The Beast

[HomerPindar]

So, I had this class that asked for a research poem. You suppose to do all the work of a research paper, but in the end, write a poem instead. Now, the classic example of this is Eliot's Wasteland. But, in case you don't feel like pulling your poetry volumne off the shelf, or clicking your way to a version, I offer instead my own version of a research poem.

Instructions:
This poem is, in fact, formed by taking three poems and lieing them side by side. Therefore, I'll offer it in three different posts so you can line them up on your screen and read either each of the three poems on their own, or the whole poem together.

The topic of the research was Health and Disease in American Society, and how the language used to describe health and disease has not changed much in the last one hundred and fifty years even while the collective knowledge on disease has changed greatly.

The first voice (A) is that of religion. The second voice (B) is that of doctors. The third voice (C) is that of the public and patient. Voice A begins first, the two lines later it picks up voice B (should you want to read all three together) and then two lines after picking up B we pick up voice C.

The first voice is an unrhymed ballad (with really sucky meter, so don't butcher me there too much, I know, I know, I suck at meter)
The second voice is a sestina.
The third is free verse.

So, if this hasn't bored you enough to skip it already, I'll go along and post the poem in three parts and then the notes. If it has bored you too much, then turn off your computer while you're at it, ingrates

HomerPindar

 

[HomerPindar]

See How Far We've Come to Say.

A

And so the Lord decree to all
that we shall pay for sin
so when Satan stands at your door
with warnings and advice
5 heed only this knowledge;
finding no end to prayer,
we find no end to gods good grace.
8
And like the good mayor
10 we all shall heed the Lords good word
do unto your neighbor,
as you would have them do for you.
13
keeping at bay the ills of those
15 without the word of God,
we do His will on Earth for Him
and leave for Him to punish the dregs
those who refuse his grace
do sin against natures lessons
20 clearly for all to see.
21
oh father who art in heaven
hallowed be thy name
save us from those who would abuse
25 our church, our bodies, for which
taverns and booze does bring
about the ease of ruin,
Sing to the Lord a new song
purity is now at hand
30 accept the death of Tennessee
and long may he rest.
32
They do it to themselves, oh Lord
living in sin they do,
35 with drugs and sex and all the rest
bearing a handful of dust
as they play with Satan, knowing
they had stolen moments
which God would come to answer for
40 giving unto sinners
that which such sin justly deserves
a living hell or worse
we do it ourselves each day of course
pray! that they shall join the dead!

HomerPindar

 

[HomerPindar]

See How Far We've Come to Say

B

1
2
coming to call with many aids,
though poisonous to the non-initiate
5 thousands are timely saved by doctors
finding no limits to medicine,
still we work towards greater knowledge
so that one day we shall overcome death
9
10 for we do not fear death
as we come with our aids,
we strive to the limits of knowledge
as new initiates
Administering Many Abundant medicines.
15 we’ve come to have faith in our doctors
16
so that we must turn to our doctors
must question the need for death,
while perfecting our own medicine
20 we move beyond simple band-aids,
leading to the level of initiate
steeped in the knowledge
23
the knowledge
25 the doctors
the initiate
the death
the aids
the medicines
30
a spoonful of sugar to help down the medicine
it’s this kind of knowledge,
that makes us wonder why they refuse our aids
so we’re no longer the house-call doctors
35 dressed in white, while death
brings forth the limit of the initiate.
37
in the true test of the initiate
while in the use of medicine
40 we hope not to meet death
so with our April knowledge
as Counting on Doctors Cant helps doctors
drugging ourselves AZiT aids
44
45 against AIDS, Such A Reality aS infection doesn’t initiate
doctors find the right medicine
assured in the knowledge of unavoidable death

HomerPindar

 

[HomerPindar]

See How Far We've Come to Say

C

1
2
3
4
5 coming from homelands to America...
to the land of opportunity
in order to live a better life
by lessening our burdens
we shed our pasts for
10 our ends are not the end.
11
standing aloof in giant ignorance,
congregating
we share in the pain,
15 in order to feel relief.
paging the sick, the temperate, the young
to learn why
we can not go it alone. Those who
are a threat
20 are set adrift, schooled in intolerance
becoming rykers and potters,
and nothing more
23
of the spanish lady
25 we know so little of...
we speak so easily
of the laws -
which were granted us -
are put aside till we cheer
30 a toast! a toast!
don’t choke on it boy
they still get it in the old country.
33
So what if people
36 came in purple not black
would it make a difference
we wouldn’t get our health back.
clothed in bathhouse towels
maybe we had over indulged or
40 like Julio Rivera,
we simply didn’t have a chance
waste away as
time to
say, we’re not giving up
45 our community,
while we share in our grief
asking ourselves, how long has it been
since we’ve even seen
dignity in our dying

HomerPindar

 

[HomerPindar]

See How Long We've Come to Say

Notes

The Structure of the Poem: The poem is delivered in three separate poems, each with their own voice, which, when set by side, can be read as a single poem. This gives each line a double voice, sometimes speaking within it’s own voice saying one thing, while contradicting elements in the whole poem.

