Catholic professor Tony Esolen & Catholic apologist Karl Keating say black female poets are inferior.

ony Esolen is a pro­fes­sor at Mag­dalen Col­lege of the Lib­er­al Arts, where there is a stu­dent body of 85 per­sons. For­mer­ly, he taught at Prov­i­dence Col­lege, which is run by the con­ser­v­a­tive Domini­can priests of province of St. Joseph. But he ran afoul even of those stu­dents and that admin­is­tra­tion after he pub­lished this arti­cle at Cri­sis Mag­a­zine claim­ing that Prov­i­dence belongs to a “total­i­tar­i­an diver­si­ty cult.” That’s the kind of aca­d­e­m­ic lan­guage they use at Cri­sis. Esolen does­n’t like diver­si­ty all that much. It (Esolen’s arti­cle) was a vague mud­dle of preach­i­ness and out­rage, but Esolen is sup­posed (by some) to be a gift­ed writer and the sec­ond com­ing of G.K. Chester­ton. Some­one even com­pared him, pre­pos­ter­ous­ly, to Thomas More. Esolen has trans­lat­ed Dante, so there’s some degree of mer­it in him that occa­sion­al­ly comes out, but he is also capa­ble of writ­ing dis­turb­ing pas­sages like this in an effort to check homo­sex­u­al impuls­es in young boys:

Think of how eas­i­ly and stu­pid­ly your body is aroused. You may be sit­ting in an odd posi­tion. You may be hors­ing around with the dog on the floor. You may be wrestling with your kid broth­er. You may be tak­ing a show­er. Almost any­thing can trip the trig­ger. It means noth­ing. …

And remem­ber what I say. Your real need is for mas­cu­line affir­ma­tion, so often expressed in a broad­ly phys­i­cal way—think of a big bunch of coal min­ers show­er­ing after a day under the earth. This is ordi­nary. Friend­ship, that is the need. Your father can help you there too. Talk to him.

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arl Keat­ing is the Grand Poohbah of Catholic apolo­get­ics, the founder of Catholic Answers. He had a career as a lawyer, but one day, so the leg­end goes, he found an anti-Catholic tract on the wind­shield of his car, and he deter­mined then and there to put an end to the non­sense and equip Catholics to answer back.

And yet Mr. Keat­ing’s apolo­get­ics chops are some­what lack­ing: He has done some rather lazy research in Patris­tics and he is giv­en to out­bursts of basic human inde­cen­cy on Face­book. Once, in a dicus­sion about sui­cide, he referred to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from clin­i­cal depres­sion as “off their rock­er.” The actu­al Cat­e­chism, which I rec­om­mend you con­sult instead of Mr. Keat­ing, has a great deal more com­pas­sion on the sub­ject.

In anoth­er noto­ri­ous inci­dent, Mr. Keat­ing pub­licly brow­beat a Catholic who expressed doubts about some of the Church’s teach­ings, told her the Church had no need of Catholics like her, and lat­er boast­ed on his Face­book page that he had made an “uncon­vert.”

—

And now these two—Esolen and Keating—tell us we must lis­ten to them when they declare that today’s black female poets are infe­ri­or to the Wordsworths and Frosts and Brown­ings of poet­ic yore. We must meet their demands and prove that Rita Dove’s “Lines Com­posed on the Body Politic” is fit to stand beside Wordsworth’s “Lines Com­posed a Few Miles Above Tin­tern Abbey.”

ESOLEN CONTRA MUNDUM.

