The American Poet

In evangellyfish circles there used to be a joke thus —

Let us now turn to Malachi, the Italian prophet.

The joke works if you say chi the way we’re supposed to say Qi if it’s the Chinese thing.

And it works, though my Italian wife will die on the bruschetta with a hard “k” hill — correct, by the way.

And it works even though we never turn to Malachi, except to predict the Messiah, nor, indeed, any of the “minor” prophets. They are, shall we say … difficult. We laugh about Luther farting … well, some of us do … but when the guy farting also wants to take our money and give it to the undeserving poor … well.

We have to draw the line somewhere, right?

But like the Minor Prophets, this is not mostly about that.

It’s just a short note on Dana Gioia, American Poet.

He actually is Italian, though he’s mostly American, which is the point I’ll make.

Eventually.

Now there are lots of Italian poets. Americans play baseball. Italians play poetry.

And just as we say … well, some of us do … that Dante is The Italian Poet. Gioia is an American one. Or maybe the Italian-American one. But definitely American.

Here’s why.

The American Ideal is respect. It’s not individualism, because we do usually … eventually … come to see how not all individualisms — that of Charles Manson, say — are as equal as others.

And even earlier we might notice that individualism was always in service of … something.

That something was, and is, respect.

When the men who would not be king, but would be Americans, came here, it was to get respect. When they continued West it was for the same. It’s what they wanted, even when they didn’t do it well, the same as today when we say we want our say, deserve our say, it’s because we want to be heard — we want respect.

That is the American ideal.

Unfortunately, the American real is different, as ideals and reals often are. In practice, we want respect but we don’t accord it others. This is another unfortunate evangellyfish practice, but that is a subject for another note.

Suffice to say for now that while the American Ideal is —

Respect yourself and others

— this too often devolves, or rather never matures, beyond the first point.

We demand respect for ourselves but we by the God we occasionally pay lip service to, we won’t give it to anyone else.

They have to earn it, we might say.

Or, they don’t deserve it, anyway.

Which isn’t how it works for us, or how it’s (in general) supposed to.

But Gioia respects.

Which is to say others.

Which is to say he listens.

Men recovering after work … people in an airport … the young and criminal …

He even respects himself — not the same as demanding it of everyone in tarnation or our nation — he does so in recall and rumination, but not recrimination, on the death of his young son.

The American ideal.

It’s also a poetic ideal.

The writer John Dufresne says the first thing a writer needs is compassion. When a friend saw I’d written that down on a notecard, she asked, unkindly, if that meant I would be demanding it for myself.

No, I said. I’m demanding it of myself.

Now demand isn’t the way to cultivate compassion for others, and the writer Anne Lamott does put an oar in the writing water for compassion for ourselves, and I’m still much in the real not the ideal in all these.

But the point is, if you can’t do this, you can’t write. If you don’t have compassion on the people you’re creating and considering, you can’t write truly, and you can’t tell the story properly.

You can’t tell their story properly.

This rules out writing as an act, let alone a work, let alone a vocation.

Gioia’s an Italian-American by happy design of birth.

And he’s an American Poet because he hits that ideal.

Gioia listens. It’s why and how he can tell. If we listen.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Cursing With God

More battle scenes please Once teaching a high school American Literature class — and let me tell you, once is enough —a student he says, “I don’t understand The Red Badge of Courage.  It’s a war book, but there are hardly any battle scenes.  I don’t get it.” So we did a little Socratic dialogue, and

Read More »

Pumpkin Eater

Alex Rodriguez cheated. Took the easy way. Lied. And if he really does have faith, as he said after the Red Sox game Sunday, he knows he’s right out of Pinocchio. His lawyer, however, appears to have no idea what a gigantic donkey he himself is. To recap — Ryan Dempster missed Rodriguez with his

Read More »

Functionally Illiterate Christian

Every few years I realize how wrong I’ve been. People who know me are faster on that, and even temporary acquaintances pick up the signals pretty quick, and I do the same for them. All this has happened before, and it will all happen again, the line goes. But this time it happened in …

Read More »

Missing Dinner

The common phrasing phor life today offers one and sundry the common counsel, Live, Laugh, Love. Jesus responds — preempts if you prefer it precise — with semi-characteristic frankness Love Love Love I say semi-characteristic since only half the time is he blunt, while the other half he’s maddeningly opaque — like the dork in high

Read More »

Related

Do Piece — Love (Frankl)

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves her. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more,

Read More »

The Professional

  shows up every day stays on the job all day commits to the long haul sets the stakes high, sees they’re real is patient seeks order demystifies acts in the face of fear accepts no excuses plays it as it lays is prepared doesn’t show off masters technique asks for help doesn’t take failure

Read More »

Sign Posts

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art consists in three things — the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician

Read More »

What Men Want

In an office of the U.S. Postal Service this morning, a morning show deejay played clips from last night’s Leno and … I forget now, but prolly was a guy after Leno, on the same network. Come to think it, maybe they own the station, and the whole shtick — supposedly hey you might have

Read More »