Bold Poetry Projects: Simone Muench's ORANGE CRUSH

I WAS DISAPPOINTED, OF course, when Simone Muench's new book of poems, Orange Crush, turned out not to be about one of my favorite neo-Fanta beverages.  But, I was relieved when I realized it was an homage to one of my favorite R.E.M. songs (I've got my spine . . .).

Wrong again.

Muench's Orange Crush isn't about music or carbonation (when is poetry really about either of these things?  It's about resilience.   It's about how creepy men can be, how strong women can be, and how eradicative history can be.

What makes Orange Crush a bold project is its commitment to ideology.  Or, put another way, its devotion to a rhetorical stance, a positionality that is often missing in contemporary American poetry.  

In 2008, Horace Engdahl, the secretary of the Nobel prize jury, bitch slapped (I know, right, the worst phrase!) American writing for its insularity. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

Muench bitch slaps that ignorance with two hands and a hammer, and the result is admirable.  The book's title takes it name from the notorious "orange girls" of the 1600s.   Since most women were not allowed in he theater, girls who wanted to be near the drama of drama, sold oranges (and, in some cases, more) to the kinds of men who buy such things.  Muench's poetic project is to reclaim the lost girls, remember the forgotten lives, exhume the buried voices.  An epigraph by Kathy Acker prefacing the final section of Orange Crush gets at this desire to resuscitate: "All of us girls have been dead for so long. But we're not going to be anymore."

And so, Muench makes girls live.

To this end, she divides the book into four sections--"Record," "Rehearsal," "Recast" and "Redress"--which are grouped either thematically or formally.  For example, "Recast" features a series of prose poems grouped under the heading "Orange Girl Cast" that star the poet's friends.  This 13-poem suite intentionally evokes a cast of beloved characters from stage or screen.  Each poem bears a short title with the name of the actress in the starring role in parenthesis (first name, last initial).  I almost wrote that the poems are "sassy," but that belittles the poems' energy and poignancy.  They are less overtly surrealistic and image-heavy than the lyrics in her previous book, Lampblack and Ash, but still fully Muenchy:  

from 1: the fever: (starring kristy b): Sweet Kristy of the culvert, the ankle turn, the verb imperfect, and sailors' notebooks.

from 12: the bestiary (starring jackie w): O lady of the bossa nova. O girl born of semaphors. Into the moss and phosphorus. Into the salt marsh of subjunctive silence.

In both of these poems, syntax and grammar become part of the of identities of the women.  This is also the case for jessie m, "One mason jar, one wineglass, and a verb" (the ferment) and kimberly l "A girl leans across a counter, edges of her hair flaring neon. She is a verb written on a cardboard mannequin" (outline in neon).  And it is mackenzie c, moving "between syllable & windshield," who "can't see her way out of syntax."  Nietzsche claimed that we are prisoners of a grammar we did not create.  

And so it is.  

But, the language that has been used (and not used) to erase women from any meaningful record, is, after all the language that poetry can refute, rebut, and rename.

The most successful section of the book, "Rehearsal" includes the Orange Girl Suite, in which each poem bears a title from an orange-based entry in the OED.  Here, Muench marries history and herstory (did I really just type that? And, am I seriously leaving it in?) in provocative ways.  Turning on the latent violence directed at so many girls, the poems try to create and recreate female identity and to reclaim beauty ripped from them.

Punctuating the poems about girls and orange girls are more personal poems, including some about her own illness, like the fantastic, "Count Backward Toward a Future with You in It:

     Nothing prepares us for dying,
not even dying. Nothing separates us

from the sun's luminous text,
the way words enter skin in fire spirals

lilting the room into a red vivarium.
Splinter sung our puckered lips.

That's great stuff.  Bold language for a bold book.  

At its best Orange Crush marries the personal with the political, and it's never dysfunctional.  At its worst, it can come off as, perhaps, too rhetorical.  But, even that is a sin of excess, a transgression of looking outward.  If the Swedes think we are too often and too fully gazing inward, we all might do well to commit Muench's kind of sin a little more often.

