A Poet Critiques Al Gore’s Poem
Perhaps I missed something in my laborious journey through the book, but why “September”? A literary reference to Yeats’ great poem, “September 1913,” commemorating those daring revolutionaries with “little time … to pray / For whom the hangman’s rope was spun”? That might make some sense, recalling that our climate saviors are presumably running out of time, but somehow I doubt it’s what Gore had in mind. As for snow that “glides,” this intimates something far different from disaster; rather it reminds me of Fred Astaire gliding over the ballroom floor, merry and festive. Wrong word. Perhaps “slides” or “melts” is what he intended. And Gore certainly is not preoccupied with floods “for a season”; there have always been seasonal floods in many parts of the world without portending a global cataclysm.
The rest of the poem compounds the fiasco. A “hard rain,” as everybody knows, is Bob Dylan’s coinage and refers to nuclear fallout; the phrase is now a cliché. Coming right after the drench of a hard rain, “dirt” could hardly be “parched”; one would expect rivulets of muck and ooze. Why is “kindling placed in the forest” when the forest is kindling? And why should lightning celebrate the destruction of the natural world when it is part of the natural world? Or is it jubilating over our extinction? Whatever. Wrong word again. The creatures who “take their leave” are clearly not “unmourned”; Gore and his multitudinous acolytes have been mourning them interminably for years.
Another slight but irritating point. I will be chided as a stickler here, but it needs to be emphasized that authentic poetry is always consistent. Let us take a look. This is a poem conspicuously devoid of punctuation, yet Gore slips in a comma between “leave” and “unmourned.” A casual reader will not notice so minute a solecism, but genuine poets know that nothing in a finished poem is accidental. Lack of punctuation is a structural device, meant to imply or promote a specific intention, to establish, perhaps, a kind of hypnotic or oracular mood in the reader. It should enter the reading mind seamlessly. In other words, it should not risk calling attention to itself by the inadvertent interpolation of precisely that whose absence is required by the connotative strategy — unless, obviously, it serves a demonstrable purpose in the overall scheme, which in the present context it manifestly does not. This is not nitpicking or over-fastidiousness. This is how the craft works.
To continue. Given Gore’s conviction that the modern, industrial system is responsible for wreaking havoc on the planet, the “horsemen” who “ready their stirrups” seem better placed in a romantic pastoral or historical vignette, where horsemen have been known to ride their steeds into a lather. Check out Robert Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” where the determined equestrians “spr[i]ng to the stirrup.” Properly speaking, Gore’s horsemen should be drivers fleeing in their SUVs. “Passion” is an abstraction which poets — good poets — learn to eschew in their apprenticeship; the passion we are meant to feel should inhere either in the writing or in concrete, effective embodiments, or both. The shepherd who cries would be more at home in one of Virgil’s eclogues than in a poem treating a contemporary theme — though Mark Hertsgaard in his fawning commentary on the poem (an “accomplished, nuanced piece of writing”) in Vanity Fair assures us that “it’s usually a mistake to read too much literal meaning into a poem.” But he then proceeds to ask rhetorically: “Is Gore himself the shepherd?” LOL! In any case, the only real, live shepherds I have met and gotten to know ply their trade on remote Greek islands and couldn’t give a hoot about global warming, which they don’t believe in anyway.
In effect, what we are observing is a performance so embarrassing as to make one blush in grudging sympathy for the bumbling pseudo-poet.
Regarding the book itself, it is essentially a rehash of Gore’s previous work, though it does have a modicum of redeeming value: much of the information concerning industrialization, technology, some of the implementation costs, and some government decisions is unexceptionable and worthy of consideration. And, it must be admitted, the photos are impressive. The problem is that the crucial assumptions and theories shimming his global warming thesis are all contestable and largely refuted, but they get lost in the thickening wads of insecure data, the constant downplaying or dismissal of strong rebuttals, and the progressively untenable claims that sandbag his argument. As a result, the book ultimately becomes an exercise in spurious wonkery. Many of its outright lies, clever factoids, subtle inaccuracies, glaring omissions, and sheer howlers are spotlighted in Ed Hiserodt’s compendious review in the New American, which repays consultation. Moreover, Gore’s ignorance of the Lambert-Beer Law, which suggests that radiative forcing of CO2 doubling has been overestimated by a factor of 80, decisively challenges his warnings and must give us further pause. In the last analysis, Gore is what the great historian Jakob Burckhardt rued as a “terrible simplificateur.”
