Althouse: "Trump-speak has always been a radically rough and wrong kind of poetry... his non sequiturs, his use of disjunction, his mangling of syntax..."

April 6, 2020

"Trump-speak has always been a radically rough and wrong kind of poetry... his non sequiturs, his use of disjunction, his mangling of syntax..."

"... can make his rallies resemble nightmarish (and much more crowded) versions of poetry readings I’ve attended in which nonlinear language is conceived of as an attack on the smooth functioning of bourgeois political rhetoric. (Those were the days.) Trump campaigned in this pseudo-poetry, and he fails to govern in it, too, using language that intends to inflame or obscure but almost never refers to anything real. Like many poets, he conflates beauty and truth: We’re going to have a beautiful wall. Beautiful (Confederate) statues. Beautiful rallies (despite the virus). He has said that he’s 'automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them . . .'... Plato warned us against poets. I’m not sure I fully understand his arguments for deporting them from the Republic, but now I’m sobered.... Our guardian in the White House is... just a failed poet like me...."

Writes Ben Lerner in "Trump’s Numbers/What’s compelling about the President’s anti-poetry is how it sounds at once like Wallace Stevens and a bookie" (in The New Yorker).

I encourage you to click through to see the illustration, a tweaked photograph that's an extreme closeup of Trump's mouth. I don't know if the intention was to scream "vagina dentata," but that's what I heard.

49 comments:

robother said...: If you can't Beat Poets, Join 'Em!; 4/6/20, 8:31 AM
J Scott said...: That's not something I wanted to start the day with seeing.; 4/6/20, 8:33 AM
Paul Snively said...: What’s compelling about the President’s anti-poetry is how it sounds at once like Wallace Stevens and a bookie."

Go rent The Sting.

Now try to imagine anyone other than Ray Walston as J.J. Singleton.

Yes, Trump has that same quality. Good observation. Is that a bad thing?; 4/6/20, 8:36 AM
Lurker21 said...: Writes Ben Lerner

Heard his first novel on audiobook. Not completely terrible but nothing special. He's in Madrid and keeps having pointless interactions with two women. Then there's a terror attack, 3/11.

The most memorable thing about the book for me was he kept talking about Topíca. I assumed it was a trendy Madrid night club.

No, actually, he's from Kansas. His latest novel is The Topeka School.; 4/6/20, 8:36 AM
Owen said...: The only thing worse than a bad poet is a bad poet with TDS.; 4/6/20, 8:36 AM
rhhardin said...: Plato warned us against poets.

Socrates warned us against writing.; 4/6/20, 8:39 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Trumo's tone and style does vex a few people. But my family is from New York City, and they tawk like Trump, get all agitated with all those same hand gestures. I'm used to it, and find it kind of endearing. Fuhgeddaboudit.

Of course, it'd be better if these Leftwing ninnies at the New Yorker would focus on Trump's substantive policies more than his style and tone, but they have a hard time doing that.; 4/6/20, 8:40 AM
M Jordan said...: Trump uses linguistic imprecision effectively if not consciously. Almost every time the left thinks they’ve got him at last, Trump forces them to go back to what he actually said and, surprise, they got it wrong again. They thought they had him on calling Coronavirus a hoax but if you parse the words, it isn’t there. He called the Democrats politicizing it a hoax. To wit:

“And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that's been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that."

Clearly he is not saying there is no threat from this virus, that it’s “just the flu,” but rather he is boasting that we contained it which, at that point was true. The same is true of his Charlottesville remarks as Scott Adams has clearly shown.

I imagine Trump honed this skill of crafty imprecision by years of being a salesman, a negotiator. It is not a sign of stupidity, as the left is convinced it is, but riffing with a deal in. mind.; 4/6/20, 8:41 AM
Wince said...: In so many cases Trump's critics frustrated with his practical successes try to diminish him by comparison with what's in their personal portfolios.

In classic anti-Trump bounce-back fashion, what they are essentially doing is revealing just how inconsequential and vacuous those personal portfolios are that have put so many of them atop the establishment social hierarchy.; 4/6/20, 8:41 AM
chuck said...: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. I'm going to stay six feet away from that article, someone has suffered too much isolation.; 4/6/20, 8:41 AM
Otto said...: We Bronxites would call Trump a bullshit artist. Now Ann being a 60s liberal is big on style over substance, notice that she never goes hard into substance ( policies) regarding Trump but goes hard into his style. But Bronxites know that it is substance ( policies) that counts and don't worry about the small shit.We leave the small shit to the girls. Go girl.; 4/6/20, 8:45 AM
narciso said...: why they pretend not to understand; 4/6/20, 8:45 AM
Wince said...: I don't know if the intention was to scream "vagina dentata," but that's what I heard.

