Star Musk
 

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(Idle thinking while the ship is sinking....)

While Rome burns... Maya Angelou has been monetized on the US quarter.

One of my favorite quotes of hers is this one: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Poets seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance; albeit poetry itself seems to have cracked open to be something new... Face it — what isn't cracking open? Will the metamorphosis be complete before Rome burns? Or are we hedging our bets and following Musk to the stars? Frontiers are back, baby!

Nothing to discuss. Carry on.

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Actually, there's quite a lot to discuss, I think.

It's interesting which poets are being celebrated. Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou, for instance, are two black women. It's interesting which black poets the white establishment has summoned up. These poets write easily understandable, optimistic poems. Poems are empowering to black people, but never say anything too distasteful about the white establishment. Poems that are not too well-crafted, or too complex to seem like an intellectual threat to a white person. The Hill we Climb is a piece in service to Neliberal Bidenism that only brings the country back to "normality", and I don't think many black people like that "normality". Maya Angelou's poems, badly metred, though inspirational and quite pleasant, say things white people can swallow: racism is bad, slavery is a terrible legacy, but do they speak to the experience of black people in America today, an experience the white establishment might not quite like? No, not really.
Why are we putting token, famous black poets on the dolar? Where are the Jay Wrights, or the Ishion Hutchinsons, who have taken poetry and made it theirs, complex and visionary.
No, until poets like them are at our forefront, then this isn't abreaking open. It's white people trying to make themselves feel good.

Cameron, in this particular case, black people don't seem to mind white people feeling good about Angelou's appearance on the quarter. In fact, they seem to be deluded into thinking it's a good thing. I haven't heard a single black leader or opinion columnist say what you've just said, nor have I seen an outcry on social media. Your suggestion that they should have chosen a couple of men (who, by the way, are still living and thus not traditionally eligible) instead of this particular woman ignores the desirability of adding to the scant handful of women on US currency in the past 200+ years, as well as the tradition in the US that you need to be dead to have your face become legal tender.

To suggest that it is tokenism to honor Angelou, a wildly popular and admired public figure for many years, regardless of what you think about her poety, is the kind of thing that gives wokeness a bad name. This is not a poetry prize, but a commemorations and recognition of a public figure who is loved and respected by millions, not just for her poetry but for her voice and her presence in American culture as a force for good and diversity. I myself am not a huge fan of her writing, but that's not the sole criterion I would go by in this context. Getting honored on a coin is not a poetry contest but something much larger, something which carries tons of symbolism as well. Just like Trump was acting symbolically when he vetoed the plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill (something Biden will probably revive before too long), the decision to put Angelou on a commemorative coin (or not to do so) is fraught with symbolism.

Roger,
I take all your points. Granted this is wider than poetry. But I honestly feel quite exhausted by which poets we routinely celebrate when we comment that poetry is having a revival or whatever.
I'll amend my suggestions: Lucille Cliffton would have made a much greater choice.
I still think Angelou is honestly a pour choice. Not even Morrison?
Of black commentators: I'm sure they wouldn't ... at least not in all the big neoliberal journals.

Over here in England we have an antiquated figure of utterly useless royal power on our coins. Angelou is a step up.

Although there are some great poc page poets, most of the real talent went into a different form - the great black poets of recent history are mcs. Would raekwon's profile on a quarter make me happy, though? I gotta say no, frankly. This fall of Rome morif is misplaced, I think. There's a transformational opportunity here, via exponential social tech, for a far better system to arrise and address in higher resolution the collective coordination issues we are facing. Black white queer gay trans hood junkie scientist identities aside, I accept you and care about you as a person and i'd be willingly to address the issues by running the dialectic until we are 95% aligned rather than this 50/50 war of outmoded and frankly dumb adversarial world views. In other words participatory government via social tech will make the nation state obsolete, it already has in a lot of ways. Sans autocratic pressure how do we incentivize collected sense making so that order is emergent rather than forced. The old political conversations are boring now, frens.....

I'm not sure it matters, but it may be worth pointing out that hardly anyone uses coins these days. My only use for quarters is to buy food from a vending machine at the zoo to feed the ducks and goats. There's a sign at the register of the supermarket I shop in that says there is a nationwide coin shortage and asks customers paying cash to come up with exact change if possible.

Also, it's my understanding that Maya Angelou's image will be on the back side of the coin, with George Washington still on the front (though a version created by a woman many years ago), so it's not exactly the same thing as being the featured person honored.

