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On those fortunate Fridays, we kids were given a mission by our mother.  We were to locate Steve, the mailman, and retrieve the check.  He usually delivered our mail after 4 pm when the banks would be closed, and we desperately needed groceries for the weekend.  If we could intercept Steve and get the government check, we would eat well.  If not, it might be hotdogs or meatless pasta again or a trip up on the hill, which is how we described where my grandparents lived.  If we were going up on the hill, we were going to visit Gramma and Grampa, and it was their firm position that there was always enough food to go around. 

Of course, I could not know then what my widowed mother was going through to raise five kids: what anxieties plagued her, what fears kept her from sleeping at night.  But when I became a father at an age my own father never reached, I became acutely aware that there was one person standing between my family and certain hardship: me.  My wife worked and contributed to what was brought in, by I was the main breadwinner.  It was my check that paid the rent.  The car note.  The insurance.  I took on multiple jobs, and for a spell when the girls were very little, worked at the college until 11 pm Monday through Thursday as the so-called Night Dean: an afterhours administrative role that was not really administrative at all.  I did it because it was necessary.  There was never really a choice in the matter.  I even did this on Saturday mornings while classes were in session. 

I learned that living hand to mouth as a child informed how I would be as a father.  I simply did not want my children to experience what I had experienced.  My mother did her very best, but it was still a one-person show.  I know, dear listeners, that there are many, many mothers like mine, and the chance that one of these mothers is yours is good, so you are quite familiar with the sheer greatness of this love because you have received it.  Only when I became a parent did I begin to understand that greatness – that unfathomable depth.  God gifted me like he gifts every man with aggression, and it was for me to harness that aggression and use it be a good provider. 

Like any parent, I did my best, but it was still hard not to notice the shortfalls or, at least, be sensitive to what I could not yet provide.  I accept that I was being dwarfed by a standard that was entirely self-imposed, but even so: it pained me when I could not locate my own Steves on time, could not give my children what I wanted to give them.  Up on the hill was never an option for me.  I had to slug it out in the valley. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Dewdrops 

Of course we never knew 

the five of us 

were called dewdrops 

by the grownups in the neighborhood –  

the ones who had jobs, careers even, 

the ones who weren’t dead 

or single and on food stamps. 

It was their little joke, 

harmless, I suppose. 

We never knew 

until Dale Yucha who 

lived with both of his parents 

fiendishly put us in our place. 

“Dewdrops,” he snickered.  “My dad calls you all dewdrops.” 

How he delighted in delivering our shame, 

a wound that echoes still 

as my three daughters walk with their mismatched gloves from our 

rented, aged home to play with 

the neighbor kids 

who live in impossible houses, 

private bathrooms each, I’m sure. 

I watch my daughters through the frosty, thin window and 

look for the neighborhood ginger who 

would tell them this. 

The parade would begin at the high school and move through town – past the barbershop, the doctor’s office, a couple of banks, and the bars – then pause on the bridge over the Brokenstraw Creek.  A prayer was said, a wreath was dropped over the bridge into the water, and three shots were fired before the parade would resume, making its way up to the cemetery where there would be a speech, another prayer, and three more shots.  This was how my little hometown observed Memorial Day.  It was a solemn affair when even the children knew when to keep quiet.  The old men, wearing their caps identifying them as veterans, saluted.  American flags waved from front porches. 

What I did not know then was that Memorial Day was practice for what I would experience in middle age.  Allow me to explain.  At fifty-one, I find myself looking back over my life amazed at how quickly it has gone by.  Within a few short years, my wife and I will be empty-nestors, and if I am being honest, the prospect does not sit well with me in the least.  It makes me sad.  I miss the days of pigtails and dress-up, recitals and trips to the park to feed the ducks.  It is Memorial Day for me every day.  My three little girls are now three young ladies, and the feelings of pride and melancholy that swirl around in my heart are oftentimes too burdensome.  I am at a loss for what to do, how to think.  I have only those feelings and long walks in the park with my dog Arrow where I try to process it all.  Where I pray.  Where I search for direction and purpose. 

What does a man do after all the milestones have been achieved?  College.  Career.  Marriage.  Kids.  All checked.  What does a man do in an empty, quiet house? 