Fortunately, we do have a choice, which is to toss Our Choice into the recycle bin, even if we are $35 out of pocket. The poem itself, however, continues to haunt like a bad dream or a malevolent spook out of Ghost Whisperer. Its significance, as I indicated above, is that it is representative of the Gorean mindset: the sentimentality, the pontifical conceit, the indifference to meaningful detail — in short, the dearth of acumen and due diligence.
Gore’s solution to the supposed atmospheric crisis and the emitting of pollutants into the sky is simple: “We must sharply reduce what goes up and sharply increase what comes down.” Why not start by banning poems that pollute the mind? Otherwise, to quote once more, it would “be too late to stop the process that we have set in motion.” On the other hand, in this particular instance there is probably no need to worry. The poem comes down of its own accord.
In sum, “One Thin September” is a dreadful piece of unmitigated fustian in every possible respect — tonal, structural, lexical, semantic, metaphorical — and should never have seen the light of print. If anyone ever needed fresh evidence for Al Gore’s want of discernment and unstinting self-infatuation, this is it. Those who don’t have the time to wade through 400 pages of largely tendentious argument and special pleading may content themselves by reading the poem. It tells them all they need to know. And the irony is unmistakable. For no matter how reluctantly, we owe him a debt of gratitude for this unintended exhibition.
David, I apologize for this assault on your art form. The Goracle made me do it.
Old Al Gore, he shouts and he screams,
He gets rich giving people real bad dreams.
Is he Espicopalian? We don’t rightly know.
Is he a space alien with one giant toe?
Whatever he is the adjective is weird.
Same conclusion when he grew a beard.
Now Al, he saves the planet by writing bad verse.
I can’t save diddly squat, but my verse is worse.
You might want to watch your references. In science fiction and alternative sexual circles, Gorean is taken to refer to a series of science fiction novels that take place on an imaginary planet called Gor. I forget the guy’s name, but the books are a cross between soft-core pornography and Edgar Rice Burrough’s series of books featuring John Carter, Warlord of Mars. Or so I’m told.
Anyway, while I think you were trying to insult Gore (probably with good reason) I doubt you intended this reference.
Here my redaction of the poem with words restored from the original MS:
One thin September soon (that’s gibberish, I know).
a floating incontinent fat man disappears
in visions of the midnight sun with lots of snow.
Vapors rise as quickly as his halitosis
and fever settles on an acid sea; therefore
Neptune’s bones dissolve from osteoporosis.
Snow glides from the mountain—set off by some villain—;
ice in father’s gin—floods of salt; for a season,
a hard rain comes quickly, for we do like Dylan.
Then dirty Al is parched from a sad lack of beer.
Still, let’s party! Kindling is placed in the forest
for the lightning god’s celebration. Over here,
unknown creatures, like Bear-pig, with his human face,
take their leave, unmourned, and I hope your heart is stirred
as Horse-men must ready their stirrups for a race.
An old passion seeks heroes and friends who are young,
though the bell of the city bike needs a good clean.
On the hill is a ladder with a broken rung.
The shepherd cries, “Hey, voters are deluded fools!
The hour of choosing a global hoax has arrived!
I give you man-made warming; here, then, are your tools!”
An awesome defining of a poem hardly considered worth the time to read it. I congratulate the writer of this article. However, I seriously doubt it will make any difference to those that consider Al Gore to be a supposed “great man” and pushing an agenda that needs to be attended to. the LIE has been consummated by a never ending deluge of “truth” from the left that causes all disagreement to be considered foolish. After all, RELIGION has no doubt, at least to those who “believe”.
I’m guessing The Poet of the Age chose September because the snow is pretty much melted by then on most mountains in the USA. But in northern latitudes, where Al is so rightly concerned, the upper slopes already have fresh snow. On this point we may fault our humble prophet from Tennessee. Otherwise, we can only bow to his genius and not doubt that every word and comma are carefully chosen and impart enormous wisdom to those who would only believe. Move over Edgar Allen Poe.
WHOA!
I have heard dribs and drabs on the radio, but the whole thing. OUCH. That is some pitiful verse. His ghost writer should be shot.
Maybe it was a typo, with the gliding snow and the hard rain. Maybe it was supposed to be CHUBBY RAIN but when he used the Microsoft Syntax Checker on his poem, it automatically changed it to hard rain.
So we can blame it on Bill Gates, right. Big Silicon.
“” I have never heard (Gore) crack a joke and never read anything by him in any way distinguished by wit, verve, levity, or even a hint of paranomasia. (paronomasia?) “”
And nor will a clever fellow like you, who knows very well a sense of humor indicates measurable intelligence, be holding his breath while waiting for the one-time holder of the title — and now but First Runner-Up (to Big Ears) in the World’s Most Dangerous Dullard Stakes — to show signs of such.
