First the Pravda.
HSC students who have launched social media attacks on an Indigenous poet — in one instance comparing her to a monkey — have been urged to apologise for their actions by the NSW Education Standards Authority.
Upon opening paper 1 of the Higher School Certificate on Monday, students were faced with an analytical question on Indigenous writer Ellen van Neerven’s poem Mango.
The work, found in the book Comfort Food, appears to have frustrated many students and van Neerven has worn that frustration in the form of vulgar online abuse — even death threats.
“We were asked to analyse your mango f****d poem — and I’m asking what the f***k was the point of your mango bullshit?” one student said in a direct Facebook message to van Neerven.
“In all honesty there wasn’t much to analyse cos it reads like a 4-year-old wrote it,” another said.
…
The NSW Educations Standard Authority, which is responsible for overall oversight of the HSC, have now expressed their dismay about the attacks and said the students owe van Neerven apologies.“I am appalled by the abuse of the author,” NESA CEO David de Carvalho said.
“This is a completely inappropriate response and I hope those involved see fit to apologise to Ms van Neerven.”
Exam questions are set by a committee of experienced English teachers, and like all authors featured, van Neerven was not given advance notice that there would be a question centred around Mango.
The Poem is here. Since I’m not an Australian some points.
- I have no particular fear of blank verse or modern poetry. But this is like a lot of recent poetry: it is bad. One of the reasons to read the old stuff is that time is one of the good editors. I hope von Neervan has done better work.
- The question about conveying delight in the poem is salacious, and has no placw in school
- There is no such thing as a good English teacher left: I know, for I was taught by some of the last of them. The field is converged
The pithier version is that I would not have blogged about this poem if I did not read Julian O’Dea’s link to Crikey, from which I quote.
In the annals of the Culture Wars, the Battle of the Mango is going to prove an instructive moment. If you haven’t caught up with it yet, be prepared to plunge into something you thought you’d never have to do again: year 12 exam poetry interpretation, for thereby hangs a tale …
For their English exam, New South Wales year 12 HSC students were set a number of possible poems that might come up on the exam, including short lyrics by Yeats, Auden, and a piece by young Australian poet Ellen van Neerven called Mango, which is about an eight-year-old girl going down to the dam, where the boys are, and various things happening. Spoiler alert: in this poem, mangoes aren’t just mangoes.
From the poem itself, you can tell the setting is rural and by presuming author is narrator that it’s a girl, but that’s about it. You will be amazed to find that year 12 students did not all enjoy the experience of reading this poem. In fact, a lot of them seemed to really dislike it, and it appeared to sum up their frustrations with the whole torturous process of doing HSC. But, though it appears nowhere in the text, van Neerven is an indigenous writer, and on that fact much would later turn.
As regards the poem, I can see the kids’ point. Mango is an engaging enough simple lyric, but the scene it describes is pretty cliched, and it’s rendered in short lines that make it/seem more/portentous without/having to/do/much/work. The thematic is pure HSC fodder: a fairly direct narrative of sexual contact with boys of an indeterminate age, and the narrator hinting she might have enjoyed it. That gives the poem a twist and a sting, but no more than your average pop song, and considerably less than a lot of rap and other genres, which kids just consume as non-set texts.
They don’t seem to have had a problem with set questions on Auden or Yeats, but the exam question, “how does the speaker convey delight?” in Mango really set them off. Tracking back several days on the Facebook “HSC 2017 Study Group” it’s clear that class of 2017 took Mango as a symbol of all that was paradoxical and torturous about HSC, in which juicy, delicious life and success dangle tantalisingly, just out of reach. The memes there on Mango the poem, and mangoes themselves, are rude, unfair, and sometimes downright fruit-pornographic; some would no doubt be a bit scarifying to the poet reading them. Inconveniently, they’re also very, very funny. It wasn’t that they hated poetry; they just seemed to feel there wasn’t much to the poem — “four sentences chopped into sixteen lines,” one said — and they were rebelling against being asked to find a depth in it that might not be there.
Well, they are funny. And that is the problem. The narrative requires the official truth, and that is always without humour. Let us be fair to van Neervan, she has some humour in her poem. But it is not Auden, or Yeats. The experienced English Teacher won’t like the truth, that the young woman liked the male gaze, and felt pleasure in that attention, for that is now deemed unacceptable. Or, worse, they will have anger as they are now invisible to those boys, who they would have done anything to remain around.
But it is a lesser poem, and the subject is better handled elsewhere.
“O ‘Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?” —
“O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.— “You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!” —
“Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.— “At home in the barton you said thee’ and thou,’
And thik oon,’ and theäs oon,’ and t’other’; but now
Your talking quite fits ‘ee for high compa-ny!” —
“Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she.— “Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak
But now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!” —
“We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she.— “You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
And you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!” —
“True. One’s pretty lively when ruined,” said she.— “I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!” —
“My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.THOMAS HARDY
I await, with bated breath, for the English teacher so foolish to discuss how this poem expresses joy, for I am certain such a person is indeed an experienced, intersectional, fool.
I think the most fault is found in the teachers who assigned that poem – not because it’s awful, much poetry one is forced to examine is awful. But because the poet? is living, and because they assigned it to students young enough to be obnoxious about it in a way the writer could find out about. Of course 12th grade boys are NEVER obnoxious about homework they dislike. Nope. Never.
FWIW, I have loathed Hardy since I was forced to read Jude the Obscure in my 12th grade year. Blech. What’s the deal with 97% of “literature” being centered around misery or sin, preferably both? Also blech.
While I dislike the lack of manners I’m encouraged that some youth can still recognise rubbish when they see it. There is hope.
do you not get the joy described in the moments within the poem are contrasted with the horror of the act that plays out within the lines?
Yes, but that is the horror of corruption and perversion, and has no placce in school. For to say that debauching a young woman is “joy” is to remove the very meaning of joy from the word
or that this is specifically a poem connected to the culture and the childhood of the poet themselves?
Unacceptable. Hardy lived in a healthier culture. Australian Aborigines such as van Neewan live primarily as Aussies: the people in the bush are different. Try again. You are too short for this ride
you do it a great disservice by comparing it to a florid style as Hardy’s.
No. Most modern poetry does not work as well as Victorian poetry because they cannot write as well. The masters of this can and do. Do youo want me to compare it with a regional poet such as Baxter or a master such as Pound? It’s a poor poem. I’m sure van Neewan has done better
that style is neither necessary or appropriate in this context.
Then consider this: would you ask a student to discuss the Joy in the ruined maid? It is the joy of becoming a Kardashian. The answer is no