Memorial Day is a day of reflection, a day meant to think about U.S. military personnel who died while in the service.  It is a day to look back, but as I consider that event and the men, many of them old, who lined the streets, watching the parade go by, I wonder what God calls us to do when life seems so bleak. 

We are made in our Creator’s image, which means that we were made to create.  The act of creating is of God.  The act of destroying is of the enemy.  What are we meant to do, then, but to create even after war and loss, even after the obvious milestones have been achieved?  The men I knew as a kid lost buddies in their youth, watched them die on foreign battlefields.  But these same men returned home and built families, built lives, created good things for all.  Perhaps you, too, dear listeners, are in a dark place, wondering what’s next and anxious about momentums that cannot – indeed, should not – be slowed or stopped altogether.  Might I suggest that you remember what you were designed to do and Who you were designed by.  Many apexes may have been reached, but this does not negate who you are, who I am, Who the Creator God, the only true apex, was and is and ever shall be. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Memorial Day in Youngsville 

Bo Dean, the dog 

that jumped like a deer, 

mangled a rabbit, left it in the woods – 

a cacophony of blood, fur, and bones – where 

we found it after 

we returned from the parade: 

Memorial Day, old soldiers with guns, 

saluting the war dead with three loud bangs – 

Pow!  Pow!  Pow! 

We buried the rabbit, 

threw rocks over the pretty 

mound of dirt; 

we were noble, precise, 

too young to really understand 

I am grateful that I belong to a generation that got to sit and listen to stories about World War II from the mouths of those who lived it.  Grampa, my mother’s father, had already been in the army when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, but my great uncles had likely joined up when another uncle, Uncle Sam, issued the call.  I remember sitting at a table with old men who called each other boys.  One was a medic in Europe.  Another saw so much action his hair turned white.  Another man was a POW.  As for Grampa, he remained stateside.  It was his eyesight.  The doctors told him that he would be a casualty the first day.  So they sent him to Louisiana where he worked German prisoners.  When Gramma brought their oldest child to the worksite, my Grampa recounted, they cried.  They all cried.  That little girl would make my grandparents cry, too, one day when the cancer proved to be just too much for her thirty-two-year-old body.  Her loss was always too painful to bring up.  His was a silent grief. 

But once a soldier, always a soldier.  Grampa seemed to frame his entire existence on his time in the army.  We were never allowed to wear hats at the table, for instance.  Grampa told us of the time a drill instructor snatched a hat from the head of one of the recruits and tossed it out the window.  It was also unheard of to remain seated when the national anthem was played.  One simply had to stand up and salute the flag if it was visible.  He was a part of the Greatest Generation, and I got to hear his stories.  I did not know how good I had it. 

As a boy, I spent many days with Grampa, cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking cordwood.  Building and repairing what needed it.  Cutting grass.  Shoveling snow.  He was a man with many friends who knew the value of hard work.  He lived through the Great Depression and the War, as he called it, and somehow, I got to sit at his feet, so to speak, and soak in his character, try to understand his experiences, study what it means to be a man of integrity and honesty.  He was not perfect, of course.  Nobody is.  But for a good many years, we shared the same time.  Our lives overlapped.  And I have come to believe now that I am much older that the time I spent with Grampa was a great gift.  In a world that seems to be increasingly spinning out of control, here was a man who was centered on what matters most: God, family, a good day’s work. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Barracks 

At eighty-eight he was 

stationed in another place: 

“This is better than Indiantown Gap,” he 

announced to my mother.  “Twelve men above and twelve 

men below.  I sweep, and I mop.” 

And Mom smiled, and Grandpa smiled, 

and the nurses were left unaccounted for 

like the pajamas 

that were not standard issue 

and the wheelchair that was; 

Samuel G. Bowers with a purpose 

though his back arched determinedly toward the ash: 

a summit reached, the winter looks toward spring, 

an old boy still mustered: 

“But they got black people in this barracks,” he 

revealed.  “Can you believe it?” he asked. 

And Mom smiled, and Grandpa smiled, 

then Mom nodded alone. 