If a high IQ is “global warming,” the hapless Al-Fredo Gore-leone is surely the next Ice Age.
No wonder the very sound of his name has us all standing aboot, shivering in our shoes, eh? (little Canuck Lingo for you, there)
Brian Richard Allen
Lost Angels – Califobambicated 90028
And the Very Far Abroad
I despise the Goracle, but attacking people for trying to express themselves in verse, song, graphic or any art is petty and small. There is no useful measure of good or bad art. His ideas suck, but I applaud his effort and willingness to experiment in art. He can’t be any worse at it than he is at science.
I thought the Goracle was writing about Atlantis. A refrence to the One World government that gets destroyed by the one true shephard of mankind. Yet, like Atlantis, those horsemen ride to fight against what they already read has the right to destroy them.
Those like Gore would read such a poem, and see the chanting pagan prose as a call to arms, refusing to repent of their desire to worship power, and money. Using a lie,(global warming), to further their agenda of placing a false god on the throne of earth. Like Nimrod at Babel, man can be as G-d.
Maybe, I am off base on this poem, and reading to much into it, but I don’t think so.
Perhaps he should have taken a hint from Scooter Libby or maybe Lynn Cheney and inserted some lines about bears raping little girls, or may a hot, sweaty lesbian scene or two . . . Git R Done!
Ode to Deadman
There once was a guy on Pajamas
a boy who will always be mama’s
From his chair in the dark
he googles and barks
sprinkling sugarplum commas
#9 bagoh20 say: “There is no useful measure of good or bad art.”
Who are you really Frank Rich?
Willie Nelson=Beethoven?—–W.H. Auden=Hallmark Cards?—–Presley=Pavarotti—–Warhol=Monet—–Franken=Twain?—–Toscanini=Welk—–Frank Rich=Swift?
Get a grip, pal.
Gore’s poem was actually written by Percy Dovetonsils. Add plagarism to his sins.
Wonderful article. I loved it.
I loved the tone. I loved the literary references. I loved your vocabulary. I had to look up “paronomasia.”
You brought in Zeus and the Gods, and your “LOL” towards the end — referring to Gore as our “shepherd ” — well….you had me ROFL!
You have cleansed my spirit, which needed a cleansing after my read of Gore’s “poem.”
The MSM reviews and praise for Gore’s “poem” were an insult to all who write poetry, and an insult to those like me who simply read and enjoy poetry and literature.
Thank you!
Isn’t The New American the magazine of the John Birch Society? As in, Eisenhower was a commie controlled by his brother Milton? And lots of new paranoid conspiracy theories since then?
Not a source with any credibility. And frankly, that kind of association reflects on the rest of one’s argument…
“Well I quit my job so I could work alone / Changed my name to Sherlock Holmes / Followed some clues from my detective bag / And discovered there was red stripes on the American flag…”
Midnight sun in September? Typical of old Al’s understanding of science. Of course there is only midnight sun on the Solstice (June 21 in northern hemisphere, December 21 in southern). On September 21 there are 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night everywhere on earth. But then again I never thought Al was from this part of the universe.
I’m not nearly as poetic as some of you. But yes, Al Gore is definitely the biggest douche in the history of the planet.
Read the words and listen to the melody of Bob Dylan`s `A Hard Rain`s Gonna Fall`. As usual, Algore worded his sissy poem right alongside Dylan`s song. More plagiarism from a worthless life that is Algore……….
Big Al Gore is a pathetic man. He has the distinction of being the only Democrat who ever got within 5,000 votes of his opponent and was still unable to steal the election. Even Big Al Franken was able to do that.
15. Patty:
So you read and enjoy poetry AND literature.
peekaboo-ooo-ooo
Algore Haikus:
Algore opens mouth
Carbon Dioxide blows forth
The globe warms. We die
Eco-warrriors
Should not ride in limousines
To save the planet
We were all only
Few Florida hanging chads
From catastrophe
If we give Algore
Another award or two
Will he PLEASE shut up?
There once was a chap
Who lost by a chad
His minions all claimed
That the nation was had
He started to drink
And sometimes he’d drive
He grew out his beard
And started to jive
His rap was recorded
And put in a movie
Very soon after
The world thought he was groovy
They gave him a Nobel
He was awarded a Grammy
Even took home an Oscar
But his rap was all scammy
When the e-mails came out
They all looked like asses
For buying Algore
And his greenhouse gases.
