Finland in the Headlines [by David Lehman]

"What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success." It doesn't quite measure up to "Worthwhile Canadian Endeavor," which won the award for dullest headline of the 1980s, but it is still a thing of beauty, and it reminds me of James Tate, pictured above, for a reason I will explain.  

In the age of advanced technological surveillace, there is little about us that the computer doesn't know. So everyday one gets an e-mail tailored to one's specific proclivities, with a link to a can't miss headline. This is what Big Brother sent my way on January 12, 2012:

<< What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success theatlantic.com -  The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because . . .

 >>

What I love most is "Keep Ignoring." Irresistible.

James Tate, who died on July 8, 2015, has a wonderful poem titled "I Am a Finn," which Mark Strand chose from The Iowa Review for The Best American Poetry 1991:

I Am a Finn

I am standing in the post office, about
to mail a package back to Minnesota, to my family.
I am a Finn. My name is Kasteheimi (Dewdrop).

Mikael Agricola (1510-1557) created the Finnish language.
He knew Luther and translated the New Testament.
When I stop by the Classé Café for a cheeseburger

no one suspects that I am a Finn.
I gaze at the dimestore reproductions of Lautrec
on the greasy walls, at the punk lovers afraid

to show their quivery emotions, secure
in the knowledge that my grandparents really did
emigrate from Finland in 1910 – why

is everybody leaving Finland, hundreds of
thousands to Michigan and Minnesota, and now Australia?
Eighty-six percent of Finnish men have blue

or grey eyes. Today is Charlie Chaplin’s
one hundredth birthday, though he is not
Finnish or alive: ‘Thy blossom, in the bud

laid low.’ The commonest fur-bearing animals
are the red squirrel, musk-rat, pine-marten
and fox. There are about 35,000 elk.

But I should be studying for my exam.
I wonder if Dean will celebrate with me tonight,
assuming I pass. Finnish Literature

really came alive in the 1860s.
Here, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
no one cares that I am a Finn.

They’ve never even heard of Frans Eemil Sillanpää,
winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature.
As a Finn, this infuriates me.

This and the companion poem, "I Am Still a Finn," appear in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

My college room-mate was of Finnish descent. Her last name was unpronounceable. Some people in the dorm took to calling her Finn which she did not like one bit. All her ancestors lived in freezing-cold upper peninsula Michigan, because it reminded them of Finland. Barbara had the bluest eyes I have ever seen. James Tate's poem is an absolute marvel. It brought back lovely memories and cracked me up! It is definitely a Best American Poem. Thank you so much for posting it.

[lally]

though i was older than tate he was my first poetry workshop teacher at the u of iowa in the 1960s where i was going on the gi bill after four years in the military and he had recently won the yale younger poets award...a year or so later Finnish poet anselm hollo arrived to teach and became a dear friend, thanx for the post, the delightful poem and the photo and the memories they generated...