The Post National Poetry Month Posts: Bold Projects, James Thomas Stevens, A BRIDGE DEAD IN THE WATER

I'VE NEVER READ A book like James Thomas Stevens' A Bridge Dead in the Water.

And, I mean that as a compliment.













It's really not like anything out there.  Part of the fabulous Salt Earthworks Series, Stevens' experiments with form and epistemology are both refreshing and radical.

Stevens is Mohawk and his book takes on a number of pseudo-sacred ideas such as the Bering Strait theory, the ease of Eastern/Western relations, and the notion that learning English is both ethical and value-free.

The first part of the book explores the odd connections between the Jesuits and the Chinese, which becomes a larger metaphor for the contested spaces in which missionaries of all religions clashed with American Indians.  These poems are smart, energetic, probing arrows that puncture the inflated sense of self (and mission) we tend to cling to in the West.

From a poetic perspective, though, the most interesting segment of the book is the crazy cool "Alphabet of Letters." In a gesture that both waves at and gives the bird to such methods of Western knowledge and classification, “Alphabet of Letters” converts the traditional American school book into a veritable collage of signifiers. Subtitled “A New Primer for the Use of Native or Confused Americans,” this 20+ page “poem” collates phonics, classical rhetoric, a 1766 inventory list, false and real headlines, instructions on diphthongs, snatches of correspondence, a short Mohawk/English dictionary, and even heroic couplets as an alphabet lesson (K When KING Phillip, dead did lay, / the Puritans did Make their Way” (Bridge 97).  

Part time-capsule, part linguistic experiment, part experimental poetics, part historical bricolage, and part pedagogical sketchbook, Stevens’ bizarre anti-poem takes Belin’s and Woody’s fragmentation one step further.  Suggesting the cornucopia of sources that have shaped Indian identity (both within and outside Native communities), Stevens utilizes the genres of knowledge-making to assert the impossibility of compressing Indian and Mohawk identity into lessons, lists, and libraries.  

“Alphabet of Letters” divests the Western project of “Letters” of its privilege of seeing Indians as its subjects.  The forms of teaching and learning, the forms of identity arrangement, the forms of blood catalog—these are the forms that poetic genres, though their ontology of exclusion, Stevens contravenes.  It's angry. It's funny. It's inventive.  And, oh yes, it's funny. Unlike, I realize, this blog post.

Therein likes the minefield of earnestness.

Readers interested in ways in which Native American poets take on the ideology of mainstream America and the poetic conventions of mainstream academic poetry will love this book.  I highly recommend it.

The Post National Poetry Month Bold Projects Post: Joan Houlihan's The Us

Us nest fine a weather long
between the heat of kin
the least of us in huts built round with stones.
A sky-hole takes the cook-smoke through

That's the opening stanza from the opening poem in Joan Houlihan's wild new book of poems, The Us, which tells the story of a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers (the Us) who are at odds with the hegemonic band of hunter-gatherers (Thems).  The Us narrate the poems in a kind of collective voice; it's never clear who the individual "speaker" is to us (either us for that matter).  The Us seem both to know English and not to know it, to live within it and to be strangers to its diction.  With its ritualistic rhythms and gestures and its Yoda-like syntax, it is one bold book.  I've never encountered anything quite like it.

But, and this is a fair question to pose, does it work?  

Well, that depends on who you ask.  The Us garnered some love from The Boston Review, and Lucie Brock-Broido has good things to say about it, but for Fiona Simpson, the book is far from Us-tastic.  In a harsh review in the February 2010 issue of Poetry, Simpson writes: "Any idea that this is a bold linguistic experiment crumbles before its lack of thoroughgoing-ness."  However, in an equally impassioned letter to the editor in the April issue, Steven Cramer takes Simpson to task for what he calls her "bias against the unlovely."  Comments on the Poetry website are all pro-Houlihan and anti Simpson. 

It's great when people get worked up over poetry, and to be sure, The Us is a polarizing book.

