by Bruce Deitrick Price...For gifted or literary students, a lively poem called THEORYLAND offers a fun way for teachers to touch on lots of topics. T. S. Eliot, for one. Our links to the past. The use of rhyme. Obeying rules, and breaking rules. Riffing, sampling, and alluding (Eliot did a lot of all three!). The power of so-called Theory on some campuses. The difficulty of writing popular poetry in our time...
Okay, I have to start with a confession. I love this poem, my poem--THEORYLAND, it's called--and I promote it wherever I can. But having said that, I want to point out that many roads come together in this poem. It's a satire of academic excess, i.e., sophistries run amuck in English Departments. It riffs fondly on T. S. Eliot--the main character is sort of a Prufrock, and the mood and title are from The Wasteland. So you've got a very smart, intellectual poem. But, look out, it's fun. So much modern poetry is boring; we almost expect it. I have written about this problem in an essay called "The Plight of Poetry" (easy to find in Google). Academics give us pretentious Theory and boring verse. My proudest claim is that people read my poem for pleasure!
A woman from France sent me an email saying that my poetry had taken her back to reading Eliot. Another woman sent me a note calling me "an overeducated rapper." Thank you! (But is this true?) A very talented sculptor in Italy MISREAD the poem as an allegory about the life of the artist--but this is completely fascinating as it tells me that academics and educators don't get so crazy in Italy. They do get crazy here. In fact, it was my study of Structuralism and other fancy-dancy isms that made me so indignant that THEORYLAND sort of erupted.
Well, poetry is not for everyone. But people who like poetry will usually like THEORYLAND. Most readers both laugh and cry. You can feel something of these extremes in the lines that end Canto I--Ambition:
In the rooms the critics come and sneer:
my intertext is all veneer.
I may have sinned, my closure fated,
Who knew this jargon was two months dated?
I can hear the co-eds cringing, each to each,
I'm scuttling claws, sunk out of reach.
I know now, as I promenade
up and down the quad,
I'II never be a god...
I want so much to be
a god. A bod!
I want to hear the co-eds singing,
singing for me...
I suspect by now you know if THEORYLAND will be helpful in any of your classes. Find it at Theoryland.blogspot.com or, with reviews and commentary, on www.Lit4u.com (THEORYLAND link). More reviews are welcome.