The Best American Poetry

"Twenty Questions" [by David Lehman]

Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason

That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex,

The man or the woman? (Be sure to explain how you can tell.)

Which is more real to you, heaven or hell?

 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? What causes the death of love—

The love of death? Did Adam and Eve have a choice?

Did the Virgin Mary? What are we afraid of, anyway?

Even agnostics have the right to say “thank god,” don’t they?

 

Looking at these dancing atoms, shall I say I saw a ring

Of pure and endless light? Or did I dream the whole thing?

Whom shall I say is calling? Are you in if it’s your wife?

Are you willing to relocate? Do you like your life?

 

What makes this night different from all other nights?

Would you say it’s your fate to be always,

Without exception, five minutes late? If you arrived

At 9:10, would the ceremony have started at 9:05

 

Though it had been scheduled for 9:15? As you walk down

The aisle, and the others rivet their attention to you,

Do you ask yourself what you’re going to do,

As though it mattered, as if you knew?

 

-- David Lehman (from An Alternative to Speech, Princeton UP, 1986)

More Bits and Bobs for the New Year - Twenty Questions

H. L. Hix's Twenty Questions aroused a lot of interest among readers last year.  These responses, from Katy Evans-Bush, came in a week or so after Hix finished his stint as our guest blogger. Bush is the author of Me and the Dead (Salt Publishing).  She blogs over at Baroque in Hackney.Thanks for sending them, Katy. 

-- sdh

1. What poet should be in Obama's cabinet, and in what role?

Wallace Stevens: he was uncompromising in his art; he could see the things that aren't there; and he was "a hell of an underwriter." He'd get things done. And he brought doughnuts to meetings. He could be the Secretary of Ice Cream, a role he would be free to interpret for the national good.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Harmonium. For the reasons cited above: it's the next best thing.

3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

Philip Metres' Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Philip Metres is the author of To See the Earth (2008), and recently co-edited Come Together: Imagine Peace (2008). 

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Walt Whitman, Department of Homeland Security: “unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”
Emily Dickinson, Central Intelligence Agency
Gary Snyder, Environmental Protection Agency
William Stafford, Department of Peace (to be created under the new Obama Administration)
Adrienne Rich, Justice Department

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

I’d give him William Stafford, Every War Has Two Losers.

Sarah Maclay's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Sarah Maclay is the author of The White Bride.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Gaston Bachelard      Housing

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Laurie Anderson’s Oh, Superman

(And when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justice is gone, there’s always force)

Ralph Angel’s Exceptions and Melancholies & Forrest Gander’s poetry disguised as essay, A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory and Transcendence, because both of these books will allow him to enter a kind of silence and stillness that he will need.

Ann Fisher-Wirth's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Ann Fisher-Wirth's new book of poems Carta Marina is forthcoming from Wings Press in April 2009.  She teaches at the University of Mississippi.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Lucille Clifton.  She is a wonderful poet and a remarkable, staunch woman.  She could be Secretary of Moral Truthfulness and Authority.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Leaves of Grass, though I imagine he already knows it well. 

4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?

Some of our MFA poets are pretty wonderful, though they do not yet have books.  Look for individual poems by Greg Brownderville, Jen Malesich, Chris Hayes, Alicia Casey, Danielle Sellers.  Also I’d name Jessica Fisher, whose first book Frail-Craft won the 2006 Yale Younger Poets Prize.  Her work is so beautiful, so haunting and full of intelligence and longing.

Saturday in the Dark [by H. L. Hix]

Naturally, I’m not the only one asking questions like those I’ve posed here.  Charles Bernstein has already been asked the “what poem would you send Obama” question, so he sends his reply to that in the form of links to his previous replies, one in text format and one in audio:

My book recommendations for Obama, Palin, McCain, & Biden at the Poetry Foundation .

Meanwhile, just as a consensus is building around Lucille Clifton for public office (she gets another vote — two votes, really — today from Ann Fisher-Wirth), so is a consensus building around Wallace Stevens as a poet whose work merits love but doesn’t exactly invite understanding.  Fisher-Wirth puts Stevens in a group with Hopkins and Rilke, and Gregory Dowling votes for Stevens’ “Esthétique du Mal.”