Yes, and reminiscent of those really dirty close-up black and white porn magazines from the 1970s.; 4/6/20, 8:46 AM
Temujin said...: This is in many ways a typical tedious template from the left side. But I've never seen a better description of Trump-speak than this sentence: "What’s compelling about the President’s anti-poetry is how it sounds at once like Wallace Stevens and a bookie"

Nailed it.; 4/6/20, 8:49 AM
Marc in Eugene said...: This sort of short essay is why I continue, in spite of every provocation, to suscribe to the New Yorker. Had it gone on for pages, with the author attempting to convince me of the validity of each of his citations and allusions etc etc, I wouldn't have read past the first paragraph.; 4/6/20, 8:51 AM
ConradBibby said...: Trump doesn't speak well but he communicates well. There's rarely any ambiguity.; 4/6/20, 8:54 AM
rhhardin said...: Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd,
Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last;
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:

Pope, Dunciad; 4/6/20, 8:55 AM
Limited blogger said...: Right, Trump reminds me of Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a bit more modest.; 4/6/20, 9:04 AM
Francisco D said...: Trump's verbal style reminds me of a basketball player trying to get past the man guarding him. He weaves, he jukes, he yo-yos the ball, he tries an earlier move again, then a different move. It's sort of a jerky jerky poetry.

The basketball player tries to be unpredictable because predictable moves are more easily defended.

Sometimes he scores and sometimes he misses, but his field goal percentage is pretty good.; 4/6/20, 9:09 AM
narciso said...: ah madrid, that attack was enabled by comey with his drummer mueller, shutting down the stellar wind in the hours before, due to the pantomime at Ashcroft's hospital bed,; 4/6/20, 9:17 AM
robother said...: A "radically rough and wrong kind of poetry." The censorious spirit of Wallace Shawn lives on at the New Yorker. Good luck getting published at the New Yorker if you were the wrong kind of poet. That nice Harvard boy, John Updike, sure, but Ginsberg and the rest of that East Village lot? Not a chance.; 4/6/20, 9:19 AM
narciso said...: well updike is more prose than verse, what did people see in Ginsberg,; 4/6/20, 9:24 AM
Fernandinande said...: ...just a failed poet like me....

And I had mischaracterized these creatures as wannabe/failed novelists, silly me.; 4/6/20, 9:25 AM
tcrosse said...: Poems are made by fools like me.; 4/6/20, 9:28 AM
rcocean said...: Trump a "failed poet"? That's a new one. What a clever angle to attack Trump. Guess the New Yorker's audience is getting tired of the same old attacks every week for the last 4 years.

But its hard to think of another man who's more grounded in the real world than Trump. Our failed poet is mistaking salesman talk for poetry. And Trump's connecting to average people through the use of simple language. But then anyone -like the author - who would attend Poetry readings attacking the "bourgeoisie political sensibility" is not connected to the real world.; 4/6/20, 9:29 AM
rcocean said...: The adjective "Wrong" must be attached in any discussion of anything Trump in the MSM press.; 4/6/20, 9:32 AM
rcocean said...: Trump's speaking style is that of a businessman not a politician. He's also an entertainer. And his mode of speaking at his rallies differs radically from his speech pattern, at more serious times. Like the Chinese virus briefing. But of course, no matter how he talks, he's "wrong".; 4/6/20, 9:35 AM
robother said...: Updike's poetry was rather...prosaic. But even some of his prose was too explicit for Shawn's New Yorker.; 4/6/20, 9:39 AM
robother said...: "what did people see in Ginsberg"

I won't defend Ginssberg, but if Wallace Stevens is wrong, I don't wanna be right.; 4/6/20, 9:52 AM
TrespassersW said...: Now do Biden.; 4/6/20, 9:55 AM
Michael K said...: I don't watch Trump speak but he seems to be the message across if you don't hate him.; 4/6/20, 9:55 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: @Otto,

"We Bronxites would call Trump a bullshit artist. Now Ann being a 60s liberal is big on style over substance"

My Mom went to James Monroe High; I spent many a fine summer in Pelham Bay.; 4/6/20, 9:58 AM
narciso said...: you saw that biden link, he's so far off the board, it's not even funny.; 4/6/20, 10:00 AM
MD Greene said...: I read poetry, but I haven't been to a poetry reading since the 1990s, when poetry readings were a big deal and the poetry, pretty much all of it, was, to say it nicely, not particularly memorable.

