Last week’s prompt was to begin a poem directly quoting or with a variant of a sentence spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather II: “If history can teach us anything …” and over 150 poems poured in, telling us exactly what we've learned over time. Here are some of the week’s highlights.
Emily Winakur starts us of with “Cross-Discipline”:
If history can teach us anything,
it’s that a sonnet is ample space for
the creation of a planet. Already,
line four, atoms are spinning dizzily,
like toddlers hyped up on birthday cake.
By line six, the dinosaurs have marched,
leaving giant footprints in riverbeds.
Line eight, the earth is cooling down—
wait, it’s heating up again. Enter man-
kind, or at least our rodent forebears.
Of course we cause the turn of the earth,
the turn of everything: we invented
wheels. A star goes dark in Cassiopeia.
Did I say creation? I meant the opposite.
I absolutely love the way the poem references its structure, the way it takes us from prehistoric times to the present, reminding us that we are all, in some ways, obsessed with creation and destruction.
Millicent Caliban summarizes some unpleasant historical truths that we tend to overlook when romanticizing past eras. David wisely turns our attention to the turn after line eight, "a textbook example of using the logic of a sonnet to advance a double argument":
If history has taught us anything,
it is that life was dirty, cold and dark.
Diseases raged unchecked and danger lurked.
To travel far was risky, without comfort.
To be a woman meant a narrow scope—
a self-determined life was scarce a dream.
Hierarchies were strict and unrelenting;
your gender, race or tribe determined all.
Yet people put more trust in simple faith;
believed that God had so ordained their lot.
Some strove to conquer ignorance with learning
and, when they could, indulged in acts of love.
They understood the sacredness of Nature
and did not waste her bounty in their rage.
This one takes us back to nature (or rather a Dickinsonian 'Nature'), which is both the worst place to be (dirty, cold, and dark) and the best place to be (the sacredness of her bounty). Very cool.
Randall Brett’s “Student Debt” juxtaposes memories of train rides in boyhood to events in South Africa, and dazzles us with its painfully relatable last lines.
If history can teach us anything,
if the djinn of memory riding beside me
on the Regional from New York to Providence
is roused angrily from its nap
by the calling out of place names:
Saybrook, Old Lyme, New London, WesterlyWhat pass for the colonies of your childhood—
while you text me from LA about the First and Second
Boer Wars, the Voortrekkers, the Battle of Blood
River, the map marked “all dead,”
your studies from the spellbook of time—How you are happy in every past,
but ours.
I'll admit to having personal motives for loving this idea of people being thoughtful and understanding with the history of everything except for their relationship to you, but even so, the journey is objectively lovely.
“Intercourse” is the eye-catching title of Josie Cannella’s passionately earnest poem:
If history has taught us anything
perhaps it’s that we need to talk things out.
Some diplomatic negotiating
mends rips in social fabric, sans a doubt.
Whether a border has been wrongly crossed
or toes have accident’ly been stepped on,
without a conversation, all is lost
and hope for peaceful resolutions, gone.Some suffer rips and wrinkles. They don’t care
to grapple with the ugly likelihood
that those who’ve wronged them simply do not share
their moral obligation to make good.
Disquieted, they quiet down their pain,
let anger gall, and plan revenge to gain.
Always relevant given the mode of political and social discourse going on today, I love the double meanings behind phrases like borders "wrongly crossed" and toes "accidentally stepped on."
And Eric Fretz wins the brevity award for his two-stanza poem:
If history can teach us anything
It’s that we never know what’s coming next.Sometimes decades pass and nothing happens
And sometimes ages are transformed in weeks.
Which I love because this can be applied to life, career, romance, and yes, the movements of the world.
If you're still hungry for some wonderful poems and interesting conversation, visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post!
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