And, this is why The Us deserves attention.  In a recent poem-slash-blog post on the Best American Poetry Blog, Nin Andrews Andrewses eloquently about the love of and disdain for "the MFA poem."  One of the charges against the MFA poem is its self-referentiality, and by that, one might also imply its safeness--its closeness to home.  Suffice it to say that there is really no home in The Us--either literally or metaphorically.  Mythologically perhaps, one finds a provenance, but that's about it.  The willingness to give up positionality, to risk groundnedness, to embrace the nomadic is spooky but rewarding.

One key reward is invention.  A recent episode of 30 Rock lamented the death of invention, and to a certain degree, mainstream academic poetry can, at times, feel a bit like network programming.  In this sense, The Us is the Twin Peaks of American poetry.  It weaves in and out of reality, it plays with perspective, it sets up a moral dichotomy, and it splits its audience into camps that think it's genius and those that think it's gibberish.  

Perhaps the riskiest move of all is Houlihan's decision to play with vocabulary.  Like Twin Peaks, there are experiments with language, word order, and plurals.  It recalls novels like A Clockwork Orange or those Hobbit movies where people speak a funked up English.  This move is probably both the strength and the weakness of the collection.  I thought most of the attempts worked; some did not.  But, I was always amazed by how brave the project is.

In short, it comes down to this--you either buy it or you don't.  You're either willing to go along with the project, to suspend disbelief and be invited into the wacky world of The Us, or you're not.  But, the problem is, if you side with the latter, then you're not an us anymore . . . you're a them.  And, I think they all watch Fox.

Post-National Poetry Month Posts

NOW THAT NATIONAL POETRY Month has come to a close, I can now start posting about poetry again.

Sure, I could have written about poems during the spotlight month, but tiny 'ol TWR would have gotten lost in the tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk of poetry's biggest, baddest, most gangsta month.  But, a couple of weeks into May, and everyone will be missing those smart, insightful pieces about the role of poetry in American culture.  Of course, you'll find no such posts here, but you get the idea.

The theme of this year's post poetry month posts is "Edgy Projects."

I'll be featuring four relatively recent books of poems that take risks, that stretch the author, that may find the author working outside of his or her comfort zone.

You may not find all of these books "successful," but you will find all of them provocative and in some cases, even daring.

And no, Ryan Adams' Infinity Blues did not make the cut, despite how much I may love all those Whiskeytown albums.

Ice Kobe: A Guest Post by Scott Andrews

ICE KOBE: A Guest Post by Scott Andrews One of our favorite guest posters is back, just in time for the NBA playoffs. Here, he writes about a particularly interesting image of Kobe Bryant, whose Los Angeles Lakers are, at present battling the morally superior Oklahoma City Thunder (the best sports mascot in WNBA history!).

I love this picture.

I saw it being sold as a poster by a vendor at Venice Beach. He also was selling images of Marilyn Monroe with thuggish tats on her body. But it was this picture of Kobe that fascinated me more.

I saw it and laughed before I even understood what I was laughing at. I stared at it, fascinated by it and by my fascination with it. As I tried to understand my reaction to this gunslinging Kobe, I was reminded of reception theory. Yes, even on a sunny day in Venice, with bikini-clad girls rollerblading past, over the din of the construction of yet another medical marijuana dispensary, and lit by the flashes from the digital cameras of a thousand German tourists, I could wax wonk-like about a bootleg poster.

Must I over-analyze everything? Yes. Yes, I must.

In literary studies, reception theory is an attempt to explain the process by which audiences understand texts. Traditional literary studies had concentrated on what an author might have intended to communicate with a text, but reception theory (and reader response theory) concentrates on the reader’s interpretation, regardless of how that meaning deviates from the author’s intent.

One of the many influences on how a person receives a text is his/her community. People who share a culture, an economic class, or a community are likely to interpret a text in similar ways. And if the maker of a message shares this connection with the audience, it is more likely the audience will generate an interpretation similar to the maker's intended message. The further apart creator and audience are, the less likely they will be in agreement.

As I stared at Gangsta Kobe, I knew I had no way of knowing what its creator meant to convey since I didn't know who had made it. And I knew that what the poster could mean would depend a great deal upon who was looking. Is the poster celebratory? Does it appeal to people who see themselves as gangsters? Are they embracing Kobe as one of their own?