Home ownership had always been the plan, but it was an experience I had when we were living in a little apartment that really lit the fuse.  Our three girls were little.  The youngest had just come along.  It was the beginning of the Disney princess fad, and those who know what I am talking about know exactly what that meant: dresses and crowns, DVDs and catchy songs the kids would belt out at random.  It was a happy time.  A busy time.  My wife and I were doing are very best to make things happen, but our timetable was not God’s.  Still, we worked overtime and took on second and third jobs.  Our apartment was next to the common exit: a door to the outside used by the occupants of six units, two upstairs, two downstairs, two on an even lower level.  All day long that door would slam open then slam shut.  What is more, it was right by the girls’ bedroom.  One night, when we were trying to get the girls to go to bed, the door slammed open and shut and woke up the kids.  It was then that I realized that there was only about a half of a foot between where my girls slept and the outside world.  The juxtaposition was unnerving.  I thought of their safety.  I thought of their security.  I as a father had to put more distance between my kids and the world.  It was a sobering realization.  To be sure, the event made me feel inadequate.  I wasn’t doing enough.  We needed a place of our own – something that felt more fully ours, not shared. 

We eventually moved out of the apartment and into a rental house where the girls shared two bedrooms.  It was a step in the right direction, and for five more years, we continued to save.  I found more work.  My wife babysat.  Finally, after so much sacrifice, we managed to purchase our own home. 

We were there for about seven years until we outgrew it and were able to buy something bigger.  My girls were little in that first house.  The home we live in now is their teenage house.  Just before we moved, I realized this affecting truth and wondered all the same about the shifting role that is fatherhood: the holding on and the letting go. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

2814 Christopher Court 

The girls had on their 

puffy coats when we first brought 

them to the tan split-level that 

sat in the cul-de-sac of our dreams. 

The numbers were right, and so was the school, 

we had thought, but it was the backyard tree 

with the limbs the girls could reach 

that did it for me. 

This was our house, our home. 

And now, seven years later, I sit, 

grayer and surrounded by boxes, and think of 

Henry le Puss and Pablo Picatso 

buried under the rose bush 

and of the new house, a new home, 

not far but distant, still 

and wonder about my life and 

the bittersweet passage of time 

as my eldest comes in fitted 

perfectly in her mother’s skirt 

to ask me if she could spend 

Halloween with a friend, 

not us. 

Yes, I reply then watch the night 

descend upon the low limb  

she had once griped. 

I have my Uncle Barry to thank for introducing my father to my mother.  He was a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and one day, after making hamburgers for dinner, he decided to toss the grease outside but forgot about the screen door in the process.  The result?  He got splattered with boiling grease and had to go to the infirmary where he was attended to by a Navy corpsman, my dad.  My uncle was newly married, and his wife had a sister, Spring, my mother.  The two met and were soon married – too soon, thought many – and just as quickly, I came along.  It was 1974.  In less than ten years, my dad would be gone.  Passed away.  Deceased.  It had been his heart.  Had the affliction come just a few years later, medical science would have been able to help. 

Losing my father months shy of my tenth birthday left an indelible mark on me.  The truth be told, the loss shaped me in ways I am still discovering.  The permanence of death is unyielding.  A person can’t get around it.  Can’t escape how it looms over us all.  It was a lot to process for a kid.  Suffering was all around me: my brothers and sisters, my mother, my grandparents, aunt, and uncle. He was my dad, but he was also a husband and brother, friend and son.  I think back on that time now as a husband and father and shudder at how the loss of my dad was also the loss of a husband, the loss of a brother, the loss of a child.  Death is an enemy for a reason.  He who wields the scythe is indiscriminate and cruel. 

I was blessed to have many loving adults in my life.  In their own way, they walked with me through that dark tunnel.  Some offered words.  Others just listened.  Uncle Barry took me fishing, and in doing so, taught me how to disconnect from one reality and connect to another.  The language of trout streams is melodic, peaceful.  It was both a retreat and a way to plug into something higher.  A gift.  A beautiful respite even when it rained and the water grew muddy. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Uncle Barry 

Uncle Barry understood trout 

in a way that was silent and sure: 

“They hittin’ on salted minnows today?” I’d ask 

as I’d ease into the Brokenstraw to get a sense of the current. 