US stamps have already commemorated Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden, as well as white poets such as Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Joseph Brodsky, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams.

Well, I always liked the stamp.
As a hip-hop lover I must disagree. IF I were to compare black rappers to poets, Raekwon and Lamar to Hutchinson or Hayden or Walcott, the poets will always come out on top. Rap just doesn't encourage the same type of ambiguity that poetry does. Aesop Rock is the exception that proves the rule. And his race makes him a rather ironic exception.

Cam,

I agree for the most part but the top pens in rap history are as strong as any page poet. Rae, Ghost, Yoni Wolf, even Roc Marci, Andre 3000, deltron...all have tons of work that crushes on the page: sprung rhythm, recombinant rhymes, triple meanings, lazer focus imagery. I've been writing a book that maps certain schools of rappers that employ what we would consider academic poetic conventions... Lamar is no where near that conversation. It tends to be the new york fly talk image based rappers, and the alternative more underground dudes that are the most advanced poetically. Also the whole race in hop hop thing is overplayed, hip hop is a meritocracy of skill regardless of race, ya!? Always love showing style wars to frothing at the mouth marxist types who claim hip hop is solely a response to white supremacy, sigh -

A mural in the hood trumps a coin imo

Peep this hook from Yoni:

There was a moth in the soapdish
laminated in lye -
Will you still remember me well
if I don't make it to two-oh-oh-five,
my deadline gemini...

Jesse,
Tell me when that book comes out..I would really wish to read it.
I certainly don't think that rap is just a reaction to white supremacy.

And yes, we are again in agreement about the new york rappers.

I agree on sprung rhythm, word, rhyme, and metaphor. But I don't quite believe that they can best page poets. I think we are mostly on the same page though...Second the mural.

I've been thinking recently about the sixteen-bars of a rap verse, especially as how it relates to the sonnet.

I think Maya Angelou was a good choice because this is not a poetry prize in which we can or should insist that only the best poets be allowed to appear on our coins, but it is a tribute to the simple fact that she was widely admired for what she stood for and had become an iconic figure admired for her dignity, eloquence, and moral leadership. Yes, at the heart of all that was her writing, which allowed her to build that reputation (though actually she was best known for a prose memoir). It's a case where we can admire both the person and the writing, and there are certainly many millions of people in the US who have been made to feel good over the decision to pay her this honor in a way they would not have felt if some lesser-known poet had been chosen, even if some might videw that lesser-known as the better poet.

What, no puns about change?

Shhhhhh! We'll have a pundemic

Well, that's about to change now, isn't it, Julie?

Just my two cents. I should probably have checked my privilege.

Seriously, though, Roger is right that many, if not most, people no longer use coinage. But it's worth noting that a large number of those who still do are people of color, and are thus the most likely to appreciate the attempt to honor achievers who were also people of color:

Digression: the article doesn't explicitly mention bail bonds among "non-bank alternative financial services," but I assume that those are included along with services that cash checks for a hefty fee, or that offer paycheck advances for an even heftier fee.

The fact that this particular (coinage-based) tribute might not have much impact on most Americans doesn't necessarily mean it's useless.

When things cost more, there is less change.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Fear of change is so Republican.

I'm teaching an Intro to Poetry course at OSU this semester, which has 42 students. I did a (written) icebreaker exercise that was fairly open-ended -- tell me your experience with poetry, do you like poetry, do you have a favorite poet etc. Maya Angelou came up several times, and no other poet came up more than once.

Not exactly a huge sample size, but Angelou is familiar, known, and generally liked. If we're going to have a poet on the quarter, I think Angelou is a great choice.

We can't have it both ways. Poets who target their works exclusively (in every sense of that word) for the type of narrow, elite audience that regards explanatory notes as deeply insulting shouldn't complain whenever a more mainstream poet gets honored by the mainstream public.

Who are these poets and where are they complaining? I see no mention of any "exclusive" poets on this thread. In my own comments I only see the establishment's bland, inoffensive poet and the real great black poets of talent who go wrongfully unrecognized. Where this talk of "exclusive[ness]" and "explanatory notes" is coming from is beyond me at present. Julie, can you illuminate.

FWIW, I unpick this as:

1. Oh, cool thing, A (universally recognised as completely amazing, regardless of their skin colour) Black Female poet will be accepted into a mainstream canon, and vindicated by a particular kind of embodied object
2. This isn’t so cool, as the embodied objects are only canonised by a particular strand of society who invented that canon, and exciting things are going on elsewhere which centralise different cultural experiences rather than articulating them as something that should be canonised within dominant power structures.
3. But the wider majority won’t get that, and it is important that we all move forwards with a sense of togetherness/belonging.


