At the recent AWP conference, apparently a hubbub erupted over Tony Hoagland's "The Change." I didn't attend the conference, so I can't speak to what transpired, but I heard Hoagland read the poem several years ago. He'd prefaced "The Change" then by saying that it bothered him that poets tend to write self-congratulatory pieces that highlight their wholesome goodness. He felt that poets should examine the negative self as well, no matter how uncomfortable the truth. At the time, I found "The Change" vaguely unsettling, but given his introduction, I took the poem to be about the speaker's discovery that, to his chagrin, he'd not yet overcome the racist views he'd learned growing up.
After the AWP conference, though, Hoagland has been roundly & soundly ripped as the snarky, conceited, racist, sexist, golden (read white supremacist) boy of poetry. Some have suggested that Hoagland exemplifies the racism/sexism inherent in literary history, calling "The Change" the most racist poem ever written.
OK, hot button issues, such as racism--which, by the way, sucks & sexism too--often cause people to make hyperbolic statements in anger, which is understandable, but the most racist poem ever? Anyone who's ever read Hoagland's What Narcissism Means to Me knows that's not true. "The Change" isn't even the most racist piece in the book. That dubious distinction belongs to "Rap Music," in which the speaker, hearing rap booming from a car pulling up beside him at a traffic light, imagines "a lot of dead white people in there," beaten to death with bricks so that their skulls can be used to "drink blood from."
For me, that trumps anything in "The Change."
Tempting though it may be to leap to accusation, neither poem necessarily means Hoagland is a racist. For example, what if--as an astute friend astutely asked--Hoagland had written in the third-person? Indeed, readers often, though erroneously, equate the "I" of the poem with the poet, though oddly, these same readers seldom presume that the first-person narrator of a novel or short story is actually the writer. Few people, besides myself, think Stephen King should be declared a total psycho & stopped before he writes anything else, but I digress. The point is that Hoagland probably would have insulated himself against the brunt of ad hominem attacks through the use of a third-person persona.
OK, hot button issues, such as racism--which, by the way, sucks & sexism too--often cause people to make hyperbolic statements in anger, which is understandable, but the most racist poem ever? Anyone who's ever read Hoagland's What Narcissism Means to Me knows that's not true. "The Change" isn't even the most racist piece in the book. That dubious distinction belongs to "Rap Music," in which the speaker, hearing rap booming from a car pulling up beside him at a traffic light, imagines "a lot of dead white people in there," beaten to death with bricks so that their skulls can be used to "drink blood from."
For me, that trumps anything in "The Change."
Tempting though it may be to leap to accusation, neither poem necessarily means Hoagland is a racist. For example, what if--as an astute friend astutely asked--Hoagland had written in the third-person? Indeed, readers often, though erroneously, equate the "I" of the poem with the poet, though oddly, these same readers seldom presume that the first-person narrator of a novel or short story is actually the writer. Few people, besides myself, think Stephen King should be declared a total psycho & stopped before he writes anything else, but I digress. The point is that Hoagland probably would have insulated himself against the brunt of ad hominem attacks through the use of a third-person persona.
Facebook--oh, to what hellish depths I've sunk--has crucified Hoagland. At least one person may not have found third-person narration a solution. Her problem--with the poem, I mean--is that even though the speaker acknowledges Vondella (think Venus & Serena Williams) Aphrodite's superior skills lead to her victory, his opinion of her race & gender doesn't change, which teaches the wrong moral. Poems such as this, the Facebooger--er, sorry/not sorry, Facebooker--lamented, make it more difficult to teach students about race.
Should poets write with the classroom in mind? If so, someone should pen a sonnet sequence on avoiding the passive voice. Also, abstractions! Beyond that, I disagree with the implication that only literature as didactic as an ABC After School Special can facilitate classroom discussions. In fact, the firestorm of reaction to "The Change" suggests that here's a poem that may generate student interest; surely an enlightened instructor could turn this into a teaching moment.
I don't know Hoagland's racial views. Perhaps he is, as some have suggested, a bigot. Or perhaps he hopes to provoke, with combustible statements, open dialogues about race. Perhaps he simply sees himself as staying true to his call for self-implication among poets. Perhaps he's simply missing the mark. Whatever the reason, it would seem prudent at this juncture that he stop & think things through a little longer. Maybe a lot.
Should poets write with the classroom in mind? If so, someone should pen a sonnet sequence on avoiding the passive voice. Also, abstractions! Beyond that, I disagree with the implication that only literature as didactic as an ABC After School Special can facilitate classroom discussions. In fact, the firestorm of reaction to "The Change" suggests that here's a poem that may generate student interest; surely an enlightened instructor could turn this into a teaching moment.
I don't know Hoagland's racial views. Perhaps he is, as some have suggested, a bigot. Or perhaps he hopes to provoke, with combustible statements, open dialogues about race. Perhaps he simply sees himself as staying true to his call for self-implication among poets. Perhaps he's simply missing the mark. Whatever the reason, it would seem prudent at this juncture that he stop & think things through a little longer. Maybe a lot.
I wouldn't call What Narcissism Means to Me Hoagland's best--for me, it's still Donkey Gospel. The aforementioned poems aside, much of the volume, as the title suggests, seems self-absorbed, with the poet--or rather persona--reflecting on the mundane middle-class life of artists & literati like himself, the kind of poetry Frank O'Hara might write today if he'd survived his tragic dune buggy accident, only to have lost much of his incredible wit due to a botch-up during surgery.
Seriously, though, I won't say there's nothing good here. Take, for instance, the closing lines to "Man Carrying Sofa":
this damaged longing
like a heavy piece of furniture inside you;
you carry it, it burdens you, it drags you down--
then you stop, and rest on top of it.
Now that sounds like a splendid idea.
Seriously, though, I won't say there's nothing good here. Take, for instance, the closing lines to "Man Carrying Sofa":
this damaged longing
like a heavy piece of furniture inside you;
you carry it, it burdens you, it drags you down--
then you stop, and rest on top of it.
Now that sounds like a splendid idea.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzj6YHxr2xg
http://listener.bandcamp.com/track/wooden-heart-poem