Verse Imitating E.B. White on The Washington High School Mural Controversy

Yesterday I wrote a verse about the controversy over Arnautoff's mural in Washington High School.  I wrote it in the style of E.B. White's verse about Rivera's mural at the Rockefeller Center in the 1930's.

Dear Mr. Demarais,

I just  read online your June 20 article on how destroying art destroys culture, so well stated.  

Are you familiar with the poem that E.B. White wrote about the destruction of Rivera's Mural at the Rockefeller Center?  

I've written a weak imitation, changing meter at will and committing other offenses to send it as a letter to the editor, but it was too long, so I'm sending it to you--and maybe to John Diaz, too, if he's not lucky.

Signage is the Solution 

 with apologies to E.B. White 

 "Why did he paint what we  see on this wall?"

Asked students at Washington High School

 "Why not a cherry tree in Fall

That we could see as we walked the hall

An image of Washington great and tall?"

              He painted what he knew,  comes the answer.

 "Why did he show the injustice done race?

A foot on an Indian, a Slave Market place?

When he could have shown  Washington in  state of grace?"

             He painted what he thought, comes the answer.

             He painted what he saw, he painted what he knew.

            He painted what he thought, Arnautoff did.

He left it on the wall until controversy grew

and minds were made up to obliterate or sue.

 You can't erase the Indians' loss

Or the Africa-American's  subjection to the boss

Or all of the injustice done to/by the tempest tossed

Just because it's paint-ful.

 It's not our wish for the Board to be

(Says the Board's president Stevon Cook)

A censor of art, but it seems to me

We owe it to the community

(The students are our community)

To protect them from  immunity

to  normalizing what they see.

 And what they see , to a large degree,

Are scholars  coming to its defense.

In a petition.

"A gross violation of logic and sense,"

The demolition is an offense

Obliterate?  Under no condition!

 But Alea iacta est

The die is cast.  They did their best

Their best just wasn't good enough.

 Unanimously  they've cast their vote

Are the chances of saving the mural remote?

 A modest proposal could come in Swift

And give the mural the needed lift:

Here's the  proposal  I'm banding about:

Keep the mural .  Move students out.

 Or the wisdom of Solomon let's graph:

Cut it in two and white-wash just half.

 A former student wrote in to say

He thought  the mural, though disturbing, should stay

With signage the suture.

Let  new light on the mural be cast,

saying that we remember the past

To ensure a better future. 

 With best wishes (like mural preservation),

Tina Martin

 

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