What is American poetry? What is UK poetry?
 

I've been reading a 1954 essay by Marius Bewley titled "Some Aspects of Modern American Poetry". It first appeared in "The Complex Fate" (Chatto and Windus Ltd.) though I'm reading it in Modern Poetry: Essays in Criticism, editor John Hollander.

Go West Young Man

—James Laughlin

Yessir they're all named
either Ken or Stan or Don
every one of them and

those aren't just nick-
names either no they're
really christened like

that just Ken or Stan or
Don and you shake hands
with anybody you run into

no matter who the hell
it is and say "glad to
know you Ken glad to

know you Don" and then
two minutes later (you
may not have said ten

words to the guy) you
shake hands again and
say "glad to have met

you Stan glad to" and
they haven't heard much
about Marx and the class

struggle because they
haven't had to and by
god it makes a country

that is fit to live in
and by god I'm glad to
know you Don I'm glad!

Fifty years ago this poem was considered a good representative of American poetry. In my opinion it firmly holds its own "as a poem" even today, though it did make my mind go whizzing in two directions at once: weirdly, one part raced to the Tea Party and Congressional shutdowns, and another part plonked down in conceptual poetry http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...ne/poem/237062 .

Marius Bewley had this to say about American poetry of fifty years ago:

"What the vast horde of American poets mean by American experience is, of course, something that cannot safely be generalized about for more than one poet at a time, but all the poets have this—and perhaps only this—in common: each is aware that his own experience is American, and the sense of it gives him confidence and a feeling that what he has to say is important . (…) Like a great deal of American writing, it is pure and emphatic assertion. Whether it has logic or not, it has a good deal of will in its make-up, and one is really surprised at the strength of the conviction behind it."


How would you characterize contemporary American poetry? And since Marius Bewly is—or so I believe—an Englishman, what characterizes contemporary poetry in the UK?

What characterizes a lot of contemporary poetry in the UK is a sort of snivelling pc boringness. How lucky they are that Wendy, Ann and me are around to improve matters. Oldies rule!

And the great James Fenton of course.

And any English person on Eratosphere of course. Plus other people who win Speccie competitions.

Ah, John, Rose Kelleher agrees with you, here.

I wonder...
Shall I get in before my Word Nerd Police boss, Janice, to point out that "Wendy, Ann and me" should be ''Wendy, Ann and I'' in this instance? Aside from that, I agree with what you said, John.

... And Rose's piece is hilarious, Julie :)

Jayne

American, that's a big word. In Valpairaso they write poems on the rocks, in white paint, maybe in honour of Neruda, I know little Spanish so can't say what they said. When I saw them I was a little scandalized as I thought it spoilt the natural scene, but I like the idea of poetry reaching the street, like graffitti art. I'd do that if I wasn't old and lazy, put poetry in places where it surprises people.

As for the USA, I think poetry is in great shape, it's online, that makes it wonderful for me as I can access so much. It's free so you'd better have two careers and it speaks of a culture that despite its problems still innovates and leads, with occasional stumbles.
And of course Canada has Leonard Cohen. And a few Erato girls who shall remain nameless.

Slightly off topic, but did you catch this one?

http://laphamsquarterly.org/arts-let...raphs/day-jobs

http://laphamsquarterly.org/sites/de...2_day_jobs.png

Apropos Bill's post, I'd add that EA Robinson worked in the US Customs office. It came about because Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's son, was a fan of his poetry, and recommended it to his father, who was also quite taken with it. When he learned that Robinson was in financial difficulties, he set him up in a government job that paid pretty well for the times, and let him know that he didn't expect him to do customs work at all but to spend his time writing more poetry. There's an American story!

Bill, those adjusted salaries are FAR TOO LOW. Charlotte Bronte would have died of starvation at that rate and Eliot was very well paid, thank you very much. The best guy is Wallace Stevens of course. He had shedloads of money. And don't forget our James Fenton who is a millionaire. How? I'll tell you if you want to know.

Me. I'm poor as a church mouse. Or so I tell the Revenue and Customs. I haven't paid tax for years. Thank you, Gordon Brown.

As for me - Me and my shadow, walking down the avenue.

