Anne Babson has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and has won awards from Columbia, Atlanta Review, Grasslands Review among others. Her libretto for Su Lian Opera, Upbringing, is being produced by Meridian Arts Ensemble in 2006.

ns 69 | Fall/Winter 2007

Featuring an interview with MH Abrams, reviews of new books by Walter Benn Michaels, John McGowan, and Paul Smith, plus a special section on online criticism.

Read this Issue

Published Spring 2006

Vocabulary Test

by Anne Babson | ns 65-66

Question 1: What is a statue?

But my fifth-grade students have never seen a statue.
The principal refuses to spend allotted monies for field trips —
Too many discipline problems, she says,
Here between two tough city housing projects.
These children need to focus on testing, she says.
Testing is what will give them future success.

One girl answers, "A statue is something people build or buy."
She recalls a vague reference in a textbook.
A boy answers, "A statue is a big thing you can
Climb up in the head of,"
His uncle once went in the
Statue of Liberty, he remembers hearing once.
Most leave the answer blank.
They have never seen a statue. This is a test.
They are afraid of wrong answers.
Tests show how bad they are at
Everything in advance of trying for the first time.

Question 2: What is the arrow pointing to in this picture?

It is pointing to a suburban lawn.
The correct answer in the teacher's guide is "lawn."

But my students do not live in houses with lawns in front of them.
They are crammed into brick boxes
Barely big enough for their beds,
And there is grass for sale outside the elevator,
But not even a whole lawn of contraband grass.
There are patches of dying grass in the park,
But the park is too dangerous, even in the middle
Of the day, to go roll
Around on the green, and a barefoot walk
Would shoot used hypodermic needles in their toes.

Only one student, a prophet, answers:
"Other kids have this, maybe. We don't have this. This test is not fair."

MR BOOKS

Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.

Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.

Purchase Critics at Work.