THE COMING RENAISSANCE IN HIGHER ED

by Philip Kitcher

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Is there a deeper problem with campus unrest?  One not solved simply by replacing presidents?

 
 
The point of any university or college:
Discover, advertise and sell new knowledge.
We can expect to make big money off it,
Provided that we maximize our profit.
Pernicious liberal miseducation,
Re-fashioned as a thriving corporation,
Led by a practical economist,
Strives to appear on Forbes’ Best Business List.
To reach that rank requires a stable anchor.
The CEO we’ve hired? An ex-World-Banker!
 
Obnoxious humanistic psychobabble
Incites the young to form a mindless rabble.
Recurrent demonstrations by this mob
Divert attention from our proper job.
After reflection, we have deemed it prudent
To expurgate the useless role of student,
Replacing faculty (eternal moaners)
With affluent trustees and docile donors.
Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale
Will learn their lesson: profits must prevail.
 
A needed Reformation!  We who led it
Will take away some cash—and all the credit.

Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years. His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

DEATH IS NOT THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

by j.lewis

although it puts what seems to be
a ragged stamp of finality
on unstarted and unfinished dreams

we mourn and we remember those
who took one for the team
for a vaguely defined cause
that slips our grasp like crude

"they died for our freedom"
is the standard line, and holds
true for very few of the conflicts
america has so willfully embraced

no one dares recite a line like this:
"they died to make a corporation richer"
or "we honor them with every tank of gas"
because to proclaim the emperor's nakedness
can get you a lot of hassle these days

and certainly, no one wants to ponder
the sacrifice of those left alive
the daily waking up dying
from loneliness, poverty, insecurity
children to carry on shoulders
already rounded with the weight
of grief, of love's candle snuffed

no, the ultimate sacrifice is not death
but living, pushing through the darkness
finding strength beyond self, and still
in spite of it all, believing
that this imperfect country
is the greatest place on earth

j.lewis has an irritating habit of asking about the collateral damage of war: the families of slain soldiers, and how they manage to keep on keeping on. His first collection of poetry, paired with his own photography, is available from Amazon.

JOSEPH'S GRAIN PYRAMID

by Alejandro Escudé

Cartoon by Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, October 6, 2015

Stacked full, the loincloth peasants hoisting baskets
up the winding ramp to protect the world from

famine—a wide smile on the giddy prophet’s face,
a full moon like a Greek shield and Christ himself

cradling the planet: power gives to power, the surgeon
holding a scalpel like the reed of a scribe writes

the corporation of God on our minds, you may
renounce judgement, you may let the doubts go,

have faith only in him who knows the truth
and believes mightily enough to forgo knowledge.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

DECISION

by William Aarnes 

Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary via Daily Mail; Donald Trump via DonkeyHotey

                                                . . . where shall you listen
                when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?
                                                --Charles Olson, “I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You”


Tonight, hunched
over his iPad,
your son will decide
whether to devote his life
to commerce
or killing—

                   already dreading  
some corporate career  
in throwaway crap,

already fancying
the euphoria
of wielding a bullpup.

He replays the video
of a capitalist
endorsing himself
by espousing bigoted blather.

He replays the video
of a jihadist
ambling into view
after executing sunbathers.


William Aarnes had recent work in Main Street Rag, Shark Reef, Empty Sink, and The New Verse News.