John,

See here for some discussion of Governess salaries at the time: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.c...f-jane-austen/

Can't have been fun. Merrill, of course, was absolutely loaded, and by the early 20's, Yeats was essentially a church mouse. But I wonder: who was the richest historical English poet?

The story is that when Faulkner sold his first novel he quit his post office job, proclaiming that, "I will no longer be at the beck and call of every son-of-a-bitch with three cents for a postage stamp."

The Earl of Rochester was pretty wealthy, although I believe his expenses were considerable...

Petra Whiteley is an interesting young UK poet, very symbolic and quite European, originally from Czech Republic(?). Gillian Prew is a young Scottish poet, very dark, dense poetry. She is also an academic (philosophy).
Can I also put in a plug for Gig Ryan, the best Oz poetess, since it's women's week.
All 3 write in free verse but Gig Ryan is so intelligent give her a week and she'd be writing in Mandarin.

John, have you ever read "Into the Heart of Borneo", in which Fenton is a principal character?

Actually I was hoping for a more critical response to form and content in contemporary US and UK poetry. That is why I posted in Musing on Mastery rather than General Talk.

Does anyone in this room read any poetry other than their own or what appears on the Eratosphere workshops?

Is the poetry floating out of the publishing houses and clouds about navel fluff, or national politics, or the working class, or weighty existential queries and meditations?

Is contemporary work formal, or humorous, or spread out all over the page, a kind of connect-the-words?

Does it arrive from a publishing house or self-published on a cloud?

Are poets channeling the old masters or assembling structures from refrigerator magnets?

Do poets borrow poetry at the library, or buy poetry from some source--what source?

Do poets actively seek out new work or just routinely "like" on social media?

What poetry do you think gets the most reads--poetry of past or contemporary elite/recognized or the smallish poetry pal constellations?

Do aspiring poets care about anyone's poetry except their own?

Sorry Janice. When I started writing poetry a few years ago I joined the Poetry Society, which includes a subscription to Poetry Review, which seems to pretty much represent the Establishment of UK poetry. I disliked it enormously. Almost all of it seemed to me gimmicky and/or incomprehensible. The society was going through a lot of upheaval at the time – I would say the issue guest-edited by George Szirtes seemed a big improvement over the others that year; but at the end of the year I cancelled my membership. Maybe I’ll try again one day to see if it’s improved under the leadership of Maurice Riordan.

The poetry I like best is what I read here and in form-friendly webzines (Light, LUPO, Snakeskin, Mezzo Cammin, etc), but I do also go to the University library sometimes to read print-only journals like Measure and to check out books by what poets they carry. And I do force myself to include modern free verse in that: Don Paterson, Gwyneth Lewis, Helen Mort and Simon Armitage are some of the ones of that ilk I like better than most. But my favourite (non-Eratospherean) living poets are Wendy Cope and Sophie Hannah.

I rarely buy poetry – this is partly me being cheap and partly my strange inability to read books or magazines I have bought. I’m much more likely to read something I’ve checked out of a library because it comes with a time limit, even if objectively I would much prefer to read a book sitting on my shelf at home.

Other than Wendy Cope, Sophie Hannah, Don Paterson, Ann Drysdale, John Whitworth, and other Sphereans, I don't tend to read a lot of British poets, so I can't speak to trends there. I have a lot of favorite poets that I read often, trying to get my hands on most of their books either through interlibrary loan (free-verse poets) or by purchase (formal poets, who are not carried in most libraries). Among the living free-verse poets I read regularly, I would include Andrew Hudgins, Ron Wallace, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Tony Hoagland, Billy Collins, Kim Addonizio, Beth Ann Fennelly, Linda Pastan, Stephen Dunn, Allison Joseph, David Kirby, Philip Dacey, and Leo Dangel (some of these write in form some of the time). I try to keep up with the work of most American formal poets, so that list is even longer. Since Poetry is available online, I look through it occasionally to see if there is anything there that I enjoy. Most of the time I don't like what I see there enough to read more of the author's work. I like work that is understandable, funny, or narrative, or that connects with my emotions or experience in some way. Obviously, I like form and what it can do, but I expect the same things of it in content that I expect of free verse. I accept that my tastes are narrow compared to the tastes of some readers, but I don't have time to read everything, so I head for the kind of work that I know will give me pleasure. I would probably read more contemporary British poetry if I knew it better, but there is not a lot of overlap between British and American journals in terms of what they publish. The contemporary British writers I read, I mainly learned about through Eratosphere.

