Every year since 2002, I've taught a very obscure poem entitled "O Pioneers!" by the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920--2010) in my senior-level classes. It's an odd and perplexing little poem, a wonderful (but not very famous) example of Morgan's avant-garde experiments. I would quote the entire poem here for you, but I'd be violating copyright laws if I did so (I requested permission from the publisher, but it may take them some time to respond, and they might deny my request). [Update 2013: I heard from the publisher, and they will let me quote up to twelve lines of the poem, if I pay $37. I was hoping the cost would be lower.] There are only two copies of the poem on the whole world wide web of information, as Ms Ball calls it, and one of them is inaccurate, incomplete, and a bit hard to find. --And I like that!
It always surprises the students that they can't find any information about the poem on the internet--they really do seem to think that everything must be there, somewhere! Well, not everything is. There are still a whole lot of things you can only find in books. (I can show you a copy of the poem, if you come and see me.)
In any case, the poem is very difficult to understand, at first, and I usually ask students (in small groups) to write an essay about it during class. I give them some supporting materials, and I ask some leading questions; then, I just let them struggle and puzzle their way through it.
Usually, folks are able to identify a theme or a message, despite the fact that the poem is made up almost wholly of such non-words as "begubnugn" and "Wuglbumlugn." (Just so you know, that last word is a proper noun and thus it must be capitalized!) Think of this poem as a more complex "Jabberwocky." Indeed, the poem demonstrates more than one connection to Lewis Carroll, as it incorporates a version of the word game known as doublets or word-ladders, which was invented by Carroll. Morgan was a translator as well as a poet, so he loved playing with words and languages, and it really shows in this poem.
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| Photo of "inscription on tunnel wall" by Nick Catford, from Subterranea Brittannica |
Morgan's inspiration for the poem was an inscription chiseled into a stone wall in 1880 at the site of an abandoned attempt to dig a tunnel under the English Channel. The stone wall is underneath Shakespeare Cliff, part of the famous White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. On a website called Subterranea Britannica, there's a photograph of the inscription (taken by Nick Catford) which shows the very evocative and somewhat palimpsestic word "BEGUBNUGN," which was workman William Sharp's poignant attempt to correct his own misspelling of the word "begun." (Let's see if anyone's paying attention: 1 extra-credit point to the first member of the class of 2014 who can explain, in his/her own words, what "palimpsestic" means in a comment to this post.)
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| Screenshot of my message, asking for permission |
| I very much wanted to use Catford's photo in this blog-post, so the other day, I went to subbrit.org.uk and used their contact form to send a message to their secretary, Roger Starling, asking if I could use Catford's photo in this post. |
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| Screenshot of the reply to my request |
This year (2013), several groups of students wrote rather good essays about Morgan's poem, and I've asked some of the students to post their essays on their blogs. [Update from 2017: I had Mr Lockhart remove from the internet a couple of blog posts that were giving away too much info.] As the students discovered, the poem is about how language changes over time, absorbing mistakes and new additions along the way, and yet still manages to do its crucial job of connecting communicators with each other, just as the "Chunnel," the tunnel under the English Channel, does today.
In 2002, when I first read and then taught the poem, I was still fairly new to Marshall, and I was still building my AP Lit curriculum. I was paging through a few old textbooks from the 1970s I'd found stashed away in a closet somewhere, and one of them contained several poems by Edwin Morgan, a poet I'd never heard of. Those few poems were enough to make me a fan. Just as an experiment, I showed "O Pioneers!" to my AP students the next year, and they spent an entire class-period working through the poem, abuzz with curiosity and frustration, the best kind of frustration, the kind that makes you desperate to solve a puzzle.
One of the students, Emily Korsch, became so obsessed with the poem that she did some research on her own, found a fax number for Morgan's secretary, and asked if we could spend another class-period writing a letter to the poet. Of course, I said yes, and I can still remember sitting in a circle with the students as they figured out what they wanted to ask Edwin Morgan. They had lots of good ideas, and they very much wanted to know if they were right.
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| Yes, Mr Whittaker was in that class! |
Now, keep in mind that he was 82 at the time he wrote to us, and he had written "O Pioneers!" some 30 years earlier. His memories of what had gone through his mind when he wrote the poem were a bit distant, and so he downplayed the complexity of his own composition, and my students were a little disappointed by that.
The romantic myth of the inspired artist who produces a masterpiece without struggle, without conscious thought or planning, is a compelling fiction, but it is almost always a fiction. Some writers are so emotionally attached to their work that they can't analyze it and, when asked to account for what others see in their work, may resist by claiming they were inspired, or the piece just wrote itself. They may feel a bit uncomfortable when readers ask questions they themselves hadn't thought of.
But we all know that blog-posts, college essays, research papers, and poems don't write themselves. Somebody has to do the work. Somebody has to think! (You can listen to a great interview with poet Dana Gioia, conducted by the BBC here; he talks about his process of revision.) And then, when we put our work out there into the world, other folks are going to think about it and ask us questions. --And that's a good thing!
The best art never only means what its creator intended it to mean: it keeps speaking to people; it keeps on provoking new thoughts and reactions, far beyond what its creator ever could have imagined. (AP Lit students should be thinking about Victor Frankenstein and his Creation when I say this!) Although Shakespeare hoped that his art would last forever, would continue speaking for him long after his death, I bet he never imagined all the interesting interpretations of his works that directors, audiences, and readers have come up with.
My students were right because they created their own meaning from what seemed at first like a meaningless page of gibberish, and what's more, they created meanings that Morgan himself hadn't thought of (or at least couldn't remember thinking of).
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| photo credit: Muffet via photopin cc |
Since the Class of 2002 graduated, I've turned this lesson into a holiday, Edwin Morgan Day, a kind of moveable feast that I slip into my senior classes each year. I give the students a copy of "O Pioneers!" and they have to puzzle through it, with some hints and help from me. They can also contact former students, to see if any of them will provide help (of course, I have already sworn those who graduated to silence, so very few of them actually give any help).
[Update: Emily Korsch (Class of '02) visited class today to chat with us about this poem and her experience with contacting Morgan. She was really the instigator of the whole Edwin Morgan Day experience! It was truly a special treat to see her again. Now that she has returned to Duluth, perhaps she can visit yearly on this little holiday of our concoction! Below is a photo of Emily K, looking over the shoulders of a couple of students as they work on writing their essays about "O Pioneers!"]
