Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, November 17, 1974 BOO KS WOODY HAYES- The man behind 'OSU football: He'll try anything just to win PABLO NERUDA The poetic voice of an agonized nation BUCKEYE: A STUDY OF COACH WOODY HAYES AND THE OHIO FOOTBALL MA- CHINE. By Robert V a r e.. New York: Harper's Maga- zine Press, 240 pages, $7.95. By TONY SCHWARTZ WOODY HAYES and Colum- bh s, Ohio deserve each other. He calls it the 'best god- damn placeaon earth.' A noted political scientist says, m o r e specifically, that'no city of comparable size in America is as homogeneously middleclass. If Woody Hayes often seems Neanderthal, the city he rules isn't far ahead. On the eve of the Michigan-Ohio State game a couple of years back, F r a n k Zappa and his Mothers of In- vention visited Columbus to give a concert. After surveying the frenzied pre-game madness around him, a stoned Zappa wondered, 'Like what can you say when you're in Columbus, Ohio, disguised as 1955?' In that light this book w a s potentially as much a study of vintage middle America as it was of "Coach Woody Hayes and his Ohio State football ma- chine." Sadly, it falls short on both counts. Although by no means a puff job, the book is neither the incisive character study, the tough hatchet job or the telling expose that it might have been. Rather it is an er- ratic and fitfully organized col- lection of colorful anecdotes, and an ultimately ambivalent view of its subject and his empire. Robert Vare is a 29-year-old freelance writer who came to Columbus in the spring of 1973 to write a magazine piece on Hayes, sidled unexpectedly in- to his good graces and ended up hanging out with him for six months. One senses that Vare's difficulty was too much close- ness; he seems unable in the end to separate Hayes t h e captivating charmer from Hay- es the autocratic and hypocrit- ical power-wielder. PABLO NERUDA, FIVE DECADES: POEMS 1925-1970, translated by Ben Belitt; New York: Grove Press, 425 pages, $12.50. By MARY LONG rv turned tortuously in upon itself, displaying resentment and disgust' at every form of city life, whose routine empti- ness oppressed him as much in Asia as it had in Santiago. wcbn89.5 f spectacula~r sunday! 94 9:00 a.m. THE CLASSICAL SHOW with TOM GODELL featuring the music of SERGE PROKOFIEV, psrt 1, "PROKOFIEV: The Young Revolutionary." 2:30 p.m. THE BROADWAY SHOW with STEVE STUDNICKA and ANNA GUESS featuring "SEESAW" 6:00 p.m. TUXEDO JUNCTION with the ever.popular GUY LUDWIG ON THE SURFACE, Woody Hayes is a more interest- ing and complicated man than it generally appears. For one thing he reads voraciously and quotes freely from such widely divergent sources as Abraham ° , Lincoln, Darrell Royal, George Patton, John Kennedy and the Marine Corps Training Manual (managing to make analogies to football in each case.) Des- pite his 24 years as Ohio State coach, Hayes makes only $29, 400 a year, and has turned ness), respect, hard work and, down raises at least twice. le men who are men. lives modestly, is generous withl friends and visits even peri- IRUT FOR ALL these lofty pheral acquaintances who are in ideals, there is sometaing the hospital. Woody likes . even more, and And there is, of course, the that's winning. When it comes legendary success: four nati'n- to Ohio State football, a n y - al championships, nine Big Ten thing that contributes to a vic- titles, four Rose Bowl vict pries. tory he considers 'moral. Ini Moreover, Ohio State nearly al- Woody's Colmbus the end jus- ways leads the nation in attend- tifies the means. For example, ance and its football program //in 1970, a small sit-in to protest grosses more than 3.5 million the war in Vietnam was beiten dollars annually. Woody works back by tear gas, gunshot, mas- year around, wakes up at 6:00 sive arrest (including innocent a.m., leaves his office after dark bystanders) and indiscrimnlate and. often keeps it up ;.even violence. Six months later,' days a week. During the season when 10,000 Columbus citizens he goes so far as to live in the and students rioted on the main, dorm with his players. street for nine hours, the mayor There, however, ends Wocdy was photographed smiling in Hayes' good side; the rest is the middle of it all and few thoroughly detestable. He is a were arrested. All this despite Nixon Republican who believes scores of injuries resulting from in staunch adherence to the flying bricks, widespread loot- law. He hates protests and rad- ing, overturned cars and dam- icalism, long hair, drugs, lack age totaling over $100,000. Ohio of respect and, for the record, State had beaten Michigan that women. ("I hear they're even day. letting w o m e n in their sp )rts Woody proudly claims thiat program now. That's your Wo- 85 per cent