A Diptych for the Golden Crows of Academia

My pandemic reading has involved a lot of poetry.  For one, I've studied it for over eight years and am presently writing a book about it; for another, I find it challenging to pay attention for any great length of time these days. I need reading that makes space for my focus to fracture. Poetry is perfect for this--even long poems have line breaks, allowing my mind to wander and then return.

I wrote in my New Year's resolutions that I wanted to

Celebrate other people's good news. I sometimes feel that academic has a toxic culture of always finding fault, rather than celebrating achievements. Some of my most joyful moments as a historian last year came from celebrating others' achievements or having them celebrate mine. I want to be the kind of person who enjoys a colleague's article or book, hears about their grant or job success, and sends them a note of congratulation.

And then, in my poetry reading over the past month, I came across two poems which for me perfectly talked back to academia's culture of fault-finding. There are so many beautiful phrases in these poems--for example, Jaqypbek's description of people who are rude to those they perceive to be their inferiors

those men

who, like overfed lice and swine,

are rude to the servants sweeping courtyards,

desperate to marry a king's daughter.

has the magic and incisiveness of a fairytale. I hope you enjoy these poems as much as I did.

(Epigram 4)

 

    Don't hold yourself superior to others.

Don't make fun of people for things they can't change,

    or else stop hanging out with me. Don't bother--

at the least, your inability

    to cool it with the mockery

bespeaks a certain failure of writerly range.

~ Stephanie Burt, After Callimachus (Princeton, 2020)

"The Golden Crow" by srikaanth.sekar is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The Grudge

My life stopped me in my tracks--

as if my very existence was wasted.

For I can't help bearing a grudge

against the general public who are favoured.

 

I have a grudge against the unscrupulous,

against the soul-less who appear kind-hearted.

I bear a grudge against those who don't care, 

who have done nothing for anyone. 

Crows will be crows, my darling.

Even if they have golden tails,

they will then just be golden crows.

I bear a grudge against those men

who, like overfed lice and swine,

are rude to the servants sweeping courtyards,

desperate to marry a king's daughter.

I bear malice against goats that never lead

the flock to the right places.

And I wonder if the lamb-like people

will notice too late that they are standing

right in front of a slaughter-house.

I have an aversion to the stony-hearted

who consider everyone else stupid.

So many words have died inside me.

I carry on like a thief who is riding

a white horse and is going to be caught.

~ Yesenqul Jaqypbek, translated by Patricia McCarthy in Contemporary Kazakh Literature: Poetry (National Bureau of Translations, 2019)