I Could Have Been Happy with Just the Beans.

August 11, 2021 8:26 AM

Derichment is an essay by former US poet laureate, Kay Ryan. "The actual word ‘derichment’ recently presented itself to my mind in reaction to the word ‘enrichment’. I have always bristled at the idea of enrichment. Children, it is often maintained must be enriched. Bread must be enriched. Weren’t they rich already? That is my big question, weren’t they rich already? Wouldn’t you have to degrade them somehow in order to make them need enrichment?"

"In my first year of college my English teacher, Miss Foley, having confessed herself worn down by the dimness of the previous semester’s Intro to Lit students, told us that although Emily Dickinson was listed on the syllabus, she might skip her our semester, explaining that Dickinson’s poetry was very important to her and that she just couldn't go through that brutalization again so soon. ... in no time I had my hands on the college library’s copy of the exciting new Johnson edition of Emily Dickinson. Here we see the carrot method of instruction at least impure. The student was not offered a carrot; at most we might attempt to purify ourselves to the point that we might be worthy of being in the same room with a carrot. This is one of the faces of derichment. There are others."

posted by storybored (2 comments total)

Sorry, the link goes to a page that says I am at my limit for viewing this book, though I haven't seen it before--
posted by Countess Elena at 8:33 AM on August 11, 2021

Also Kay Ryan: "Carol and I were reading the paper on Sunday morning in bed, and Carol is reading the funnies, and she says in this stricken or awed or something tone, she says: "Kay, read this out loud" and she passes me the funnies. I start reading this cartoon and it is Boondocks and in it, the little brother, who wants to get his bit of the action now and is complaining is smacked down by his big brother, Huey, who uses my poem "Patience" in this cartoon. It was just astonishing. He says: "You know, a poet named Kay Ryan once said, 'Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable—a place with its own harvests. Or that in time's fullness the diamonds of patience couldn't be distinguished from the genuine in brilliance or hardness.' What do you think that means?" Huey asks Riley. Riley answers: "It means you're a nerd and poetry is stupid."
posted by storybored at 8:33 AM on August 11, 2021