One way to look at BJ Ward’s “Musée des Bea Arthur” is as a twenty-first century parody of a classic poem by W.H. Auden.
Famously, in his 1938 poem “Musée des Beaux Arts,” Auden encounters a sixteenth century painting attributed to Brueghel the Elder (the attribution is contested by contemporary scholars) that recreates the fall of Icarus, a tragedy that goes unnoticed as the others in the frame remain busy with their own lives, and nature remains its indifferent self.
“About suffering they were never wrong,” is the well-known first line of the Auden poem. For Auden, it’s a springboard into a straightforward—and masterful—ekphrastic poem, that then moves on to classical myth and motifs to comment on human suffering as captured in Brueghel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.”
Ward’s poem begins with the exact same first line, before taking an unexpected turn into, yes, parody, but also a quietly profound understanding of an incremental suffering characteristic of our contemporary world, as explored in several classic situation comedies.
Both poems, he said, are part of a larger, millennia-long conversation. stretching from the ancient Greeks right through—thanks to his own insightful contribution—Archie Bunker and Fonzie.
“Human nature doesn’t change,” he said. “It’s only the furniture that changes.”
The voices of Auden and Brueghel are essential to the conversation, of course, as are countless voices and echoes stretching back to the origins of the Icarus myth and again through Brueghel’s perceptive observation that, although suffering is all around us, life goes on.
That same reality is evident in the lives of Ward’s sitcom characters, he shows us. If they lack the drama of a plunge into the sea, the daily beatings and bruises suffered by the blue-collar characters of “All in the Family” or “Happy Days” are punishing enough in their own way.
In the old myths, he said, “catastrophes announced themselves. The socio-economic events today don’t announce themselves. The parents [in “Happy Days”] don’t realize . . . the different ways power manifests itself in their lives.”
Ward is the author of four critically acclaimed books, the recipient of a number of prestigious awards (a Pushcart Prize and the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence among them), and is widely published in such journals as Poetry, TriQuarterly, and the Sun (his bio appears below). He is currently “building” a fifth collection, in which “Musée des Bea Arthur” will serve as “one of those touchstone poems.”
He traces the initial idea for “Musée des Bea Arthur” to an interview he read with the contemporary poet Baron Wormser, who said “art is a conversation that happens across generations.”
Like the conversation between Brueghel the Elder and W.H. Auden, he thought.
“How would that manifest itself in the twenty-first century?” he asked.
For Ward, whose own blue-collar roots and experiences continue to inform his literary concerns, the answer was to be found in those sitcoms, albeit by skipping back a few decades to a time when television viewing was a widely shared water-cooler experience.
(Bea Arthur never actually appears in the poem, but she presumably found her way into the title as an icon of the era and, more importantly, because she shares initials with the “beaux arts” of Auden.)
“You use your hands to lift your family up. And how often does it work out?”
You can find in those shows the essence of what blue-collar parents do, Ward said.
“You use your hands to lift your family up. And how often does it work out?”
“I wanted there to be a parallel with Auden,” he said, when he began writing the poem in 2019. But he also knew that not everyone who read the poem would know the Brueghel painting, the Auden poem, or perhaps even the Icarus myth, and he wanted to preserve meaning for those readers as well.
“I’m not in the habit of explaining my poems,” he said.
“[But while] The poem alludes to Auden, it also alludes to things people will know.”
“Predators in suits.” “. . . a coliseum/where the crowd learned laughter/was part of slaughter.”
And significantly, when Fonzie boldly jumped the shark, “a blue-collar man rising into the sky/over a sea full of teeth and enthusiasm/riding his hubris like a motorcycle.”
So, here is BJ Ward’s poem, followed by a link to the Auden poem.
Musée des Bea Arthur About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Sit Coms: how well they understood its relation to the comic: Lucy stuffing her mouth with both chocolates and consequence— then with Ethel, in cut-n-dry black-and-white, stomping grapes as if they were globules of female inequity. Later, Ricky waiting for the miraculous birth (miraculous, because the parents slept in separate beds) could never forget the dreadful martyrdom of remaining in a frustrating marriage. They divorced by Kennedy—like two halves of America. And so Archie, a Bunker in name and attitude, festered in his untidy spot where Meathead went on with his Meathead life, stuck with each other for love of Gloria. His armchair was a coliseum where the crowd learned laughter was part of slaughter. In Garry Marshall’s Happy Days, for instance: how everyone turned off the channel after Fonzie jumped the shark. Walter Cronkite may have heard the splash, the forsaken Heeeeyyyy!, but for him it was not an important half-hour. Yet we ten-year-olds watched as we had to, and my tired parents, who must have seen something amazing, a blue-collar man rising into the sky over a sea full of teeth and enthusiasm, riding his hubris like a motorcycle, had their own labyrinths to escape, predators in suits and a repo man’s tow-truck to avoid, and turned their backs almost leisurely to the spectacle. At the dinner table, they wrote out checks for partial payments amid whatever canned laughter would bleed into the kitchen, filled their mouths with some whisky, then got into separate spaces in the same bed and failed calmly on. --BJ Ward originally published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Issue 100 (June 2020) And here is a link to Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden. And a link to the painting.
BJ Ward is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems 1990-2013 (North Atlantic Books), which received the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. His poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The New York Times, and The Sun, among others, and have been featured on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” NJTV’s “State of the Arts,” and the website Poetry Daily. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and two Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He lives on a bank of Spruce Run in rural northwest Jersey with his wife, son, and two cats. His website is bj-ward.com.
New paid subscribers receive a 20% discount throughout the month of February. Your support is deeply appreciated!
The review style (for me) expands the range of voices apt for poetry. This poem turns a few screws that the original Auden poem turned, but much more personally, inwardly. The pain of canned laughter is palpable, scarring juxtaposed to Auden's poem of artful philosophy. Both poems strike different chambers of the heart, awaken dulled corners of the mind.
GM