Our blog poet, self-identified as SomeDam Poet, wrote the following poem about testing, opting out, and New York State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. Reading the poem requires cultural literacy about arcane education jargon.
“The Mywayman” (after “The
Highwayman”, by Alfred Noyes)
PART ONE
THE VAM was a torrent of darkness
among reformy goals
The school was a ghostly galleon tossed
upon rocky shoals
The Test was a ribbon of Pearson tying
the Common Core,
And the Mywayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The Mywayman came riding, up to the
school-house door.
He’d a half-cocked plan in his forehead,
a shill of Gates for his spin,
A coat of the cleanest whitewash, and
breaches of law within;
Though served with a Lederman wrinkle
(the suits were up to his thigh!)
He rode with a jeweled twinkle,
His ed-u-bots a-twinkle,
His Tests and VAMs a twinkle, under the
New York sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and
clashed in the dark school-yard,
And he tapped with his Test on the
shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and
who should be waiting there
But the Test Lord’s VAM-eyed Super,
Elia, the New York Super
Planting a bright red “Opt Not!!” inside
the “Opt out” lair.
And dark in the dark old school-yard a
rusty swing-set creaked
Where Diane the Blogger listened; her
curiosity piqued;
Her eyes were filled with sadness, her
worry was plain as day,
For she loved the public schoolhouse,
The American public schoolhouse
Alert as can be she listened, and she
heard the Governor say—
“Hear this, my well-paid Super, I’m after a prize to-night,
And I shall make Opt-out parents fold
before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry
me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though
parents should bar the way.”
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce
could hide his rage ,
He tried to mask what the case meant,
but face read like a page
As the franks and beans from the dinner
were mingling with his bile
He cursed its taste in the moonlight,
(Oh, putrid taste in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his reign in the
moonlight, and galloped away to Long
Isle.
PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning; he did
not come at noon;
And out o’ the tawny sunset, before the
rise o’ the moon,
When the Test was a Möbius ribbon,
looping the Coleman lore,
An Opt-out troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
The parents all came marching, up to
the Governor’s door.
They said no word to the Test Lord, they
mocked the test instead,
And they nagged the Super and grilled
her about everything she’d said;
All of them knew what the case meant,
with Lederman at their side!
There were parents at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
Elia could see, through the window, the
road that he would ride.
They had tried to get her attention,
‘bout many an invalid test;
They had written a letter to meet her, to
discuss the VAMs and the rest!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they
dissed her.
She heard the Governor say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though
parents should bar the way!
She twisted her claims for the parents;
but all their Not!s held good!
She waved her hands at the figures, she
said were “misunderstood!”
She stretched and strained credibility,
and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The
statute at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it; she
strove no more for the Test!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the
statute above the rest ,
She would not risk a hearing; she would
not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the
moonlight throbbed to the Gov’s refrain
.
The quote of laws! Had he heard it? Her quote of NY laws?;
Her quote of laws — from the distance?
The “Rights of Parents” clause?
Down the ribbon of Möbius, over the
brow with his bill,
The Mywayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The parents looked to their stymying!
She stood up, straight and still!
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot,
in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face
was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; her
heart, it missed a beat
Then her fingers moved in the
moonlight,
Her pen-stroke shattered the moonlight,
Shattered the tests in the moonlight,
sealing the Gov’s defeat
He turned; he spurred to the West; he
did not know who blinked
Bowed, with her head o’er edict,
drenched with her own ink!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his
face grew grey to hear
How Elia, the New York Super,
The Test Lord’s well-paid Super,
Had watched for the Gov in the
moonlight, determined his future there
Back, he spurred like a madman,
shrieking a curse to the sky,
With Elia caving behind him and his
testing vanquished nigh!
Wide-read- were his slurs on the
Twitter; wide-spread was the parents’
vote,
When they opted out on the test day,
In droves and droves on the test day,
And he lay in the flood on the test day,
with a bunch of ‘rents at his throat
And still of a winter’s night, they say,
when the VAMmers roam like trolls
When the school is a ghostly galleon
tossed upon rocky shoals,
When the Test is a ribbon of Pearson
tying the Common Core,
A Mywayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A Mywayman comes riding, up to the
school-house door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs
in the dark school-yard,
And he taps with his Test on the
shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and
who should be waiting there
But the Test Lord’s VAM-eyed Super,
Elia, the New York Super
Planting a bright red “Opt Not!!” inside
the “Opt out” lair.