Susan

To answer some part of your question, Janice. There may be the teeniest swing back towards formal poetry here in the US but it is almost unnoticeable given the truckloads of free verse which has been dumped upon the journal world here. To me, it seems that there is a real aversion to formal poetry. I attribute that to laziness, not preference of art. I also believe it is a business decision on the editors part, even the university journals tilt heavily to free verse. In the recent past I was just as guilty in my preference for free verse, not due to laziness but to ignorance. The post-modern public generally doesn't have a clue what it takes to write a good formal poem, much less to comprehend it. We are called "rhymers" by our free verse brethren in such a derogatory way. I think the best free verse writers (Billy Collins not withstanding) do incorporate rhythm and meter in their work. Rhyme is more subtle, folded into the guts of their work so that their readers aren't consciously aware of it or their readers don't mind it if they are running internal mind tricks on them. I don't submit free verse to journals so I am not up to speed on the paying markets for it.

I see much more formal poetry in the UK. Some of it is just as dreadful as some of my work, but there are a good many talented formalist writers there. I don't think free verse has the same hold there as in the US, but I could be wrong about that. What I do see are the local poetry societies making concerted efforts to engender formal competitions which pay at least a little bit more than anything going on in America. I suspect education has something to do with that as well. It is natural to assume this given the UK and Europe have been the cradle of formalists from the beginning. Americans seem to be intimidated by their across the Pond brethren. There is a little snobbery involved and not a little resentment of it. I don't care who writes the good stuff, I just want to read it. Buy it when I can. More later.

At the risk of revealing more than I intend, I'll have a go at these questions, but I can only speak for myself.

Yes. I try to read the magazines I subscribe to and the contributors copies I get, though the process can take a while. The magazines are mostly US and only rarely UK. I also read Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Rattle site daily, and when I get an e-mail from poets.org, I read that too.

And I've now been on the receiving end of unsolicited submissions, which was quite the adventure.

Most of the books I buy are either by poets whose work I already I know or are older, well-reviewed collections. (For example, I'd like to score a cheap copy of Mark Jarman's Unholy Sonnets.)

All of those, and it varies from magazine to magazine and issue to issue.

The spread-out-all-over-the-page thing is rare in my experience. Formal work exists out there beyond the Sphere, but slant rhyme and loose meter are more common.

I'm reading stuff that publishers produce, so I can't say.

Most of what I see channels contemporary speech and tries to create of it something memorable or elevated.

I use the library and interlibrary loan. And I buy. Mostly used, through Amazon, but sometimes from used bookstores.

Poetry Daily is a good way to be introduced to new work. Talking to others (online or in person) about what has impressed them lately is another good way.

I can only say what I read, and I wish I had more time to go back to the poetry of the past. The new sort of overwhelms it.

Yes. Other poems often trigger our own.

Now everybody else can tell me how totally weird I am.

Come Janice. I read the other poets in Quadrant. Joe Dolce is very good for one. He has a website. And Jennifer Compton too. And Victoria Field, a wonderful poem lately about her daughter's first period. Not something we dads can share, as a rule. And the great (and fat) Les Murray of course.

And back here in Blighty I'm a big fan of James Fenton, as you should be too, though I don't know if he has written much lately. But I've bought his books, paid money down. And I read any poems that appear in The Spectator.

Poetry Review isn't very good now, I'm glad to say, since they won't take me at any price.

I like to feel that what I do is in some sort of mainstream. And it is.

Gail, no I haven't. Tell me more.

Wagner was the first to realize a melody could extend over time beyond the confines of one song, this translated via Eliot into the long poem that had a melodic theme that was not immediately apparant, this is for me the real attraction of free verse, very few poets have managed it, to my mind one is 'From Gloucester Out' by Edward Dorn, and to a lesser extent Whitman. I think Eliot succeeded in Prufrock but failed in Wasteland, Wastelend is too influenced by Pound. Van Morrison also initiated it in song with Astral Weeks, (written by a poet, not Van). Most use free verse because it frees the subconcious but in doing so many forget both music and coherence and such poems have no appeal beyond their intellectual content. This has dogged poetry in both the US and UK, and elsewhere.
This is not off topic I think formalists should understand and read free verse, so much of it is wonderful. It's everywhere now and has been for a hundred years.

