Why do we willingly watch bad art? What pleasure possibly obtained from viewing William Hung’s savage evisceration of what little musicality remained in Ricky Martin’s opus major? Not once, but dozens and hundreds of viewings as the fabled excrescence was replayed across the land, revisited in American Idol retrospectives, and finally brought to life repeatedly by Mr. Hung himself on stage and in person. Certainly his interest in the matter is understood; pecuniary motives drive us all, and the sheer rationality of a man taking money for simply allowing others to laugh at his folly has an overweaning appeal, though few would be so bold as to apply for the same remunerative abuse. But us! From whence comes our pleasure? Truly, the shameful fascination for Hung and his ilk gives proof – if any were needed! – to Baudelaire’s contention that laughter is satanic, that humor derives from a malevolent and dark recess of the human spirit. Our comic pleasure is always at the expense of another, and if that victim cannot even see the costs, our laughter is only redoubled.
But, alas, most bad art provokes only boredom and resignation. Most bad music is merely run-of-the-mill. Even the worst of painting, literature, and drama has little claim on our spirit, and not even a claim on our derision. The dollar bins at used music shops, the “free” books outside used bookstores, the monstrous waves of material produced because … well, I can offer no reason, but crap is produced at a prodigious rate, nonetheless. A wiser person might make the connection between our consumer culture and the need for continual overproduction, or perhaps might show the fallacy of individualism and of inculcating a belief that each should “follow his dream”, or – better still – might find an existential lesson in our tortured pleadings to the muses who have abandoned us to the third millennium, left us to our own devices and who can blame them? I, of course, am a product of this selfsame spiritless culture, and so I can proffer only the banal observation that a lot of “art” is crap.
Some of that excrement, however, compels our attention. And the scatological term underscores both the heavy burden of this waste and our secret shame over its fetischistic attraction. Our passion for irony – if you can excuse the oxymoron – permits us to excuse our love for “Cult movies”, or the Village People, or Jeff Koons, or any of these myriad objects found in our fractionized cultural space, objects of our desire for, shall we call it, the “beautiful bad”. But such objects are rare, for it requires a truly special delusion to be Ed Wood, or Jeff Koons, or Pedro Carolino. Carolino, if you cannot place the name, was the author of the putative Portuguese-English phrase book known in reprint as English As She Is Spoke, in which the complete inability of Carolino to understand English creates a comic nonsense of disconcerting verve and beauty. An example of the resultant mishmash follows, in which the author describes the flaws of previous phrase books that his own will correct:
The Works which we were conferring for this labour, fond use us for nothing; but those that were publishing to Portugal, or out, they were almost all composed for some foreign, or for some national little acquainted in the spirit of both languages. It was resulting from that carelessness to rest these Works fill of imperfections, and anomalies of style; in spite of the infinite typographical faults which some times, invert the sense of the periods. It increase not to contain any of those Works the figured pronunciation of the english words, nor the prosodical accent in the Portuguese; indispensible object whom wish to speak the english and Portuguese languages correctly.
Has ever such sincere ineptitude been expressed more forcefully?
Mark Twain helped bring the world’s attention – or that part of its attention concerned with such trifles – to this book, contributing a preface to a reprint of the outlandish language guide. Mr. Clemens had a particular fondness for such charming failures; his praise for the leaden verses of Julia Moore helped make her first book of poetry a best-seller, in spite of the verses therein. Here is a sample of the poetry of the Sweet Singer of Michigan, in which she ponders one of her fellows:
“Lord Byron” was an Englishman
A poet I believe,
His first works in old England
Was poorly received.
Perhaps it was “Lord Byron’s” fault
And perhaps it was not.
His life was full of misfortunes,
Ah, strange was his lot.
Strange indeed.
Execrable though this may be, it is also almost impossible to imitate, unlike the mass of the merely bad that threatens to drown us in banality. Mark Twain tried his hand at crafting his own crappy verse in his “Invocation” to the platypus in Following the Equator, with results above the banal but below the stunned chuckle that the spectacularly bad can compel. Perhaps Norman Spinrad may be said to have succeeded with The Iron Dream, his splendid pastiche of a 1930’s racist science fiction novel as written by a bitter Adolf Hitler – but then Hitler’s talent for the truly bad lay in fields other than art, as anyone who has slogged through Mein Kampf can attest. But by and large, this brilliant incapacity is forbidden to the talented, a misshapen bizzaro-world Muse only available to the truly talentless who yet possess a passionate devotion to their art.
