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The Rise of Washington

from Legends of Liberty, Volume 3

IT’S TIME! Let’s give our story’s star some space.
He’s famous through the land, you know his role:
“A fire in his eyes, a light in his face,”
Eternal Heaven destined him to rule.
His birth miraculous, his father killed,
He unified the tribes and swept the plains.
With hordes displaying bow and arrow skills,
He conquered Asia on his horse’s reins.
Impulsive, cruel—oh wait, my sense is gone…
That’s from the Secret History of Genghis Khan.

Wrong epic, sorry. Um…so where were we?
Ah, yes—IT’S TIME! Let’s introduce our star.
He didn’t abdicate like Charles V
By citing weariness of gout and war.
He never, unlike Caesar, tried to mingle
Pleasure with power in his self-expression.
Though not a bloody butcher like the Mongol,
He still gets blamed for fostering “oppression.”
You know his face—it’s solemn. Never blinks.
We see him everywhere, yet he remains a sphinx.

Mount Rushmore gazes, stone cold and aloof.
The dollar’s secrets top the pyramids’.
A marble pillar stabs the world’s roof.
The silent quarter raises shouting bids.
He guards the Black Hills like a sleepless sentry
And towers above our capital like God.
He lines our wallets as we spend like gentry
And jingles in our pockets as we plod.
Icon of power, wealth, and sculptured arts,
His meaning’s lost when he’s forgotten in our hearts.

They’d have you think George Washington is “bad.”
They rip him from the textbooks during strikes.
Aren’t made-up stories told by some granddad
As passé as those twangy tunes he likes?
Cast iron values can’t endure a forge.
Destroy the cellos, murder all the bassists:
With Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, George
Completes the string quartet of founding racists.
Like deer that, caught in rushing headlights, quail,
We’re prey to reckless lies—he’s no mere dead white male.

He felled a cherry tree? He never fibbed?
He threw a coin across the Rappahannock?
“Whatever.” (Kids these days.) “We’s gotten ribbed!
That Parson Weems invented them talltanic
Tales—yous aware? The bio’s been aggmented.”
Augmented—grammar, child. But yes. Old Weems
Was right: the G-man was unprecedented.
Gave up the power twice. Not what he seems.
His worshippers have never been occult ones.
But chuck the children’s fables—I’ll relate adult ones.

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Andrew Benson Brown has had poems and reviews published in a few journals. His epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, will chronicle the major events of the American Revolution if he lives to complete it. Though he writes history articles for American Essence magazine, he lists his primary occupation on official forms as ‘poet.’ He is, in other words, a vagabond.

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18 Responses

  1. Julian D. Woodruff

    Entertaining and biting–gently through these lines. Clever rhymes, invented (Rappahannock / taltanic) and devised (bassists / racists). BTW, did you know?–Franklin is (dubiously) credited with writing a string quartet (3 vns and a cello, all open strings, variously tuned; no lh needed!)?
    Thanks for this. Now let’s have some of those specifics about George you ended on the edge of recounting.

    Reply
    • ABB

      Fascinating about Franklin and the string quartet. I like to add strange details and may have to throw that in somewhere. I’m already planning on including his invention and playing of the glass armonica.
      More details on the way. Have three more excerpts coming out over the next month or so. Thanks for reading, Julian.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Another fascinating tale fraught with fun fables, caricature, satire, innate arrows, and factuality. Rather than repeating any examples, let me just say your grasp of history is firmly embedded along with your flights of fantasy. It may take mature minds to comprehend what you have done so brilliantly.

    Reply
    • ABB

      Probably right about the mature minds. And if immature minds are infuriated on top of it, so much the better.

      Reply
  3. Mary Gardner

    Andrew, this excerpt promises another witty, informative, poetic volume of Legends of Liberty. I am delighted. Viva the Mock Epic!

    Reply
    • ABB

      Thanks, Mary. Doing my part to revive the genre, as many others on the site are doing in their respective spheres.

      Reply
  4. James Sale

    More total brilliance for ABB – this passage alone requires a minimum 3000 word exegesis to appreciate the subtlety, but not the sense, which is crystal clear. Of all the many things one could comment on, perhaps the greatest in this extract is the genius of the rhyming (which is itself of course partially dependent on his wonderful syntactical shifts along with his diction). ‘occult ones/adult ones’ – marvellous!

    Reply
    • ABB

      I didn’t include the notes, but my annotative verbosity and auto-exegesis there will hopefully take jobs away from scholars of the future. Appreciate you as always, James.

      Reply
  5. Daniel Kemper

    Good work on keeping it fresh, keeping the reader engaged and yet guessing. I’m not sure I’d call it a mock epic, so much as a crass one. I enjoy crassness and don’t think it’s used enough. I mean it IS actually an epic, but it doesn’t mock, though it’s definitely not your standard delivery. Beh. It’s super cool. I hope that’s coming across.

    I particularly liked these lines: ”

    You know his face—it’s solemn. Never blinks.
    We see him everywhere, yet he remains a sphinx.”

    That’s a great summoning of images and associations and an inspired rhyme. You mention “unprecedented.” I really don’t think the public at large understands the power of that. I myself cannot find another person in history who voluntarily ceded power to non-family, for the good of the country and not his personal clan.

    Reply
    • ABB

      It’s not mocking in the more thoroughgoing Popean sense, true. I’ve seen the term ‘burlesque epic’ thrown around too, which also doesn’t quite apply (most of the time). I think I prefer ‘comic epic,’ since that’s the least confusing to the general reader.

