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Stupidity Street
 By Cooper Renner
In 1913 Ralph Hodgson
published a little pamphlet called "The Mystery and Other Poems" (London: Flying Fame, 1913)
including only 8 poems, one of which might as well be a vision of George W. Bush's America,
written 90 years before the fact. "Stupidity Street" reads in its entirety:
I saw with open eyes
Singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops
For the people to eat,
Sold in the shops of
Stupidity Street.
I saw in vision
The worm in the wheat,
And in the shops nothing
For people to eat;
Nothing for sale in
Stupidity Street.
On a first reading, one notes the neat bifurcation, the split between
what Hodgson's prophet sees "with open eyes" and "in vision". A
prophet is supposed to function so, of course, discovering the
tuberculosis masked by rosy cheeks. But Hodgson is a sharper poet than
a first reading indicates: the irregular, two-foot rhythm and the
triply rhymed stanzas serve not only to emphasize the final stresses of
each-- "Stupidity Street"-- but also to draw the reader around for
repeated readings. Perhaps the reader first breezed over the fact that
even the scene of "plenty" occurs on Stupidity Street, and perhaps the
music lulled him into thinking it was a healthy scene, those people
feasting on songbirds. But it is not. Songbirds serve a larger
purpose, an artistic purpose, short-sightedly short-circuited when
people eat them instead of listening to them and confining their meals
to poultry. There is plenty in the first stanza, but it is a fool's
plenty which leads directly into the vision. The simple rhythm is
heavy here, but the words skirt ineffective didacticism because of both
the rhythm itself and the lean imagery Hodgson uses to convey his
unequivocal message.
Do we not watch in horror as W tramples on international alliances
going back decades and allows his spokesmen to insult the strongest
democracies in the world if they dare to disagree with him--only to
turn around a few months later and beg those same now-tenuous allies
for contributions to help clean up his mess?
The "worm in the wheat" might be, in another
setting, the image of a natural disorder, a mere famine. But in its
place here, Hodgson makes obvious the cause and effect, the first
stanza's idiocy leading to the second's starvation.
And isn't Stupidity Street the street we all find ourselves walking
down right now? Aren't we now face to face with a presidential
administration and a congress which view natural preserves, parks and
wilderness areas as cash resources to be exploited? Do we not face a
president with an unyielding determination to make use of every finite
ounce of petroleum left, even to the wasting of petroleum in order to
produce ethanol and hydrogen, while ignoring the fully inexhaustible
possibilities of wind and sun? Are we not enslaved to tax cuts "right
now" so that generations to come can pay for their predecessors' debts?
If one of us were to read
"Stupidity Street" to President Bush today, he would--I suspect--
first of all apply it to other nations and not to the U.S., utterly
unable as he seems to be to imagine the consequences of his actions.
Or he might reject it as a the sort of "negative" thinking he finds
endemic to liberal culture. He might be surprised then to learn that 3
of the 7 poems which accompany "Stupidity Street" in Hodgson's pamphlet
are specifically inspired by the author's Christian beliefs, at least
as orthodox as the president's, and far more versed in the long history
of Judeo-Christian-Muslim morality which insists without ceasing upon
the responsibility the wealthy bear toward the poor and upon the final
accounting which men will provide for the ways in which they have
employed their blessings.
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