I don’t think this is about Maya Angelou, maybe - maybe more about wider ideas of power and agency, including what currency ‘is’ and who decides what faces go ‘on’ it.

I think there's something here about structures of power (isn't there always) and capitalism, and breaking down structures - and how that happens, either by a kind of storming of heirarchies/power or by finding lines of flight -

But the specific argument here isn’t mine, as until the UK has the collective willpower to rid themselves of their current PM, I cannot critique the US.

Sarah

I apologize, Cameron. I was conflating this thread with about two decades of sour grapes expressed here at Eratosphere over which poets deserve, and don't, to be famous outside the po world.

Name recognition is definitely a criterion when seeking to honor someone on a coin, though. And it's not going to be the sort of name recognition earned by threatening the status quo too much.

If any of my abstruse comments have made anyone out of the small number who have read them curious enough to go off and take some interest in the work of Ishion Hutchinson, Lucillle Cliffton, or the much more undervalued Jay Wright, instead of reading another bestselling book or anthologised poem by Maya Angelou, then at least I have done something toward raising the profiles of these geniuses.

I'd love it if you'd use the Musing on Mastery board to post some of their works that really grab you.

In response to your praise, I read Ishion Hutchinson's three seven poems on the POETRY website and one in The New Yorker. Just as for most poems in POETRY and The New Yorker, I liked some of the imagery and phrasing, but was left with an overall feeling of having missed the point.

I hope that says more about the type of poems that appeal to the editors of those two publications than it does about me. [Edited to say: Actually, what it says about me is that I'd never heard of this poet before because I haven't paid much attention to two of my country's leading poetry magazines for the past two decades...because I got tired of paying good money just to feel stupid. I can be blissfully ignorant for free.] Perhaps I'll be able to engage better with his other work.

But I might still need some notes in order to see what you see in him. If you can provide some, I'd be sincerely grateful.

I do love this:

     I smashed my head against a lightbulb
     and light sprinkled my hair;

BTW, here's the series of quarters:

https://catalog.usmint.gov/on/demand...desktop-v2.png

Gotta say, I appreciate the names being on these!

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(Crashing back in on a wing and a prayer that what I have to say has any relevance to what has been said... I have tried to work in some punnage at Julie's behest)

I guess "it's all good" as the hipsters say. Or, as the GenX'ers say,"Whatever". "Better late than never" as the greatest generation would say (if they were still able to talk and chew gum at the same time).

But what would a poet say to being monetized? Isn't it the height of hypocrisy? Isn't it Chump Change? What would Maya write? Would the Treasury overrule her objection, claiming sovereignty over currency?

This is a boon for coin collectors; a hard nut to swallow for petrified racists and bigots who spend their currency resisting change. The transformation of currency is happening, but not in the way of minting/coining the likeness of overlooked under appreciated women would have you think. Currency is sea-changing from coinage to plastic to whateverthefuckbitcoin is. Is this a token gesture? The US has been tinkering with the quarter for the last quarter century. I hardly recognize our coins these days. Is the depiction/inclusion of women on our quarters a "too little too late" scenario?. Does money mean anything?

On the occasion I actually have change in my pocket I never look at the graphic relief on it and ponder its significance. I just put it in a vending machine or a parking meter to get what I want. Does it still say "In God We Trust" because that is definitely up for review, IMO. (or is that only on the bills? I don't know, I can't find my money anywhere). What would Jesus do to the Mints? Tip the tables.

I don't know for sure if Rome is burning... (how would I?) Perhaps it is a slow-burn. After all, Ginsberg predicted the Fall of America a half-century ago. There are always thousands of false prophets. But there is a feeling, an undercurrent to our culture that is

No, Rome is not burning, the ship is not sinking. I was being facetious. We're safe for now. That's not a prediction. We have insurance, right? We have poets to protect us. Protect us, Maya!

We must become a culture of readers. Not spenders. Make books our currency. —Oh crap! They digitized them, too!

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Cameron is correct. I don't have anything against Angelou, other than she wrote bad poetry. And it is bad. I cringe when my students choose her for a presentation and I hope they just make some interesting shit up. She was charming. I honestly would have liked to meet her. On a coin? Who cares. There are worse people we spend.

Never mind. Cameron made the point more effectively and he's right that other poets/writers need far more attention.