I rarely submit anything for publication, and of those rare submissions, hardly anything gets accepted. Bottom line--I can't count on contributor copies to keep me in touch with contemporary poetry.

I currently subscribe to eight print journals, all of them form-friendly. Some of these also publish the sort of free verse that tends to appeal to me (i.e., the kind that does what the formal verse I like also does--convey an experience, rather than communicate how very, very clever and cool the author is).

I also read, on a regular basis, a handful of online journals that are form-friendly.

I've disliked many poetry venues over the years. Some of these I have found disappointing because they tend to publish a lot of substandard, lackluster, predictable poems (often by the same handful of names...hmmm, friendship? backscratching?). Very occasionally, I'll bail on a venue because I find the prevailing climate there a bit too annoyingly self-righteous, either liberally or conservatively.

I buy books by authors whose work I have already encountered and enjoyed several times, either in a workshop or in a journal, OR whose books are highly recommended by others I trust.

It never ceases to amaze me how many supposedly well-known poets I've never heard of, until I encounter them in an interview in Able Muse Review or Rattle or someplace. Poetry's not a huge universe, yet we all seem confined to certain orbits. Someone who's a big noise in one set of venues or conferences may be a complete unknown in another.

Sadly, a big, national venue like Poetry--which actually has a stated mission to try to give readers an idea of what's going on across the breadth of "contemporary American poetry"--in practice only manages to represent a few types of work, which tend to be fairly close to each other. Lots of other exciting stuff may be going on, unreported, but if it's too far from its usual beat, Poetry doesn't seem to think it matters.

I try re-subscribing to Poetry every few years--i.e., with about the same frequency, and with exactly the same sense of "I really should stop avoiding this because it will be good for me" attitude, as I enroll in exercise classes. And every time, I hate it with a ferocity that scares me, and I remember why I've quit so many times. Poetry, like the exercise classes I've tried, seems designed to appeal to someone who is, as Rose's essay said, [not me]. I wish [not me] well, and will leave [not me] to do [not me]'s thing, without my financial support or allocation of limited bookshelf space.

Thanks everyone. Very interesting. FWIW I've found that by buying secondhand over the net one can get some wonderful books by wonderful poets for 65 cents plus postage or thereabouts. The libraries are being shut down you know, and their books are going for a song. And sometimes the so-called secondhand books are brand-new.

Also from my local library I've acquired a large number of international poets in translation for about the same price without postage. They don't have room for books that no one checks out, so they sell them off after a year of no activity. Needless to say, I'm in pig heaven when I come home with ten new books of poetry for ten dollars or less. I get access to many international poets I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, and even buy English writers in translation sometimes. It is interesting to see how the translation compares with the original. I learn a lot that way.

John, I agree about James Fenton. He is marvelous. I recently bought his Title correction: Yellow Tulips : Poems 1968-2011. It is very good. I discovered his work via an essay. And I just ordered (new) the collected works of Stanley Kunitz (thanks to Wells mentioning him). I've always loved his writing and found a hardcover Collected at a reasonable price. An early Christmas present. Or something.

Thanks again, all. The door is still open, if anyone else cares to share.

I suppose I should take a swing at these, just out of a warped sense of duty. And because Maryann did, and I don't want to leave her hanging out to dry. But please don't think of my answers as actual answers, or even positions. Any answers say more about the answerer than about the subject. And the questions themselves do the same. That said...

Does anyone in this room read any poetry other than their own or what appears on the Eratosphere workshops?

Yep. Quite a bit of it. And I try to go well beyond the realms of brits and yanks.

Is the poetry floating out of the publishing houses and clouds about navel fluff, or national politics, or the working class, or weighty existential queries and meditations?

I rather like "weighty existential queries and meditations." It's pretty much my stock in trade, alas, so I likely tend to seek those out. And discussions of aesthetics. I'm selfish that way: anything that can broaden my own work, or my own understanding. Anything else, like those categories you list, I tend to ignore, so I have no idea about their prevalence. I also like hot-wild-monkey-sex poems. Obviously. I wish I had a copy of John's anthology of Blue Verse. Can't afford it, dagnabbit.