What little I have read of Ben Lerner's output convinces me that he needs to get out more. Tribalism has its good points, I'm sure, but it tends to limit one's horizons.; 4/6/20, 10:01 AM
Jersey Fled said...: Every word in the New Yorker is a lie (in my best Pelosi voice); 4/6/20, 10:03 AM
Kevin said...: Trump campaigned in this pseudo-poetry, and he fails to govern in it, too, using language that intends to inflame or obscure but almost never refers to anything real.

An authoritarian Hitler who fails to govern.

And they have the nerve to say Trump is the one dealing in pseudo-poetry that fails to refer to anything real.; 4/6/20, 10:12 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Yes the CiC has a unique manner of speech. Without being easily reduced to sound bites, and impossible to diagram like normal sentences, these strings of ideas and images Trump creates nonetheless clearly transmit his meaning. I truly see his one-of-a-kind style as the perfect opposite of the prior president. Obama uses clear and precise words to obscure the lack of content in his speech, Hope and Change, Yes We Can, reject the false choice of X, etc. while Trump uses repetition and verbal cul-de-sacs and very simple terms like “beautiful” to describe and transmit ideas and aspirations: “I hope we can go back to church on Easter,” “it was a beautiful call,” “it’s a recommendation and you -I’m not going to wear one, it’s a recommendation. You can wear one.”

Through repetition and humor Trump has made clear his priorities. Build a wall. Stop letting China rip us off. America first. Obama always kept his agenda fuzzy and unstated: “fundamentally transform America” and “we are the change we wanted.”; 4/6/20, 10:17 AM
n.n said...: Color before character. #Judgments #Labels; 4/6/20, 10:22 AM
JCann said...: "Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub withered.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part."

Now that he mentions it, I see a resemblance to Stevens.; 4/6/20, 10:23 AM
narciso said...: you have to work to misunderstand him,; 4/6/20, 10:44 AM
Molly said...: (eaglebeak)

Plato said the poets should be given garlands and laurels and then thrown out of the Republic because they lied about the gods--and by poets, he meant Homer, Hesiod, etc.

The funny thing (or Socratic irony, if you prefer) is that Socrates was executed precisely for corrupting the youth and lying about the gods.

The other funny thing is that Socrates and/or Plato couldn't say 10 words without quoting Homer.

Also funny: Plato was the most poetic of philosophers, extraordinarily poetic.

So the reader of the Republic has to wonder: Did he mean this about the poets? If he didn't want to lie about the gods, what the hell was the Noble Lie all about?; 4/6/20, 11:06 AM
JackWayne said...: If you hear the whistle, you’re the dog.; 4/6/20, 11:10 AM
Jack Klompus said...: I remember reading 'Salem's Lot as a kid, and being intrigued by the section "The Emperor of Ice Cream" was why I first delved into Wallace Stevens. I always liked that Stevens remained a buttoned-down insurance salesman and didn't take on the affectation of a "poet" like Krusty the Clown reinventing himself as a Carlin-esque stand-up.; 4/6/20, 11:25 AM
Lurker21 said...: How much of political commentary is about style and how much of it is about substance? Of course, there's a gray area in between but it seems like style prevails, especially at New York and the New Yorker.

-----

I'm wondering if I would have more or less respect for the New Yorker if they had published Updike's poems "C*nts" and "The Beautiful Bowel Movement."

Less, I think.; 4/6/20, 11:27 AM
Earnest Prole said...: at once like Wallace Stevens and a bookie

Well turned.; 4/6/20, 11:32 AM
Lurker21 said...: Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

...

That is actually sort of understandable. Not at all like Stevens seemed to me when I first tried to read him. I don't see much Trump in it, though. And if you really want disorderly and disconnected, Joe Biden is the place to go right now.; 4/6/20, 11:52 AM
narciso said...: stark raving incoherence; 4/6/20, 11:52 AM
Richard Dolan said...: So much effort is being devoted to convincing themselves that the winner (and likely repeat winner) is really the loser. Whatever works for you, as they say.; 4/6/20, 11:55 AM
Clyde said...: Slow Lerner.; 4/6/20, 6:44 PM