New Poems

Eight poems inspired by A.A. Milne:

If I were married to the Queen

I think that I would make a scene

I'd say this isn't how it's been

My enemies are all unclean

But after that I'd want to sing

If I were married to the Queen.

-----

If I had a little boy

I think I'd give to him a toy

Not a little pretty doll

That wouldn't suit him, not at all

But a toy that spins and flies around

Though it never leaves the ground

That I think would be quite sound

That indeed would be quite sound

-----

If I were a spider

And sat down beside her

Hoping perhaps I could play

I'd be quite disheartened

And not really smartened

If she were quite frightened away

-----

I wish I had an elephant and rode him to the square

I wish there were some people who said, What have you there?

I do not have an elephant, a tiger, or a drake

I only have a tiny little mouse upon a lake.

-----

A rabbit came a-wandering along a country lane

He held two gloves within his paws and wandered back again

O rabbit, I said to him, rabbit my dear,

Can you explain to us all

Why there's a fool in a stove top hat

Waiting for me in the hall?

-----

It would be nice to have some spice

Though it sadly tickles my nose

And yet I would try it once or twice

Just to see how it goes

-----

You can hear the sea if you stand quite still*

You can listen and know upon a hill

There's all of the world wrapped up in the sea

And maybe there's more of the world to see

Or maybe the world is waiting to be.

*An actual line from "Come Out with Me."

A single line of plagiary.

-----

A poet shouldn't explain his poems

For one thing it might get very long

And worse than that, he might be wrong

And anyway if he tells them through

There isn't much for others to do.

Transformational Grammar

Well, actually I know nothing about transformational grammar, except that it has something to do with Noam Chomsky, and I don't think it has anything to do with what I want to talk about, which is the transformation I have noticed in recent years in the way educated people, or at least young educated people, speak.

I work for the student society at the University of British Columbia. I don't hang out with the students, but I interact with them a fair bit. Also, my colleagues tend to be of a younger demographic, and it was one of these colleagues who first shocked me back in the late 90's when he talked about some meeting he was going to, saying: “Her and I will talk about tuition tomorrow.”

Actually, I don't remember what he said they would talk about; what I do remember is his use of “her and I.” Now, I was brought up to learn a certain sort of grammar in which subjective case was distinguished from objective case. The pronouns I, he, she, they were to be used when they were the subject of a sentence; me, him, her, them was for when these pronouns were used as objects.

Everyone still follows that distinction when there's only one subject or one object, I think. I don't think I've heard people say, “Her will talk to us about tuition tomorrow” or “Me want to go fishing.” (Well, maybe infant would-be fishermen say the latter.)

The change has happened with compound subjects and objects. I would have said, “She and I will meet about tuition” or “John and I will talk about tuition.” But now people will say “Her and I.” I confess that I hear that phrase so much that “She and I” has come to sound a tad precious to my ears, a little stuffy, like something out of a book or out of another century (which of course it is, just like me).

I think I have heard “Me and John will talk about tuition”; I hesitate I suppose because I can't believe that's what people say now, but I'm in fact pretty sure that's what university students and the others I encounter at the student society do say.

Some people would be appalled. In some moods, I'm appalled. It's the fault of the elementary schools, teaching self-esteem and creativity instead of grammar rules, they say. And maybe it is. But I'm not sure fault is the right word. The language always changes. The authors of Beowulf would have been shocked at the way we talk: you use the same word for “the” all the time? Whether it's a subject, an object, an indirect object, a plural, a masculine, or a feminine?

(Yes, Old English had masculine and feminine grammatical forms, like French. In fact, it had a neuter form too, like German, which is not that surprising, since it was German, the German dialect of those Angles and Saxons who travelled from Germany to take over Britain from King Arthur's hardy Celts. But that's another story.)

We have lost the feminine, masculine, neuter distinctions. We have lost the 16 different ways to say “the.” We have lost the distinction between subject and object for nouns; we have retained it only for pronouns (I versus me, he versus him, etc.) -- and now even that may be going.

I wonder if one day “she” will disappear, and we will only have “her.” As between “me” and “I,” that's a tougher one. Though “me” seems to be ousting “I” in “Me and John will discuss tuition,” in places where I was trained to use “me,” “I” has taken over. “That's between John and I,” people say. Or “He gave that to John and I.” There you have “I” used where traditional grammar would say you have to use the objective case (“me”).

So what do we have now (acknowledging that we may be in transition):

Traditional 20th-century grammar:

She and I will meet tomorrow.

John and I will meet tomorrow.

That's between me and John.

He gave that to me and John.

Young People's 21st-century grammar:

Her and I will meet tomorrow.

Me and John will meet tomorrow.

That's between John and I.

He gave that to John and I.

Except the last two sentences may be more common in a slightly older demographic, among people who remember being corrected for using “me” with another pronoun (“Me and John are going out to play”) and deduced that “I” is always to be used when there's another noun or pronoun.

