Dear Friends,
It's that time of year again! April is National Poetry Month. For the past several years, I've enjoyed sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month and reading your responses to the different poems.
If you would like to have poems emailed to you, I would love for you to join my poem-a-day list here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poemaday_tgifreytag/
Each poem-a-day will also be posted right here at meetmein811.blogspot.com.
No prior poetry experience required! Enthusiasm, ability to read, and access to email are the only main prerequisites. Do you have friends or family who would like to be added to a poem-a-day email list? They can sign up here, too.
Once in a decade, April 1 is not only the start of National Poetry Month but also National Census Day. So, today, a poem for the counted, and a reminder that a census may be defined as much by the questions it doesn't ask as by the ones it does.
Love,
Ellen
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The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
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"The Unknown Citizen" appears in W.H. Auden's collection Another Time, published in 1940 — a year after Auden moved from Britain to the United States and became an American citizen. This poem is also included in his Collected Poems (2007).
To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Labels: NPM