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Saturday 14 March 2015

I invented EQ in 1984

Dear Daniel Goleman,

I was listening to a CBC radio broadcast tonight where you were discussing your many books on emotional intelligence. It reminded me that I first used the term EQ, in the context of emotional intelligence, in my widely published poem, "Five Minutes Ago They Dropped the Bomb" (1984). I listened to the program hoping to learn the genesis of your creation of this concept, & was reminded that you began publishing on this topic a full decade after my poem had been published. Very likely this is a case of 'great minds think alike' & all that, or parallel discoveries, like Edison/Tesla, or perhaps basically the time was ripe in the zeitgeist for such a social/psychological connection to be made & articulated.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in my poem - as an oft-starving poet, it's a thrill that some of my ideas have entered the culture, whether overtly through my writing or through parallelism or serendipity,  but sometimes I wish I'd benefited a bit more financially & credit-wise  ;  )

emotionally & poetically yours,
Chris (Faiers)

zenriver@sympatico.ca 


Five Minutes Ago They Dropped the Bomb


After the bomb dropped
the homophobic cop
and the steambath patron he was handcuffing
melted into each other's arms
into infinity

After the bomb fell
concrete angels in all the graveyards
took wing
Every bell in the world
gave one last high-pitched ring into oblivion

Five minutes ago
a tear or two slipped in the halls of karma
at the insignificant passing of
3rd. dimensional existence –
3rd. stone from the sun – reality factor
time factor irrelevant –
total dissolution of creatures

   IQ 100     EQ 35
evolutionary phase median ape to bodhisattva

The bodhisattvas wept
Buddha watched mountains raise their final crest –
burst into pulverized space/time

Basho's spirit watched every moment in nature
cruelly bloom into the final haiku moment of infinity

Five minutes ago
the Marxists got their final synthesis
the neo-nazis their final solution
the capitalists their last boom from the economy

Five minutes ago we kissed
said "Shit! They've done it …"
Armageddon - Apocalypse

Five minutes ago Time Must Have a Stop
five minutes ago we passed into borrowed time
five minutes multiplied 12 times by the hour
24 times by the day
365 times by the year
and 38 times since Hiroshima shimmered into oblivion

Five minutes ago we passed into borrowed time again
reality factor minus:
3 million
994 thousand
and sixty

five minutes ago

- Chris Faiers  (1984)



Author's note: this poem was multi-published in 1984 -
in the chapbook of the same title,

in "The Unfinished Anthology" (Unfinished Monument Press),

in "Anti-War Poems: an anthology" edited by Stehen Gill (Vesta Publications),

& I believe in "The Americas Review".

It was republished in "Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era", Allan Briesmaster and Steven Michael Berensky, (Seraphim Editions, 2008).

War-era poets share experiences
Toronto Star review of "Crossing Lines" by Joe Fiorito   


Flipping thru anthologies and books which have included my poems, today I discovered several more credits for this poem.

Foot Through the Ceiling, 1986, Aya Press (now Mercury Press)  collection for which I received the inaugural Milton Acorn People's Poetry Medal in 1987

The Last blewointment Anthology, edited by bill bissett, 1985, Nightwood Editions

Keeper of the Conscience (anthology), edited by Ronald Kurt and Mark McCawley, 1990, Greensleeve Publishing

Other Channels (anthology), edited by Shaunt Basmajian and jones, 1984

Waves (magazine), Vol. 13, No. 1, Fall 1984, pages 76 - 77

Piping at the End of Days: A book of Overcoming (anthology), edited by Katherine L. Gordon, 2017 Valley Press, Rockwood, Ontario
  





Did my poem invent "IQ/EQ" corollary?

Another key aspect of this poem was psychological. I come from a quirky, even negative for me, nuclear family. Likely both my father and brother have 'genius' IQs, and in my early years I felt intimidated by anyone who was overtly 'smart'. But as the years went by, I realized my father hadn't been very supportive of me, and I've since come to suspect he exhibited a high degree of narcissism (now labelled narcissistic personality disorder).

So I invented a corollary to IQ in this poem, "EQ", emotional quotient. as another benchmark for understanding human behaviour. A decade after I multi-published Five Minutes Ago They Dropped the Bomb I was browsing a bookstore in Belleville, Ontario. I came across a best seller titled something like EQ: EMOTIONAL QUOTIENT. Had some academic read my widely circulated poem and then appropriated my intellectual property? Unless some author comes forward and admits to this, I'll never know. But the chronology is suspicious.



Wikipedia claims first published use of EQ in 1987 in British Mensa Magazine

The first use of the term "emotional intelligence" is usually attributed to Wayne Payne's doctoral thesis, A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence from 1985.[11][citation needed] The first published use of 'EQ' (Emotional Quotient) seems to be by Keith Beasley in 1987 in an article in the British Mensa magazine.[12] However, prior to this, the term "emotional intelligence" had appeared in Beldoch (1964),[13] Leuner (1966).[14] Stanley Greenspan (1989) also put forward an EI model, followed by Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1989).[15] The distinction between trait emotional intelligence and ability emotional intelligence was introduced in 2000.[16]

1 comment:

angelee said...

Dear cricket,
this is a powerful.poignant and significant poem .
Did Daniel Coleman ever reply to you?
You should be credited by Wikipedia for EQ ,
a term which is bandied about much more than IQ now.
Love and light,
angelee