Gregory Dowling's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Gregory Dowling teaches American Literature at Venice University.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Wallace Stevens, to remind people of the need of “an and yet, and yet, and yet”.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

X. J. Kennedy, Peeping Tom’s Cabin, because he’ll need a good laugh occasionally.

5. What’s the funniest poem you’ve read lately?  What was the last poem that made you cry?

funny: John Whitworth, “Being the Bad Guy” (you can find the poem at this address: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/Forum9/HTML/003064.html )

made me cry: “Death of the Hired Man” (it can get me every time)

Stacey Harwood's Answers

Stacey Harwood is managing editor of this blog. Here are her answers to H. H. Hix's twenty questions:

1. What poet should be in Obama's cabinet, and in what role?  I wouldn't want a poet in the cabinet.  I would rather keep poets as "the unacknowledged legislators" that they are. Poets are better as outsiders.

 

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why? I would send him The Oxford Book of American Poetry. 

Friday Free-for-all [by H. L. Hix]

A person who reads poems carefully is likely to be the sort of person who reads most anything attentively, and that includes lists of questions.  Several respondents have questioned one or more of the questions, and that goes for Ron Silliman, whose response to the “funniest poem / poem that made you cry” question drew attention to its implicit valuation of laughing and crying.  Silliman’s response to that question is itself a question: “I tend to resist poems that go for only one emotion or the other -- what feeling do you get from Louis Zukofsky’s "A"?”  Point taken.

George Witte's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

George Witte is the author of two books of poems:  Deniability (Orchises, January 2009) and The Apparitioners (2005).

3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

Check out Contemporary Poetry Review at http://cprw.com/index.htm .  Some of the most thoughtful and clear-eyed reviews and longer considerations of poets past and present can be found here.

4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?

Ander Monson—see his poems in the Spring 2008 edition of Prairie Schooner.

Ron Silliman's Answers [ by H. L. Hix]

Ron Silliman is the author of The Alphabet and The New Sentence.

1. What poet should be in Obama's cabinet, and in what role?

Simon Ortiz, chair of Truth & Reconciliation Commission on the Subject of the Genocide of Native Peoples (a new position)

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

William Carlos Williams' Spring & All, in the 1970 Frontier Press edition.

Dan Beachy-Quick's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of Mulberry.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Pindar. Press Secretary.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

I think I might send along Dickinson’s “My life had stood—a loaded gun.” I don’t know why exactly. Inexactly, I think I have a guess as to why. The odd/awful power of that poem is that the speaker has no power of her own, but in order to gain meaning, must be put to use. She cannot put herself to use. It strikes me that being President might be a similar sort of situation. To take that oath is to load the chamber and wait in the corner (save the oval office has no corners?) At any rate, we’ve had leadership for 8 years that is a gun that pulls its own trigger. Perhaps a poem, too, can inaugurate a new model.

Christine Gelineau's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Christine Gelineau is the author of Remorseless Loyalty, and co-editor of French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?
Reginald Shepard.

4. Who is the most exciting new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?
Patrick Phillips and Maurya Simon have received enough high profile attention probably not to qualify for this category . . .           

Cecilia Woloch's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Cecilia Woloch is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently a chapbook, Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press Snowbound Prize. A new book-length collection of poems is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2009.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Leonard Cohen, even though he's not American -- or maybe because he's not American? He could be the bard-in-residence, or the secretary of passion and irony; he could sing "Democracy Is Coming to the USA" on the White House lawn.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

I'd send him that little Shambala edition of Whitman's Song of Myself, because it's visionary and inspiring and great to read out loud.

4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I’ve never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?

Natalie G. Diaz, Douglas Kearney

More Thursday Musings [by H. L. Hix]

Stephen Burt puts us onto the work of Vivek Narayanan, to a cluster of whose poems this link leads: http://www.openspaceindia.org/vivek_poem.htm.  I especially love the buzzing presence of “the mosquito hour” in the “Oddessa, Texas” poem.

