Smarter than Jack

Well, I guess it's true: cheeky animals are smarter than Jack. It kind of goes without saying, really. But I'm not entirely sure that I welcome the advent of a whole series of books reinforcing the fact.

Basically it started out as a book of cute animal stories compiled by animal-lover Jenny Campbell, which enjoyed so much success that it's now spawned a whole slew of sequels: Cats are Smarter than Jack, Dogs are Smarter than Jack, Aardvarks and Crocodiles [for all I know] are Smarter than Jack ...

What I'm curious about, though, is: Who is this Jack? I mean, I've looked in vain through the publicity material accompanying the series for the least reference to the original Jack. Is it simply meant to be a generic masculine appellation: Jack & Jill, Jack the Giant-killer -- the ubiquitous hero of so many nursery rhymes and folktales? Or is he some actual person (or animal, for that matter? Probably not, given the fact that so many other animals have been proclaimed to be smarter than him).

One thing's for certain -- he's male, and he's constantly being outsmarted. Which brings me to the real subject of this post.


I was all set to go along to the beach to read out my poem from the volume above, Poetry Pudding, edited by Jenny Argante and published by Reed earlier this year. There was a big launch party planned on Long Bay beach, with kids and party games and (I hoped) parents waiting in the wings to control their unruly offspring.

All set to go -- but then I checked the time. Not Sunday afternoon, but Saturday afternoon, 28th July 2007. So I missed it. Animals really are smarter than Jack.

So I've decided that the least I can do is to repent in this public forum, remind you that it 's now on sale in bookshops (or, alternatively, from the Reed website here), and to reprint, as a kind of teaser, my own poem from the book. Sorry, Tania:

Noughts and Crosses

My name is …
John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom X
I live in …
The Fortress of Solitude X
My father is …
a barbarian chieftain from the Plains of Leng X
My mother is …
a slavegirl from the Mongolian steppes X
I have 100 sisters and no brothers
save for the heads impaled atop my tent X
This summer I …
set out to pillage all the known world X
It was …
very easy X
My teacher is …
a dog whose last words will be screams of pain X !!
My best friend is …
my mighty two-handed battle-axe X
My classmates are …
dust beneath my chariot-wheels X
I like to …
ride like the wind on my 8-legged steed Thorondor X
When I grow up I want to be …
a vengeful ghost X

0
12

This silly work is becoming increasingly typical of you, I’m afraid. You know you could do far better if you tried.

[Poetry Pudding, ed. Jenny Argante (Auckland: Reed, 2007) 28-29].

Metamorphoses IX (1994): Iolaus

… Making clear
that this was a one-time favor, she had been on the point of swearing
that never again would it happen that an old person be made
young again, but Themis, the Hours’ mother and Mistress
of Seasons and Years, prevented this ill-considered gesture.
And now we get Themis’ list of myths in which time stands still,
moves around, plays tricks. . . not stories but only allusions,
some of them clear, and others oblique or coy. Our attention
wanes, as the voice — of Themis? Ovid? — falters and drones.
Tired perhaps? We strain to follow its murmur and feel
frustration, even annoyance. Why has he thus betrayed us?
Is this a place he’d have fixed had the gods not sent him away
(or, to keep to the pattern, turned him from darling to exile,
the victim of Caesar Augustus’ whim)? But there is a way
to read this passage and turn time back. We are children again,
hide in the hall at the top of the stairs and strain to hear
the phrases that float up from our parents’ conversations.
Greedy for what we can catch, we hold our breath to listen
and to comprehend their words and the world’s unpleasant secrets
from which they have tried to protect us as long and as well as they could.
The question is one of trust, which Ovid invites or tests.
Have we learned in these pages to yield to his moods and moves, to read
with that mixture of love and awe we felt many years ago
in the upstairs hall? The subject, at any rate, is the business
of youth and age, how the gods can turn back the clocks—not often,
but every now and again. We get Amphiarius’ story,
and Callirhoë’s, who prayed that her young sons might be made
mature to avenge their father’s death. ...
… We’re back on track now. This story, a somewhat mannered performance,
is one of those nice rhetorical set pieces Ovid loved
to dazzle with. He could put his lawyer’s training to use
as he made up elaborate speeches for his characters to declaim.
We’re all ears now, or they are sharper for having been jangled
a while, as if, in a concert hall, a composer had scored
a tune-up, white noise to get us into the proper expectant
mood. There’s even a warning, a moral (not quite on target,
but, if it were, the story would be otiose and redundant).
Byblis, he says, is a warning that girls should be careful to keep
their passions in check and direct them only to lawful and licit
persons — and this is a rule it’s difficult not to agree with. ...

The Metamorphoses of Ovid, trans. David R. Slavitt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. 183-85.

Well, that really is a rather remarkable passage to come across in the middle of a verse translation, isn't it? Fine if you call it a verse commentary or rewriting, sure - but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Slavitt is straining the boundaries of the genre here.

That's what Bernard Knox thinks, anyway. In an article in The New York Review of Books he remarks of this section of text:

Slavitt speaks eloquently in his introduction of the reader's (and the translator's) reaction to the poem as a "leap of sympathy, intuition, understanding, and, finally, collaboration." But this seems to go beyond collaboration; it is in fact editorial intervention, or perhaps intrusion would be a more accurate description.