It all start­ed because Prof. Esolen, liv­ing in the pure wilds of New Hamp­shire, peered out the win­dow of his study long enough to con­tem­plate the decline of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and work him­self into a pique. This time he was upset about Maya Angelou’s black coun­te­nance star­ing at him from a quar­ter, and he got on Face­book and wrote:

I hear that Maya Angelou (nee Mar­guerite John­son) will be grac­ing the US quarter—or one such, such as we’ve done with the states,and oth­er things. It’s fit­ting, I guess, because nei­ther the quar­ter nor her poems are worth two bits. All’s polit­i­cal, and all’s slo­ga­neer­ing. Emi­ly Dick­in­son was a great poet, and the cor­rect sex, and her poems don’t have to hitch a ride on any polit­i­cal move­ment. Robert Frost was a great poet, per­haps the most under­rat­ed of all poets in Eng­lish in the last 200 years, and a deeply Amer­i­can poet, too; and the pol­i­tics of his poet­ry can­not eas­i­ly be cat­e­go­rized.

(Prof. Esolen has coura­geous­ly delet­ed the post, and so my thanks to Don­na Provencher for the screen­shot.)

As is typ­i­cal with any­thing writ­ten by Tony Esolen, there’s much that’s down­right bizarre here—and par­tic­u­lar­ly so com­ing from some­one who teach­es poet­ry for a liv­ing, even when you take into account that it’s not exact­ly Har­vard.

First, the idea that polit­i­cal poet­ry is less­er poet­ry is utter non­sense. That the per­son say­ing this trans­lat­ed Dante makes it espe­cial­ly inex­cus­able. How did Esolen miss all those popes and politi­cians that Dante took great delight cast­ing into Hell? How is it he over­looked John Mil­ton’s pro­fuse polit­i­cal com­mit­ments? In his fit and his upset over the Maya Angelou quar­ter, did he suf­fer amne­sia and for­get all the paeans to the French Rev­o­lu­tion that were writ­ten by Wordsworth and Coleridge? Has he nev­er read “A Defence of Poet­ry,” in which Shel­ley declared that poets are “the unac­knowl­edge leg­is­la­tors of our time”? Pol­i­tics is about as com­mon a sub­ject in poet­ry as love. It’s not some new obses­sion of the blacks.

Sec­ond, what on earth is Esolen talk­ing about when he says that Robert Frost is “under­rat­ed”? If Esolen is in pos­ses­sion of some anthol­o­gy that does­n’t con­tain poems by Robert Frost, I would sure like to see that one. One could make a case, I sup­pose, that Frost is over­rat­ed. I would­n’t agree, but at least the claim would make sense. It’s true that many imag­ine Frost’s poet­ry is sim­pler than it real­ly is; Frost is far more com­plex than many give him cred­it for. But that’s not the same thing as say­ing that Frost is “under­rat­ed.”

KEATING: NO MERIT IN BLACK WOMEN.

So the first thing we learn, apart from the racism, is that for a poet­ry pro­fes­sor and trans­la­tor, Esolen has very lit­tle idea what he’s talk­ing about. Here’s anoth­er exam­ple: In the con­text of dis­parag­ing Maya Angelou, he quot­ed Frost’s dic­tum com­par­ing free verse to play­ing ten­nis with the net down.

That’s just out of place in a dis­cus­sion of Angelou. Esolen claims he’s read her; has he? Here’s some rhyme and meter for him:

 

Does my sex­i­ness upset you?

Does it come as a sur­prise

That I dance like I’ve got dia­monds

At the meet­ing of my thighs?

 

Some­thing upsets Esolen about Angelou, but he’s inco­her­ent about what it is.

“Harlem Hop­scotch” is a son­net, if you’re wor­ried about tra­di­tion­al forms.

If Esolen wants to demon­strate that Angelou is a sec­ond- or third- or fourth-rate poet, let him do so. But when he sug­gests there’s no rhyme or meter or tra­di­tion­al poet­ic form there, he only proves he does­n’t know what he’s talk­ing about.

But then Karl Keat­ing descend­ed into the thread and spec­u­lat­ed that maybe the prob­lem is not just Angelou. Maybe the prob­lem is there aren’t any black female poets, any­where, of any mer­it.

