{"id":109360,"date":"2016-11-06T07:49:41","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T15:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=109360"},"modified":"2016-11-06T07:56:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T15:56:39","slug":"jews-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=109360","title":{"rendered":"Jews & Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes<\/a>: World War II poet Karl Shapiro wrote this poem about his one semester at the U. of Virginia in the 1930s:<\/p>\n

University
\nBY KARL SHAPIRO<\/p>\n

To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew
\nIs the curriculum. In mid-September
\nThe entering boys, identified by hats,
\nWander in a maze of mannered brick
\nWhere boxwood and magnolia brood
\nAnd columns with imperious stance
\nLike rows of ante-bellum girls
\nEye them, outlanders.<\/p>\n

In whited cells, on lawns equipped for peace,
\nUnder the arch, and lofty banister,
\nEquals shake hands, unequals blankly pass;
\nThe exemplary weather whispers, \u201cQuiet, quiet\u201d
\nAnd visitors on tiptoe leave
\nFor the raw North, the unfinished West,
\nAs the young, detecting an advantage,
\nPractice a face.<\/p>\n

Where, on their separate hill, the colleges,
\nLike manor houses of an older law,
\nGaze down embankments on a land in fee,
\nThe Deans, dry spinsters over family plate,
\nRing out the English name like coin,
\nHumor the snob and lure the lout.
\nWithin the precincts of this world
\nPoise is a club.<\/p>\n

But on the neighboring range, misty and high,
\nThe past is absolute: some luckless race
\nDull with inbreeding and conformity
\nWears out its heart, and comes barefoot and bad
\nFor charity or jail. The scholar
\nSanctions their obsolete disease;
\nThe gentleman revolts with shame
\nAt his ancestor.<\/p>\n

And the true nobleman, once a democrat,
\nSleeps on his private mountain. He was one
\nWhose thought was shapely and whose dream was broad;
\nThis school he held his art and epitaph.
\nBut now it takes from him his name,
\nFalls open like a dishonest look,
\nAnd shows us, rotted and endowed,
\nIts senile pleasure.<\/p>\n

Karl Shapiro, \u201cUniversity\u201d from Selected Poems (New York: Library of America, 2003).<\/p>\n

Comments at Steve Sailer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* He should\u2019ve stopped after the first line \u2013 the rest was superfluous.<\/p>\n

* I get the impression that Karl Shapiro didn\u2019t get laid during his one semester at UVA.<\/p>\n

In fairness, a lot of universities and colleges were like that in the old days; snooty and condescending and members of the DAR and all that. The democratizing of higher education came later, probably after WW2.<\/p>\n

Shapiro\u2019s poem is of a genre of outsider literature that I am tired of reading, to be honest. It sums up, in free verse, the text of a thousand blog posts by young Asians, African Americans, women, LGBT\u2019s, etc. who are all trying to make a career for themselves by describing the ineffable pain they suffer by being different. There\u2019s a certain navel gazing and self-pitying quality that I just can\u2019t appreciate anymore.<\/p>\n

I was raised \u2014 this is hardly unique \u2014 to believe that there was a Western Canon in culture, the arts, and philosophy, and if I wanted to be an educated member of society I had to be familiar with this. Some Ivy League colleges, e.g., Columbia, still promote the idea, that\u2019s why you get minority students whining about reading the Iliad every year.<\/p>\n

But one of the things I\u2019ve noticed about the left in recent decades is not only do they not have that broad cultural education, they have no respect for such education, because, after all, that past was sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, you name it. They seem to have no conception of traditional high culture at all, but the most worrisome consequence is that they have no way of knowing that their specific attitudes as well as their grievances have been discussed before, usually by far more intelligent and insightful artists and writers.<\/p>\n

I have no problem with outsiders. It\u2019s not that uncommon a syndrome. And outsiders can frequently provide fresh and interesting insights. Unlike this poem.<\/p>\n

* That is not a poem; it\u2019s silly prose that makes little to no sense.<\/p>\n

* I\u2019m always amazed at how bad Jews are at Poetry. Great Novelists, screenwriters, and dramatists. But poetry seems to be a bridge too far.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure Shapiro disliked U of VA in 1939 cause of all the gang rape. You just have to read the poem more closely.<\/p>\n

* This dude really needed a safe space.<\/p>\n

* It seems a sub-category of the Jewish ethnic animus genre. They could just have a stamp that says \u201cJewish ethnic animus\u201d or \u201cSimilar to Jewish ethnic animus\u201d and we\u2019d all save a lot of time.<\/p>\n

* Some people like me went to college for the education. Others go because college is supposed to be their ladder into American\u2019s upper class with all the money and power that implies. When these people meet a wall they can\u2019t break through, thwarted ambition makes them rage like Karl Shapiro.<\/p>\n

Frankly, a guy from a tightly knit in-group like Shapiro has no right to fume about another tightly knit in-group not letting him in. It also says something about a man whose greatest ambition in life is to gate-crash an in-group. He doesn\u2019t want to accomplish something of material value in life, rather, he just wants to know the right people. It\u2019s as if without their approval, he thinks he has no value at all. I see a person like this as being the bowing, scraping, beta male courtier always revolving with a ring of his prancing beta-ilk around a kingly WASP-type figure, and they\u2019re ecstatic to be this guy\u2019s servant. Sort of like Huma Abedin, actually.<\/p>\n

* Shapiro grew up in Baltimore and, after leaving UVA, transferred to Johns Hopkins, so perhaps homesickness played a part in his sense of alienation\/resentment. I don\u2019t guess I have to add that people who go on to become poets tend to take the routine abrasions and disappointments of life VERY personally.<\/p>\n

\u201cShow me a poet, and I\u2019ll show you a shit.\u201d
\n\u2013A.J. Liebling<\/p>\n

* At least in Russian language, Jews are among the best poets: Mandelstam, Pasternak, Brodsky.<\/p>\n

* Counter Points: Heinrich Heine, Paul Celan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes: World War II poet Karl Shapiro wrote this poem about his one semester at the U. of Virginia in the 1930s: University BY KARL SHAPIRO To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew Is the curriculum. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109360"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109365,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109360\/revisions\/109365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}