Out With the Old, In With the New

The year was almost through, and I realized I'd spent most of it reading old poetry, which is not a bad thing, but not necessarily a good thing. Contemporary poetry is ridiculously good (except for the bad stuff, but it doesn't usually get published in the best places or receive tons of awards and stuff, so we'll ignore it) and way easier to read. I've read several amazing books of poetry lately, beginning with Nikky Finney's Head Off and Split, a National Book Award Winner. Some of it was fabulous, and some of it I couldn't get into. It was all so fabulously well-written, though. Then, I read Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith (ahem, Pulitzer Prize Winner) and fell hopelessly in love with her. Her poems about science and society and culture spoke to me in a deep way. I'm now reading Jim Harrison's Songs of Unreason and am again speechless and jealous of how brilliant brilliant writers are. I haven't finished the book yet, but here's the poem that inspired this post.

American Sermon

by Jim Harrison

I am uniquely privileged to be alive

or so they say. I have asked others

who are unsure, especially the man with three

kids who's being foreclosed next month.

One daughter says she isn't leaving the farm,

they can pry her out with tractor

and chain. Mother needs heart surgery

but there is no insurance. A lifetime of cooking

with pork fat. My friend Sam has made

five hundred bucks in 40 years

of writing poetry. He has applied for 120

grants but so have 50,000 others. Sam keeps

strict track. The fact is he's not very good.

Back to the girl on the farm. She's been

keeping records of all the wildflowers

on the never-tilled land down the road,

a 40-acre clearing where they've bloomed

since the glaciers. She picks wild strawberries

with a young female bear who eats them. She's being

taken from the eastern Upper Peninsula down

to Lansing where Dad has a job in a

bottling plant. She won't survive the move.