Ryan Car­ruth [says] “The crit­i­cism offered by Esolen would ring truer if, per­haps, he had named two oth­er black female poets who he felt deserved recog­ni­tion.” What if there are no such oth­er black female poets? What if there haven’t been any black female poets of the first rank, peri­od?”

At this point, no one can pre­tend that racism isn’t moti­vat­ing this whole plaint. Keat­ing has revealed two ugly things. The first is that he is igno­rant of Gwen­dolyn Brooks, of Rita Dove, Sonia Sanchez, Phyl­lis Wheat­ley, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton. The sec­ond is, being igno­rant of them, he assumes that some­how, in all these years, no black woman any­where has writ­ten poet­ry as good as white men write it. If no black woman has done so in all this time, per­haps it’s because no black woman can. From that begin­ning, Keat­ing plunges on and pre­tends he speaks with author­i­ty about poet­ry.

WHOSE EXPERIENCES MATTER?

And now Esolen makes a brave but trans­par­ent attempt to shift the bur­den of proof. Show me, he demands, any poem by Maya Angelou that’s wor­thy to stand beside “Ode on a Dis­tant Prospect of Eton Col­lege.”

But that’s not my bur­den. I don’t need to prove that Gwen­dolyn Brooks has an equal mer­it to the mer­it Esolen finds in Thomas Gray. He claims Maya Angelou is “not worth two bits.” He claims Gwen­dolyn Brooks’ poems are trite and cliche. He needs to prove it. He can’t post his con­tro­ver­sial ipse dix­its on Face­book and then demand some­one else prove him wrong. An Eng­lish teacher ought to know that.

Think with me about Esolen’s ques­tion. Con­front­ed with Brooks’ poem “The Moth­er,” Esolen said: Take away her cliche images, he said, take away her trite rhymes, and what is left?

Think. Read between the lines. He’s say­ing that the expe­ri­ences of black women are noth­ing. When some­one asks, in a rhetor­i­cal way, “What is left?” that’s what he’s imply­ing: Noth­ing is left.

This is not an argu­ment about poet­ry. It’s an argu­ment about whose expe­ri­ences mat­ter. The argu­ment is about whether white men like Tony Esolen and Karl Keat­ing get to pon­tif­i­cate that accom­plished black women poets just don’t mea­sure up to Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson.

TO LIVE WITHOUT SCRUTINY.

So I’m not going to try to prove that Rita Dove’s “Lines Com­posed on the Body Politic” has mer­it. But I am going to talk about what I like about the poem.

 

Less than the chart­ing of each dawn’s res­o­lu­tions,

less than each evening’s trick­le of doubt,

less than a crown’s weight in sil­ver, a diamond’s

scratch against glass, less than the tout­ed

 

ill luck of my rich beginnings—and yet

more than Eve’s silence, my mute ingrat­i­tude.

More than music’s safe pas­sage, its rap­tur­ous net,

more than this stock­pile of words, their liq­uid solic­i­tude;

 

more desired than praise (the least-prized of my dreams),

less real than dream­ing (cas­tle keep for my sins),

more than no more, which seems

much less than hoped-for, again—

 

one mutiny, quelled; one wish lost, a for­got­ten trea­sure:

to live with­out scruti­ny, beyond con­stant mea­sure.

 

• I like the sheer beau­ty of Dove’s lan­guage, in turns of phrase like “this stock­pile of words, their liq­uid solic­i­tude”; or Dove’s descrip­tion of her dreams as a “cas­tle keep for my sins.”
• I like the way the poem is con­struct­ed as a series of “less than this,” “more than that” phras­es. Dove keeps you hang­ing until the last cou­plet to find out just what it is she prizes above all oth­er things but which, in her view, is sim­ple. It is so sim­ple that I can tell she’s per­plexed why it has been so elu­sive. It is less than “a dia­mond’s scratch against glass” (anoth­er great and evoca­tive image).