SomeDAM, the Poet Laureate of the Resistance! Such a delight!
And yes, Ed Deform is a horror story. One day, when it has collapsed of its own dead weight, people will tell that story in books with titles like The Dark Ages of Ed Deform and Descent into Madness: American Education in the Age of Deform Data Numerology.
Thanks to all.
But the credit goes to Alfred Noyes, of course.
It seems that the timeless nature of great poetry is a direct function of how easily the words can be changed without changing the central meaning.
Myway or the Highway!
Thank you for being here SomeDam Poet. Not in New York but that does not matter. There are too many variants of Elia in too many states.
Always clever and creative with verse and content! You give us something to reflect on and sometimes smile about in the dark ages of the deformation.
Great line: we are living in the Age of the Deformation.
The Reformation was enlightenment. Deformation is Darkness.
AKA the Counter Rheeformation
a powerful thought
Bravo SomeDam poet!
OMG! How wonderful is this man’s talent.
We are so lucky to have his wit and intelligence here!
FABULOUS poem, SomeDam Poet.
Thank you.
I was on Twitter and, suddenly, I spot none other than SomeDam Poet, via Diane. What a RELIEF from the usual rantings and ravings of our childish, orangish president. But what a sad thing to admit, though, that I am fluent in the arcane jargon of VAM etc…. And, what a tragedy to have wasted so much of children’s lives tied up in such mumbo-jumbo.
Yes, the opportunity cost of the Deformation is even greater than the direct damage.
Wow! That was great.
Quite a feat, SDP! But in the line, “Then he tugged at his reign in the
moonlight,” it should be ‘rein.’
Everybody is guilty of typos. I recently read a great scholarly biography of W. B. Yeats by a historian named Foster. Foster was scrupulous about quoting his sources verbatim. Yeats, by most estimates one of the two or three greatest poets of the twentieth century, had the spelling skills of a remedial third grader. Harriet Monroe, the editor, for years, of Poetry magazine and the person who published the first important works by such folks as Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Millay, Frost, Williams, and many others, said that none of those folks, with the exception of Eliot, could spell worth a d**n.
Typos can also be caused by an automatic spell check program.
I have been writing and sending to friends little poems based on autocorrect mistakes in our text messages to one another. So, for example, here are a couple. In each case, I’ve given the autocorrect error first.
Autocorrect poems by Bob Shepherd
Spurned Bread | A Haiku
sourdough bread –>spurned bread
The bread I left her
In the cornflower basket?
It goes uneaten.
My Kitchen, My Rules | Bob Shepherd
making biscuits tomorrow –> making biscuits timorous
Bow down and lick my boots
Ye galley slaves,
For I am queen of the kitchen!
Lo, even the biscuits are timorous.
Thanks for the Loud Laughter.
I am great at spelling. But typos happen.
Years ago, I took a job at an educational publishing house. On my first day, the house got in the freshly printed copies of its new eighth-grade grammar and composition textbook. The grammar section of the text was introduced by a half-title page that contained, in 120-point type, the word
GRAMMER
And the Spelling chapter misspelled the word the word misspelled in its first paragraph.
But my favorite of these occurred when I was teaching, years ago, in an all-girls Catholic school. One of the nuns brought me a paper written by one of her 9th graders on the topic of “Saint Paul Preaching to the Genitals.”
I ESPECIALLY loved this, as my elementary school teacher used to read The Highwayman to us regularly in the 5th&6th-grade classroom at our little rural school in the ’50’s! Great memories– & masterful parody.
Masterful is exactly right. One of the things I love about SomeDAM’s light verse is that he has a fine command of prosody and rhetorical techniques, so the pieces are very artful. Most people, when they try to write metrical verse, don’t quite succeed.
One of the reasons why the Resistance will beat the Deformers, despite all their money, is that the Resistance is funnier.
Ed Deformers have the charm of a straight razor and the wit of a manual for the installation of snow tires.
From the Devil’s Dictionary of Deform:
Deformer poetry. noun phrase. Synonym for financial statements
I have been working, off and on, for some time on a little dictionary of Reformish, which is one of the goblin dialects. It can be found here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/from-the-reformish-lexicon/