      Right about Washington. I mentioned Charles V, but another notable abdicator was Diocletian. He was a ruthless autocrat who gave up the throne because he was weary, and plunged Rome into another civil war as a result. As to Washington’s leftist critics today, you’ll never see them give up their power. The greedy Foucauldians crave it, and they only see people through the lens of systems.

      Reply
  6. Brian A. Yapko

    There’s something about your work, Andrew, that makes one peer beyond your obvious skill and erudition, right into your astonishing uniqueness in tone and point of view. When you tell a story one of the reasons you’re never dull is that you tell it with a multiplicity of spotlights, voices and moving parts. I’m in the middle of reading your Legends of Liberty Part I and have just finished Thomas Jefferson in Hell and I find, so far, that reading your work is an almost immersive experience. There will be unexpected detours in the narrative, there will be rhyme (but not as one might expect), there will be foreign accents, there will be snatches of dialogue, unexpected spotlights and, like a good movie, occasional close-ups and occasional epic shots.

    George Washington here is presented with this same pleasantly manic voice. I am reminded of Patrick Stewart playing all of the roles in A Christmas Carol as a tour-de-force of voice control. Your narrator is similarly versatile. In just in these few short stanzas you pull Washington out of an audience of historical characters, from Genghis Khan to Julius Caesar to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, you move backwards and forwards in time, telling the tale like an emcee of human history, you bring in the tall tales, Mt. Rushmore, the dollar bill, the Sphinx and it all becomes something of a dazzling kaleidoscope of information, attitudes, contexts and judgments – both of history and of modern attitudes towards that history.

    Some final thoughts: Throughout Legends of Liberty, your tone is often sassy or simply chatty. But this is a red herring. Despite your deceptively casual tone, you have deep respect for your readers – you expect them to know things about history and literature. And if they don’t know it, well… they can learn. Your work can be enjoyed without that knowledge, but it’s more fun to be in on the historical and literary jokes and to identify the Easter eggs you embed. Your expectations do not put off the reader but, rather, elevate him. Your work is to be enjoyed, but it is never meant to be taken lightly and it is a terrific springboard for discussion and/or research. A very enjoyable learning tool.

    I mean it as a high compliment to tell you that yours is work I have never seen before. You are quite fearless in your use of every possible tool in the toolbox. Does that translate into great poetry? Yes. Though the pot sometimes simmers over a bit, I think it absolutely does. Well done.

    Reply
    • ABB

      Your deep analysis and praise are much appreciated, Brian.
      Interesting how you mention respecting readers. I’m tired of authors (and publishers) who dumb things down. Everything is on a grade school level, it’s terrible. What are smart people to read these days? Besides old books.
      As far as the pot simmering over, I’ve thought myself it might sometimes be too much and am open to advice for avoiding that. Please do share any and all criticism you may have as you read. One method I’ve incorporated for preventing the reader from becoming overwhelmed is breaking up the chapters into sections, since its unlikely anyone will read 1000 lines in one sitting. Need to go back and do this for Volume 1, in addition to some other revisions.

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    When I was a kid in grade school, the image of Washington’s august and calm face always came to me when I thought of God. What did the Almighty look like when He was on His throne in heaven? He resembled the father of our country, with that self-possessed look of total control and command that one saw in every painting and sculpture of the first president.

    Others have told me that this was true for them in their countries — Spaniards saw God as the face of Francisco Franco (Spain’s heroic savior), while Brits saw Churchill, the French saw DeGaulle, and Indians saw Gandhi. So I suppose for children religion was often mixed with intense patriotism.

    When thinking of a figure of world-historical importance, it’s almost impossible to separate truth from congealed layers of myth-making. I think that’s why ABB ends this section of his poem by saying that there are children’s fables, but also adult ones.

    Reply
    • ABB

      Am reminded of Brumidi’s magnificent Apotheosis in the Capitol, with Washington enthroned in the center. The wackos out there today would rather serve the false idol of George Floyd.

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    What a tantalizer of an introduction, Andrew! Better than blurbs for the back of the book. I agree with Daniel about “sphinx,” not merely as clever rhyme, but as a significant contemplative word for the important position of stanza end. The unknowability of Washington is part of what contributes to his legend. There’s so much to learn about him; I’m sure you’ll have no trouble producing adult fables, even without making up any yourself. This passage works with a concept perfect for the purpose: images carried by everyone, especially as coins and bills. Too bad cards and digitizing have diminished the presence of the Founding President. Some card-and-screen artist might be able to restore him to his place, and make a lot of money in credit form, by providing high-tech real images to show up every time fake money is used. I hope you have a fleeting passage doing the same with words later on in this section of the mock epic. As for understanding the text as history of any kind, it requires a reader already familiar with facts to focus on your fun. For example, you ask a lot with “values . . . . . . . . forge.” A brilliant appeal to quick interpreters! Clearer and definitely welcome is the martial attack on anti-American activists. That’s something you can include more easily and more entertainingly than biographers.

    Reply
    • ABB

      You are right that I do make demands on the reader. A lady who reviewed Volume 1 on Amazon said that without the footnotes, she ‘wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails’ of my book. But then she complained about having to slog through the footnotes. In other words, this epic is basically a homework assignment. Which is also the case for Milton, Spenser, etc. I might re-work the “values…forge” line.
      The next excerpt will be about the cherry tree legend. The Weems reference is pertinent, if obscure, since he is the first writer to mention it.

      Reply
  10. Cynthia Erlandson

    “A marble pillar stabs the world’s roof.” Grand! And I love the way you used the racists/bassists rhyme to pull out an entire metaphor: the “string quartet of founding racists”. I laughed out loud! Great stuff!

    Reply

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