Now I'm not sure how the younger demographic would say those last two sentences. One thing I am sure about is that pronoun cases are interchanged much more readily these days, prompting some to call for a return to the basics in the schools.

“Her and I” is not what I was taught, but I wonder if it's the way of the future, and if one day “she and I” will sound as archaic as the sixteen ways to say “the” or words like “forsooth.” The language moves in mysterious ways.

Robin Williams and Modern Life

I made a comment on Facebook the other day about how after all of us had been feeling sad over Robin Williams, now a water bottle was trending on Downton Abbey: someone had left a modern-day water bottle in a picture for the show, and this historical inaccuracy was now the latest thing among Facebook people. It felt wrong somehow, I said.

Not that I necessarily wanted to wallow in Robin Williams stories for a week, and I especially was not interested in details of his death. His hilarious comedy routines, yes, but not how he took his life. Even that, though, I wouldn't want to go on forever. I'm not sure what I would have wanted, actually. My girl-friend said it was just the contrast that bothered me: the death of a great comic juxtaposed with an unimportant mistake on a TV show.

Perhaps. Perhaps I just wanted a little space after Robin. But space is what the modern world doesn't give us. It was bad enough in the old days, when newspapers had to fill their pages with something, anything, but now it's all the social media all the time, bringing us information, games, jokes, quizzes, whatever.

A recent book talks about how we've lost boredom. There used to be a time when people could get bored, but now there's no chance of that: now every minute is filled somehow, at work, at play, everywhere. There are emails and Tweets and Facebook posts and I don't know what.

And the thing is, I don't particularly have a solution to any of this, nor do I particularly want someone to come up with one. Another aspect of modern life, perhaps, is that we complain about it. So there it is, my complaint. Though complaint sounds too harsh a word. A sigh perhaps, just a sigh. A sigh over I don't know what. Life.

One time not so long ago, Craig Ferguson, my favourite late night talk show host (now soon to depart, alas), received an email in his email-reading segment asking about the Jonas Brothers. Whatever happened to them, the email asked? And Craig just shrugged a bit and said, “Well ...”

Time passes, things move on, the current big story gives way to the next big story (or the next trivial story), and then ... well, who knows? We are but a moment's sunshine.

Free to Go

I was watching a TV crime drama tonight, a rerun of Boston Legal actually, so drama may not be the right word: it’s too full of comedy and romance, but basically drama, and I was struck by a typical dramatic moment, typical for courtroom dramas, I mean.  The jury comes back, declares the defendant Not Guilty, and the judge says, “You are free to go.”

Free to go, yes, but go where?  For days or weeks the defendant has been caught up in this drama, this challenge, this struggle: how much it defines her, how it gives meaning to this segment of her life, and then suddenly the struggle is over, the game is won, and she can go home.

I guess that will be where she goes: home.  But we haven’t even seen her at home; we’ve just seen her at her trial; that’s been her whole life, and now it’s over.  It’s a bit like working, and then retiring.  Or if not as dramatic as that, like finishing some major project and not knowing what to do next.  Where does one go when one is free to go?  Is freedom what we really want?  Maybe we want the opposite of freedom, maybe we want to have to struggle.  What is life without struggle?

I read a letter to the editor earlier today opposing euthanasia as the easy way out and arguing for suffering: suffering is what makes us human, the letter writer argued, and I wasn’t entirely convinced, but maybe …  Suffering may be going too far, but you want a little struggle in your life.  If you play a game, you want to play against someone who could beat you: you try to make sure they can’t, but if you actually know they can’t, where’s the fun in that?  To win without risk is to triumph without glory, as someone once said.

It’s the free to go part that makes me nervous.  After the trial, after the game, what then?  Wandering in a wasteland of freedom, without purpose, without direction …  Let us be bound by something and struggle to be free, and if we get free, let us struggle again.

Partial Truths and Errors

Following up on my last post, I was thinking today about an incident a couple of evenings ago, when my girl-friend came to pick me up on campus.  “I’m in a little roundabout in front of a construction site,” she said.  Oh, that’s the New SUB, I replied, and headed off for it.

It wasn’t the New SUB, though; it was the Alumni Centre (another new construction).  But not to worry, the two new buildings are right beside each other, so it was easy to find her.

I pondered this later.  Error had led me not astray, but to the right place.  A little learning is a dangerous thing, Pope once said, so perhaps a little error is useful?  I’m not sure that’s what he had in mind; I fear he was one of the devotees of System and warned against partial knowledge in the hopes of bringing people to Full Knowledge, Complete Learning, or whatever.

I certainly agree that a little learning can be dangerous.  I once told this to a class of mine and when they asked for an example thought of my situation arriving in a city where traffic was allowed to turn right on a red light.  Having been raised in a city where red meant stop, period, I suddenly was in a state of partial and thus dangerous knowledge.  I needed to learn that in Toronto cars might be turning on me even when I thought I had the right of way.

