The Best American Poetry

Danielle Pafunda's Answers

Danielle Pafunda is the author of My Zorba and Pretty Young Thing.

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

Mina Loy, secretary of Corpses and Geniuses.  There is, at this site, an interesting petition for Obama to include a Secretary of the Arts.

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

Well, if I’m remembering my CNN, Obama took some poetry in college, so I’ll guess he’s familiar with the genre.   Still, any one book seems insufficient.  Maybe a presidential course reader?

Tuesday Trifles [by H. L. Hix]

Moira Egan has added a question to the list: What do you read in bed?  My own reading in bed tends to be simply whatever I’m reading generally; in other words, I don’t usually have one book going by the bed, and another going for daytime reading.  Whatever I’m reading during the day just gets carted off to bed.  Last night that meant an anthology that I’m reading because I’m supposed to review it: The Baltic Quintet: Poems from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden, edited by Edita Page.  (I love her name; I didn’t make it up.)  I’ll end up writing a favorable review; there are some fine poems in the collection.  Here is a link to a poem by a Swedish poet who is included in the anthology. 

Alex Stein’s ‘poem that you love, love, love, but don’t understand’ led me to another I-can’t-believe-what-you-can-find-on-the-web moment.  I found a page here with 300 poems from the T’ang Dynasty, translated into English.

I haven’t found the particular poem Stein loves, but I’m not all the way through that web page yet. 

Jill Alexander Essbaum's Answers

Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of Harlot.

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

David Lehman: Best American Secretary of Poetry, duh!

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

George Starbuck The Works.  Because I want more people reading Starbuck.

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

Home-Schooled by a Cackling Jackal, Reb Livingston's blog.

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

Jessica Piazza and Ken Rumble.

Alex Stein's Answers

Alex Stein is the author of Weird Emptiness: Essays and Aphorisms.

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

A very small one, not subject to claustrophobia, crouching.

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

Leaves of Grass. Bill gave it to Hillary. That turned out well.

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

“As poets have mournfully sung,/Death takes the innocent young/ The screamingly-funny/ The rolling-in-money/ And even the very well hung.” Auden (from memory)

Christopher Davis's Answers

Christopher Davis is the author of The Patriot.

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

John Ashbery as Secretary of the Imagination

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

"Wrong" or "Otherhood" by Reginald Shepherd...it is highly possible that Barak (I call him Barak) has had some DL experiences at the gym, and he shouldn't be afraid to think about them, in the privacy of his mind, in all their complexity and Americana...and feel sad that an Orphic voice is silent now.

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

Lance Phillips does one -- interesting.

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

See #3.

Charlotte Innes' Answers

Charlotte Innes is the author of “Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles” to be published by Finishing Line Press in May 2009.

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

Robert Hass, Environmentalist
Lewis Turco, Infrastructuralist
David St. John, Fashionista
Wendell Berry, Agriculturalist
Dana Gioia, Energy

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

“Time and Materials” by Robert Hass, especially the poems, “Bush’s War” and “State of the Planet,” that tell us everything we need to know about what is spoiled but also joyous about our poor old, messed-up world. Hass shows us what we lose when people commit crimes against humanity and the natural world. In “Bush’s War,” Hass quotes from one of my favorite Schubert lieder, after a poem by Goethe: “Warte nur, bald/Ruhest du auch.” Or in Hass’s words “Just wait/You will be quiet soon enough.” Perhaps “soon” should be underlined?

Timothy Liu's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Timothy Liu has two new books forthcoming, Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse (Talisman House) and Polytheogamy (Saturnalia Books). He lives in Manhattan. He answers my twenty questions below:

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

“Shine, Perishing Republic” by Robinson Jeffers. Should be read at the Inauguration.

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

This week I’m reading John Isles second book, Inverse Sky (Iowa, 2008), and suggest you get your hands on it to see what lyric poetry can yet do.

Jason Stenar Clark's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Jason Stenar Clark writes poems in Laramie, Wyoming.  His responses to twenty questions:

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

That’s easy. Obama should be the only poet in the cabinet. I have no idea what any of his policy ideas are, anyway, I just like that baritone drip of his, unfurling “Israel” and “Afghanistan.” Yummy. I guess we could get someone with an Iowa diploma and a billon awards, but don’t we want him doing double-duty? I’ll bet his State of the Union will be in blank verse. I’m seriously only kind of kidding.

Damiano Abeni's Answers [by H. L. Hix]

Damiano Abeni is an epidemiologist who has been translating American poetry into Italian for 35 years.  With Mark Strand, he co-edited West of Your Cities, an anthology featuring many of the poets who have edited volumes of Best American Poetry. Here are his twenty questions responses:

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

Bob Dylan, Minister of Culture
or
Mark Strand, Minister of Monuments
or
John Ashbery, Minister of Charts
or
Charles Wright, Minister of the Four Seasons
or
Jorie Graham, Minister of the Environment
or
Moira Egan, Minister of Love

Twenty Questions [by H. L. Hix]

You saw it on the Best American Poetry blog first!  Poet Timothy Liu suggests that Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Shine, Perishing Republic” should be read at President Obama’s inauguration.  Hard to picture citizens who won’t vote for a candidate until he or she wears a flag lapel pin standing for a poem that starts by confessing that America has been settling “in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,” but maybe the metaphor “the fruit rots to make earth” opens a line of thinking that might begin to repair the damages caused by naive belief in the efficiency and omniscience of the market.  Certainly it would help to remind ourselves that “corruption / Never has been compulsory.”

Here is a link to the poem.

**
That’s not the only good idea received so far in response to an inquiry undertaken for this blog.  Asked what book of poems he would send Obama, Jason Stenar Clark replied, “I’d send him this book of poetry I don’t really remember the title of, which I bought for five dollars, written by a homeless man in San Francisco. The work was not particularly good, but neither was it terrible. It was a copy of his verse xeroxed with too much toner at the local library and every poem was filled with resignation and resentment against all the people who passed by him, thinking he remembered nothing. But he did. I’d give Obama the poems mostly because I think, unlike any president since, well, Lincoln, he is already a pretty literate and curious fellow (he actually complained about not having the luxury of browsing through his neighborhood used bookstore in Hyde Park anymore), and he needs to be reminded of those over whom he has authority but from whom he will hear no complaint, no retribution should he wound their fates. Everyone else in America, from soccer mom to Rolex executive, has some blabbermouth to sway the President. That author in San Francisco had a voice Obama is unlikely to hear. It’s not that I think the man is unsympathetic to the poor. Not at all. In fact, probably more than I am, since I tossed the book a long time ago (shelf-space, you see).”