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Childe Hassam, 1918
The funny Colbert of the Colbert Report had on Caroline Kennedy the other night in his episode Colbert with Caroline. The show is a little late for me, but I wanted to see what Kennedy was up to.
So, I tuned in. Kennedy was promoting her book of poetry, an anthology titled: She Walks in Beauty. She was giggling like a school girl throughout Colbert's antics. They read a couple of poems together from her books (she has a another book, A Patriot's Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love, which was published in 2003). Kennedy has a strange monotonous voice (that was criticized during her bid for a seat in the U.S. senate in 2008). One would think she would add more emotion in her voice at least for poetry, especially since she says during the interview (which I've posted in a more complete form below): "I think that women grow up...living in the world of emotions." Still, she can't go wrong with an anthology. But here is what Kennedy says about women's "relationship" with poetry:
Colbert: Do women have a different approach to poetry?Does she mean that women write poetry, then pass it on down a matriarchal line? Or do they pass on poetry in general, most of which is written by men, and that women are the guardians of poetry in families and societies? I'm afraid, in her jumbled and incoherent way, she means more the former than the latter. This is similar to homosexuals, and homosexual supporters, saying that any male in the arts is (naturally) a homosexual, as I've briefly written about here. Through Kennedy's feminist-tinted lens, women have that special, mysterious, ability for poetry - both in understanding it and producing it, and even exalting themselves through it. So, no full-blooded, heterosexual white male need apply when it comes to poetry.
Kennedy: Women have a special relationship with poetry. I think it's something that's passed down much more often by mothers to grandmothers to children. And I think that women grow up...living in the world of emotions. And men write about women, which is really the greatest poetry of all.
Colbert: This is mostly men writing about women?
Kennedy: This is men celebrating women. And women celebrating themselves...What could be better than that?
Colbert: O.K. (Then Colbert suggests they read: "Leap Before You Look" by W.H. Auden)
I thought it would be interesting to see how many male and female poets she has in her latest anthology. The numbers are pretty much skewed towards the male: Fifty-five male to thirty female. But, it looks like many of her choices are from the 19th and 20th century, when there was a surge of female poets. And I've heard many more of the male than the female poets. I think her selection of poets was designed to include an "equal" number of male and female writers, although even in that search, she came up short (30 and 55 are not equal).
Here is a poem Colbert and Kennedy read together:
You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.
They sleep with their windows open.
Their bathtubs are never dry.
They are not grown up yet. They still believe in Santa Claus.
They are terribly in earnest.
But they laugh at everything…
I like Americans.
They give the matches free…
I like Americans.
They are the only men in the world, the sight of whom in their shirt-sleeves is not rumpled, embryonic and agonizing…
I like Americans.
They carry such pretty umbrellas.
The Avenue de l’Opera on a rainy day is just an avenue on a rainy day.
But Fifth Avenue on a rainy day is an old-fashioned garden under a shower…
They are always rocking the boat.
I like Americans.
They either shoot the whole nickel, or give up the bones.
You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.
I have a feeling that Kennedy is lightly, in her liberal elitist fashion, mocking the Americans that, like those in the poem, are naive and genuine instead of adopting the European sophistication and flickers of cynicism that is present even on the grand and beautiful Avenue de l'Opera.
1. The poem is from Kennedy's: A Patriot's Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love