“Mm hm,” he’d reply, and 

that was all; I’d soon hear the squeal 

of his line as he cast upstream, and 

I’d watch him guide the blue-green 

line downstream like a conductor before an unseen orchestra.  In wisps of cigarette smoke, Uncle Barry would 

make his way downstream, triangulating, strategizing, 

and thinking about nothing all at once, and 

between bait 

I would follow; 

nudged by the steady flow of water, 

caught in the silent and sure wonder 

of river and man and things unseen, 

tugged by the goodness of a man who showed 

me how to fish for trout 

as my own father once began before he left to die -- 

“Make sure your split shot’s two foot up from 

your bait, and try the riffles.  It’s time they’re hittin’,”  

he’d yell back, and because I too wanted the symphony of a catch, 

I would. 

In The Professor’s Bayonet, I attempted to cut through what I perceived to be a lot of nonsense in order to offer something thoughtful to chew on.  The episodes were not long on purpose. Having arrived at episode 100, however, I am met with the cold reality that, despite my best efforts, I have been unsuccessful at growing my audience.  I have a very dedicated bunch, and to them, I am very, very grateful, yet the stark fact remains that the party is not getting any bigger.  I can only assume the interest is not there.  I humbly accept this end.  Perhaps the indifference is just that pervasive. For this reason, The Professor’s Bayonet is going to launch into a series on fatherhood.  The episodes may or may not be tethered to a work of literature, but they will certainly hone in on some aspect of being a father that I hope the audience will find edifying.  In one sense, the aim will be the same.  I continue to want to cut through all of the craziness to get to what really matters.  Much of what ails society is caused by a lack of fathers, so if I can offer some thoughts to help correct course, then I will give it a go and hope for the best.  At some point, we might return to what we did for ninety-nine episodes, or we might just hang it up and call it a day.  I am still on the fence.  It all depends on the numbers and my ability to gently blow on a tiny spark to get a flame – a flame that grows more hungry with each puff.  For now, in celebration of hitting the one-hundredth episode mark, I would like to leave you with a poem entitled “Underduck.”  It is one I wrote.  It is mine.  But it is also a poem that speaks to what we as mothers and fathers, educators and caregivers do every day.  We encourage.  We lift up.  We inspire.  We know that our best selves linger long after we are gone, for that is the nature of loving others into being.  My grandparents and parents, teachers and mentors did it for me.  And so, too, are we charged with doing it for others. 

I use the metaphor of a swing.  I hope you enjoy it. 

Underduck 

The bucket swing was suspended by 

two long ropes from the ancient 

tree standing sentinel in front of the 

small, white, red-trimmed house able 

to hold generations, and we all took our turn –  

sisters, brothers, cousins, first and second, 

and up we would soar after each push, 

each give to our take, into the crisp blue sky 

criss-crossed by gentle branches and wisps of clouds, 

and when the mood would strike them, 

our elders, the providers, 

would give us underducks, determinedly  

guiding us through the dipping arc before 

heaving us above their heads whereupon 

our little feet would float into 

the great expanse, our unscarred bodies 

lift ever so slightly out of the 

black, rubber womb fashioned out of an old tire. 

To and fro we went as the acorns fell 

and the squirrels gathered for the coming cold 

until we, too, were launched into 

worlds without sassafras, lives  

where dogs don’t smile as much – rocketed beyond 

that simple plot of land by those who are now 

grayed or gone, those who gave us one last great shove, 

hopeful that we would be birthed into 

noble, more beautiful tomorrows with young ones 

of our own all pleading as we once did for 

underducks to will them still higher: joy beyond measure, 

summits only imagined. 

So it goes as it went – we hold our children to our hearts 

then thrust them forward until we can reach them no more, 

left to run tiredly past the upward effort, and if 

we are lucky, turn to admire the heights. 

If you have ever sat in a literature class, you have likely heard of this term: iambic pentameter.  It is used to describe the da-dum, da-dum, da-dum rhythm often found in poetry.  One syllable is unstressed but the syllable immediately after is stressed: Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.  Often likened to a human heartbeat, iambic pentameter appeals to even novice students of literature because the meter is that relatable.  The beat precedes the lyrics.  It is what first catches one’s attention. 