Is contemporary work formal, or humorous, or spread out all over the page, a kind of connect-the-words?

I have no idea what this question means. I really don't make any distinction between formal or informal, structured or free. There are good people doing good work in all genres: we're lucky that way these days. And there are hacks and poseurs doing things in all genres as well. The distinctions we know so well are pointless, and the persecution complex so many formal poets suffer from hurts only themselves. We need to move forward.

Does it arrive from a publishing house or self-published on a cloud?

Actually, most new work arrives from the same source it has for decades: little magazines and small independent publishing houses. Anyone looking to the big five for innovation should probably look elsewhere.

Are poets channeling the old masters or assembling structures from refrigerator magnets?

Another false dichotomy. Do I learn stuff from Ovid and Martial and Attar and Du Fu? Of course. Do I get just as fascinated by twists of contemporary language? Yes, I love the music of the sensual ear.

Do poets borrow poetry at the library, or buy poetry from some source--what source?


Neither. I hate to say this, but if it's not online, I'm probably not reading it. In a choice between buying food for the boys or buying a book, the boys are going to win every time. This has cost me friends: you wouldn't believe how many messages I get from people saying "Please buy my book." I've even lost friends over it. I wish things were different, but there you are.

Do poets actively seek out new work or just routinely "like" on social media?

I'm desperate for anything new and useful. Leaves on leaves on leaves of books I've turned, and I know nothing. Finding something I can actually use is rare. There's this Mongolian poet, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav, who friended me out of the blue on facebook. I liked some of his stuff so well, I spent three hours discussing it with my lit class the next day. I love that kind of thing.

What poetry do you think gets the most reads--poetry of past or contemporary elite/recognized or the smallish poetry pal constellations?

You know what gets the most reads? The Dash. Look it up, I dare you. Then there are poets who are the equivalent of Thomas Kinkade. A few of them have been mentioned in this thread. I don't want to hurt any feelings, so I won't use their names. But if you're counting, they get way more reads than others. Not that I abhor Kinkade: I'm very, very interested in why so many people like him so much. I suspect it has something to do with Dutton's theory of beauty. When we dismiss such things, it's to our own detriment... and to the detriment of our work. Do we really enjoy sticking our noses in the air that much?

Do aspiring poets care about anyone's poetry except their own?

I don't know any aspiring poets. I know people who are producing work, and people who aren't. Most of the latter group are like me in the woodshop: I spend a lot of time getting in my own way. We carry beliefs that hold us back, even to our detriment. There's no reason people can't be producing on a daily basis. Some people believe it would be bad to do that. That's exactly the kind of belief that holds people back, that gets in their own way. Reverdy thinks we should be like trees, making leaf after leaf after leaf. There's something to be said for that. Just ask Li Po.

Thanks,

Bill

Bill, and ask Keats too: "if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all." But examination of his manuscripts shows his leaves got carefully rearranged after their first burgeoning...

This is an interesting thread. Thanks, Janice, for starting it. I didn't know Marius Bewley was English. He certainly did most of his teaching in America. It's probably people like him who are keenest in identifying the specific qualities of national poetries. Auden was also very good at seeing what made American poetry different from British poetry.

The United Kingdom includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, all the commonwealth nations. Queen Elizabeth II rules them all and not just symbolically, in 1975 she dismissed the Australian parliament. That has to be a factor in how we view ourselves.
Can I also mention Jonathan Heimarck, was once 'Johnny Pravda' on Myspace and Diane Arthur, both now Facebook poets, Jonathan is from Minnesota, Diane is also from the US, not sure where. Both have written fine poems.

Actually that isn't correct, Ross. The United Kingdom comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Don't worry, I saw an interview on Fox News with the Prime Minister of Ireland and they were confused too; couldn't understand why Ireland's currency was the Euro and not the GBP.

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are three of the 16 Commonwealth realms. However, there are 53 countries in the Commonwealth (formerly called the British Commonwealth).

It was sloppy of me not to make clear that Canada was included in "American" poetry.

I should of course have mentioned Australia.

I know some Canadians who may not fully embrace that notion... ;)

So do I. I also know Canadians who ask "Why does 'American' always mean the United States. We live in North America. I spent a long time wondering if I should get into the Mexico is also "North America" discussion, but decided not to. But as far as Canadian poetry is concerned, the Canadian journals and the American journals are usually included in the North American books and magazines that list places to submit too.

