Pure Products

Selected lines from Spring and All, by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963):

The pure products of America

go crazy ----

***

peasant traditions give them

character

but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags -- succumbing without

emotion 

saved numbed terror

***

and we degraded prisoners

destined

to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains

after deer

going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September

somehow

it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flocks that

something

is given off

No one

to witness

and adjust, no one to drive the car

I guess the reason why the blues is such an American form of music is that we are probably the first nation/empire in the history of the world to realize just how crazy we actually are. Songs and poems about the desperate and downtrodden seem like our real national hymns, much more apt to our nature than soaring anthems about glorious battles.  I think the founders realized that in their audacious democracy they would either succeed grandly or fail utterly.  For at least the first century of our existence, many in Europe thought our foolish rebel experiment would surely implode.  There were chances to be sure, we may be in the middle of one right now, but maybe not.

I have written a lot in this space about the gut-wrenching feeling that no one is driving the car, that we lack leadership or that the moral fiber of our leaders has failed, perhaps fatally.  In order to maintain my sanity, I try to spend at least a little time each day leafing randomly through some of the books in my office, not looking for sermon illustrations, not reading for any purpose whatsoever, just looking for something to sort of float out of the ether of humanity and divinity that is contained in the collection of old fashioned actual paper books.  I realize I spend too much time reading electronically, searching for exactly what I want to see and think about or simply following the algorithms that google and facebook feed me (it seems to destroy me).  Today I came across William Carlos Williams who wrote in the first half of the 20th century.  The line that grabbed me was: The pure products of America go crazy.  That's often how it is with poetry and me, I don't much have the ability to sit and just read through a poem unless something grabs me, but when something does grab me it's like a tractor beam on the Death Star, pulling me in. For the purposes of this reflection, I trimmed and edited pieces that followed, something that I would be critical of if it were scripture, but  it's not and I didn't feel like re-typing the whole section.  Read the entirety if you want, it's good.

But what I want to focus on are not the dire sounding warnings but the glimmer (even if it is just a glimmer) of hope that by that last stanza: 

It is only in isolate flocks that

something

 is given off

No one 

to witness

and adjust, no one to drive the car

You may focus, if you want, and Lord knows I often do, on the absence of a driver, which we are almost certainly experiencing again and not for the first time.  Or you might, as I found myself doing, focusing on that "something" that is given off by the "isolate flocks."  The communities of this nation of ours are not anything like the catastrophe of mendacity, polarization, mistrust, racism, xenophobia, class anger, and general misanthropy that you might imagine if you just look at the headlines.

Don't blame the media though, there really is no one to witness, because what is there to see? Broken humans somehow being kind? People who should fear one another learning to trust?  How should a reporter in New York find out anything about a group of people fighting for fair housing in Southern Maryland? More to the point, why would they?  Even up the road in Washington DC, would they care?  Maybe they should, but it doesn't make economic sense for them to write about normal people from little places doing good things.  The absence of a driver seems much more pressing.

The hope comes from the back pages and the back streets, where the products of America aren't quite so pure.  They're not red white and blue nationalist and pure capitalism, those are the "peasant traditions that flutter and flaunt sheer rags."  The people that we must learn to trust are the products of America, but not so pure that they can't question the wars we wage, or the values we hold, because if you don't question yourself, you do end up going crazy.  If you cling to purity too tightly you end up with nothing and you "hunger until you eat filth." 

Still, the sanity comes back from something, somewhere, the idea that people are not as vile and delusional as the fools they have elected king.  Maybe it's better that there is no ONE to drive, maybe that too is a product of America.  Maybe the best of what we are, and our best hope, is to really embrace the reality that we need no king and that we can survive a demagogue, and praise the wisdom of our founders for knowing that was going to be necessary.

In the meantime, read more poetry.