Our Anthems
I remain fixated on thinking about institutions and their effects on people and communities, but before I get to that, let me share what is easily one of my favorite poems:
Anthem
by Jim Daniels
Two months after retirement
my father is here, to get away
from 6 A.M. and his cup
of empty destination.
At a football game we huddle
under his umbrella
talking about the obvious.
He brings me coffee
to hold warm between my hands,
a gift of no occasion.
When we rise for the anthem
I hear the rusty crack of his voice
for the first time maybe ever.
Thirty-three years of coughing
thick factory air, of drifting to sleep
through the heavy ring of machinery,
of twelve-hour days. In my sleep
I felt the cold bump of his late-night kiss.
I shiver in the rain
as my father sings me
what now I hear as
a children's song. I lean into him,
the umbrella and rain my excuse,
my shoulder against his,
and I imagine my mother
falling in love.
I have always read this poem as intensely personal, an homage to the moment when children who have grown into adults realize their parents are individuals, human who have passions, faults, and insecurities just as we do. This realization doesn’t bring shame, but joy. It is, in fact, something to fall in love with.
This poem is also seeded with several institutions that surround us, the ethos and ego of our world writ large. The father’s retirement—maybe from the American institution we know as the auto industry (Jim Daniels is from Detroit). And where are they on this rainy night? I imagine a high school football game (Detroit’s pro team has played in a domed stadium since 1975), and high school football and what we dub Friday Night Lights are certainly a long-standing institution of their own. James Wright, another great American poet, knew this to be true. Then the national anthem—the poem’s title, our nation’s song, which has also become an institution at sporting events; to be at a sporting event is to be reminded, as a group, of the national community in which we live. And there are other institutions present: the length of workdays, sharing coffee, nuclear families, and the more tender rituals of parenting, such as singing or reading at bedtime.
In “Anthem,” the institutions add up to their own anthem, and the world structured by these institutions is one which the poem’s speaker loves, just as much as he loves his father, their boy’s night out to watch younger boys perform their ritual of sport. That’s what I adore about this poem: it’s depth of field (pun intended). In the foreground stands the personal world and the individuals who think and breathe and feel. In the background, as is most often the case in our lives, stand the institutions that create these spaces for the personal—who built this stadium? How old is the school? How many years are there between this poem called “Anthem” and the writing of the national anthem? Of course, why would anyone think of these things in the moment, as the purpose of institutions is to function and, at their best, be taken for granted simply because they function so well.
This conjures the irony of well-functioning institutions—we don’t hear their anthems; they’re silent in the background, and thus we often forget to protect them. Or, when it comes time to protect them, or simply elevate them, we don’t know how. And why should we immediately know, as they have always largely been working for us, not the other way around?
But we certainly have institutions—nationally and locally—that are in danger and require us to show up for them as they have always shown up for us. (I will stick to the local, as there’s nothing I can add to the state of national politics that people don’t already know.)
My children’s school board is possibly titling toward the type of leadership that would be inclined to ban books. Reading, writing, and publishing are durable institutions extending back millennia. Of course, I’ve realized this too late, possibly sitting in the comfort zone that hums, It’s somebody else’s job to run for school board, right? Wrong. I know this to be true—every book you read changes your life, and some, those special few, seismically impact you and your place in the world. Imagine the irony of not being able to read Fahrenheit 451 because it has been banned, or not reading the sublime prose of James Baldwin because of his audacity to write about his life in a world where race and sexuality matter.
Speaking of Fahrenheit 451, there is a growing crowd of people who call for us to “burn it all down!” and start over. (Again, pun intended.) Of course, each one of those who call for tearing down institutions have never built anything, let alone an institution beyond the easy culture of “no.” In the end, this leaves us nothing but the ruins of the very world that empowered us enough to yell “tear it all down” in the first place. College isn’t worth it! Of course it is, if your primary goal is education, not employment. Taxes are a burden! No they’re not; they’re a privilege. I remind myself of this every time I pick my daughter up from the public library. I remind myself of this every time I sit in one of our beautiful local parks, looking at the river and people walking on trails. I remind myself of that privilege when I compare my contribution to the local public schools to what my bill would be for a private-high-school education—I silently thank my neighbors for sharing this privilege with me. And don’t get me started about funding for local universities, as I am too biased to speak without overheating.
You know what else is an institution? The arts and its economy. Maybe that’s why I started this piece with a poem. The National Endowment for the Arts published an article yesterday titled “Can the Arts Fortify State Economies in Times of Financial Crisis? Yes, Apparently.” Here’s the juicy stuff:
State arts economies, while they “suffered disproportionately” from the recession, were also among the quickest to bounce back, he found. Their subsequent growth rates, moreover, exceeded those of the U.S. economy as a whole. It also turned out that the states with the greatest post-recession growth were those with larger arts economies.
How is my home state, Wisconsin, doing in terms of state support for the arts? As of 2024… last. 50th out of 50. In 2023 there was some hope—we were 49th, ahead of only Georgia. I guess Georgia heard the anthem and decided to step it up a bit. Here’s a look at per capita spending by state in the good old days:
In referring to my last post, maybe I’ve lost the thread here. But since there is always more than one thread, I have yet to find the other in this gap between an ending and a beginning. Institutions are under attack, are decaying, and/or are suffering from neglect. The previous sentence is synonymous with saying the same thing about our communities and the larger geography we inhabit.
What are the anthems of the institutions dearest to you? Learn them and start singing them.