Help Wanted & The Worden Report
Help Wanted
There’s always a job for an engineer,
A bonanza for any technician:
We scour the country far and near
For the boys who are good at addition.
Money’s no object, we rush to bestow it
On science and people equipped to know it—
There’s always a job for an engineer
(But nobody wants a poet).
If you know your way round an atomic pile
Or the brain of a giant computer;
If you’re clever at guiding a guided missile
And can tell if a neutron is neuter—
Forget all the rest, boys, skip it, stow it.
Iambic pentameter? Who wants to know it?
There’s always a job for an engineer
(But nobody wants a poet).
—Marya Mannes, Subversive, 1959
A Modest Proposal
Since poets have not seen fit to regulate themselves and continue to palm off on an unsuspecting and innocent public, jottings, fragments, punkish whimsy, pompous obfuscations, and shavings from a thoroughly whittled ego—it becomes necessary to impose some regulatory authority in order to restore a once-noble profession so that it may deal artfully with the truly important things of mankind and give once more a sense of order to chaotic existence.
In pursuit of these ends, I propose that Congress pass legislation to establish with the the Department of Labor, a committee to make recommendations to the states regarding uniform standards d practices for the accreditation and licensing of poets. [For God's sake, take all responsibility away from the National Endowment for the Arts, the haven of bardic poseurs who see that awards go to postmodern deconstructed cronies.]
No one under forty shall be granted a license, on the grounds that one must, as a duly licensed poet, experience much life before attempting to wring sense out of that life.
More: It is clearly unseemly for a noble profession with a Delphic and Hierophantic role to be dominated by youthful scribblers who have learned how to type and run a wordprocessor, and who have taken creative writing courses that encourage evulgation and other excesses as touchstones of creativity. (Naturally this will require some minor changes: for example, the Yale Younger Poets series should be changed to the Yale Middle-Aged Poet Series, or the Yale Geezer Poet Series.)
It may, of course, be possible for a younger poet to work as an apprentice or serve an internship with an older poet, perhaps helping the Maestro with metaphors, imagery, and fine-tuning sprung rhythm, much the way apprentices used to work in the workshops of Michelangelo, Ben Cellini, J. Pollock and A. Warhol.
As I noted earlier, poets are in roughly the same situation as physicians were in 1900. Just as the Flexner report did much to strengthen the medical profession, this report may stimulate those who really care about the future of poetry to take the steps necessary to insure its vigorous survival.
—Mark Worden, from The Worden Report
There’s always a job for an engineer,
A bonanza for any technician:
We scour the country far and near
For the boys who are good at addition.
Money’s no object, we rush to bestow it
On science and people equipped to know it—
There’s always a job for an engineer
(But nobody wants a poet).
If you know your way round an atomic pile
Or the brain of a giant computer;
If you’re clever at guiding a guided missile
And can tell if a neutron is neuter—
Forget all the rest, boys, skip it, stow it.
Iambic pentameter? Who wants to know it?
There’s always a job for an engineer
(But nobody wants a poet).
—Marya Mannes, Subversive, 1959
A Modest Proposal
Since poets have not seen fit to regulate themselves and continue to palm off on an unsuspecting and innocent public, jottings, fragments, punkish whimsy, pompous obfuscations, and shavings from a thoroughly whittled ego—it becomes necessary to impose some regulatory authority in order to restore a once-noble profession so that it may deal artfully with the truly important things of mankind and give once more a sense of order to chaotic existence.
In pursuit of these ends, I propose that Congress pass legislation to establish with the the Department of Labor, a committee to make recommendations to the states regarding uniform standards d practices for the accreditation and licensing of poets. [For God's sake, take all responsibility away from the National Endowment for the Arts, the haven of bardic poseurs who see that awards go to postmodern deconstructed cronies.]
No one under forty shall be granted a license, on the grounds that one must, as a duly licensed poet, experience much life before attempting to wring sense out of that life.
More: It is clearly unseemly for a noble profession with a Delphic and Hierophantic role to be dominated by youthful scribblers who have learned how to type and run a wordprocessor, and who have taken creative writing courses that encourage evulgation and other excesses as touchstones of creativity. (Naturally this will require some minor changes: for example, the Yale Younger Poets series should be changed to the Yale Middle-Aged Poet Series, or the Yale Geezer Poet Series.)
It may, of course, be possible for a younger poet to work as an apprentice or serve an internship with an older poet, perhaps helping the Maestro with metaphors, imagery, and fine-tuning sprung rhythm, much the way apprentices used to work in the workshops of Michelangelo, Ben Cellini, J. Pollock and A. Warhol.
As I noted earlier, poets are in roughly the same situation as physicians were in 1900. Just as the Flexner report did much to strengthen the medical profession, this report may stimulate those who really care about the future of poetry to take the steps necessary to insure its vigorous survival.
—Mark Worden, from The Worden Report
posted by degustibus at 8:47 AM
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