Which brings us to Mattie Jaxx.
I discovered Ms. Jaxx and her poetry (if “discovered” is the right term) in the New York Times Book Review, of all places, where my weakness for discerning the crass commercial motives everpresent around us had been subdued and lulled into a complacent assumption that therein I would find Literature or, failing that, at least Books. My attention – Let me back up a moment. I ignore advertisements. In newspapers, on television, on Web sites – on radio they are quite difficult to ignore, so I do not listen to radio. I accept some permeation of advertising into my daily life, of course, much like background radiation that, given a sufficiently strong ozone layer, usually isn’t a danger, but which can be quite harmful if one’s psyche is not protected from the ceaseless barrage of lies and inanity. So I view the ads in the pages of the paper as frames around the story I want to read, and the advertisers creep into my subconscious peripheral vision, and we both are happy and delude ourselves that we’re putting one over on the other. But on this particular Sunday I noticed an advertisement in the Book Review. Or, I should more properly say, I noticed a fraction of an advertisement, for within that full page spread promoting the works of thirteen authors of the Xlibris press was the cover of Mattie Jaxx’s book Obamaism is Socialism.
My attention was drawn to this particular work out of the fifteen present in the ad by three things. The first was the horrible layout of the cover, upon which the author’s name was broken by the author’s photo. The author’s name! The single most important part of the cover. As we all begin to appear for ourselves per se in every field of life from pumping gas to being in charge of our healthcare, we might reflect on the old adage about the type of client a person has who chooses to be his own lawyer. Is it not enough that Mattie Jaxx pretends to be a poet, without also forcing the poor woman to be a layout artist as well? Such demands could test stronger wits; in the case of Ms. Jaxx, the test was too much. Something had to break, and that thing turned out to be her (assumed?) name. I will not dwell on the photo itself; I find it difficult to do so. Best as well just to skip over the obligatory U.S. flag motif behind that photo on the cover, as well, and move onto the second thing that reeled me in: the title. Obamaism is Socialism. How trippingly it rolls of the tongue! The clarity of the argument can hardly be doubted. The triple “is” and double “ism” overpower any cavil. I have a soft spot for crank literature of all kinds – I don’t even have to go out and buy new books proclaiming Qaddafi’s evil; I have works from the 80s confidently proclaiming him the Antichrist. But neither the abysmal DIY (“Damage It Yourself”, in this case) cover nor the delightfully strident title would have made a lasting impression upon my jaded tastes. Perhaps the two combined might engender the amount of interest sufficient to tweet, post, update, etc. a link to the cover image – assuming I could find it easily – along with a snarky comment along the lines of “get a load of this!” or some other savagery. But then I read the book blurb
Learn why Obamaism is Socialism as author Mattie Jaxx boldly shares her thoughts and sentiments over politics, the government, and the nation through verse and vignettes. These insightful works capture not only her sentiments, but that of others in America.
I have reason to believe that it is Ms. Jaxx herself who addresses us in this blurb, as we shall see. Certainly it is an impressive display of poor English; but the two grammatical mistakes in two sentences did not command my attention, nor did the repetition of the tiresome word “sentiments”. No, it was the conjuration amidst the maelstrom of malevolent mediocrity performed by that magical word “verse”. Not merely wacko – but wacko poetry. How could I resist? I could not; so I sought the treasure.
The book is available on Xlibris.com – as was stated in the advertisement – as well as Amazon.com. The latter site allowed excerpts of the book to be viewed. Google Books also permits a preview. If ever a book existed for which sales would increase by not permitting people to peruse its contents, Obamaism is Socialism is that book. I had sought gems and found a gold mine, but had no interest in spending a double sawbuck upon the trade paper copy of Ms. Jaxx’s book of “thoughts and sentiments”. Even had I a Kindle, I am disinclined to spend a sawbuck upon the eBook version of her “verse and vignettes”. My review, let it be said explicitly, is based on only a partial survey of this particular poetic terrain; I am no brave explorer to go deeply into these wilds, only a discriminating tourist who feels that a surface survey, in this case, is a surfeit. All my remarks are based on those pages available online for preview on either Amazon or Google Books – the two sites offered different views of this work at different times. Again, the ability to read before purchase is a godsend for a potential customer, though not so for the author, who has spent a pretty penny to promulgate her “insightful works” across this land, as we shall see.
