Habilines And Bebelines Poem by gershon hepner

The contrast between habilines,
pre-humans who used tools,
and those whom I call babelines,
who thought all primates fools
unless they found a way to turn
their squeals and squawks to speech,
is still extant. Tool users spurn
the words that people teach
until they’re tenured as professors,
when they can safely coast,
as betters looking down on lessers
who have no tenured post,
while babelines spurn everyone
who has no tools to dabble
with words that cause them lots of fun
and they are paid to babble.

I think that I am on the side
of those with tools, who are,
without diplomas, qualified
to fix my drains and car.

I was asked by Ra’anan Boustan, who enjoyed my poem “Sleasy Poets, ” to write a poem about sleazy professors. His suggestion inspired this poem, which was also triggered by a new word that I learned in Dwight Garner’s review of Richard Wrangham’s book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” (“Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid, ” NYT, May 27,2009) . The new word is “habilines, ” which means tool-using prehumans. This word inspired me to coina new word for people who work with words, like sleazy poets and professors.

5/27/09