Anyway, if I backtrack and say that I am interested in Canadian poetry magazines too. I have a special place in my heart for them because when I was first trying to get published from Sweden, it was Canadian print journals such as Malahat Review, Event, Fiddlehead, Windsor Review who were good to me.

And of course Centrifugal Eye and Rotary Dial and other Canadian mags that no longer exist share that special place. Besides which I love Canada. One of the friendliest countries I've visited.

I don't suppose the Irish understand about the bloody euro either. Never mind. It's on the skids. Bring back the Punt!

I thought Centrifugal Eye and Rotary Dial were still going strong.

http://home.earthlink.net/~tinyviole...urnal/id5.html

http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines/the_rotary_dial

Are they not?

Report me to the punctuation section of the Word Nerd Society. I'll go quietly.

And of course Centrifugal Eye and Rotary Dial (and some Canadian mags that no longer exist) share that special place.

Doesn't hurt to give both of them a little publicity though. Thanks Ann.

I get around 80 books a year for review and try my best to look as Poetry in its online edition.

There is some stuff I find rather witty (I always look for wit) but more that seems centered on the "family romance." Surely I wrote about family matters when I was young (what else do young poets have to write about?) but to read not-so-younger and older poets still going over their problems with mom, dad, and various uncles (rarely aunts) is tiresome.

The other thing that I notice (re. Poetry Magazine, is the number of references to pop culture. These things will give poems a shelf life of maybe a year or two. I recently gave my students Cole Porter's "You're the Top" as an example of a fascinating use of rhyme. They got that, but they got about 15% of the allusions.

As far as the young are concerned anything that happened more than 20 years ago is history and dead history at that. American young people can't tell the civil war from the war of independence, the first from the second world war and the Brits are no better. Hardly any of them know who commanded the forces at Waterloo or who it is on top of that column in Trafalgar Square. They are pig ignorant It's a shame but it's a fact.

Perhaps the English Public School (Private School) is the only place where a decent education can be got. They teach Latin and Greek, don't you know.

Good heavens, even Yanks know that Duke Ellington won the Battle of Waterloo. (Although he famously said that he was on a playing field with Mrs. Beeton at the time.) And, of course, that’s Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square.

Tell me how many young people have heard of Duke Ellington, Chris. He's as long ago as the other Duke. The chap on the pillar a hobbit in a funny hat.

My wife tells me that many French children think Napoleon won.

Roof, frazzle, snap, young people these days. beat them over the head with a cricket bat, I say, they never broke a British square, and we'll hang them in the morning, ignorant bastards all.

John, just out of curiosity - not that I would ever question your sources, or their sources - where did you get the information that young Americans can't tell the civil war from the war of independence, or the first (Gary Cooper) world war from the second (Audie Murphy and John Wayne). I often find the sources of your information fascinating.

As I think you know, Michael, my wife is a history professor. She has more than once told me about students who believe that slavery and the automobile were contemporaneous elements of American life. A colleague of hers tells the story of a student saying, “All I know about the war in Vietnam is what I learned from Saving Private Ryan.” Granted, D-Day and the Tet offensive, which at least occurred in the same century, were a bit closer in time than Yorktown and Appomattox. But the spirit of John’s indictment is certainly true, and I’m quite prepared to believe the letter as well.

I learned about these things on these l'il ol' boards, Michael. I'm sure the young are very nice. They just don't know anything.

Didn't the boy notice the bad guys were, how can I put this, not of South East Asian appearance, Chris.

Yes, Chris, I know there are kids like that (I was one of them, except that my areas of ignorance involved music and dancing - which, at age 17, was far worse), but an entire generation? I know you can find fools - even outside of Congress - but is that exceptional or institutional?

John, we cross-posted, but it's always informative to have you expand on your world view.

Michael. World view? I am a plain, blunt man. I only speak right on. I tell you that which you yourselves do know. The young know many things, mostly pertaining to mobile phones and the internet which we oldies find most puzzling. But as to knowing anything about what happened five minutes before they were born... nada.

But you know this as well as I do. You are putting yourself out to be nice to your grandchildren. And anyway, what is history? Damn square thick books. The internet will tell us all we need to know.

If we know what to ask.