This seems odd when you think he so clearly is NOT one of them. He is a multi-millionaire. He spent much of his childhood in Italy, where his father played pro basketball. He did not grow up in the American inner city. He did not know the mean streets. He is more scampi than Scarface. However, Los Angeles is obsessed with the Lakers. Gangsters are obsessed with the Lakers. The people who identify with gangsters, even though they may go to church every Sunday, are obsessed with the Lakers. And so perhaps they claim him as one of their own, and they dress him up in the images from pop culture paraphernalia they are familiar with --­ movies, rap and hip-hop videos, CD covers, etc.

Do they imagine Kobe sharing their fantasies of fighting back against a system they may feel oppresses them? Is this poster some kind of Robin in the ‘Hood fantasy? Do they dream of Kobe following Public Enemy’s instructions to “Fight the Power”? Do they hope Kobe will descend from his gated community, arm his merry band of bodyguards, and cause some serious mayhem?

(By the way, no one could ever make a similar poster with a player from the Clippers. That would be ridiculous.)

Or is the image mocking? Does it appeal to an audience that sees Kobe as unlike themselves and similar to those lower-income people who identify with gangsters? Does the poster suggest that Kobe, despite his millions and comfortable childhood, is a gun-wielding criminal at heart?

Is it a racist poster? It may appear comical, but perhaps beneath the laughter is a quiet fear about the violence that can come from black anger.

Is it the celebration of the wannabe? You know, Seth Green's character from Can’t Hardly Wait. Jamie Kennedy’s character from Malibu’s Most Wanted. Does this poster hang in the bedrooms of nerdy boys across L.A., boys who wish they could be as cool as Kobe? Boys who mash up being cool and being black with being gangsta?

Ultimately, I cannot know what the poster means. And the fascination it holds for me is exactly the fact that I cannot know. I am fascinated not by what its ultimate meaning might be -- that is rather UNfascinating -- ­ but by its simultaneous and conflicting and irresolvable messages.

When Poetry Gets Political

DATELINE, LONDON.

JUST LIKE IN THE U.S., a controversy over a poetry professorship is a major news story in England.

I love it when the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times write about the importance of poetry professors in their pages. It always reminds us of the important role poetry plays in the unfolding drama that is American Life.

The drama of the Oxford Poetry Professorship is showing aspects of Americanness in that it has now reached Angelina/Jennifer proportions.

Poet Ruth Padel was elected to the prestigious post last may--the first woman to hold the position in the 300+ year history of the professorship. But, after only 9 days in the chair, she resigned.

Her appointment was not without some drama itself, as she was pitted against Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott, who himself withdrew from the competition after a report accounting a history of sexual harassment allegations was leaked to the press and to the Oxford dons who vote on the position. Walcott cried foul, indicating a smear campaign against him.

Padel denied having anything to do with the rumors, but just days after assuming the coveted post--an appointment that was groundbreaking from the perspective of gender equality--reporters revealed that Padel had been a source for the anti-Walcott scuttlebutt.

Enter Geoffrey Hill.

The 77-year old Oxford Alum has a reputation for being only slightly more cranky than his photo (above) might suggest. Considered by many to be among the most talented living British poets, Hill has a bizarre reputation for being both too conservative and too violent. But, Hill and his reputation aside; what's interesting is how this battle is being acted out on the public stage.

On one level, who is elected to the post is less important than the degree to which the position has become part of the national conversation in England. Matthew Arnold and W. H. Auden held the professorship, so for Brits this post figures into the larger English identity.

Put another way, this is newsworthy because Englanders know that the Oxford Professor of Poetry is a statement about their artistic and intellectual values. Brits see themselves through a literary lens in a vastly different way than Americans do. In part this is historical, but it's also cultural.

One wonders when (or if) a similar situation in America will become as noteworthy as it is with our neighbors across the pond.

A Faded Star at Baylor

NOTHING ROUSES THE BLOGGER out of a post-holiday hiatus like news that Ken Starr has been named the new president of his alma mater.

It's true.