Obamaism is Socialism appears to be about seventy pages of poetry, with the remainder being given over to quotes from “interviews” made by Ms. Jaxx with “a multitude of American Citizens”. The examples available in the previews are quite banal, and do not concern us here, but I provide a sample for those of you who may not have ready access to an extensive collection of crank writing. The following quotation (quotes and all) is one of dozens of similar unsourced passages in the section about abortion, and could provide an irritating grit for a better writer to craft a pearl of discourse on the nature of urban legend and its place in modern politics:
“My neighbor’s granddaughter was pregnant. She went to the high school counselor. The counselor drove her to an abortion clinic. The abortion was performed, and the girl ended up hemorrhaged to death. Her parents didn’t even know, that their daughter was pregnant. The schools are becoming so Communistic, to sneak all rights away from parents!”
Besides abortion, the topics of her “interviews” include “Obama’s Socialist Health Care”, Muslims, illegal immigrants, “Real Racism”, same-sex marriage, the Tea Party, and the economy. As Ms. Jaxx says so eloquently, “This is a mixture of hot political stew!”
However thin and watery this stew may have appeared, her poetry had the rich flavor of untoward beauty. I mentioned earlier good reasons for believing the author wrote the book blurb, and first is the fact that Ms. Jaxx does not know the English language. The plural/singular confusion of “not only her sentiments, but that of others” (my italics) in the blurb is mirrored in such a line as “The evils of Socialism is trying to score!” from her poem “Wake up!”, or perhaps from the verses
Even sacrifice will bring forth the blessings,
Even heaven sent angels sings.
from the first poem of the book, “Socialism”. In addition to the possible subject-verb disagreement between “angels” and “sings”, the lines also have the benefit of making no sense – no sense at all. Perhaps you think that more context is needed; very well. Here are the final three couplets of this poem:
Wake up America, for the conflict of “justice”,
Throw out Tyrants, again, everything will be nice.
Even sacrifice will bring forth the blessings,
Even heaven sent angels sings.
Hail to America’s Constitution,
To the tyrants: Beware of the Revolution!
It is almost too easy to find examples where an understanding of English has been divorced from the meaning of the poetry. Take, for instance, this couplet from the poem “People”:
People, rise and lift up America’s standard,
And don’t allow Socialism to retard.
Or these lines (it’s hard to say if the first two are meant to be a couplet; as with the previous example these lines invite us to guess whether or not a rhyme is intended and, if so, which) from Ms. Jaxx’s poem “Conservative America”:
Let her have her great wisdom.
We know enemies hate her beauty-dome.
Let her remain humble and pure,
Let her feet be strengthen to endure.
The most basic spell-checker hardly allows one to even type such lines, and her book has so successfully eschewed editing that it abetted the escape of the following (from “Wake up!”):
Slumbering in sin and idolitry,
Always an excuse for every adultry.
This is the last of all dispensantions,
Use time wisely in this generation.
For many, such a complete misapprehension of the English language would preclude a vocation of poetry; not so for Ms. Jaxx! Her passion and convictions far outweigh any inability she may have to act upon the stirrings within her. She is on a mission – sort of like the Blues Brothers, but without the talent – and she states her mission quite forcefully:
“BARACK OBAMA IS EXPOSING HAZARDOUSNESS
TO AMERICA’S FUTURITY. VOTE OUT THEIR
CARNIVOROUS DESTRUCTION AT THE VOTEING
POLES!”
Again – and again and again and again; the temptation is not lost on me – it would be too easy to take this work to task for its inadequacies, or to take Ms. Jaxx at her word that she is “a Common Sense, Ronald Reagan, The New Republican Party Conservative!” and use that as a brush to tar the denizens of the Right, but such would miss the more important point, and would just join the long inane conversation whereby the politics of This are contrasted with the politics of That by picking one extreme example and saying “Isn’t That terrible?!? Vote This!” etc., etc., ad infinitum.
