Many thanks to
my correspondent, "Mr. Southwest," for surfacing an early and revealing Obama
poem that I had heretofore not seen.
The unnamed
poem, which I will call "Forgotten," was unearthed for a lengthy March 2008
article in Vanity Fair by the magazine's national editor, Todd Purdum. It reads
as follows:
I saw an old,
forgotten man
On an old,
forgotten road.
Staggering and
numb under the glare of the
Spotlight. His
eyes, so dull and grey,
Slide from right
to left, to right,
Looking for his
life, misplaced in a
Shallow, muddy
gutter long ago.
I am found,
instead.
Seeking a hiding
place, the night seals us together.
A transient
spark lights his face, and in my honor,
He pulls out
forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,
And walks a
straight line along the crooked world.
When Purdum
mentioned the poem to Obama in 2008, Obama told Purdum he had no memory of it.
(By contrast, I can still recite the poem that won a class contest when I was a
freshman in high school.) After Purdum read the poem to Obama, he said, "That's
not bad. I wrote that in high school?"
The poem, which
was published in 1978 or 1979 in Obama's high school literary magazine, is not
bad at all. In fact, for a B-minus jock at a Hawaii prep school, the poem is
exceptional. The question that must be asked, however, is the one that Obama
himself poses: did he actually write it?
As to the
content of the poem, Obama told Purdum, "It sounds in spirit that it's talking a
little bit about my grandfather." Note that the subject of this sentence is
"it," not the expected "I." As he does even in the forward of his acclaimed
1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father,
Obama distances himself from his presumed composition.
The
"grandfather" Obama refers to here, of course, is his mother's father, Stanley
Dunham -- "Gramps," the Willy Loman character with whom Obama lived during much
of his adolescence. If the critics are to be believed -- and they ought not be
-- that makes two early Obama poems about his grandfather.
The second poem,
called "Pop," was published under Obama's name in the Occidental College
literary magazine in 1981. Rebecca Mead, for instance, writing in the New
Yorker, unhesitatingly describes
"Pop" as a "loving if slightly jaded portrait of Obama's maternal grandfather."
Obama biographer
Remnick makes the same point. "'Pop,'" he says, as though a given, "clearly
reflects Obama's relationship with his grandfather Stanley Dunham." I could
find no mainstream publication that even suggests otherwise.
The two poems do
seem to be about the same person, a world-weary older man with whom the young
Obama has a personal relationship. In "Forgotten," the old man's "eyes, so dull
and grey / Slide from right to left, to right." In "Pop," the "dark, watery
eyes" of the old man "glance in different directions."
The contention
that "Pop" is about Dunham, however, leaves a basic question unanswered: why did
Obama not call the poem "Gramps"? If I were to write about the man I knew as
"Gramps," I might not necessarily call the poem "Gramps," but I surely would not
call it "Pop." That latter title, after all, has obvious implications.
The case for
Dunham as "Pop" is further weakened by the line in the poem "he switches
channels, recites an old poem / He wrote before his mother died." Although
Obama credits Gramps with a little poetic dabbling, Dunham was more of a dirty
limerick kind of guy than a real poet.
As an
adolescent, Obama did have a relationship with a real poet: Frank Marshall
Davis, a Communist and pornographer but also a skilled writer. "I could see
Frank sitting in his overstuffed chair," Obama remembers in Dreams, "a book of poetry in his lap, his reading glasses
slipping down his nose."
Obama continues,
"[Frank] would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing
whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar." As to the sharing of sage
advice, that description fits Davis better than it does Dunham. "I was
intrigued by old Frank," Obama writes in Dreams, "with his books and whiskey breath and the hint
of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes."
A 1987 interview
with Davis recorded by the University of Hawaii shows the man Obama describes as
"Pop": the drinking, the smoking, the glasses, the twitches, the roaming eyes,
the thick neck and broad back.
More to the
point, Dunham's mother died when he was eight years old. Obama knows this. He
says so in Dreams. Dunham would not
have read a poem he wrote "before his mother died." Davis's mother, however,
died when Davis was twenty and had already established himself at Kansas State
as a poet of promise.
On one occasion
in Dreams, the teenage Obama stops
by Davis's house alone, and there Davis pours him his own shot. "Pop" seems to
memorialize such visits:
Pop takes
another shot, neat,
Points out the
same amber
Stain on his
shorts that I've got on mine, and
Makes me smell
his smell, coming
From me
...
A little more
obliquely, "Forgotten" captures a comparable experience.
Seeking a hiding
place, the night seals us together.
A transient
spark lights his face, and in my honor,
He pulls out
forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,
And walks a
straight line along the crooked world.
Maya Soetoro-Ng,
Obama's half-sister, would describe Davis as her brother's "point of connection,
a bridge ... to the larger African-American experience." Both "Pop" and
"Forgotten" would seem to validate that assertion.
Davis, however,
may have been more than mere bridge for Obama at this stage of his life. In my
forthcoming book, Deconstructing
Obama, I deal with the sexual innuendo implicit in "Pop" as well as the
explicit suggestion of paternity in the poem's title.
Here, I will
just deal with the issue of authorship. In reading Davis's poems -- his estate
denied me permission to reprint them -- one senses that he is more than just the
subject of the two Obama poems. In fact, "Forgotten" and "Pop" have as much in
common with Davis's 1975 poem "To A Young Man" as they do with each
other.
All three poems
show a comparable sophistication in language and structure. Written in free
verse, each makes ready use of what is called "enjambment" -- that, is the
abrupt continuation of a sentence from one line into the next.
