Dear 1 Percenters. Have I Too Glibly Addressed You?

America's uncle.

I wrote about money, its lack, its impact on me as a poet, for Poets on the Great Recession.***

In my brief and poetically illustrated essay I address my audience directly, assume that “You” live a life similar to mine, that “You” have as negligible a bank balance as I do. You might. You might not.

What do I know? There are poets who make good bread, and more power to them. Ed Hirsch, who in addition to being poet and professor, heads the Guggenheim Foundation—seems like a good job. He deserves all and any monies, if only for How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. What a rare tribute to poetry and its readers that book is; it assures and creates more readers of poems.

I figure Rita Dove is doing okay, but then she teaches, has racked up some decent prizes and grants, and just edited the Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry.

Cornelius Eady travels the world promoting poetry, encouraging poets of color—all colors and shapes and styles—to write. I've seen his and his wife's New York apartment—it's terrific but modest.  Still he may have a little up his sleeve financially, being a teacher, and all. But Cornelius is not in the 1 percent, nor is Dove, and probably not even Hirsch.

Which leaves a silent member of the silent minority of 1 percenters to chance upon my work. Are you there, Ma'am or Sir? I'm interested in knowing.  Let's meet at a bar, talk. If you like poetry or fiction, I like you. Okay?

***Poets on the Great Recession is a series of essays and poems curated by Eileen R. Tabios. 

She Blasted the Canon to Hell

The older I get, the more I am convinced the canon of "literary" "classics" should be blasted to hell. It's just fine with me if we start over with a perspective not born in the faux democracy of the Greeks, woman-fearing religions of the west and colonialism.

This relates to the latest outrage, Helen Vendler's tasteless critique of the Penguin Anthology of American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove. Dove redefines the canon and bless her for that. Vendler is sour about a redefinition --a-- and --b-- making it clear she is not guided by dictates of democracy, kindness, openmindedness, or a belief in the equalify of all personkind.

I've commented, cross-commented, posted new links including one to a new interview with Dove, already, on Facebook, Twitter and a listserv. All relevant links and opinions are a Google away.

A mere Google away.  I'm not going to replicate the effort here, but in case I'm the only poet left standing after China and Pakistan destroy us,form a pact and destroy us, something I thought about on December 6, Pearl Harbor Day, I want to let the record show that Vendler attacked Dove, and that I was aware of it.

And pro-Dove. I am a dove! Now give me the money to buy the anthology which is long and tasty and not cheap but doable and enjoy a new concept of American verse.

Rita Dove: "Wiring Home" presents us with our beatification

Rita Dove beatifies us in "Wiring Home." Ambushed by canaries. We're in a breathless flurry. A thousand golden narcissi. We're Saul struck by heavenly light.
Every line calls to us. Wolf whistles, knees, the beggar (always with us). Our ordinariness is in its final turn made classic and beautiful.  Wordsworth's "crowd," "host" of golden daffodils is pastoral. Dove doesn't necessarily forego his remembered "bliss of solitude" but puts it upfront and shows us bliss, not as memory, but accessible and present.

Narcissus may be hung up on himself. Wordsworth (wonderful) may be hung up on reflection. Dove brings us to another level, not hung up, not reflecting. We're there.  Moving on from tabloid tales of "odyssey and heartbreak" offers street-level sanctification. We're sanctified.




Wiring Home
Lest the wolves loose their whistles
and shopkeepers inquire,
keep moving, though your knees flush
red as two chapped apples,
keep moving, head up,
past the beggar's cold cup,
past the kiosk's
trumpet tales of
odyssey and heartbreak-
until, turning a corner, you stand,
staring: ambushed
by a window of canaries
bright as a thousand
golden narcissi.

____
Rita Dove, first published in Mississippi Review.