The appeal of Mattie Jaxx and her unique stylings upon the language of Chaucer and Shakespeare derives not in spite of her inability, I say, but indeed just because of her incapacity. For in spite of all evidence to the contrary, she feels compelled to sacrifice to the Euterpean Muse her most poignant stirrings of emotion – not only the rage and heartbreak she feels at her beloved country falling into the clutches of Obama’s satanic Socialism, but also the delightful joys of the everyday world. Far from renouncing poetry as did Rimbaud with much less reason, she pours out her libations of verse and creates a singular beauty – a beauty, I shall add again, unsusceptible to such silly contraries as “reason” or “taste”. Her almost heartbreaking sincerity propels her verse past the Scylla of grammar and the Charybdis of reason into some barely glimpsed beyond that poets with much better word sense rarely approach. Had she been possessed of the merest inklings of her inability to write, Ms. Jaxx would have hesitated and never implored us, in her poem “Gratitude”, to
Give thanks that you have shelter
And a bed,
Give thanks because you know Fred
And Ted.
Be glad we’re not an ice cube in a frying pan,
Be glad that we’re all just human!
The reader wishes to know more of Fred and Ted, disclaiming their acquaintance but desiring the same. Who are they? Few clues are at hand. We assume they are the same who are joined by two other assonantal fellows in this couplet from “Wake Up!”:
Arise from your bed,
Ted, Jed, Fred, and Ned,
but if further evidence is available to the reader as to the identities of these mysterious personages, it did not present itself in the previews made available to me.
The book is available in three convenient formats: $9.99 gets you the Kindle eBook, with the convenience of instant gratification and instant regret; $19.99 pays for the trade paperback version, making a convenient paperweight; and $29.99 obtains the hardback copy of Ms. Jaxx’s poetry and observations, conveniently exchanging your money for this worthy biodegradable tome. Xlibris is what once-upon-a-time was called a “vanity press”, but now that narcissism has been banished from the upcoming DSM, and the preacher Koheleth’s imprecations no longer echo in the omphalic future, the term “self-publisher” is as good as any other. Self-publishing may be profitable, but does not appear to be so for an author. The lowest cost package that promulgates your work in all three of the versions mentioned above (eBook, PB, and HB) is the “Professional Package”, which costs $1,099. The royalties paid to the author are set at 25% of the cover price, which means that for a book containing 254 pages – as is the case for Obamaism is Socialism – Ms. Jaxx might see $5.00 for each trade paper copy or $7.50 for each hardback sold. (The mysteries of eBooks and eBook pricing are further complicated by the fact that Xlibris allows many variants of pricing and author discounts etc.) Making some quick ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculations, let’s assume that the book pays for itself — that is, the total author royalties equal the outlay for the publishing of this work — this would mean that 147 copies of the hardback were sold (or 220 of the paperback). If such a miracle were to occur, the author could sell the ten paperback copies and one hardback copy that came as part of the “Professional Package” at full cover and actually net $230! And I shouldn’t give such short shrift to the Package – it also includes postcards, business cards, bookmarks, posters. And let’s not forget the “Worldwide distribution” (e.g., Amazon.com).
But the siren song of self-publishing is not yet complete. Our theoretical author with a couple of hundred bucks in his virtual pockets has listened to Xlibris tell him that “Publication is a right, not a privilege.” He knows, from reading the company’s publishing information, that “Publication is no longer just for the selected few.” And what better way to ‘stick it’ to those stuck up Old School writers than by going right into their sacred temples and turning the tables on them? Well, our author can do that (figuratively speaking) by adding just a bit to his previous investment and taking out an ad in the New York Times Book Review – just as our own favorite author has apparently done. As Xlibris itself notes, “The New York Times brand has always been associated with credibility, trustworthiness and prestige.” Of course, you and I may think, that could change…. The cost for this “limited advertising opportunity”? A mere $5,499 – that is, five times the cost of the “Professional Package” already paid for. Again, I do not want to give short shrift to the full splendor of this marketing package; it also includes press releases being sent to 100 newspapers (to be ignored most likely) and “Social Media Marketing”, the latter meaning that you can find Mattie Jaxx and her work on Facebook and Goodreads, etc. She also has a Web site, to which we’ll return momentarily. And thus Ms. Jaxx and her vision made their way into my own consciousness, through the credible, trustworthy, and prestigious pages of the New York Times. Another bit of math: With fifteen slots for books in their full-page advertisement, Xlibris will pull in $82,485 from those authors wishing to take their work to the next level. The advertising rates for a full page in the Book Review work out to be $35,735 for a “Small Press” (you can look this up yourself; the New York Times has quite an extensive listing of all the potential rates you might want for any ad you may want to take out; your First Amendment rights in action). Thus Xlibris can clear $46,750 on this Sunday ad – assuming they haven’t worked out a lower rate (quite possible) and that their own production costs are not too high in producing the actual ad content (also likely). If they were only able to get enough authors interested each week to continually fill up those slots in the Book Review, they’d make $2.4 million in profit from this advertisement over the course of one year. Perhaps that is likely, perhaps it is not. (N.B. I have just checked this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review, and an advertisement from Xlibris is not among their offerings.)
