Robert Frost | BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye

I originally had decided to write a blog post about finally re-watching the entire series of “Lost” because I always felt sure I missed a lot during my first watch of the show during six erratic television seasons. (I really had, too. No doubt, lots of stuff missed during that first viewing.) Then I happened to listen to a podcast about the ongoing war between the two rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake, found I had an opinion about that, too, and that opinion actually developed into a poem, so, in the realm of Things I Have No Business Commenting On…

Being a fifty-plus-year-old white woman, I don’t really keep up with the hiphop/rap scene much, although I’ve undoubtedly heard some I like. The first I’d heard about the Drake/Lamar feud was a couple weeks ago in a chance remark from a friend. I was interested because Kendrick Lamar had actually achieved something I once wished I could when he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The podcast I listened to was a Washington Post podcast, so fairly unbiased. I’ve read a little more since and talked to a few people. Everyone’s got an opinion, and some people have a less than complimentary view of Drake, influenced, no doubt, by salacious (the news loves that word) rumors and claims about his relationships. As one person said to me with great disdain, “Who’s on team Drake?”

And yet, both rappers have been acting out, putting out music practically in real time over streaming services. It reminds me of old battles that happened in newspapers between politicians or poets like Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg (that’s one of my favorites). Except these “songs” are more than inflammatory disses, they’re downright mean and often libelous, and more than one has been taken down almost as soon as it was put up. Maybe by a manager or someone with some creative control and more common sense?

So, even though I probably don’t have any right to have a real opinion about this rap battle, I was nonetheless moved to write the following poem. As for if I’m on team Lamar or team Drake, I’d just like to say I hate to see anybody wasting their talents dragging apart an art form they both excel at and should spend their time promoting. What good will it do the music world if two bright stars develop a black hole between them?

Beef
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Send out your diss
over the interweb.
Its mark won’t miss
your intended jab.

Insulting pushback,
wasting your time.
Get in the next crack—
make sure to rhyme!

Talent you got in spades
but gotta be sure to rile
when you throw shades!
(What rhymes with pedophile?)

Take it from this old white chick:
you could do so much more.
You could make each word stick,
bring the world to the floor.

But go ahead, send out a slur,
defend what’s left of pride.
Growl and bark like a mad cur,
and we’ll watch from ringside.

This tree has a death sentence. The town has decided it doesn’t look good enough to not be cut down. So it will soon be gone. I’m a little sad. Photo by Michelle Garren-Flye

It’s cold here today. Yesterday it was mid 60s. This morning? In the 30s. That’s why it wasn’t really surprising to see a dead butterfly on the sidewalk. Poor insect is as confused as I am about the weather. Yesterday, shirtsleeves, today, winter coat. But he didn’t have a winter coat. He was frozen but still beautiful.

It reminded me of poetry. Is that morbid? Definitely dark. But then, I’m one of the best poets you’ve never heard of, and I’m thinking it might be difficult for many people to name ten living poets off the top of their head, anyway. Because poets don’t become household names anymore.

Robert Frost said, “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

Carl Sandburg said, “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”

Considering the competition between these two poets, sometimes one-sided, it’s not surprising that these two poets had very different views of poetry. What has always intrigued me was that people paid attention to that rivalry. It was a different time, I suppose. These days, poetry is a hard sale. I see it every day in my store. I have shelves of used poetry—some modern, some classic—in my bookstore. I also have a section of local poetry, including my own.

It’s the classic poetry people still want. Byron, Dickinson…Frost, Sandburg. I understand that want. Those poets wrote about things that aren’t our reality. They’re a higher brow type of escapism than bestselling fiction. I myself have two poetry books sitting on my desk right now. One is The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho and the other is A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry (published in 1950). I study haiku, so that’s my excuse for that one, but I love the pastoral themes of past poets. I adore reading about love and beauty and passion as if I hadn’t a care in the world.

But I know modern poets are important. We are dreamers and truth speakers, but when we put those dreams of truth out into the cold December mornings, there’s the danger that they may die of the cold.