Some good writing, David; must we conclude the Goracle is good for something? I’m having fun imagining Kevin Spacey lecturing a room of politicos on the brilliance of the artist-leader.
About six months ago I ran across an article that had an interview with Bob Dylan. He was asked about the ‘hard rain’ song. He was asked what the phrase ‘meant.’
It was about a rain storm, he said.
He was referring to the wet stuff that ruins picnics. He was further quoted as saying that he was a bit surprised or taken off-guard when people started referring to it as representing fall-out or war, or whatever.
It was about rain. The H2O kind of stuff.
Jim Anderson
anderson.james@att.net
You mean — are you saying that — Al Gore is NOT the brilliant, talented, creative, self- sacrificing hero and savior of the world?
Algore has become a cartoon, and the best part is he did it to himself. I also applaud his efforts to make an ass of himself.
Well, he:
couldn’t be president,
is definitely not a scientist,
didn’t finish divinity school…
Maybe he wanted to see if he was a poet who didn’t know it?
My punctuation’s criticized by Now and Then’s high court, but if I said a thing he liked I’d reassess the thought. It’s Now and Then who likes the gloom to hide a venal smile and vomit lines which almost rhyme and manufacture bile.
Ignore Now and Then, Deadman. I think your version was sheer genius of its kind. And almost in classic Dantean terce rima, at that!
“Turn me on dead man…”
If the poem was really that bad, what does it say about the critic that he needs 20 times the length of the poem to critique it?
To put it another way, if I saw a lousy football player, I’d say “He’s a terrible football player. Too weak, too slow, can’t catch, can’t remember the play. Period.” If I couldn’t point out the flaws in such an obviously bad performer in a succinct fashion, one would have to wonder whether I knew what I was talking about and/or whether the player really was as bad as I claimed.
I was interested by the title of this piece, but found the critique long, boring, nauseating, grasping at straws, and so unbelievably pretentious, that were I Al Gore or any public figure, I would love to be critiqued in this fashion, for what I foudn to be the unbelievable snobbery of this critique rubs me as a regular guy so wrong that in fact it paradoxically elicited sympathy for the subject. I’m not sure the worst human product ever produced wouldn’t come out looking good with the help of this brand of criticism.
What kind of poetry or thought can one expect from a man so stupid he failed divinity school. He is an unmitigated fraud.
I’ll be d@mned. I never expected to actually hear real Vogon poetry. I now need to have my ears cut off… excuse me (rrrraaaaallllph!)
I repeat: “There is no useful measure of good or bad art.” The proof is that there are just as many people out there that think it’s wonderful as think it sucks and all you can do is say: “I disagree.” You have no way to prove you are right. I would go further and bet that you could get most of the two sides to reverse opinions by simply changing who the author is and nothing else. There is no accounting for taste. And political bias is more powerful than any perceived literary qualities either way.
Al Gore has redeemed the reputation of Vogon poetry.
Excellent White Devil, I’ve been waiting for someone to compare ManBearPig’s poetry to the great literary works of the Vogons.
#35 Michael Lonie
Not to mention Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings and Grunthos the Flatulent.
Reading it, at first I thought AlGore was trying to write haiku, which would be in keeping with his Eastern/mystical pretensions. But he keeps getting the line counts wrong. He obviously was not using iambic pentameter, although he may have thought he was doing so.
Whether in blank verse or vers libre, he’s no Don Marquis.
We can mark this down as yet another way Al is incapable of making sense. The scary thought is that he was one heartbeat away from the Presidency for eight years, and nobody noticed that he was a potential train wreck.
(Well, except maybe Hillary.)
clear ether
eon
The climate wars switch to bad ditties.
(At least mine rhymes in places and I think is witty!)
Gored Ode, Al
This thin December soon to go
Continents cloaked in deep snow
Change, maybe a fifty year low?
(Despite the millions C inner Earth glow!)
