Poems Written By Anonymous Authors

Sarah Palin email bombshell: A lifelong reader, Alaska's former governor also ...

The emails are proof that Palin is not exaggerating her early bibliophilia. Because emails are written speech, it's easy to miss linguistic deftness in them. We even hear that the emails are written on an eighth-grade level - but that's better than the average bear and then some in modern America , typical of CEOs. Take this ordinary Palin passage: "Even CP has admitted locking up tax rates as Glenn suggests is unacceptable to the legislature, the Alaskan public, this administration and the Constitution." Her spelling, for one, is great, when even spell-checking misses some errors and creates new ones. More to the point, we get a dependent clause ("locking up tax rates") embedded within a main one, with another clause ("as Glenn suggests") nested within the dependent one. It's good layer-cake syntax, and beyond the capabilities, or at least proclivities, of quite a few thoroughly bright college graduates I know. Namely, the ones who didn't grow up reading. Here's another one: "Cowdery telling a kid what's acceptable and what isn't inside these four walls??? Puleeeze. A three-pound puppy vs. all the CBC crap that he helped dump around here?" Gravitas? Little. But it's a highly articulate evocation of emotional American language. You hear a genuine voice. How many people do you know who in emails can express nuanced renditions of their living selves? Professor X tells us "The two most crucial ingredients in the mysterious mix that makes a good writer may be (1) having read enough throughout a lifetime to have internalized the rhythms of the written word, and (2) refining the ability to mimic those rhythms." Call that pessimistic, but in my teaching experience, I have known not a single exception to it. Namely, across classes, races and temperaments, good writers grew up reading, whether or not we'd call them intellectuals. Meanwhile, poor writers do not get significantly better from summers or semesters of classes writing brief essays about, usually, themselves. Note the "significantly" - our question is whether modest, better-than-nothing improvement is truly worth the expense and effort. Addressing it, we must consider: Upon what do we base the idea that all Americans must be fluent writers as opposed to so very many other things one can be? All must be functional writers, yes. But the idea that all adults must be better writers than that is arbitrary - especially when the chances that all Americans will grow up as avid readers are painfully small.

The Earl of Oxford in “The Arte of English Poesie” of 1589 ...

Is dedicated to Oxford’s father-in-law [and former guardian] William Cecil Lord Burghley, but it’s actually addressed to Elizabeth herself.  It emphasizes the importance of deception, disguise and anonymity.  The unnamed author says that many members of the nobility or gentry “have no courage to write & if they have, yet are they loath to be a known of their skill,” and continues:

“So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably, and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it

Later he begins to use names:

“And in her Majesty’s time that now is are sprung up another crew of Courtly makers, Noble men and Gentlemen of her Majesty’s own servants, who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford , Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Master Edward Dyer, Master Fulke Greville, Gascoigne, Britton, Turberville and a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envy, but to avoid tediousness, and who have deserved no little commendation.”  [My emphasis]

Does Oxford head the above list because, as Webbe had announced in no uncertain language, he’s the best writer?  Or is he listed first because of his nobleman’s rank?  Our brethren on the Stratfordian side prefer the latter interpretation, and I won’t argue here except to note that the author surely knew he was putting a spotlight on Oxford’s literary work.

Moreover, on the very next page the anonymous author of The Arte

When wert thou born desire?

In pomp and prime of May,

By whom sweet boy wert thou begot?

By good conceit men say,

Tell me who was thy nurse?

Fresh youth in sugared joy.

What was thy meat and daily food?

Sad sighes with great annoy.

What hadst thou then to drink?

Unfeigned lovers tears.

What cradle wert thou rocked in?

In hope devoid of fears.

What was this poem really about?  Well, The Arte elsewhere speaks of a poet as a “dissembler” who “by reason of a secret intent not appearing by the words, as when we go about the bush, and will not in one or a few words express that thing which we desire to have known, but do choose rather to do it by many words.