The man who whose investigation of the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals engendered President Bill Clinton's impeachment in the House of Representatives is now the president of Baylor University. With the departure of former President Herb Reynolds in the 1990s, Baylor began a sharp slide to the right, limiting what could be taught and who could teach. The appointment of a man whose public career has been about licentiousness over learning, punishment over poetry, sends a sad message to current Baylor students and alums.

In short, this news means that Baylor is more about the ideological world rather than the intellectual world. Education suffers whenever religious agendas drive policy because the tighter the microscope the more likely it is that all subjects are seen through the same lens.

As the world's largest Baptist university, it is understandable that Baylor wants to galvanize its Baptist base. But other Baptist universities, like Wake Forest and Brown (which Baylor should emulate) actually gained momentum and rose in public perception once they realized that education is never about restriction but liberation.

At one time, Baylor's baptistness was not at odds with its ability to deliver a comprehensive first rate education. I was a student at Baylor with award winning poet Todd Heron, Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson, and journalist Jess Cagle, who went on to edit Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine. One wonders if Baylor continues to foreground exclusionary values over pedagogical values if the institution would attract such a diverse and talented student body.

Actually, we know the answer to that. No American university has simultaneously become more conservative and more coveted. Indeed, overtly Christian colleges are rarely taken seriously as places where true learning happens.

So, is Baylor's model Liberty University or Brown University? President-appointed Star has not permanently set the college down the wrong path, but the decision to put him at Baylor's wheel is making that detour harder and harder to imagine.

Best Books of Poetry, 2009

APOLOGIES FOR CRIBBING MY own list from the San Francisco Chronicle, but deadlines and grading take precedent over originality. I'll call special attention to my stocking stuffers--excellent books of poems that may fly under the radar of most lists.

The Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens, edited by John N. Serio, (Knopf; 327 pages; $30). A gorgeous and generous selection from the most important American poet of the previous century. Stand in awe at the bling in Stevens' first book, "Harmonium," but linger longer on his final collection, "The Rock," especially gems like "The World as Meditation," "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" and "The Planet on the Table." Amazing and enduring work.

Inseminating the Elephant, by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon; 93 pages; $22). Perillo's insightful work is less silly and more philosophical than Billy Collins', but just as funny. Imagine William Carlos Williams poems on roller skates, holding Roman candles in each hand, wearing a Viking costume, and racing down an abandoned waterslide, and you'll get an idea of what reading Perillo is like.

Face, by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press; 159 pages; $18). Alexie's poems are razors. Watch him lather up the faces of pop culture, Indian reservations, basketball and family. Then marvel at how his crazy sharp poems scrape them clean. This collection is Alexie's least angry and his most formal.

Archicembalo, by G.C. Waldrep (Tupelo Press; 64 pages; $16.95). Limning the line between verse and prose, this ingenious book takes the form of a 19th century "gamut," a kind of self-help primer that prefaced early American sheet music. The poems, forged in music's fire, instruct the reader not just about music and language but also about what we might call the internal symphony of the self.

Chronic, by D.A. Powell (Graywolf; 78 pages; $20). San Francisco remains one of the world's great cities for poetry, and Powell is its best poet. Powell's poems map the mysterious spaces where the internal and external world overlap, ultimately calling attention to the chronic afflictions affecting both.

Stocking stuffers:
Slamming Open the Door, by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (Alice James Books; 80 pages; $15.95). A harrowing book about the murder of the poet's 18-year old daughter. The poems manage to be affecting and sorrowful without being exploitive, dramatic, or sentimental.

The Looking House by Fred Marchant (Graywolf; 63 pages; $15). An accomplished book about the problems of war and coming home from war. Meditative and introspective, these poems feel particularly relevant as America steps up its involvement in two wars.

The End of the West by Michael Dickman (Copper Canyon; 96 pages; $15). A better and more mature book than his brother's more lauded effort. These poems feel like they are about everything.

And How to End It by Brian Clements (Quayle; 122 pages; $14). See my previous post about Clements two recent books. Great stuff from small but outstanding presses.

