Jesse Nathan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Scouts

 

There was a boy even stranger than I

who’d call me in the evening

to see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in me

hesitated. Then one morning

 

during eighth grade English we got hall passes

and did it in a stall in the bathroom

taking turns over the john,

as thrilling as clumsy.

 

We kept our secret.

But he came to seem a target

around that one-light town. The cut of his hair

or the way he laughed, or maybe

 

his jittery hunched-up walk.

For a while he went on calling me

to see if I’d go with him to Scouts.

Instead I learned: treat him low

 

or be treated so myself.

Once in Art while the others snickered

I planted tacks across his chair,

and he sat down and shot up so quick

 

the chair sprang backwards, a few silver tacks

still sticking in his rear, his roar

like the shining in the corners of his eyes,

snarling as he came at me with scissors,

 

and only the teacher’s lightning maneuver

kept me from my due.

After that he looked at me, if at all, like the traitor

I was. Later that year his dad moved him

 

to a Christian school where they teach

the planet was made in seven actual days

and dinosaur bones got planted by God

to amuse geologists and children.

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Jesse Nathan was raised in northern California and rural Kansas. He was a founding editor of the McSweeney's Poetry Series, and now teaches literature in the English Department at UC Berkeley. His poems have appeared in the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, and other magazines, and he's been a recipient of fellowships from the Arts Research Center and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He lives in Oakland.

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                                  Boy Scouts at a swimming class at Boy Scout Camp in Florence, Alabama. Photograph, July 1942

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

Break my heart with language in a poem I won't forget.

[Bill Nevins]

Bravo. Hell of a fine poem.

[Denise Duhamel]

Love this poem!...

treat him low//or be treated so myself...

The honest and terrible survival of middle school.

Bravo!

[Michael Whelan]

Hypnotic. The two boys so secretly alive over the stall toilet seat, yet each so hurt. It’s hard to decide which boy is the most hurt –the traitor or the tack reared – both in a one light town. And the chilling image of the Christian school at the end comes like a death sentence doubling down the one-light narrowness of their world.

[Nin Andrews]

Stunning poem!!

[Beth Joselow]

Painfully hits the mark, with restraint and truth. Yes, heart-breaking, and admirable.

[David Lehman]

I second what Denise and Nin said. Nice tux, too.

[Eileen]

This is a powerful poem. It made me sad.

[Susan Campbell]

Excellent.

[clarinda]

I'm typing this through tears. It's a wonderful poem and it hits home. I too was a traitor in elementary school--where it seemed like the way not to get picked on (my speech was "stuck-up" by PS 56 kid standdards) was to be one of the ones who picked on the even-more-downtrodden.

[Robert Pinsky]

Wonderful poem -- the terrible pain and loneliness and guilt, lucidly painful.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

My own Boy Scout years paralleled my late elementary school years. I rose through the ranks of Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, and Life. Eagle, of course, was the pinnacle, but the onset of high school, the advance of puberty, and a growing fascination with female classmates put the Eagle fluttering out of my reach. It was a relief. But I still remember the “Scout Oath”: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” The twelve points of the “Scout Law” also mysteriously swim back to my mind: “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” Why do I still know all that? Even back then, I thought those rotely uttered pledges sounded more like indoctrination than inspiration. And I also witnessed Boy Scout behavior too often not in keeping with those precepts. Jesse Nathan’s poignant, powerful poem “Scouts” summoned that not-quite-so-innocent time and ethos back to me. Pubescent boys can be very cruel, especially where character-testing turf wars are waged, whether openly or furtively. Betrayals can proliferate, and the hollow bravado of humiliating an easy-target classmate to impress a clique can leave scars on both perpetrator and victim. Neither of the two boys at the center of Jesse Nathan’s ultimately heartbreaking poem escapes loss, whether inflicted, suffered, or both. “Scouts” is eight quatrains of vivid characterization, disquietingly brilliant insight, and uncannily deft craft. It’s not a poem easy to shake, nor should we.

[Kyril Alexander Calsoyas]

March 28, 2023 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday affirmed the Boy Scouts of America's $2.46 billion settlement of decades of sex abuse claims, rejecting appeals by some of the group's insurers and abuse claimants.

U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Wilmington, Delaware, ruled that the Boy Scouts agreement, which would create the largest sexual abuse settlement fund in U.S. history, was a good faith effort to resolve claims by more than 80,000 men who say they were abused as children by troop leaders.