It’s U.S. Navy tradition that the first entry of the new year in ship logbooks be written in verse.
Some sailors angle for the job as a chance to inject a bit of personality – even poetic depth – into a format that discourages it; others try to avoid such a mission.
To delight readers in rhyme is no easy task – particularly given that deck logs are also legal documents. By Defense Department mandate, they must convey less-than-lyrical details about things like commanders on duty and the status of ship systems.
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Poetry aboard U.S. aircraft carriers has been derided as evidence of a “too woke” Navy. Sailors disagree and keep up a New Year’s Day tradition by writing logbook entries in verse.
An additional hurdle: Warrior-produced poetry has recently acquired a few powerful detractors. When a Navy ship hosted a spoken-word event last year, some U.S. lawmakers decried the practice as too “woke.”
“We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker,” Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said on Fox News in September. “It is absolutely insane the direction we’re headed in our military.”
Yet poetry has a storied history in the armed forces, military leaders are quick to point out. Lawmakers worrying about poetry detracting from battle skills are perhaps “just ill-informed,” says Samuel Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, which hosts an annual competition for the best New Year’s deck log poem.