This Board Is Not For the Bored

A woman student standing in front of the Lamont poetry board clicks her tongue disapprovingly. Shaking her head, she walks away, commenting, "harsh, harsh, harsh."

It's hard to tell exactly what she was responding to. To be sure, many of the poems displayed on the board are thought-provoking, to say the least.

But more likely, it was the poetry board's unique brand of commentary which elicited her response.

A particular haiku, for example, is dismissed with a single word--"mediocre." The comment is followed by another student's scrawl: "What is this? The Gong Show or something?"

And a third critic addresses the second, asserting, "He fucking asked for comment. Who the hell are you?"

Barroom-Style Literary Criticism

To regular visitors of the Harvard Quarterly Poetry Board Board--known affectionately by regulars as the "Board Board"--this barroom-style literary criticism is an integral part of the poetry forum's charm.

Nora S. McCauley '91-'92, who founded the Board Board two years ago along with Matthew Steinglass '90, admits that she finds some of the less constructive criticism disturbing. She also acknowledges that people occasionally put up joke poems.

But McCauley insists that these abuses do not interfere with the basic mission of the poetry board, which is to enable students to get responses to their work.

"It's meant to be an anonymous starting point," McCauley explains, "especially for people who are too shy to ever show their poems to anyone."

Andrew D. Harless '83, who has put up several of his poems, says that for him, the board is a place to bounce ideas off of nameless, faceless critics before taking his work on to the people who really matter. The poems he has displayed on the board "have really been poems I didn't think were good enough to give to somebody whose opinion I trust," he says.

"Some people are more articulate than others," Harless says of the commentators, "some responses are more useful than others."

McCauley, editor of the Quarterly's poetry board--not to be confused with the Board Board--says the Board Board has gradually begun to attract a more diverse audience. Harless, who is an economics graduate student, is the proud author of the Board Board's "Capital Asset Pricing Poem."

"People originally felt intimidated" by the Board Board, McCauley says. But now that the board has been there for so long, "it seems to have definitely taken on a life of its own," she says.

McCauley hopes that in the future, the unique forum will continue to widen its constituency. "It would be good if it could become a link between people who write poetry and people who don't," she says.

Commentary on Commentary

Others have less lofty views of the board's role in Harvard literary life. David B. Lurie '93, for example, calls McCauley's Board Board "a glorified bathroom wall."

But that is exactly what attracts him to the forum, admits the literature concentrator, who is also an editor of Padan Aram. "The comments are always amusing because people are so full of themselves, especially when it starts to go back and forth and you see commentary on the commentary," he says.

And the Board Board does perform a valuable service to the community, Lurie says. "If there's a poem up there without a name on it, it could have been written by a freshman, or it could have been written by someone who's been published in the Advocate 50 times," Lurie points out.

"It's so rare at Harvard for any writing to be valued for what it is and not for who wrote it or what purpose it's supposed to serve," he says.

And though some potential contributors may be scared off by the caustic comments, many are not. Most Board Board poets return to post again and again.

Students who frequent the board know the writers only by who laserprints and who types, or by particular initials, as few writers sign their pieces. For die-hard readers of the board, common questions lie more along the lines of 'Why is D.M. so bitter?" than "Who is D.M.?"

Although Lurie claims to know D.M. personally, he would not reveal the Board Board celebrity's identity.

Dare to Bare

So for now at least, any Harvard student who dares to bare his or her poetic soul on the Board Board can rest assured that there is an invisible audience out there waiting--albeit in most cases with caustic remarks at the ready.

The commentary sparked by "Time Stole Their Lives," a poem posted earlier this month, captures the essence of today's board culture.

The poem, written carefully in black ink, received the typical slew of responses. "Nice poem, but the calligraphy is a turn-off. Buy a Mac like everybody else," wrote one commentator.

Another liked the poem. "Your piece is marked by balance, dimension and remarkable clarity," the critic wrote. "Poignant expression and lucid meaning. Interesting diction and scholarly tone. Good luck."

The third--but not final, of course--commentator retorted in glorious Board Board style, "Whoever wrote this comment must be a total moron."

"How could anyone think that this piece of crap is 'poignant? Both the comment and your work suck."

The note is unsigned, but the handwriting looks familiar. D.M., is that you?