B1: Aids - Clearly a set up for later in the poem for AIDS, and how the words meaning is clearly changing in the medical profession.

AB3-4: These lines show the initial conflict between religious doctrine and medical practices. Doctors were not held in high regard and often seen as con men selling unscrupulous snake oil. Although, B3-4 is also in references to mercury, arsenic and blood letting that were still accepted cures in the 1800's.

B4: Initiate - the use of the word is in reference to Charles Bosk's Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1979, in particular Chapter Five's review of professional control and moral identity and how this resembles an initiation into the profession.

AB5: By the 1849 Cholera outbreak the number of voices for science in the churches were starting to grow, changing the preaching to match the warnings of the medical profession. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 The University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1987

B5: "Thousands are timely saved by Doctor Kennedy's skillful and improved treatment..." New York Times 11-4-1865 ad 9:2 The ad goes on much like any ad today, suggesting that Doctor Kennedy can also cure wrongful treatment done by other doctors at less expense and time.

C5: A note on immigration (C5-8), but also a reference to the segregation of religion and medical practices upon arrival in the new world. This segregation separated medical practices and hospitals to treat specific religious groups - Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago, or St. Joseph's Hospital here in Philadelphia. More modern separation of medical practices comes from poorer neighborhoods having doctors in medical clinics who often train in less prestigious institutions outside the United States. Laurie Kay Abraham, Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1993.

B6: limits to medicine - Intentional use, from the title of Ivan Illich's Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health Marion Boyars Publishers New York, 1976. Illich argues that "The medical establishment has become a major threat to health." (3) Repeated use of "limit" outside of the end line is also a return to this line of argument in the medical profession also sited in Inventing the AIDS Virus, Peter H Duesberg, Regnery 1996, and elsewhere. It's entered here, in clear contradiction, to reflect the idea that the use of earlier cures were universal and not specific, i.e. mercury was a cure for any number of diseases instead of specific diseases.

BC8: B8 is in reference to the idea of doctors playing god, with the confidence that they know what is best, even while prescribing the same cure for multiple ills. C8 is in contrast to this, suggesting the social medicine approach. By decreasing the strain of everyday life with modern convenience, better housing, plumbing, diet, people have improved the conditions of their life.

A9: New York Times 1-29-1910 1:4, “Sends Offenders to Church” Mayor Shank, of Indianapolis, Indiana, sent three barkeepers to church as punishment for violating the law. Seen as a socially acceptable use of State and Church.

C10: A fancy way of saying immigrants came to the new world to start anew rather than coming to the new world as an ends to itself.

BC12: Again the use of limit, in this case underling the belief that doctors can know all about the health or disease of a patient. C12 is in stark contrast to this, but is also a quote from John Keats (1795-1821), To Homer, line one. The irony between these two lines is multiple, for one, Keats accepted his ignorance as the foot notes of the line explain, “Keats could not read Homer’s Greek.” (Norton Anthology of Poetry) Of course, the origin of the doctors Hippocratic oath, referenced in B10-11, is Greek. Also, Keats died of tuberculosis, which at the time of his death, doctors simply knew as consumption. His “prescribed” remedy of social response was to be sent to Italy from England where he died attended by a single close friend. Clearly, medicine had not reached it’s limit at the time of Keat’s death.

C12-22: This stanza deals with the communities that are set up by immigrants. The transition is from ignorance (C12) to schooling - which in turn supported racism and historic myths itself. The stanza’s placement marks the period where the population did not know what the medical society was beginning to learn about disease. It is not until the medical profession has “moved beyond simple band-aids” that the public is likewise learning about modern medicine. This, chronologically, coincides with the arrival of the Spanish Flu, or the influenza pandemic of 1918.

B13: Another reference to the initiation one goes through to make it as a doctor, this time the line picks up the religious voice (mimicking the meter of 3 iambic feet as befitting the meter of A) which is left blank in A13.

C13: Early land divisions in the United States were marked by the church congregations. Secular divisions, such as townships and boroughs, came about in the early 1900’s. Such congregations were also responsible for keeping track of the deaths and births of the population, a job that likewise was later made a civil duty and not a “church” job.

AB14: A14 is a warning against the ills of improper medicine, legal or otherwise. While Prohibition wanted to outlaw alcohol doctors had to be allowed to keep such medical supplies on hand. The A.M.A. capitalization on line B14 is an intentional reference to another abundant medicine, cannabis. Peter McWilliams, in Ain’t Nobodies Business If You Do: The Absurdity Of Consensual Crimes In A Free Country, laid out the history of the outlawing of cannabis. One part of the story was how late the AMA, the American Medical Association, was brought into the debate. Once they were made aware of what Congress was planning they wanted to know why anyone would consider outlawing such a versatile and abundant plant. Unfortunately, the AMA was brought in too late to stop the hysteria that had been started against cannabis and it was outlawed by Congress.

AB15: The transition from spiritual medicine man to modern healer is still a questionable transitions, as noted in the movie The Placebo Effect (Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers: The Wonder Pill), and the attempt to relate ritual with feeling healthier. B15 also notes the transition that turns the doctor from the figure that we do not trust into a figure of immense trust and power through that trust.

