Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackboard

(Moments in the life of an English teacher, with a nod to Wallace Stevens)

Notice: Part of this poem includes a parody of the offensive language characteristic of "gangsta rappers" and similar performers, people with names like Enema, Puff Adder and Sniff Doggie Doo. The term "gangsta rapper" is not a racial but an "artistic" label, and therefore the parody of "gangsta" language is not a racial slur but a criticism of its sociopathic content. In part the poem satirizes not only the sex/gender slurs made by such people but also their degradation of the English language. It was written several years before the radio personality Don Imus broadcast his troublesome and over-publicized gaffe. Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" has been parodied and imitated a number of times, and in different ways.


1

Among twenty snowy pages
The only cutting thing
Was the eye of the parody.


2

I was of three minds,
Like a book
In which there are three parodies.


3

The parody slipped in among the editor's papers;
It was a small sabot in the machine.


4

A chalk and a blackboard
Are one.
A chalk and a blackboard and an instructor are one
Huge parody.


5

I do not know which to prefer,
The parody of inflections
Or the inflections of parody:
The writing,
Or the whistling after.


6

Lines of cathartic broken prose filled the long page
With barbaric gas.
The shadow of a parody
Crossed and re-crossed my mind.
The mood
Traced in the parody
An inexplicable snicker.


7

Yo, gangsta rappers, hip-hoppers and wanna-be's,
Why yo ice-cracks showz?
Dont-cha see, da pa-ro-dee
Dissin ya durdy hoze?


8

I know the sober, stately cadences of standard English,
Its friendliness to earthy, concrete words;
But I know, too,
That the parody is involved....


9

When the parody was circulating,
It went around and around,
Cutting many circles.


10

At the counterpoint of the parody's
Open scoring on the page,
The hawkers of cacophony
Would gasp, aghast.


11

They overrode the country
In a million DJ vans;
They had no fears, no cares!
They never suspected
The parody would overtake them.


12

The crowd is streaming overhead,
The Mall slides by.
Somewhere a parody is hatching.


13

This Twilight has been a Dark Age
For ages.
An Ice Age has descended,
Colder than glaciers.
A parody poises itself
Among the pages.
_