Besides the fact that the author provided almost $7,000 to Xlibris to publish and promote her book (see the note on the author’s Web site below if “almost $7,000” seems poor math on my part), little may be seen of the biography of this wunderalter in her poetry itself. Exegesis is always a difficult art, often providing more illumination of the exegete than the author of the work in question. There are few clues in Obamaism is Socialism beyond the politics which might broadly belong to any number of persons in these United States today – few of whom, it hardly needs be said, would dare to write poetry of any stripe, though most (I might add) could perform the task more creditably than this writer Jaxx. The name “Jaxx” is doubtful, as it is a well-known fact that “Exxon” was chosen as the new brand for the hapless Enco label, after discovering that “Enco” meant ‘car trouble’ in Japanese, primarily because a double “x” is a rarity in almost all languages of the world. A search for the name in Google Books brings up – besides the expected volume we study here – a snippet from a romance novel entitled Dark Guardian wherein the heroine, named Jaxx, is comforting a Matthew Jr. by crooning “Don’t cry, Mattie” (‘crooning’ is the author’s term, not mine), so perhaps we have a clue to the reading habits of our author. Perhaps not.
Searching for clues within the poetic works proffered, a tinge of the Mormon faith may be espied. Besides the association of the Jews with “Ephraim’s mold” and a few offhand references to this time being the Last Dispensation, a slightly chilling reference to the now disowned doctrine of Blood Atonement may be seen in her first jeremiad, “Socialism”:
These tyrants in power will “have to atone” for the blood we lost,
They will pay for our shedding of blood at a cost.
They are assasins of greed and fame,
Socialism is the “worst” name!
According to her Facebook page, she resides in Lakewood, California. But besides these meagre cues, there is little solid to hang a picture of this creator upon.
The many pages of “interviews” collected by the author show someone who has made field study of ignorance and bigotry and bile, but our author remains credulous. Otherwise, she could have answered the “interviewee” who asked, “My curious question for you is: Is Obama a member of the Skull and Bones / Illuminati Group?” The answer, of course, is no: Obama did not attend Yale, Skull and Bones is a secret society for Yale students and alumni, ergo Obama is not a member. Quod erat demonstrandum. But enough of such trifles. Seeking more information about this exceptional author – the exception in this case being the fact of writing at all – I further scoured the Internet like a good 21st-century human, and found little besides the many links to Ms. Jaxx’s work on all the various channels of commerce that make up the Web space in which we live. So I was surprised to find out that she actually has a Web Page, linked to from the abovementioned Facebook page, with the inspiring domain name www.obabmaissocialism.com. This site – while apparently not treated to the sort of Search Engine Optimization which would bring it back in a search (I could not even get it returned with the query “obamaissocialism.com”) – contains an Author Bio! My hunt for the source of these treasures was finally to be rewarded!
Allow me to interrupt myself at this point. I have to confess that the eerie fascination which this awful poet exerted upon me was in no small part a reaction to my recent reading of Rimbaud’s banal last decade of letters to his family and others. As I have written before, the complete separation of the author of those letters from the poetic firebrand who seduced Paul Verlaine away from his wife was a sad shock. Though many theories have been pronounced (by Rimbaud scholars, who must pronounce something, after all) as to the reasons why Rimbaud turned his back on poetry, if in fact he did renounce something rather than simply move on, the terrible fact of those tiresome missives and their depressed prosody left an unfillable ache within my spirit, contemplating my own shallow dreams of creativity in the shadow of Rimbaud’s refusal to worry about it. Becalmed as I was, the appearance of Mattie Jaxx within the pages of the New York Times Sunday Book Review tore through these grey and spectral moods was like a bracing tornado of sewage, the stench overpowering a bourgeois bleakness with at least the promise of some life after the lifesickness left by Rimbaud’s pallid correspondence. Instead of questioning how one of the brightest lights of 19th-century literature could have walked away at the peak of his powers, I found myself facing a more deeply moving question, a question which has more resonance perhaps for the vast majority of us who shall never be the brightest lights of anything: How does the dimmest bulb refuse to stop shining? How does a person, far from hiding his light under a bushel, go to the opposite extreme and take out ads within the New York Times to cry “Read me! Hear my words!” when it is immediately obvious that there is nothing worth reading here? What strange madness is this, that in spite of every force that society or reason or economics or anything else the “real world” can array against it, insists upon being heard? Thus my initial interest was piqued beyond reason due to the lonely cultural space I had only recently departed, and it was great pleasure to finally find the Author’s Bio of Mattie Jaxx.
