The Best American Poetry

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.