Consider Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day: 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 
 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 
 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
 

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; 
 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 
 

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
 

And every fair from fair sometime declines, 
 

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd; 
 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 
 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; 
 

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, 
 

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: 
 

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 
 

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee 

Many poets have dipped their quills and written with unmatched eloquence about love, and the Bard, Shakespeare, is no exception.  However, he is keenly aware of the power of iambic pentameter.  From his own heart, he sets his ideas to the beating of a heart and in so doing, draws in his readers even more closely, knowing full well that the da-dum, da-dum, da-dum rhythm has been imprinted on all of his readers since they were in utero.  That is correct, dear listeners.  Our lesson in literature begins before we ever emerge from the womb.  It is not in words or prosody but rhythm: the beating of our mother’s heart.  That is what we listen to.  That is what forms us.  To be born, then, is to graduate from that first school. 

But a curious thing happens upon our commencement.  We begin again.  We learn a language.  We build a vocabulary.  And, eventually, we rediscover a familiar rhythm, sitting in English class, looking at a poem we believe is so foreign to us as to be written in a different tongue. 

Novice educators might miss the opportunity to reintroduce iambic pentameter to their students, choosing instead to explore some esoteric concept.  Some students might be won over while others not so much.  Even the best of us had to run that gauntlet.  Educators in the know, however, will begin on common ground even if it takes some time to explain to the learners that the ground is, indeed, common.  In effect, we need to remind students that they already know the material.  The details may be new but the intended effect is not.  In the womb, we were nurtured, and if everything that came afterwards was an immense challenge, we still have that groundwork.  To return to iambic pentameter is to return to the utmost basic.  And if we can do so with hope and optimism, we can make this return into a new beginning.  Such is the power of poetry.  It is not meant for a special class of individuals who know the terminology and the biggest hitters.  It is meant for all, for all, deep, deep down, understand it.  There is nothing elite about it.  Iambic pentameter is as common as a mother’s love. 

Shel Silverstein’s vastly popular children’s book, The Giving Tree, has been a fixture in most nurseries since its publication in 1964.  Both the story and the illustrations are simple. It begins with a tree who loves a little boy who would gather her leaves, climb up her trunk, and swing from her branches.  The boy was imaginative and joyful, and, Silverstein writes, “when he was tired he would sleep in her shade.”  The boy loved the tree very much, he continues, and the tree was happy.  But the story turns as so many stories of blissful innocence turn: when time begins to drive a wedge between those wistful days of youth and the call to march forward to some unknown and, in many cases, scary future.  The boy begins to grow up and want other things.  At first, it is romance, but then it turns to money – the material – at which point the tree offers her apples for the boy to sell. That would make him some money. That will make him happy. But the boy continues to grow up, and as such, his desires change. He is now too busy to climb the branches of the tree. He wants a wife. He wants a house at which point the tree offers her branches to make that house. And the tree, Silverstein writes, is happy. But the boy continues to grow and soon becomes an old man who wants to flee from the world. He wants a boat so he can sail away. He is sad.  Life got to be too much. So the tree offers her trunk, and the boy cuts it down and makes his boat. But the tree only feigns happiness. The truth is much more stark.  She is sad and lonely. Years later, the boy eventually returns, but the tree tells him that she has nothing more to give – no more apples, no more branches, not even a trunk – but the boy only wants a quiet place to sit and rest. The story is worth summarizing because it is important to see the juxtaposition that runs throughout: the passing of time and self-sacrifice.  Time waits for no man, but if we remain stuck on that reality – become transfixed by our powerlessness in the face of aging, in ourselves and others – then we risk forfeiting the opportunity to serve and love others. he tree could have pleaded with him to stay – to do his best along with her to preserve a precious moment in time when there was seemingly nothing but bliss and joy. But the tree chose a different tack. She emptied herself to serve his needs.  She died unto herself for her beloved friend, tethering her life journey to his. This underscores the poignancy of this children’s story, read to countless infants before bedtime. The boy represents so many of us. He wants what so many of us want: nothing bad but typical. A spouse. A home. A good job. But, in the end, it wearies him to the bones. He comes to the end of the story a broken and fatigued person who wants merely to sit and rest his weary bones. A children’s story, dear listeners. A deep and profound review of a long and difficult life in a children’s story.  It might not be a stretch to consider that Silverstein was writing for both listener and reader. The book certainly makes an impact on both. Even though Silverstein had a Jewish upbringing, I have to wonder why he made the decision to have as the boy’s lifelong friend a tree.  I do not want to be guilty of imposing a worldview on this special book, but his choice is cause for wonder.  Where else do we see self-sacrifice and a tree?  I will leave my interpretation there.  Any way you take it, The Giving Tree serves as a beautiful reminder of what truly matters.  For the little one listening in a parent’s lap, it is a blueprint for how to live; for the parent him or herself, it is the best way to pay it forward.  Those blessed with the responsibility to nuture and guide others should understand in the full that everything is expected of them because that is the measure of true and everlasting love.  We are to hold nothing back.  We are to encourage and uplift.  Until we are stumps.  Places of rest.  Cradles or mangers, they are both the same thing. 

