Politics as Usual, Sadly

Here in flyover country rages one of the many battles for a Senate seat that could shift the balance of power in Congress in November. The battle is between incumbent Republican Jim Talent and Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill, and it resonates nationally not only because of the potential significance of its outcome, but because the campaign has featured some of the same disgraceful, disheartening tactics used around the country. Both Talent and McCaskill are running enough ads during the World Series (which features the St. Louis Cardinals) to single-handedly finance Major League Baseball's new labor accord. It is these ads that are so disgraceful and disheartening.

Factcheck.org, and indispensible and under-used resource for those wishing to limit the manipulative power of politicians, has authored a critique of several Talent ads that attack McCaskill. In those ads, Talent and his organization attribute several critiques of his opponent to the Kansas City Star when, in actuality, those critiques were uttered by McCaskill critics quoted in the Star. The difference is significant, obviously. According to the Factcheck report, Talent's campaign has not responded to the critique. According to another report, Talent has promised to pull the ads, but has yet to do so. I cannot help but anticipate that the ads are working, and that more potential voters will be manipulated by the mis-message than will be repelled by Talent's deceit.

The record of success is clear: look at the Swift Boat campaign in 2004, and the hatchet job Bush and his thugs did on John McCain in 2000. In politics, truth is what you make it. Which makes truth crushingly difficult to find.

Praise Be

If you haven't read The Constant Critic, and you care about the health of poetry, do. This article lambasts compellingly the latest installment of Best American Poetry.

Dictionaries are our friends

The poem featured today on Verse Daily is "Amazon Parable" by Jeffrey Thomson, and it was published in Quarterly West, a literary journal I have long admired. The poem is decent; it recounts the Amazonian legend of bees that, instead of stinging their victims, steal their victims' hair. But the poem isn't about the legend; it is, in the poem's words, about "the weight / the story carries." Good enough.

But I have a problem with the poem, and with Quarterly West (and Verse Daily) for publishing it. Here's the first sentence of the poem:

The bees that will strip every hair
from your head instead of swelling
your hands with a thatch of venom,

that will leave you bald and clean
and unstung, they are my subject
today.

Look at that word "thatch." Here's the OED's definition: Material used in thatching; straw or similar material with which roofs are covered; particularly b. that actually forming a roof, the thatching.

The subsequent definitions don't stray far; "thatch" meaning head of hair (and pubic hair); "thatch" meaning layer of matted debris atop a lawn; "thatch" meaning tall, coarse grass. So in what sense can "a thatch of venom" swell someone's hands? The word is simply misused.

I'm not arguing against the figurative use of language, obviously. But "thatch" provides no striking figuration of venom; it does not offer us a new or interesting way to see the bees' poison. It merely distracts. And any editor worth her salt should write the poet and say, "I like this poem, but could we do something about 'thatch'? It makes no sense." At which point any poet worth his salt should be humiliated that he used a word of which he did not know the meaning.