of all Ohio State men's Liberation, boy - bunch players eventually get a degreet of goddamn lesbians. You can (although he refuses to release' bet your ass that if you have proof, and of 24 players from women around - and I've V.'lk- Ohio State now on pro rosters, ed to psychiatrists ab-ut this only five have degrees). But you aren't gonna be worth a even given Hayes' statistics, the damn. No sir. Man has to dom- fact is that players are encour- PABLO NERUDA has been HIS WORLD outlook went to called "the only living poet pieces and Neruda mirror- who is admired wherever poetry ed its collapse in a meticulous is read." This volume was to disintegration of traditional have been a celebration of Ne- poetic forms. His poems be- whether the reader shares the ruda's seventieth birthday; it came a series of seemingly ran- poet's view of mankind. The contains one hundred and thir- dom metaphorical approxima- poems take on unique meaning ty-eight poems taken from a tions to clear statement or- for each reader in terms of his sequence of twenty-one books ganized into a studied sem- r e s p o n s e to his own per- written between 1925 and 1970. blance of chaos around a cen- sonal experience. But the volume instead became tral core of emotion. Some of, This may well be true for any a posthumous tribute when Ne- this poetry (collected in this poem, but the extent to which ruda died last year - shortly volume under the title "Resi- we identify with a poem is re- after the Allende government, dences on Earth") is extremelyt stricted if the piece is explicit. which had earlier appointed obscure, largely due to his use Neruda, though, works with him ambassador to France, of private symbols under the ambiguities. He suggests rather in storming illegally onto theI was overthrown by a military influence of the Surrealists. than expounds and he usually football fields, punching o u t junta. The outbreak of the Spanish suggests any number of vary- press people and cloying spec- Better than any attempt to ing lines of thought and feeling tators, and indignantly protest- analyze Neruda's directions and U1 at a single time. He uses sev- ing eachnand every loss. When emphasis in poetry are Neru- "Let the poetry we eral technical devices to ex- he recruits, he unabashedly tells da's own words on lis writing. , ' press the full range of possi- young Ohio country boys that He urged: "Let the poetry we search for be worn;, bilities. His poems barely begin Ohio State has the best medi- search for be worn with the Neruda wrote, "With before.they move ito a web of cal school, law school or busi- hand's obligations, as by acids, two-way syntax which creates ness school in the country. You: steeped in sweat and in smoke, the hand's obligations, differing patterns of association name it. (Apparently this trans- smelling of lilies and urinei around the imagery parent chicanery didn't fool splattered diversely by the Dennis Franklin. Woody recruit- trades we live by, inside the in sweat and in smoke, THIS FEATURE of Neruda's law or beyond it."*.poetry is fascinating but ed him heavily, and when he lWorbyodit"Smell ing of lilies and makes his work exceedingly heard Dennis haddecided on "A poetry impure as t h e plattere d 'the school up north,' chucked a clothing we wear, or our bodies, urine,.splattered complex to translate. Anyone film projector thirty feet across soup-stained, soiled with our dbattempting to translate his work a room.) It isn't surprising thatI shameful behavior, our wrin-ht Woody hates the press, con- kles and vigils and dreams, ob- trades we live by between the numerous levels of vinced as he is that they are servations and,' prophecies, bymeaning. At times too, a word out to get him, football and declarations of loathing and inside the law or will be abstract enough to ap- America in that order. love. idylls and beasts, the Ibeyond it."pear unclear in English, and r f shocks of encounter, political THAT THIS book fails t) do loyalty, denials and doubts, af- is to penetrate Noody firmations and taxes. Those Hayes. How has he mana;id to who shun the 'bad taste' of accumulate such power? Tor things will fall flat on the ice." if Woody Hayes is the Nixon Neruda made his name' over prototype he seems to be, te fifty years ago. Born in 1904 in nation is deeply susceptible to the south of Chile, his very ear- this kind of come-on. Rather liest poetry brought him swift; than resolve the questians he success among his fellow stu- raises in the first half 'if the dents in Santiago. These first book, Vare wastes the last 100 poems were characterized by pages recounting the Buckeye's the brilliant use of a close-knit bD2 "nr hnr~lroIntiG f nture bohlism to civil war in 1936, together with the murder of Garcia