Thursday, November 11, 2010

Euthyphro and other classroom timewasters

Canadians of a certain age will all shudder with horror at the mention of the name Earle Birney. He wrote a lot of mediocre and deservedly forgotten poetry and sexually harassed pretty much every woman he ever was attracted to. Politically he was a communist and morally speaking he was an imbecile.

But all of those offenses pale next to his having written a long and trite poem called "David". Although it has only a little redeeming value as a poem, David ends with a mercy killing and is, for that reason, beloved of lazy English teachers everywhere. They can read the poem and then stand back and watch while their students debate euthanasia.

After mention the Euthyphro in a post a couple of days ago, I reread bits of it and reached the same conclusion about it. Although not as morally vapid as Earle Birney's poem, it would be an incredible act of charity to call the Euthyphro one of Plato's better dialogues. Professors love it because it invariably lets them and their students spin their wheels about an issue they have nothing new or useful to contribute. But, hey, it's easier than actually teaching.



Postscript: I once inadvertently got my revenge on Earle Birney for his many sins against art and reason. I was poetry editor of an arts magazine years ago and covered one of the last readings Birney ever gave. I needed a picture of him reading. A roommate of mine at the time was a professional sports photographer and he offered to do the job gratis so I took him up on the offer. So, that night I'm sitting in the Café Alternatif suffering through Birney's idea of a funny anecdote about cockroaches in Mexico eating his toothbrush. Towards the end, I think even he realized his poetry was boring and his readings got to be more and about the patter between the poems. The lights are down very low. Out of the corner I see Peter walk in swinging his Nikon F and, I realize with a jolt, a big Metz flash with enough power to be seen from outer space on a bracket. He walks up and stands right in front of the podium and whack, hits him the eye with all the power the Metz was capable of letting off. It was like someone had set a flare off in the room. And he did it five times more.


Peter was a huge guy, he'd gone from playing university football to photography, so no poetry fan was going to mess with him. I was hiding behind my hands hoping that no one would notice how hard I was laughing. Everyone else in the room was horrified. They couldn't talk about anything but that photographer after the reading was over, which was very soon thereafter because Birney couldn't see a thing for a good twenty minutes.


I'm sure it made a good anecdote for his next reading.

3 comments:

  1. What an appalling excuse for teaching English. This sort of thing makes my blood boil (& glad I had decidedly un-lazy English teachers)!

    In the CanLit course I took in university, the prof ignored 'David'(as he did Atwood's novels--and this in a course with 12 novels on it that I can remember), probably for the reasons you state--it's a waste of time. Birney was a bit better on the subject of the end of the world ('Vancouver Lights' & 'November Walk Near False Creek Mouth'). I thought 'Bear on the Delhi Road' was good.

    Why did I think Birney was gay?

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  2. I've read a lot of people who say that David has homoerotic overtones (although I don't see them) and perhaps Birney was gay and just over compensated. The few times I saw him interact with women, however, he was rather too convincing as heterosexual. Even when he was toddling along on crutches he had a way of staring at women that had to be seen to be believed.

    Poor Margaret Atwood really did have talent but I can't say she used it well.

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  3. I have no idea at all why I thougt Birney was gay. And I didn't mean to have an opinion on Atwood's novels (I've only read one--Edible Woman--so can't say such things). My prof did spend 3 hours on her poetry, and I recall having some respect for it.

    BTW, still chuckling over that anecdote. Love it. Awesome.

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