AC14-15: A conflict between the act of quarantine and of administrating aid to the sick to help them the feel better.

C16: Page five, New York Times 11-19-1865 there are two articles (and a number of ads not considered). One article is on the impending cholera outbreak in New York City (cholera struck in 1866) followed by an article on a temperance march that drew three thousand children. Paging plays the duel roll of informer and noting the page five of the Times.

C19-20: Quarantines and hospitals, the English mail steamer “Atalanta” was quarantined upon arrival in New York from Europe, 1865, as was the practice when ships are infected. Indeed, ships were also used as makeshift hospitals during New York cholera outbreaks. Likewise, schools were converted into make shift hospitals. Yet, since the conditions in these “hospitals” was so poor, it did little to heal the sick. Charles E Rosenberg, The Cholera Years.

C21: Rykers Prison and Potters Field Cemetery, New York, both of which become the home of the poor.

ABC23: The prayer is left blank through B and C to illustrate that there are certain points of the churches influence in both spheres, medical and personal, that are not responded to but respected such as last rites, or advanced directives.

B24-29: This stanza has a duel purpose, depending upon which reading you are doing at the time. In the context of the doctor, inside the sestina, it is reflexive of how doctors are worked till the twelve hour shifts become a repetitive process. This, in turn, also is symbolic of how the doctors position is distant from the patients, just as the stanza is symbolically distant from the other two voices. Also, in relation to the other two poems, Prohibition was not a medical topic, even though it is seen as a social disease.

C24: spanish lady - The 1918 influenza pandemic was known as the Spanish Flu, or The Spanish Lady, as it first arrived in the western world from China in Spain.

ABC26: The enforcement of Prohibition created the speakeasies. C27-28 are comments on how organized crime was born of the Prohibition years, and generated a sort of folk-hero status for some criminals.

A28: Psalm 98:1

A30: Tennessee was hot topic of the Democratic Party in the temperance movement in 1908, the Democratic Party had failed to support more stringent prohibition laws in the state. This only further propelled the religious right against alcohol and the Democratic Party in the State. (154) Isaac, Paul E. Prohibition and Politics, University of Tennessee Press Knoxville, 1965. Where as, to the public, Tennessee is still associated with whiskey.

B31: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down...” Mary Poppins, Robert Stevenson Director. Julia Anderson et al. Disney, 1964. Sugar is also key to fermentation of alcohol.

ABC35: “white” is both white coats and cocaine. “death came in purple” is a tarot card reference, Death is clothed in purple, the color of power.

A36: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, line 30.

C38: The gay-male community was known for it’s active sex life, often cultivated in bath houses.

C40: Julio Rivera was a HIV positive gay man who was murdered in Queen’s New York. His death drew criticism to the New York Police Dept. for their slow response time.
The Question of Equality: Culture Wars. London: Channel 4 TV/UK 1995

B41-3: April 23, 1984 the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) announced that HIV caused AIDS prior to publishing their findings in medical journals in order for the discovery to be tested in a controlled conditions. The primary drug to fight AIDS is known as AZT, but AZT is arguably just as dangerous, if not more so, than any illness. Duesberg, Peter H. Inventing the AIDS Virus Regnery, 1996.

B45: SARS, the capital letters are a reference to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome which, as of the writing, had infected 4300 world wide with a 5.5% mortality rate (Numbers taken from Metro Wednesday, 4/23/03). What is interesting to note is the contrast between coverage of SARS to AIDS. Another Metro had a picture from Singapore where people were writing, on a subway wall, thank you’s to the doctors treating the sick. The population had no such public response to doctors treating AIDS.

C47: “How long has it been?” advertisement on SEPTA transit asking about HIV testing. The ad shows a man on the phone in a mirror, where the message is posted “HIV testing.” As most of these ads show, AIDS is a male disease in America, and it’s only been recently that ads have pointed out that half of all infected HIV patients are female worldwide.

HomerPindar

 

[Rybka]

Thank You, H.P.

Very edifying. I am glad I no longer have to take or teach such courses.

Regards,                                 Rybka

 

[Senna Jawa]

Instructions:
This poem is, in fact, formed by taking three poems and lieing them side by side. Therefore, I'll offer it in three different posts so you can line them up on your screen and read either each of the three poems on their own, or the whole poem together.

HomerPindar

Like one could not line up three different poems from THE SAME post in three DIFFERENT windows     I love idiots, I do

(This is just like the ethnic jokes stuff; their material can be taken from real life!!! I would never guess it )

 

[HomerPindar]

Re: Thank You, H.P.

Very edifying. I am glad I no longer have to take or teach such courses.

Regards,                                 Rybka

thanks I hope...

But, I noticed you tag line, poems should not mean, but be...

how's that fit with, or contradict, the idea of a research poem then?

oh my gawds, that was an actual serious question!! ACK, and here I was aiming for that silly, not really saying anything sorta image...aw heck

HomerPindar