Written By Madison Bigelow
During Summer 2023, the entire research team co-authored a blogpost with our own reflections on Superintendent Roger D. MacNamara’s analysis of the Mansfield Training School closure in 1993, titled “The Mansfield Training School Is Closed: The Swamp Has Finally Been Drained.” Warmly referred to by our own team as “Dayton Drains the Swamp,” this op-ed explores what seems to be MacNamara’s attempt to make peace with his own involvement in the atrocities that took place during his time as head of MTS’ administration.
Amongst the many fascinating things that MacNamara has to say about the school’s closure and his experiences as superintendent, something that deeply struck me about his piece comes near the beginning of the article: a quote he includes from the book titled Souls in Extremis (1971), which is Burton Blatt’s analysis of the inhumane conditions of institutions that house the mentally and/or physically disabled. MacNamara introduces this quote by stating that “Blatt included a piece of my free verse in the foreword [of his book].”
The quote reads: “Backward stranger, you have story to tell without words we can understand. Never thought to possess human needs,your only gifts are isolation and desolation. Your life in a porcelain cage is nonexistence, interrupted only by the madness of your sisters’ struggling spirits. Can you hear the people talk of change only to see compassion left at the door step? How could you know that the reforms never left committee? Growing old and inwardly dying each passing day, why can’t you accept injustice in silent agony, as we were told you would. The sands of time create the glass you shatter, and you turn on your own irreplaceable flesh in self-inflicted torture, which on one understands to be your message to the planners: ‘I will render my flesh disfigured and blur my consciousness while you are powerless to stop me. Your consciences do not allow you to bind me, but your senses cannot tolerate my destruction. When you find the answers and have the means, I will be waiting here for my new life. I’m not going anywhere.’”
To be frank, my eyes sort of glazed over this portion of the op-ed when I read it on my own. Because this quote appears on the first of four pages, I found myself skimming over this portion to find his direct criticisms of the Mansfield institution. However, hearing Brenda speak these words out loud during our group-read of the piece, I started to become deeply curious about the rhetorical implications of MacNamara’s choice.
It is important to note that this quote is, in fact, an excerpt written by MacNamara himself that appears in Burton’s forward (which… must’ve required a lot of self-admiration, to say the least). To acknowledge that this quote is explicitly and intentionally written in free verse begs the question: why does a poem appear in the middle of MacNamara’s serious meditations on MTS’ shutting down for good?
Granted, this excerpt doesn’t read like a poem in the most ‘traditional’ sense. It lacks any sort of end-rhyme scheme, line breaks, or a ‘standard’ rhythmic cadence that one would expect from poetry. However, MacNamara explicitly notes this quote as a work of free-verse. Maybe this is a fast and loose employment of the term. But, especially since MacNamara acknowledges his own writing (and the intent behind it) as a work of free-verse in “Dayton Drains the Swamp,” I think it deserves the respect of being read as poetry, if just for a thought experiment.
To perform a brief analysis on the excerpt above, MacNamara’s ultimate goal in his self-quotation is to foster a deep-seated feeling of sympathy towards the residents of Mansfield. The repeated address of the second person implicates the audience in temporarily assuming the role of the disenfranchised; as MacNamara asks “Can you hear the people talk of change only to see compassion left at the door step?” to leverage the viscerality of his audience’s sympathy for the residents that is much quieter in the rest of the piece.
In the second half of the poem, he switches perspective and adopts the voice of the institutionalized. Concluding the excerpt with the statement “‘When you find the answers and have the means, I will be waiting here for my new life. I’m not going anywhere,’” MacNamara further calls upon the sentimentality of his audience in a very interesting way; he assigns and articulates the voice of the masses that have been excluded from the conversation of deinstitutionalization up until this point in time. A voice, in other words, that many have been willing to argue ‘for the sake of’ but very hesitant to listen to.
The use of metaphor here, too, is particularly thought-provoking. In such a clinical, sterile, and otherwise professional space that was the Mansfield Training School, a former leader of the administration himself chooses figurative expression above any other method to communicate his thoughts regarding institutionalization. While he cites concrete observations about the abuses, corruptions, and hypocrisies of MTS later in the op-ed, the choice to firstly ground his position with a poetic excerpt speaks volumes.
Comparing life in the institution to “life in a porcelain cage [as] nonexistence, interrupted only by the madness of your sisters’ struggling spirits” suggests that the happenings at public institutions across the country are almost too atrocious to be spoken about. By adopting such a poetic vehicle to exemplify the deepest iterations of these abuses upon residents housed in these facilities, it seems that MacNamara specifically utilizes free verse as a vehicle for expressive thought when other methods have failed.
I acknowledge, though, that this insight is completely formed as a result of my biases– I love poetry, and I look for poetry in everything. Maybe even in places where poetry doesn’t ‘exist’ (although, that’s another conversation). However, the intentional use of poetry as a tool to approach institutionalization and the humanity of its residents that is integral to remember, but often forgotten, cannot be ignored. Despite all of the legal proceedings, government hearings, and standard procedures that illuminate the legacy of the Mansfield Training School, the actual ‘issues’ surrounding MTS concerned people. People with emotions, with feelings, and with experiences that can’t be genuinely shared in an administrator’s testimony.
To me, MacNamara tries to voice the experiences of others – specifically the institutionalized that have been denied their voice from the origin of MTS to its closure – and mobilizes poetry as a means to convey a sympathetic appeal to his audience similar to if a resident would have spoken. Of course, his attempt isn’t perfect. Clearly, the excerpt is written by an individual who is very well-read and has knowledge of life inside AND outside the institution from a bird’s-eye view.
But MacNamara pulls back the curtain, if only for a brief moment, and sheds light on the possible emotional state of many residents themselves. In an ideal world, residents and others involved in institutional life would be directly invited to these testimonies, conferences, and other conversations concerning their ‘well-being’ and trajectory of their institution. This clearly didn’t happen, or else we would see residents’ names in the historical records. However, MacNamara does provide an insight to his colleagues and peers about the internal soul of the institution that they presumably would’ve never considered otherwise, had it not come from his mouth.
Ultimately, metaphors resonate; they’re able to explicate and convey iterations of the human experience that could never be contained by a standard procedure. And, as a whole, poetry illuminates. It elucidates sentiment, sensation, and incidence. Establishing these metaphors sets the tone of the piece and serves as an emotional anchor point for many of the events leading to MTS’ closure in the 90s.