So I’m all for fuller knowledge (and not being run over), and I know the dangers of thinking you know before you know, but you can never know all; there are always things to learn; one shouldn’t think there will be a time when your knowledge will be complete.  And sometimes a little error can lead you in the right direction.

Skepticism and Belief

I took an interesting course on Greek philosophy this week, with a little Buddhism thrown in as a fillip, and what we learned was that there are all sorts of approaches to happiness (the theme of the course), leading one of the students to ask the instructor, “But which approach to happiness do you follow?”

To which the instructor, a young thirty-something type half the age of most of the students, replied, “Aristotle says that’s the sort of thing you shouldn’t ask a young man.”

(Instructors are so much younger nowadays.)

Another student raised the issue of post-modernism.  She’s taking a course on that too, and learning of its onslaught on absolutes and its claim that everything is relative.  “What can young people believe today if they are bereft of fundamental beliefs?”  (I paraphrase.)

To which the instructor replied that his young students do still seek belief, even if there is no longer a unified foundation like medieval Christianity to rely on.

Which I would agree with.  We seem to be in the midst of developing a new world view, at least in the West or on university campuses in the West: a world view based on environmentalism, science, identity politics, and political correctness.  There are good guys and bad guys, angels and demons, in a way reminiscent of earlier philosophies and religions (more the religions than the philosophies, I’d say).

It’s a development that makes me uneasy, because just as my ancestors didn’t fit with the dominant world view in Christian Europe, so I fear I don’t fit with the believers in climate change and the evils of “white male privilege.”  But more than that, more than not fitting in with the contents of the latest beliefs, I fear I don’t fit in with the culture of belief per se – which might make me sound like a post-modernist, only I don’t believe in them either.  I’m a skeptic perhaps – or perhaps I’m an eclectic.

The upshot of our final discussion was that people today are more eclectic.  Given all the philosophies out there, people pick and choose.  I think this is true too, though it is in opposition to the drive I’ve just outlined, the drive for the one Pure Belief, the true cause.  Perhaps after this period of eclecticism, we will end (though I shouldn’t say “end”) with One Big Belief again, a new anti-religion Religion.

It’s not where I want to go, but it may be where we’re heading.

Literary Lives

I wrote a letter to the London Review of Books today.  Don’t know if they’ll print it.  I once came close to getting published in them.  They wrote saying a letter of mine was being considered for publication – but it never appeared.  Perhaps it was too late.  In those days I was months behind in my reading, so they may have felt my comments were no longer timely (referring as they did to something months old).

That didn’t stop the Times Literary Supplement years before when I published my most famous letter, the one that got me in People magazine.  You were mentioned in People, some people would ask?  They didn’t believe it.  One didn’t even believe it when I showed her a copy of the magazine.  It must be some other Sheldon Goldfarb, she said.

Uh huh.

Anyway, this time I wrote as part of my campaign to get the LRB to return to its tradition of reviewing literary biographies.  And by reviewing I mean publishing long, leisurely review-essays which present the biography themselves, so you don’t even have to read the book – and who wants to read hundreds of pages of minutiae about anyone, even a writer – and I do like reading about writers, but in bite-sized format, a few thousand words, not a few hundred pages, just enough to get the essence of the life.  I relish those.

But the LRB (and the New York Review of Books too, alas) have turned from this.  Perhaps it is the “death of the author” craze that swept academia decades ago finally percolating into the more general public journals.  Or a distrust of “essentialism,” of believing you can sum up anyone’s life in an essay, which of course you can’t really – but you can try.

The LRB and the NYRB have given up trying, at least for writers; they do seem to publish review-essay biographies of non-writers occasionally, but it’s not the same – and I should note that the NYRB may have reversed itself recently, so I have resubscribed.  One lives in hope.

Many years ago when I expressed an interest in writers’ lives, a literature professor of mine reacted dismissively.  “You’re interested in gossip?” he said.  I felt cowed.  But I’m thinking now, “No, not gossip, humanity.  I’m interested in people’s lives – though not all people’s lives – reviews of painters leave me cold.  Reviews of anyone not a writer leave me not entirely satisfied.

Now, I don’t mean I want literary criticism.  I’ve read my fair share of literary criticism for various graduate degrees.  It’s useful but seldom entertaining or enthralling.  No, what I want is to follow some writer’s life, to learn where they were born, to see them grow up, to see them become a writer, to learn how they functioned in the world.

In a way, it’s the same story over and over.  The lonely, disaffected creative person finding their voice.  Yet I love to read about them, the more the better.  It’s like when I was ten years old and had to read a new Superman comic every week, or reading yet another Agatha Christie mystery, or watching another Mentalist episode (well, they’ve gone off, so I don’t do that anymore).  It’s the pleasure of routine.  The new that is yet the same.  And I wish the LRB would give it back to me.