In June, Paul Muldoon spoke to graduates of the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

In Oxford this “solemnitie” was called an Act

when baccalaureates were mostly bacchanals

and that the humors reigned was held to be a fact

while God and all His creatures were thought to be pals.

W. H. Auden egged on a Harvard crew

when he was called upon to raise morale

at the ’46 Commencement, lighting the fuse

off his cigarette: “Between the chances, choose the odd;

read The New Yorker; trust in God; and take short views.”

Can’t you imagine Auden shuffling his iPod

as he looks out over the End of the World

in search of something like an Oxford quad

on which a banner may yet be unfurled

that reads “Find What You Love” or “Listen To Your Heart”

or “Get Over Yourself”—any such slogan hurled

between the factions where the battle-lines now part

to reveal our noms de plume as noms de guerre?

The challenge is how to kick-start

ourselves and name some grand ambition shining there

at which we may, albeit briefly, set our caps

before throwing those same caps in the capricious air.

One thought that comes to mind is how to mind the gap

between the world that Auden viewed in ’46

and ours. There was a sense back then the map

might be redrawn to take in post-war politics

both literally and metaphorically.

Our sense now is that we’re in such a fix

the wars we fight are best described as pre-,

since we’re not technically “at war” in Afghanistan,

Iraq, or Libya (where our involvement will be

“brief,” our best President assures us as best he can.)

He also told us Guantánamo would be shut

but it’s as Guantanamobama they’ll spray can

his name should Guantánamo linger as a smut

on corn-fed mid-America and our collective soul,

much like the detention centers with their plywood huts

in which the Japanese were left hanging like scrolls

through World War II. Auden would surely be dismayed

by how Arnold no longer means Matthew on the whole

but Schwarzenegger, who claims that when he played

the “sport” of bodybuilding he used steroids

not for muscle growth but muscle “maintenance.” Having weighed

in before now on the deaths of Yeats and Freud,

Auden would surely want to comment on how shame

has rushed in to fill the unavoidable void

left by compulsive hoarders, losers in every game

from weight loss through loss of face on Facebook

to the housewives who give up their embroidery frames

to embroider the truth with a barbed hook.

Where taloned celebrity has broken up with talent

as in the case of Snooki cocking a snook

at Mavis Cheek and Mavis Gallant

and publishing a tell-all disguised as a freakin’ novel

perhaps the time has come not to try to upset the balance

of low and high where hotel morphs to hovel

but find as Shakespeare found, as Aristophanes found,

that the space where the so-called groundlings grovel

is, in fact, a no less consecrated ground

than the king’s seat, the bishop’s throne, the podium

from which commencement speakers get to sound

off on high fructose corn syrup, low sodium,

and the outmoded hierarchy of academic costume.

Before you turn on me with your odium

theologicum and vote me off the island from the powder room

I urge you to follow your hunches

that noms de guerre are indeed noms de plume

and embrace in your writing high colonics, low punches,

a regard for two-bit shaves and haircuts, for getting back late

from three-martini lunches,

a total disdain for the totally disdaining fourth estate

unless it’s to join it as a fifth column,

to be at sixes and sevens in shooting craps or behind the eight

in rooting for both Gilgamesh and Gollum,

in warding off the latest offensive by Google

on copyright (unless it’s held by them). These, then, are my solemn

admonitions for our “solemnitie” (bugle

and drum roll, please): think outside the frame

unless you’re a photographer; be frugal

in everything but praise; never jump a small claim;

always write “some pig” of the least porker

in the barnyard; remember those who fly far look like fair game;

refuse to pay corkage; make every line a corker;

let your main tactic be tact

and—one constant, if I may—read The New Yorker.