Sightmap by Brian Teare (University of California Press; 96 pages; $16.95). The ghost of Robert Duncan lives on in these fragmented poems that catapult across the map of the page. I just love what Teare does with language here.

Onward Christian Assassins or “Oh, Lord, please do that voodoo that you do so well” - A Guest Post by Scott Andrews

OUR FRIEND SCOTT ANDREWS is back with another guest post. Last time it was about werewolves; this time, voodoo.

Recently a Southern Baptist preacher from California was in the news because he was praying for the death of President Barack Obama. Wiley Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park was practicing what he called “imprecatory prayer.”

To imprecate is to pray for or invoke a curse or harm upon another person. Drake has said there is a biblical mandate for such a prayer. In an interview, Drake made it clear he was praying not for an inconvenience, an embarrassment, or a bad fortune – a lost ATM card, party crashers at a state dinner, etc. No, he wanted Obama dead.

And he wasn’t alone. A handful of other pastors were doing the same. Pastor Steve Anderson of Faithful World Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., said he did not feel moved to pray for the benefit of the president, whom he described as “the socialist devil.” He said, “Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

First, I wondered how these pastors described their sermons on those bulletin boards you see outside churches, out by the sidewalk, announcing that week’s topic: “This Sunday: Opening God’s Can of Whoop-Ass”?

Second, I wondered why no one had charged them with attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder.

There is a precedent for it.

In 1989, two men in Mississippi were charged with conspiracy to commit murder when they attempted to hire a voodoo priestess to kill a court judge with her special powers. John Henry Ivy and his half-brother Leroy were caught in a sting operation trying to obtain some hair belonging to Circuit Judge Thomas Gardner. They were upset with Gardner because of his sentencing of John Henry for armed robbery.

In the eyes of the district attorney, whether the two men could kill the judge with voodoo powers was irrelevant. What mattered was that they believed they could, so their actions were taken with the intent to kill another person.

The case never reached trial. The half-brothers pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

The case is included in a popular law school textbook, Criminal Law: Case Studies and Controversies by Paul Robinson, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The voodoo murder case is in a chapter that discusses a defense based upon “Impossibility.” A fuzzy area of the law is whether a person is guilty of attempted murder if it is impossible for the planned course of action to result in the intended victim’s death. For instance, we often say “if looks could kill,” but probably no one will be charged with attempted murder for giving the stink eye, even if he or she believes that look could kill.

But there ARE people who believe in voodoo. It is a religion, after all, and so it has faithful followers. They certainly believe in its powers. Perhaps they even believe in its powers to rob others of life or turn them into the undead – as Bill Pullman’s character found out in “The Serpent and the Rainbow” or as Star Jones discovered after she left “The View.”

And there certainly are people who believe in the power of prayer, since there are about 150 million Christians in the United States. I was raised in Southern Baptist churches, and I never heard prayers like those offered by Drake and Anderson. So I do not think their effort to recruit God in a regime change is indicative of some widely held sentiment or practice. But there probably is some kind of consensus among American Christians about the power of prayer. And the idea of charging Drake and Anderson with conspiracy to commit murder through “imprecatory prayer” has some interesting implications for those faithful millions.

Ronald Rychlak is a law professor at the University of Mississippi College of Law, and he commented on the 1989 case to the Associated Press: “The fascination is when you prosecute people with conspiracy to commit murder with voodoo, are you acknowledging the existence of voodoo?”

If Drake and Anderson were tried for conspiracy to commit murder, would that be the U.S. government acknowledging the power of prayer?

If the two preachers were found innocent with the Impossibility defense described in Robinson’s textbook, would that be the U.S. justice system saying that prayer is powerless?

Would Glenn Beck herniate a tear duct if that came to pass?

And wouldn’t Drake and Anderson reject the Impossibility defense for themselves? Accepting it would be sacrilegious for them, wouldn’t it? Certainly they would not say their public prayers were in vain.

Drake, at least, is off the hook. He says he has stopped praying for Obama’s death. He wants Obama to live now – so the president can be tried for treason.

That’s not exactly turning the other cheek, but it’s a start, I guess.

Scott Andrews teaches American and American Indian literatures at California State University, Northridge.