Allen Ginsberg begins his 1956 poem “Howl” with the following words: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, / angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, / who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.”  Ginsberg, along with contemporaries Jack Kerouac and William Borroughs, embraced a lifestyle that ran contrary to the stiff materialism of post-war 1950s America – a lifestyle that included sexual liberation, psychedelic drugs, and a rootlessness best characterized by Kerouac’s book, On The Road, which, rumor has it, was typed out on a roll of paper without natural break or pause – stream-of-consciousness to the extreme.  The Great Depression and World War II caused a massive shift in how one approached the task of living, and at least for the Beatniks, that approach meant all out rebellion, even if, according to a popular 1955 film of the same name, starring James Dean, that rebel did not have a cause. 

What the movement, in general, and “Howl,” in particular, highlights is the insanity that will inevitably crop up when the institutions and monsters borne out of the human mind become so massive that the soul can only whimper in their presence.  Consider the A-bomb, for example.  At no time in human history have our species developed and, I hasten to say, actually deployed a weapons system that can level entire cities in a split second.  Yet we did this in Japan: twice.  And then there were the fire-bombings across Nazi-occupied Europe.  In Dresden alone, so notes Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, which was first published in 1969, the fires were so intense that citizens rushed to the water towers, climbed in, and were inadvertently boiled alive.  Juxtapose all of this to the pristine American life networks were broadcasting across the nation – Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver, and Lassie – and we get a recipe for pure lunacy.  The Beatniks chaffed at this absurd contradiction of messaging. The world was not ideal, they argued. They saw it.  They lived it. Ward Cleaver, the Beav’s father, knew it, too, though you could not see the terrible flashbacks behind the genial smile and pipe.  That was artifice.  That was fake or, as Holden Caufield reminds us in 1951’s The Catcher in the Rye, “phony.” 

Rest assured, dear listeners, that I am not dropping the titles of books, films, and television programs to sound impressive.  I do so to provide much needed context.  There were many voices saying the same thing, yet American popular culture marched dutifully forward, seemingly ignoring the calls for alarm along the way.  We were American, after all.  Rugged.  Individualistic. And, importantly, nothing like the Ruskies and their failing communist experiment. The madness, however, soon swelled into what became the countercultural revolution of the sixties with the riots and the protests, the draft card burnings and the assassinations. That gave way to the hedonism of the seventies, the materialism of the eighties, and the cynicism of the nineties. Are we howling or have we been rendered silent, pacified by our devices, oblivious of what simmers beneath?  To howl would require the ability or at least the willingness to step into unchartered places in order to consider the wider context.  It would require that we reacquaint ourselves with our wildness – to rediscover what Walt Whitman calls our barbaric yawp.  Is there cause for hope?  After cynicism came the absurd.  After the absurd came living as performance: Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram.  Is Ginsberg to be an echo or a call to action?  Perhaps it all depends on how many lies we can tolerate: those told to us by others, those told to us by ourselves.