Burt also mentions as funny poems he has read lately “several recent poems by Albert Goldbarth.”  Who is one poet we can be sure is NOT reading this blog.  The bio note to his book Griffin ends with the assertion that “his fingers have never touched a computer keyboard.”  Which hasn’t kept his poems from showing up on-line, as for example at this link.

The “young/new poet” question has given me a lot of new poets to look for, but Evie Shockley mentions among her suggestions at least one such poet of whose work I’m already a fan: Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.  Here’s a link.

Stephen Burt's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Stephen Burt teaches at Harvard; his new blog, and forthcoming book, are both called Close Calls with Nonsense (www.closecallswithnonsense.com-- just launched).

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Since the President-Elect already has good plans (it seems) for most Cabinet-level appointments, I’ve placed most of these poets in federal agencies and subcabinet-level positions instead: Mark Nowak, OSHA; Monica Youn, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights; Forrest Gander, United States Geological Survey; Jeffrey Yang, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Adminstration (NOAA); Albert Goldbarth, National Archives; Ed Roberson, HUD; Donald Revell, Interior; Robyn Schiff, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Evie Shockley's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Evie Shockley is the author of /a half-red sea/ and currently guest edits /jubilat/.  She teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

I couldn’t limit myself to one.  I’d make him an annual gift of poetry, and even then there’d be more than one book included each year.  Let’s say I’d start with these two: Blacks, by Gwendolyn Brooks, because she shares his connection to Chicago and because it includes about 40 years of exquisitely wrought, historically conscious, and genuinely compassionate poetry; and The Activist, by Renee Gladman, because it is one of prose poetry’s most shining contributions to the critique of the era of the Bush Administration.  Both of these volumes illustrate the vital importance of language: the former by example, insofar as Brooks is a precise wizard of word selection, and the latter by depicting, as Gladman does so well, what happens when power mangles our mode of communication for the purpose of obscuring its wrongdoing and foul motives.

3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?

Right now, especially, the Delirious Hem (http://www.delirioushem.blogspot.com/), where there is an advent calendar presenting daily doses of women’s experimental/post-avant poetry.  Now through Christmas Eve only!

Jesse Nathan's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Jesse Nathan is the author of Dinner (a chapbook of poems), an editor at McSweeney's publishing in San Francisco, and the managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

This question befuddles me. It’s hard to imagine a full-time poet being a full-time government official. I don’t know if that would do either poetry or government any good.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Maybe Madoc by Paul Muldoon. For its sheer wit and bizarre perspective on American history and thought. Maybe “Ozymandias,” by Shelley, for its warning. Or “Stalin Epigram,” by Mandelstam. It’s one of the few successful overtly political poems I’ve ever come across. It’s brave and chilling. Every leader should probably read it. “The Art of Losing,” by Bishop, for its humility and wisdom. Work by ee cummings and A.R. Ammons, for their philosophical zing and strange steely slices of Americana.

Wednesday Wanderings [by H. L. Hix]

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and I have long suspected that we are twins separated at birth.  I take the suspicion as now conclusively confirmed by her identifying as the lines that haunt her the last couplet of Robert Hayden’s exquisite poem “Those Winter Sundays.”  Those two lines have haunted me for years, and their presence only grows stronger.  Is there a more perfectly realized short lyric poem in the English language?

 Hayden’s poem can be found here. 

Jeffers also gives an interesting rationale for her nomination of Lucille Clifton for President: “I think Lucille Clifton should run for President because Miss Lucille has this way of making people of all backgrounds love her even when she’s telling them difficult truths. That’s exactly what we need right now.”  I’d probably have to agree with James Longenbach that having the attributes of a poet implies nothing about having the attributes of a politician, but I’d also agree with Jeffers’ implicit premise, that there may be various attributes (the attributes of wisdom, for example?) that would be virtues in regard to either office.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers' Answers

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of Red Clay Suite. She teaches at the University of Oklahoma. Here are her answers to our twenty questions.

1. What poet should be in Obama’s cabinet, and in what role?

Elizabeth Alexander, as Secretary of Education.

2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey.  This book powerfully chronicles her life as a daughter of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a sadly neglected region of the United States.