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.

ANOTHER LESSON FROM AFGHANISTAN

by George Salamon

“The United States could have left Afghanistan in the hands of a new generation, not the Taliban. But they didn’t invest enough in strengthening institutions and empowering new generations in urban areas who really wanted to rebuild the country and take over the reins. In 20 years, you could have transformed Afghanistan and that generation.” Journalist Adriana Carranca to Isabela Dias, Mother Jones, August 20, 2021. Photo: Gozargah school in Kabul in 2008. Courtesy of Adriana Carranca via Mother Jones.

As the sun sets on

yet  another place 

sought for America's

empire, one thing we

did not sell successfully

was democracy, the other

thing we couldn't buy

triumphantly was peace.

George Salamon thinks America has not yet stsarted learning from history, its own and that of other countries and peoples. George lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

DAY NINE OF THE WHITTIER FIRE

by Peg Quinn





Our differences burn away
now petty as air-borne ash
we stare, united by the dark
smoke-swallowed sky
The sun, reduced
by this raging fire
to a simple burning
red disk of anger

as we wonder what
happens next—
sundowner winds
breathing
with indifference
toward us, a lesson
in how lucky
we have been

Whittier fire photo by the poet.

Peg Quinn is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, mural and theatrical set painter and award-winning quilter.

RIFLE CLASS, DAY AFTER A MASSACRE

by Jon Wesick




Robert Dear shoots up a Planned Parenthood clinic.
A militia takes over a wildlife refuge.
The only defense against a conservative with a gun
is a liberal with a gun
so I spend weeks in rain, hail,
and desert heat learning to shoot.

Here, on this day the screams
of the wounded are far away.
Instead hands practice the choreography
of magazine changes and malfunction clearing.
I like the rented AR-15. It’s accurate,
doesn’t kick much, and it’s loose spring
goes boing when it chambers the next round.

Hot wind sucks water from my body
and even slathered in sunscreen my face burns.
Ammo belts on women’s hips distract me.
“It’s too quiet,” the teacher says.
“All I hear is pistols next door.
Let’s show them what real firearms sound like!”
With others I center my ghost ring sight
on a gray silhouette and squeeze the trigger.
Rifles’ booms alert car alarms. Dust puffs
on the berm behind paper targets.
Hot brass flies from an ejection port,
falls down my shirt, and burns.

We sling loaded rifles over shoulders only once.
“Feel something different?” the teacher asks.
“That’s the feeling of freedom!”
I don’t feel freedom.
I feel a rifle
and a heavy responsibility

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over three hundred poems in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Pearl, and Slipstream. He has also published nearly a hundred short stories. One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest. Another had a link on the Car Talk website. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts.

HORSE MEAT LESSON

by B.Z. Niditch

Meat industry under scrutiny as horsemeat scandal spreads --CNN, London, February 15, 2013
Image source: Cream Bmp Daily

Ordering for four
at our table
but unfortunately
for our sandwich
there is no label
now smothered
in ketchup
and pickles beside,
one does not want
to be snide or rude
but why does the food
taste funny
when we asked
for our money back,
and what stealth
is involved
for the meat rack.

Here's to your
good health,
no great deal
that buys
what they advertise,
we expected no trick
like-wise, scandal
stealth or treat,
for it's no hearty meal
that makes their wealth
only a steal,
as we learn a lesson
while we eat,
it was not hamburger
but horse meat!


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.