One can’t do justice in a short space to the late Robert Conquest’s gifts as a poet. But The Scrapbook can offer Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz’s assessment, which was no exaggeration:
“In the history of modern poetry, Conquest occupies a permanent place.” Readers unfamiliar with his verse will have to haunt the few remaining used bookstores, as far too many of his seven published volumes of poetry are out of print. Elsewhere in this issue, Joseph Bottum refers as well to his astonishing gift for comic verse. Of that, we can offer a sample, The Scrapbook’s favorite stanza from Conquest’s “Grouchy Good Night to the Academic Year.”
‘Those teach who can’t do’ runs the dictum,
But for some even that’s out of reach:
They can’t even teach—so they’ve picked ’em
To teach other people to teach.
Then alas for the next generation,
For the pots fairly crackle with thorn.
Where psychology meets education
A terrible bull—t is born.
But for some even that’s out of reach:
They can’t even teach—so they’ve picked ’em
To teach other people to teach.
Then alas for the next generation,
For the pots fairly crackle with thorn.
Where psychology meets education
A terrible bull—t is born.