Lorca, shattered the mood of introspec- tion which had influenced his previous work. He had been a somewhat romantic anarchist; he now became a Communist supporter. His first 'commit- ted' poetry had a brutal direct- ness and a strident note never found in any former poetry. EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY'S OFFICE OF STUDENT LIFE PRESENTS SEALS and CROFTS i NOVEMBER 22 8 p.m. BOWEN FIELDMOUJSE $6.50 Reserved $5,50 General mate. Theres just no o t h e r way.") What Woody likes is obedience (r e a d: obsequious- T h e cultivation, harvesting, and smuggling of marijuana on the North American Con- tinent. STARTS WEDNESDAY at the aged to take courses in physical education, recreation and busi- ness; they are steered away from challenging or ideological courses. It's the result - t h e sheepskin - that counts. Who' cares how you get it? 1973 season. Tne reader wondering just what mak inoos men like Woody really tick. Tony Schwartz is a fr contributor /o the Sunday a ZiIe. i s LeftWeD U natur symU111 I~~~~~ In 1940 he wash appointed1iL'Ui Chi-V. es o- define and analyze his person- In 1940 he wasappointed Chi- al response to experience, lean consul - general in Mexi- Ilayes Like other Latin American ' co and held the post for slight- countrie5, Chile sometimes hon- iy over three years, during ors her poets by giving them a which his reputation steadily diplomatic post, and in 1927 Ne-' grew. His return to Chile was ruda was sent as consul to Ran- an enormous triumph and he euent goon. He spent the next five found himself acclaimed in city vears in various consulates in after city by great numbers of Southeast Asia and during this people for whom his poems time a sense of isolation which seemed to voice the agonies and had already marked his early hopes of all the Latm American love poetry grew into a deso- peoples. late bleakness under the pres- sure of two alien cultures: that NERUDA MADE repeated use of the native Asiastic peoples, of his major themes and with whom he could make little images, in themselves a whole j intellectual contact, and that of range of heightened meanings: the European merchants and co- earth and sea, the cycle of the' hionial administrators with seasons and the renewal of na- & PA, F, Iu whom he had to deal. His poet- DECEMBER GRADUATE? If you are graduating in December you must o r d e r your CAP & GOWN no later than NOV. 19 at UNIVERSITY CELLAR 769-7940{ IL --'-- - ture; sexual love; irresistible Death and the humiliating petty deaths and the enervating qual- ity of humdrum urban life; the transience of the individual seen against the expanse of time. Most of all, there is the ex- perience of chaos and the hun- ger to find some principle of order-the pointless surface of existence and the desire to break the isolation that sur- rounds men. The images are deeply dis- turbing regardless of whether or not Neruda as a man is un- derstood by the reader or - 1 thus some kind of very concrete translation is necessary in or- der to achieve an equivalent impact. Another difficulty. is that Neruda's poetry has a na- tural setting w h o s e magnifi- cence obliges a translator to work close to what might well be called hyperbole-a danger translator Ben Belitt tries to avoid by using sharp, taut im- ages and phrasing whenever possible. He looks directly at modern man's existence - urban 'men wilt slowly away. Neruda looks at their kind' of life as a wast- ing "death in a black cup." He compares this with the per- manence of nature, of stone "raised like a chalice." Man is what matters because "man is wider than all the sea" and Neruda wants to com- municate with all the men who have died so that they may rise again to birth-with him and through him as brothers. It is easy to see this as a sort of futile retroactive "Workers of the world unite!" But his plea is timeless, and the Neruda who summons on the dead, asking them to show him the places of their agony, is a noble figure, who finds his ultimate fulfill- ment in becoming the valid voice of the dead-of the South American dead in particular, but in the last resort, of all mankind. P WHAT REALLY matters to Neruda is what his own life has in common with the lives of all men. There is also an ur- gent need to show men to themselves in such a manner that they can sense the identity behind their separate existences and share his vision. His ultimate intent is for all mankind, but towards this end he explores the most intimate levels of human life. And it seems that it is the force of these personal discoveries that remain with us regardless of however public their purpose might have been. Mary long won a Iopwood A ward for poetry last year. $2.50&3 FRI..SAT.-SUN. 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