The Domhnall, the best of MacLeod

[sabotabby]

I know it ranks pretty low on the things that are shit about the tangerine bezoar, but y'all have to read the inaugural poem—that's a thing? I guess it's a thing—by Famous Lyric Poet You've Never Heard Of, Joseph Charles MacKenzie. It contains such gems as the following:

True friend of the migrant from both far and near,
He welcomes the worthy, but guards our frontier,
Lest a murderous horde, for whom hell is the norm,
Should threaten our lives and our nation deform.

And my absolute favourite:

Academe now lies dead, the old order rots,
No longer policing our words and our thoughts;
Its ignorant hirelings pretending to teach
Are backward in vision, sophomoric in speech.
Now we learnèd of mind add ourselves to the crowd
That cheers on the Domhnall, the best of MacLeod!

§ The refrains at the end of each stanza are to be recited by the Inaugural crowd.

LIKE I FEEL THIS WILL NOT GO WELL.

You can read the whole thing here. It is not a good poem.

The real comedy gold, however, lies in the website of Trumpistan's newly appointed Poet Laureate and State Propagandist. Go, feast your eyes upon the majesty. I understand that it may be hard to find a poet willing to write such a ballad announcing the crowning of our Orange and Saviour, given that the good poets mainly lean left, fed, as they are, on arts grants and food stamps. The best the Trumplings could do band-wise was fucking 3 Doors Down. But this guy:

One of my professors, an Oxonian named Charles Bell, indicated that some of my sonnets surpassed many of Shakespeare’s. Indeed, a sequence of 154 sonnets I had then completed later received First Place in the Long Poem Section of the Scottish International Poetry Competition.

 

You have boycotted modernist so-called "poetry" for over half a century, but arrogant publishers have ignored your rejection of pseudo-intellectual nonsense in chopped-up prose.

Backward old elites have censored traditional lyric poetry because it clashes with their Marxist-totalitarian world view. The result has been complete censorship of traditional lyric verse and the loss of the ability to produce it.

This is what I mean about how art under authoritarian regimes is typically Not Very Good.

Fortunately for all of us, an actual Scottish writer has responded, no doubt echoing the sentiments of most of his countrymen. After all, these are a people who famously welcomed Trump thusly:



Take it away, Hal Duncan.






From Scotland With Love
(For Joseph Charles MacKenzie)

MacKenzie, you poor man's McGonagall,
rank mediocrity of wank and shite
that Burns wid ca' a bawheid's doggerel,
Ah'll spit a rhyme for ye: Ye cannae write.

A decorated poet? Aye! A dick
drawn on yer foreheid wi an inky wid
be fine and fitting, a humungous prick
and fuckin big block capitals: NAE GUID!

Naw, wait! Fuck drawing! Wi black biro and
a set of compasses, ah wid tattoo
yer fuckin travesty of verse by hand
aw o'er yer skelped-arse face in blue

of Picts and fitba' strips, the Scottish flag,
so's every one ae us Jock Tamson's Weans
at wan swatch ae yer ugly mug wid gag,
boak like at reekin pants wi squittery stains.

Yer rhyme for Trump's inauguration wank?
Huv ye drunk his spunk? D'ye fuckin swallow?
Like pus squeezed fae a beilin pluke, it's rank.
Ye've pisht on the Muses and Apollo.

Best of McLeod? Don't make me fuckin laugh.
Yer tangerine nazi rapeclown's fuckin loathed
by Scots who mind when rebels wurnae naff
gold-shittered gobshite Emperors unclothed.

Wallace and Bruce? Did ye watch Braveheart then?
Rob Roy wi Liam Neeson? Yer a joke!
Try John Maclean. Nae bonny hills and glens;
try our Red Clyde, ye fascist fuck, and choke.

It's fit, but, ah suppose, yer numpty's praise
shid come in scansion painful as the worst,
the world's worst, poor McGonagall: the days
aheid, we'll aw be sufferin, fuckin curst.

And aye, yer Tumshie Trump Train's on its way
Towards it's ain disastrous silvery Tay,
And yer best hope, McKenzie, is yer shitty fuckin rhyme
Will no be remembered--
wi yon prissy-lipped and fright-wigged
fake-tanned baby-handit Nazi bandit's
treasonous dismantling of the USA--
Will no be remembered--
wi yon tragic bawbag's Special Day,
remembered wi Traitor Trump's Inauguration,
remembered wi the Death of a Nation,
remembered as a literary punch bowl turd,
to poetry as Trump is to the presidency: a crime.
--remembered for,
in the world's worst poet's words,
a very long time.

In cheerier news, Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. So that's something.

Comments

[chickenfeet]

The Soviet Union produced some pretty decent poetry and music. That said, this is dire. Totally reminiscent of the "official" poetry of the twilight of the British Empire. "Ode to the Giant Cheese" anyone? To be fair it is Ingersoll, Ont's only claim to fame.

[sabotabby]

The really great stuff, imo, was in the early days of the Revolution and towards the end. At least poetry-wise. Music was a bit different, but the Soviet Union had a particular relationship with the arts, even under Stalin.

[kore]

The refrains at the end of each stanza are to be recited by the Inaugural crowd

WT ever loving FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFf

I think the news about Chelsea made me happier than I've felt since before the election. FUCKING FINALLY.

[ironed_orchid]

I woke up to find text telling me about Chelsea Manning, and then I saw the Hal Duncan poem. It has been a good day.

[sabotabby]

Both of these things make me very happy. Chelsea Manning, obviously more, but I don't have much to add about her than what has already been said.

[lapinlunaire]

lmao this is so bad. I don't think the reason why he's been discouraged by ~haters from pursuing poetry is due to some kind of marxist conspiracy, it's that this is truly bad. If he'd lived in the days of the poets he admires so much, literally nobody would remember him now.

It's not very hard to write in an old-timey way if you have enough vocabulary and you're familiar with poetical forms. What's harder is actually making something that is good, and especially that doesn't sound like just an attempt at mimicking [insert poet here]. If there's anything I learnt from my teenage years, it was that.

I say this as someone who likes more "structured" poetry better than "chopped up prose", even.

It's not just the politics, either. There are plenty of poets who had awful political views than any self-respecting "Marxist academic" would dislike, and yet they're still widely studied within academia. How does he explain Ezra Pound, for example?

I also wonder about whether this Charles Bell is still alive and if so if he can be reached for comment about those lines about academia.

Anyway, thanks for this post. The bits you've quoted have helped me with the paper I'm writing and that Scottish response is making me lol irl. :')

(Sorry about the rant.)

[lapinlunaire]

Oh. I'm a bit disappointed now. I went to look up more information on the poem (see: wanting to include it in my paper) but it turns out that it is not "official" and was not commissioned for the inauguration, according to Snopes.

It's still hilarious but that aspect made it funnier and now it's gone :(

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I know that now, alas. I'm still hoping they pick it up for tomorrow.

[sabotabby]

I had Ezra Pound in mind when I was making this post. Not to mention F.T. Marinetti! But I think that kind of fascist-sympathizing modernism stemmed from both an era when fascism was trendier, and also the property of poets who were, to some degree, in opposition to the politics around them. I mean, despite all the dedicated service, Mussolini's fascists ultimately rejected modernism in favour of warmed-over neoclassicism, which is I think what's going to happen under Trump, except worse, because I don't think you can cut corners with neoclassical architecture.