Each too deals
with an intimate, ambiguous relationship between a young man and his much older
mentor. In all three poems, the Davis character is discussed in the third
person. In "Forgotten," he is the "old, forgotten man." In "To A Young Man,"
he is "the old man." In "Pop," of course, the narrator calls him
"Pop."
In "To A Young
Man," the Davis character says on one occasion, "Since then I have drunk / Half
a hundred liquid years / Distilled / Through restless coils of wisdom." Note in
"Pop" the similar flow of language: "Pop switches channels, takes another / Shot
of Seagrams, neat, and asks / What to do with me, a green young
man."
There are
parallels in word choice as well as in style. "Neat" means without water or
ice. "Neat" and "Distilled" both suggest a kind of alcoholic purity. The author
emphasizes each of these words by isolating it from the flow of the
text.
In "Forgotten,"
the poet suggests a certain purity to alcohol as well, referring to a likely
flask pulled from underneath his coast as "forgotten dignity."
At the
conclusion of all three poems, the young man receives some useful wisdom from
the older man that cuts through the alcoholic haze and adds meaning to the old
man's life.
In "Forgotten,"
"a transient spark" lights the old man's face. "Pop" also concludes on an
upbeat note: "I see my face, framed within / Pop's black-framed glasses / And
know he's laughing too." In the Davis poem "To a Young Man," the old man
"turned / His hammered face / To the pounding stars / Smiled / Like the ring of
a gong."
Curiously,
Obama's "Pop" reads more like the Davis poem than it does Obama's earlier poem.
In "Pop" and "To A Young Man," for instance, the older character speaks to the
young man, and he does so without benefit of quotation marks. More
consequentially, each of these two poems has a leaner style than "Forgotten" and
a whiff of cynicism about it.
The young man of
"Pop" dismisses the old man's wisdom as a mere "spot" in his brain, "something /
that may be squeezed out, like a / Watermelon seed between / Two fingers."
Comparably, the old man in the Davis poem "walked until / On the slate horizon /
He erased himself." Whether "squeezed out" or "erased" from the young man's
consciousness, the older character understands just how tenuous is his hold on
the lad.
This is more
hunch than science, but I suspect that as a reward for the young Obama's
friendship, Davis may well have slipped this "green young man" a poem or two for
publication. Nowhere else in his unaided oeuvre, such as it is, does Obama show
the language control he does in "Pop" or "Forgotten."
Such an everyday
scam would not have seemed unethical to an old Communist used to the "flim and
flam" (Pop) of a "crooked world" (Forgotten) where "one plus one" does not
necessarily make "two or three or four" (To A Young Man).
Trained to
believe that nothing adds up and the deck is stacked against him, Obama has
seemed from the beginning entirely comfortable with a counterfeit literary
career.
Signed copies of
Deconstructing
Obama can be pre-ordered at
Cashill.com.
In one of the most hotly-anticipated biographies of the year, "Steve Jobs," author Walter Isaacson reveals that the Apple CEO offered to design political ads for President Obama's 2012 campaign despite being highly critical of the administration's policies and that Jobs refused potentially life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer because he felt it was too invasive. Nine months later, he got the operation but it was too late.
Those are just some of the tidbits about Jobs' life revealed in the upcoming biography, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post. The publication date of the official biography of the notoriously-secretive Apple co-founder was pushed up after his death in October. "I wanted my kids to know me," Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying in their final interview. "I wasn't always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did."
Among other details unearthed in the book on the notoriously-secretive Apple co-founder:
Jobs' Meeting With Obama
Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.
Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.
Aiding Obama's Reelection Campaign
Jobs suggested that Obama meet six or seven other CEOs who could express the needs of innovative businesses -- but when White House aides added more names to the list, Jobs insisted that it was growing too big and that "he had no intention of coming." In preparation for the dinner, Jobs exhibited his notorious attention to detail, telling venture capitalist John Doerr that the menu of shrimp, cod and lentil salad was "far too fancy" and objecting to a chocolate truffle dessert. But he was overruled by the White House, which cited the president's fondness for cream pie.
Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can't get done "infuriates" him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times. Jobs even offered to help create Obama's political ads for the 2012 campaign. "He had made the same offer in 2008, but he'd become annoyed when Obama's strategist David Axelrod wasn't totally deferential," writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary "morning in America" ads did for Ronald Reagan.
Bill Gates And Steve Jobs
Bill Gates was fascinated by Steve Jobs but found him "fundamentally odd" and "weirdly flawed as a human being," and his tendency to be "either in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you."
Jobs once declared about Gates, "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
After 30 years, Gates would develop a grudging respect for Jobs. "He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works," he said. But Jobs never reciprocated by fully appreciating Gates' real strengths. "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."
Meeting His Biological Father
Jobs, who was adopted, was a customer at a Mediterranean restaurant north of San Jose without realizing that it was owned by his biological father -- from whom he was estranged. He eventually met his real Dad -- "It was amazing," he later said of the revelation. "I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook hands."
Nevertheless Jobs still had no desire to see him. "I was a wealthy man by then, and I didn't trust him not to try to blackmail me or go to the press about it."
Anticipating An Early Death
Jobs once told John Sculley, who would later become Apple's CEO and fire Jobs, that if he weren't working with computers, he could see himself as a poet in Paris. "Jobs confided in Sculley that he believed he would die young, and therefore he needed to accomplish things quickly so that he would make his mark on Silicon Valley history. "We all have a short period of time on this earth," he told the Sculleys. "We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we're gong to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I've got to accomplish a lot of these things while I'm young."
"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened ... I didn't want to be violated in that way,' said Isaacson.
"I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. ... We talked about this a lot," he told Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it. ... I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."