Of course, it's true that Knox's article was written mainly to justify the appearance of yet another version of the Metamorphoses, this time by Charles Martin, and that Slavitt (along with Ted Hughes, the only other translation Knox considers) is really just being set up as a straw man against his pentameter-wielding hero. (In fact, Knox's article was reprinted as the introduction to the 2004 publication of Martin's translation.)

Is Slavitt justified in taking such liberties with the text? Who can say? My own feeling is that this is one of the more impressive passages in his book. I wish he'd done it a bit more often, to be perfectly honest. There's something daunting about endless ranks of advancing hexameters in any language, but especially in English, used as we are to the swift movement of the pentameter.

Contemporary NZ Poets by Theme

Come along with us, they say
There are one or two questions
We should like to ask you
– Bill Manhire, “The Old Man’s Example”

Here's a thematic breakdown of the 87 tracks in our Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance anthology (Auckland: AUP, 2007). The categories are pretty subjective, and could undoubtedly be improved on. Maybe that’s not such a bad starting point for discussion, though: what's the poem really about?

ADOLESCENCE & EDUCATION

Janet Charman: injection
David Eggleton: Teen Angel
Graham Lindsay: Playground

ANIMALS

Anne French: Trout
Sam Hunt: Hey, Minstrel
James Norcliffe: planchette
Peter Olds: Elephant
Bob Orr: Ballad of the Great South Rd

ELEGY

Murray Edmond: Voyager
Anne French: Uncle Ron’s last surprise
Roma Potiki: For Paiki
Ian Wedde: Earthly – Sonnets for Carlos 35

FLATTING

Geoff Cochrane: 1988
Peter Olds: Waking up in Phillip Street
Bob Orr: The X

FOOD

Paula Green: greek salad
Paula Green: oven baked salmon

FRIENDSHIP

Bernadette Hall: Amica
Sam Hunt: Rainbows and a Promise of Snow

HISTORY

Alan Brunton: from Waves
Geoff Cochrane: Atlantis
Bernadette Hall: Famine
Bill Sewell: Breaking the quiet
Bill Sewell: Jahrhundertwende
Apirana Taylor: Parihaka
Apirana Taylor: six million

LANGUAGE & WRITING

Graham Lindsay: Life in the Queen’s English
Bill Manhire: On Originality
Bill Manhire: Valedictory
Iain Sharp: Two Minute Poem
Ian Wedde: Barbary Coast

LANDSCAPE & LOCALITY

David Eggleton: Poem for the Unknown Tourist
Paula Green: Two Minutes Westward
Jan Kemp: Sailing boats
Graham Lindsay: Cloud silence
Bill Manhire: The Old Man’s Example
Bill Manhire: Visiting Mr Shackleton
Cilla McQueen: Living Here
Stephanie de Montalk: Northern Spring
James Norcliffe: at Franz Josef
Peter Olds: Doctors Rock
Bob Orr: A Country Shaped like a Butterfly’s Wing
Vivienne Plumb: The Vegan Bar and Gaming Lounge
Roma Potiki: Exploding Light
Bill Sewell: Riversdale

LIFE, THE UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING

Keri Hulme: from Fisher in an Autumn Tide
Bill Manhire: A Song about the Moon
Vivienne Plumb: The Tank
Ian Wedde: Earthly – Sonnets for Carlos 31

LOVE

Michele Leggott: cairo vessel
Jan Kemp: The sky’s enormous jug
Jan Kemp: ‘Love is a babe . . . ’

PAIN

Geoff Cochrane: Zigzags
Anne French: Acute
Roma Potiki: Riven

PARENTS & CHILDREN

Alan Brunton: The Man on Crazies Hill, 1 & 3
Janet Charman: cuckoo in the nest
Bernadette Hall: Party Tricks
Sam Hunt: My Father Scything
Sam Hunt: Plateau songs
Graham Lindsay: Chink
Bill Manhire: Miscarriage
Bob Orr: Eternity
Vivienne Plumb: A Letter from my Daughter

PEOPLE

Bernadette Hall: The Lay Sister
Stephanie de Montalk: Tree Marriage

POLITICS & POLEMICS

Fiona Farrell: Instructions for the consumption of your Humanitarian Food Package
Anne French: The new museology
Cilla McQueen: Fuse
Bill Sewell: Censorship
Apirana Taylor: Sad Joke on a Marae
Ian Wedde: Earthly – Sonnets for Carlos 32

RELATIONSHIPS & SEXUAL POLITICS

Alan Brunton: The Man on Crazies Hill, 2
Janet Charman: but she wanted one
Janet Charman: ‘they say that in paradise’
Fiona Farrell: Anne Brown’s Song
Sam Hunt: Bottle to Battle to Death
Jan Kemp: Against the softness of woman
Jan Kemp: Jousting
Bill Manhire: Domestic
Apirana Taylor: Hinemoa’s daughter

SPIRITUALITY

Paula Green: afternoon tea with Virginia Woolf
James Norcliffe: the visit of the dalai lama
Richard von Sturmer: Dreams

SUBURBIA

Janet Charman: ready steady
Geoff Cochrane: Spindrift Sunday

WORK

Janet Charman: from wake up to yourself
Iain Sharp: Amnesty Day