Mark, I think the best that can be said for "The Change" is that it sparks thoughtful responses like yours. If
Hoagland's own response to
Claudia Rankine's open letter had been as thoughtful, instead of breathtakingly condescending, I could view the poem and its author's intentions for it more charitably.
Yes, "The poem is deliberately designed to be uncomfortable, provocative and ambiguous." And yes, those qualities have the potential to make a poem far more effective than polemic in inviting readers to examine their own attitudes.
I just don't think that this poem really does "explore" those attitudes with the assistance of discomfort, provocativeness, and ambiguity. Instead, it uses those tools to present racial biases as perfectly understandable, even
inevitable, so why explore them further than that? If someone else finds them offensive, too bad. In that context, I see the phrase "I couldn't help wanting" as a total cop-out:
Don't blame me for my racist feelings, I'm not responsible for them, they just happen to me, and I couldn't give them up even if I tried, so I won't bother to try.
And yes, I get that that may be intentional, to provoke exactly the sort of negative response I have to the poem. But Hoagland's own comments on the poem certainly suggest otherwise.
Anyway, I prefer the universality of
this more empathetic sports poem by Tony Hoagland, who was indeed a brilliant poet, even though "The Change" is (for me and conny, at least) a swing and a miss.
(BTW,
Happy Valentine's Day!)