Joe Biden put something on our table last week that Trump will never do, given a constitutional flaw that makes it impossible to admit any fault—he admitted a human flaw, stuttering.  Furthermore, he offered the stage to a 13 year old lad who he has coached recently about stuttering, Braydon Harrington. Braydon humbly accepted  this opportunity to demonstrate tremendous courage and offer a brief speech in which he did indeed stutter

Though stuttering is a neurological disorder…as is every malady, including “being human”…I immediately thought of a poem in which this malady was approached in poetic imagery.  Edgar Simmons,  a Mississippi poet who grasped the nuances of the heart and was able to present stuttering from an interesting perspective.  In the poem which I will offer, he saw stuttering as representing a heart with so much energy that conveying  its burden into words was a challenge. This poem is so rich but one particular image really speaks to me, “The stutter’s hesitation/Is a procrastination crackle/Redress to hot force,/Flight from ancient flame.”  Simmons presents the stutterer as being gripped by a passionate intensity that words cannot contain.  It brings to mind Goneril’s response to her father’s (King Lear) question, “How much do you love me?”  She responded with a simple, “More than words can wield the matter.”

BOW DOWN TO STUTTERERS
By Edgar Simmons

The stutter’s hesitation
Is a procrastination crackle,
Redress to hot force,
Flight from ancient flame.

The bow, the handclasp, the sign of the cross
Say, “Sh-sh-sheathe the savage sword.”

If there is greatness in sacrifice
Lay on me the blue stigmata of saints;
Let me not fly to kill in unthought.

Prufrock has been maligned
And Hamlet should have waived revenge,
Walked with Ophelia domestic corridors
Absorbing the tick, the bothersome twitch.

Let me stutter with the non-objective painters
Let my stars cool to bare lighted civilities.