Word: bards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Brecht). But he was also doing a good deal more, for Shakespeare is rarely as simple as he is often made out to be. There are ironic subtexts in the play; and the dramatist includes inglorious aspects of war as well as unbecoming traits in Henry's character. The Bard gave us something far more complex than a cardboard king of diamonds, as more and more people are coming to realize--including myself, since the last time I wrote about the play. Just as people have in recent weeks been arguing over whether Israel's June 7 bombing of Iraq...
...Bard and Bartlett
...immunity, like Lear's Fool, to criticize Government policy as he wishes. The plan might open up an interesting game: select the poet who goes with the President. Thus James Dickey probably would belong more with Lyndon Johnson than with Carter; Rod McKuen might be Carter's bard (although the President's favorite poet, officially, is Dylan Thomas). Ronald Reagan's lyricist might have been the late Oscar Hammerstein II; he would have to pick another. Eisenhower's? Edgar Guest. J.F.K.'s? Another lyricist, perhaps: Alan Jay Lerner. Harry Truman's? Edgar...
Americans might even honor the exuberant, slightly bizarre poetry of their commercial muse. Two or three generations ago, the national laureate might have been the anonymous bard who wrote the Burma Shave roadside quatrains ("In this vale/ Of toil and sin/ Your head grows bald/ But not your chin/ Burma Shave.") The beer commercial ("You've danced all day on a pool of fire," or some such: "Now Comes Miller Time!") has invented a sort of macho haiku that might turn into a national verse form...
...Ontario this season, a waspish Woolf out-tongues the Bard...