Grading President Obama's Speech on Afghanistan

HOW GOOD WAS PRESIDENT Obama's justification for sending 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?

You would hope pretty good. Placing 30,000 young Americans in harm's way has more at stake than the rationale for watching Old School over Office Space.

If you're committing that many people to a war-ravaged country on the brink of toppling to the Taliban, you would want your rationale to be air tight, your methodology ultra sound. So, politics aside, just how convincing was he? Or, put another way, if his speech were a college essay, what kind of grade would it receive?

Most professors of freshman composition would be paying attention to Mr. Obama's organization and reasoning. Was his argument based on sound principles or easy fallacies? Did he provide a thesis? Did he lay out his points? Did he provide specific details to support his arguments? Did his arguments cohere? Interestingly, his immediate audience of cadets and his frothy but physically distant audience of congressmen were, no doubt, asking similar questions.

One of the key strategies to a good essay is making sure the author and the audience are on the same page regarding the terms and facts of the topic. To ensure this, Mr. Obama gave a brief and, I would say, rather objective history of the nation's military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. He refrained from criticizing President W. Bush's ridiculous troop buildup in Iraq (over 100,000) but noted the staggering imbalance between those in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida lurk. This backstory may have been a little long, but it was important to set the stage, to bring everyone up to speed so that they could all start this surreal race to troop deployment on the same foot.

To his credit, the president did put his thesis foot forward. He stuck it out there and, sort of fearlessly, he ran with it. Never one to shy away from his plan of attack, Mr. Obama stuck to his guns. He also avoided cliches, unlike the author of this post.

His thesis is impossible to miss:

These facts compel us to act along with our friends and allies. Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al-Qaida a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future.

We will meet these objectives in three ways. First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months. . . Second, we will work with our partners, the U.N., and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security. . . Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

Not bad. Direct. Clear. Hard to misinterpret. Those of you expecting a one sentence thesis statement like the one you wrote for your five-paragraph essay on why recycling is good for the earth may be puzzled by this multi-paragraph assertion. But, for a longish speech, this is actually a fairly concise thesis. He numbers his points (three is standard; five or six are way too many and one or two can feel skimpy).

One could quibble over certain terminology. Can anyone, for example, ever agree on what, exactly, a "more effective civilian strategy" might look like? What does it mean to "defeat" al-Qaida? Defeat how? Military personnel and Christian congressmen may have different ideas about this. He gets marked off a few points here for unclear phrasing, but it's certainly forgivable. Justifying deployment into minefields is a real minefield.

Also, interestingly, Mr. Obama employs another classic rhetorical strategy. He names and refutes the major criticisms of his thesis.

I recognize that there are a range of concerns about our approach. So let me briefly address a few of the prominent arguments that I have heard, and which I take very seriously. . . First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. . . Second, there are those who acknowledge that we cannot leave Afghanistan in its current state but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we have. . . Finally, there are those who oppose identifying a timeframe for our transition to Afghan responsibility.

Notice each of the sentences in the above paragraph are the first (and topic) sentences of Obama's body paragraphs. Notice how short they are--how to the point. This method of stating and refuting the major arguments against your ideas does not show weakness; rather it demonstrates that Mr. Obama has thought about his plan, has weighed the opposite approaches and has, with full knowledge of contrary opinions, made a decision.

Grading such a speech is tough because how valid you think an author's ideas are can largely depend on your level of agreement with the author's political or social views. For example, someone who is a conservative Christian would probably find an argument mandating prayer in school entirely rational and perhaps even objectively on point, whereas someone more progressive would find the same argument an objective violation of the separation of church and state and, therefore, specious.

So, how convincing you think Mr. Obama's arguments are could depend on your own cultural and political barometer for rightness.

That said, I'm going to undermine my own argument. Though I am personally opposed to sending more troops to Afghanistan, I found Mr. Obama's rationale surprisingly convincing. I buy (for the most part) his argument. He made me alter how I think about this issue; he got me to consider his point of view. When it comes to a persuasive text, that is generally as much as you can hope for.

So, for this speech, Mr. Obama gets an A-.