Lincoln could be good and compassionate while also taking his fellow men - all of them - as they were, simply doesn't compute to (some) readers.  In modernity, "Who says A must say B" is taken as a given rather than one ideological  doctrine among many.”

People are complex. Hitler was a vegetarian. Where’s the poem in that bland statement of fact?

Yeah ngl I think this is the first time I've gotten bored reading a COMMENT. Duke, this project badly needs am injection of idk what but SOMETHING <3