In June, Paul Muldoon spoke to graduates of the Bennington College Writing Seminars.
In Oxford this “solemnitie” was called an Act
when baccalaureates were mostly bacchanals
and that the humors reigned was held to be a fact
while God and all His creatures were thought to be pals.
W. H. Auden egged on a Harvard crew
when he was called upon to raise morale
at the ’46 Commencement, lighting the fuse
off his cigarette: “Between the chances, choose the odd;
read The New Yorker; trust in God; and take short views.”
Can’t you imagine Auden shuffling his iPod
as he looks out over the End of the World
in search of something like an Oxford quad
on which a banner may yet be unfurled
that reads “Find What You Love” or “Listen To Your Heart”
or “Get Over Yourself”—any such slogan hurled
between the factions where the battle-lines now part
to reveal our noms de plume as noms de guerre?
The challenge is how to kick-start
ourselves and name some grand ambition shining there
at which we may, albeit briefly, set our caps
before throwing those same caps in the capricious air.
One thought that comes to mind is how to mind the gap
between the world that Auden viewed in ’46
and ours. There was a sense back then the map
might be redrawn to take in post-war politics
both literally and metaphorically.
Our sense now is that we’re in such a fix
the wars we fight are best described as pre-,
since we’re not technically “at war” in Afghanistan,
Iraq, or Libya (where our involvement will be
“brief,” our best President assures us as best he can.)
He also told us Guantánamo would be shut
but it’s as Guantanamobama they’ll spray can
his name should Guantánamo linger as a smut
on corn-fed mid-America and our collective soul,
much like the detention centers with their plywood huts
in which the Japanese were left hanging like scrolls
through World War II. Auden would surely be dismayed
by how Arnold no longer means Matthew on the whole
but Schwarzenegger, who claims that when he played
the “sport” of bodybuilding he used steroids
not for muscle growth but muscle “maintenance.” Having weighed
in before now on the deaths of Yeats and Freud,
Auden would surely want to comment on how shame
has rushed in to fill the unavoidable void
left by compulsive hoarders, losers in every game
from weight loss through loss of face on Facebook
to the housewives who give up their embroidery frames
to embroider the truth with a barbed hook.
Where taloned celebrity has broken up with talent
as in the case of Snooki cocking a snook
at Mavis Cheek and Mavis Gallant
and publishing a tell-all disguised as a freakin’ novel
perhaps the time has come not to try to upset the balance
of low and high where hotel morphs to hovel
but find as Shakespeare found, as Aristophanes found,
that the space where the so-called groundlings grovel
is, in fact, a no less consecrated ground
than the king’s seat, the bishop’s throne, the podium
from which commencement speakers get to sound
off on high fructose corn syrup, low sodium,
and the outmoded hierarchy of academic costume.
Before you turn on me with your odium
theologicum and vote me off the island from the powder room
I urge you to follow your hunches
that noms de guerre are indeed noms de plume
and embrace in your writing high colonics, low punches,
a regard for two-bit shaves and haircuts, for getting back late
from three-martini lunches,
a total disdain for the totally disdaining fourth estate
unless it’s to join it as a fifth column,
to be at sixes and sevens in shooting craps or behind the eight
in rooting for both Gilgamesh and Gollum,
in warding off the latest offensive by Google
on copyright (unless it’s held by them). These, then, are my solemn
admonitions for our “solemnitie” (bugle
and drum roll, please): think outside the frame
unless you’re a photographer; be frugal
in everything but praise; never jump a small claim;
always write “some pig” of the least porker
in the barnyard; remember those who fly far look like fair game;
refuse to pay corkage; make every line a corker;
let your main tactic be tact
and—one constant, if I may—read The New Yorker.