And what Dove wants more than any­thing else, more than praise, more than any oth­er dream, is “to live with­out scruti­ny, beyond con­stant mea­sure.”

She wants to be able to live her life and not have oth­er people—people like Tony Esolen and Karl Keat­ing, white men—rifling around to demand proof that she mea­sures up.

And that’s what I like about the poem.

(Inci­den­tal­ly, did you notice that it is a son­net? I hope you did.)

THE CURMUDGEON’S PLAINT.

I don’t need to prove any­thing to Esolen or Keat­ing about Rita Dove’s worth, nor does she need to prove it about her­self. She no more needs to prove it than Lucille Clifton, who asks us to cel­e­brate with her “that every­day / some­thing has tried to kill me / and has failed.” Their poems are loud. Their poems, them­selves, are enough.

One last point.

Tony Esolen said to me in his (now coura­geous­ly delet­ed) thread that he reads con­tem­po­rary poet­ry and won­ders “what hap­pened”? Apart from the fact that that is not an argu­ment, he’s describ­ing noth­ing oth­er than an expe­ri­ence com­mon to cur­mud­geons. Cur­mud­geons think the world has devolved; this bias informs the way they think about every­thing else. We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heav­en!

I was amused, when watch­ing Ken Burns’ base­ball series, to hear one of the voice per­form­ers read from a news­pa­per arti­cle of the 1890s. The arti­cle com­plained that the great game of base­ball had gone to the dogs; by the 1890s, nobody played the game with any­thing like the pure motives they used to. It was all over for base­ball.

If you both­er study­ing these things, you’ll find peo­ple in Wordsworth’s day said the same thing—and said it about Wordsworth. We for­get how rad­i­cal the poet­ry of the Roman­tics was at the time, and I don’t just mean polit­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal but rad­i­cal in its poet­ic form. Per­haps Tony Esolen has heard of the Pref­ace to the Lyri­cal Bal­lads. In it, Wordsworth set out to defend his new way of writ­ing poet­ry, and the fact that he was writ­ing about com­mon peo­ple. (That was­n’t much done before Wordsworth came along. The Neo­clas­si­cists thought that poet­ry had gone to the dogs. Prove to me that this new­com­er Wordsworth is as good as Alexan­der Pope!)

Esolen is one of those peo­ple who find it easy to ethe­re­al­ize poets who wrote long enough ago that the real-world con­cerns of their poems are aca­d­e­m­ic. And if the style sounds ele­vat­ed in some way, it aids their fan­ta­sy that Wordsworth and Brown­ing were up in the clouds some­where.

But read Langston Hugh­es, and sud­den­ly you’re face-to-face with prob­lems that make the Esolens of the world uncom­fort­able. Black poets write about racist cops who mur­der black kids. Esolen does­n’t want to think about that. “But that’s just polit­i­cal obses­sion!” he cries. “That’s not a lofty sub­ject, like Eton Col­lege! Why does no one write odes to spires any­more?”

But Blake’s poet­ry was polit­i­cal. So was Wordsworth’s. Wordsworth wrote about the strug­gles of the poor. (Read “Michael.”) But the specifics are remote from Esolen. It does­n’t make him uncom­fort­able quite like Angelou’s bold asser­tion that she will rise in spite of all attempts to cut her down. Esolen can’t ignore what’s rad­i­cal in Angelou the way he can ignore what’s rad­i­cal in Wordsworth.

Esolen is not uncom­fort­able with the French Rev­o­lu­tion or the tragedy of Michael, but he is uncom­fort­able when Audrey Lorde talks about racist white cops mur­der­ing black chil­dren. He’s not uncom­fort­able with politics—that’s a ruse—but with these pol­i­tics. He adopts a cur­mud­geon’s stance and plains that poet­ry is not any­thing like it used to be, and then he makes it the fault of black women being polit­i­cal.

That’s not an argu­ment about poet­ry. That’s racism.