Belicose hot air flows
The acid sea lie grows and grows
In parody of AGW’s nose
(How long can it get? No-one knows)
Snow clouds glide in from the sea, pregnant with precipitation
The ice they father extends glaciation
As deep cooling hits the nation
(Killing many, no preparation)
Sand parched makes deserts to increase
Kindling made as frozen trees decease
Lightning sparks, fires start with ease
(Symptomatic of the freeze)
Unknown creatures as always must
As cycles swap warm rain for dust
Take their leave, unmourned alas
(Nature rules. It comes to pass)
Green shirts? Fools and funds they seek
Propaganda, gagging the meek
Too many far too scared to speak
(Scientist’s bigotry reaches a peak)
Drowned churches, unseen in the deep
Exposed as levels downward creep
The UV, O3 and cloud control
(The source of change, were truth to be told)
Mournful tolls from ghostly spires
Relate the truth, no Earth on fire
Despite it, yet the farce is played
(Alarmist leeches STILL ply their trade)
The propheteer, hear him lie,
The hour of choosing has arrived
Ten years until the Earth will die,
(Since 88, daily, spit in your eye)
Your descendants they will bake at best,
Without your cash to feather Gore’s nest
Without the basics you must make do
(Use just one sheet to clean your poo)
Believe, without proof
The hype thesis spoof
The cash cow gas will causes a disaster
(Its true value? Raucous laughter)
Al Gore’s twelve days of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
a bogus Harvard degree
On the second day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Two turtles, steamed,
And a big old SUV
On the third day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a stint as US VP
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And an Oscar all for me
On the fifth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a Nobel under my tree
On the sixth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a nice little carbon broker fee
On the seventh day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a feverish acid sea
On the eighth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Eight maids in Nashville,
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And the hugest house in the galaxy
On the ninth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Nine glaciers gliding,
Eight maids in Nashville,
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a free pass on TV
On the tenth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Lord Monckton laughing,
Nine glaciers gliding,
Eight maids in Nashville,
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a whole herd of fawning sheep
On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Eleven rain-parched dirt plains,
Lord Monckton laughing,
Nine glaciers gliding,
Eight maids in Nashville,
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And paeans for poetry
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my true tools gave to me
Twelve dumb algorithms,
Eleven rain-parched dirt plains,
Lord Monckton laughing,
Nine glaciers gliding,
Eight maids in Nashville,
Seven white bears swimming,
Six carbon credits,
A big sweet G-5,
Four hockey sticks,
Three French fries,
Two turtles, steamed,
And a quite convenient fallacy
Lots of talent out there. Seriously.
David
Please excuse klunkiness of some lines of Al’s Twelve Days. Wrote it as I was steeling myself to go out and shovel — a piece of the Arctic ice sheet had apparently broken off and drifted into my driveway overnight — so was a bit distracted.
Somewhat smoother revision here.
but it brings the noble craft of poetry down from Mount Olympus into the drains and sewers of the age, infecting the public sensibility, deluding the naive, contaminating the respect for tradition and high culture that should animate the life of a people, and reducing by contagion the faculty of aesthetic taste and judgment in all the fields of artistic endeavor.” SIMPLY BRILLIANT.
wow!!! you guys are great!!!
my analysis of Gore’s poem is simple…he’s a spoiled rich kid that never quite got the big pay off and he wants attention..simple, the school yard bully.
A 21st Century Psalm
December 7th has come and past
We must act, before Copenhagen is passed
If that Treaty is law I guarantee
Another occurrence of infamy
As they strip away democracy
We wish to debate the natural state
It was warm for awhile, but cold as of late
The scientist tried to hide the decline
Deny debate through deceit and design
The science was settled and the data deleted
All opposition was effectively defeated
From checking the facts, and results repeated
Who could prove the science was cheated
Man Made Global Warming is a lie
The CRU e-mails and codes do testify
The purpose, a Carbon Debt to apply
Kiss your money, technology and freedom goodbye
The silence is deafening across the land
As the revelations the public now understands
The weathers a carrot meant to disguise
A corrupt agenda before our eyes
And now we see light shining in Truth
Politicians, media, and search engines declare moot
You can glimpse the extent of the hypocrisy
In how they declare there is nothing to see
So much for transparency
Climategate Googlegate Copenhagengate
Who gave you permission to decide our fate?
Censoring discussion denying debate
The Spirit of Truth you desecrate
In all debate Truth intervenes
Asks does the end justify the means?
Demands that honesty remains supreme
That commitments aren’t made on fraudulent schemes
It’s time for the passive acceptance to end
It’s time to stand for freedom as free men
It’s time to expose the lies and deceit
It’s time to take it to the streets
Do not commit sedition do not get jailed
Non-Violent revolutions do not fail
The voice of the Prophets, Gandhi and King
Are calling for you to get marching
Or just sit back and take the vaccine.
AL GORE IS ANNOYING,GLOBAL WARMINGS JUST A LIBERAL TRICK,HE PULLS IN THE CASH,HE BELONGS IN THE TRASH,
AL GORES A BLABBERING DORK,ONCE STUCK HIMSELF WITH A FORK,HIS HOT AIR STILL RISING,AND STILL HIS DESPISING,HE CERTIANLY BELONGS WITH THE ORKS