In recent posts I’ve been discussing Al Salehi and Ivy Schweitzer’s Within Flesh, Poems: In Conversation with Our Selves & Emily Dickinson, specifically the Introduction by the authors and the Foreword by poet Faleeha Hassan. Today I’ll touch on the “Letter from the Publisher” by Dustin Pickering. Something he said surfaced a memory from my past.
In Salehi and Schweitzer’s Introduction, the authors stated, “We need examples of people working together, across cultural and political differences, even across the implacable abyss of time – which is what we have attempted in this collaborative collection of poems.”
Augmenting that statement in his letter, Pickering insisted, “No bigot is spared the anvil and hammer of poetic vision in Within Flesh.”
That’s the statement that bubbled up my memory.
I am a retired middle school principal, and in Virginia, state law requires a daily recitation by students of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a minute of silence. My school had a small studio where students presented a live daily newscast, and each morning, for the pledge, they would display pictures of an American flag – sometimes with and other times without the words to the oath.
Sooo…
One day, the kids ran a search on the pledge, as they did regularly, and they saw a pic and grabbed a copy. They didn’t really scrutinize the graphic; they just assumed it was the pledge – but…no, it was not “just the pledge.” It was a statement from an old edition of Mad Magazine, and they used that pic one morning.
In Salehi and Schweitzer’s Introduction, the authors stated, “We need examples of people working together, across cultural and political differences, even across the implacable abyss of time – which is what we have attempted in this collaborative collection of poems.”
Augmenting that statement in his letter, Pickering insisted, “No bigot is spared the anvil and hammer of poetic vision in Within Flesh.”
That’s the statement that bubbled up my memory.
I am a retired middle school principal, and in Virginia, state law requires a daily recitation by students of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a minute of silence. My school had a small studio where students presented a live daily newscast, and each morning, for the pledge, they would display pictures of an American flag – sometimes with and other times without the words to the oath.
Sooo…
One day, the kids ran a search on the pledge, as they did regularly, and they saw a pic and grabbed a copy. They didn’t really scrutinize the graphic; they just assumed it was the pledge – but…no, it was not “just the pledge.” It was a statement from an old edition of Mad Magazine, and they used that pic one morning.
| At the time this occurred, I was in my office. Shortly after the newscast, my telephone rang, a call from a 6th grade math teacher. “Um,” she said, “did you see this morning’s pledge?” I hadn’t. “Well,” she said… Yeah, so that happened. And I responded to it – and that is the memory that came to mind when I read Pickering’s “no bigot is spared” – for that Mad version of the pledge, in satiric fashion, uses slurs to draw a shocking contrast between the ideals espoused in the pledge and our reality. Apropos to that, the first section of the Salehi and Schweitzer’s book then begins with a section dubbed “All Hue Forgotten.” The phrase comes from Dickinson’s poem “Color – Caste – Denomination,” a work that fits perfectly with Pickering’s statement – and Mad Magazine’s sardonic rendition of the pledge. |  |
I’ll have more on this poem tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe – one day when I find the time – I’ll look into that age-old mystery, “Who is Richard Stands?”
By the way, on this gallery site, HERE, “the ultimate resource for vintage posters,” a copy of Mad Magazine’s pledge sold for $200.00.
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