Like all those who search for the Grail, I was bound to be disappointed. Would I have been sated to learn that Ms. Jaxx was the “mother of three beautiful children and a wife of a man that left twelve years later and said it was all her fault”? Could any mental picture I had created to place alongside the chilling cover photo have done justice to my initial frisson? Would anything have been gained by learning that she was born in Dothan, Alabama? Or that she owns a daycare center? For that is what I actually found when at long last I read Ms. Jaxx’s biographical note. The cover photo, uncluttered this time by the strangely broken last name across the waves in the background, sat above the text “About the Author”. But some dissonance sounded within me. The bio began “Meet Felicia Floyd”, confirming my suspicions that “Jaxx” was a nom de plume, and a few grammatical errors and the careless way she described being born in Alabama “but don’t remember anything about it” tried to aid me in reimagining Ms. Jaxx as a heavily burdened part-time poet. But a search for the name behind the name, “Felicia Floyd”, brought back another work of the Xlibris press, The Tears and Joys of Love. Another book by the same poetess! My heart leapt! But…. I once again perused the previews, and found … poetry, of a sort. Not terrible. Not great. Not Mattie Jaxx. The same Author Bio I had read for Ms. Jaxx can be found on Ms. Floyd’s Web page, www.feliciasheart.com, sans most of the unintentional grammatical errors. My conclusion, I am sad to confess, is that both Ms. Floyd and Ms. Jaxx chose to use the Web Design Marketing Service of Xlibris, paying another $359 to create the sites mentioned above. Unfortunately, for myself at least, at some point mistakes were made and the biography of Ms. Floyd ended up on the Web site of Ms. Jaxx. Alas! The sadder fact is, that should Ms. Jaxx wish to correct this error, the charge will be $65/hour, billable in 15 minute increments.
But perhaps I should count my blessings, or as Mattie Jaxx put it in her poem “Gratitude”,
Give thanks for everything in life,
And that includes your wife.
For the pleasure of her poetry might surely be alloyed by the harsh considerations of any reality she might occupy, a reality she has successfully kept at bay in her determination to deliver her inept message unto an uncaring world. An ignorant beauty shines forth in this self-called poet, beauty which would have been ignored by lesser (or greater) souls. Her vitriol is deadly to her enemies, real or imagined:
Traitors have a tide of lying tongues,
Full of shame and scorn they beguns.
People’s flesh is weak with blood ran chill,
But Socialism will always kill.
(from “People”)
But her love is also ever present:
The valleys exult, the hills acclaim,
Living water is our fame,
Water! Water! is the name.
Do you want to stand in the water, and wave your fist?
Or come here and be kissed!
(from “Water is Wild”)
What other poetess could so beautifully summarize our current political scene, as did Mattie Jaxx in her delightful description of the “Internal War Within”? Who else would dare to write such verses as these?
Step on the cock roaches,
Carve the pumpkins for coaches.
…
In a torrent power of song,
Raise your voice to old King Kong,
Decisions can be right or wrong,
A glorious day can be long.
(from “A Glorious Day”)
And so I will now leave Mattie Jaxx, praying that I shall learn no more of her ever, and grateful that for a moment she came to dispel the granite hardness left behind by the feckless Rimbaud. I salute you, Ms. Jaxx, and bless you, and hope never to cross your path again. In your struggles with Poetry, I cannot in good conscience desire your victory, but I do feel the noble humanity of it. And so I, too, with you and with all others of good cheer, will raise my voice to old King Kong!
Whatever that may mean.
