From: Lbhcove_at_aol.com
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:30:47 -0400 (EDT)

In response to J. Patrick Lewis's comment:

Isn't it possible for us to tilt the field in our favor rather than passively waiting and hoping for a recurrence of halcyon McCord/Merriam/Kuskin days gone by?

I do not feel we should be 'passively waiting and hoping...". I do feel we should go ahead but let's not throw away the past. There should not be a recurrrence - there should be a now, an availability to these great poets. As for the halcyon days I never felt works by many of our greats wrote only about happy, peaceful days/times.

Merriam's THE INNER CITY MOTHER GOOSE took on politics like never before; Livingston's NO WAY OF KNOWING: DALLAS POEMS addressed the assassination of Kennedy in spare lines that still give chills in her "Arthur Thinks on Kennedy" ending: "And I got bubbles/I got dreams,/So I know what/That killing means."

This is the stuff poetry is made of. I do not find much of this in poetry these days. There are a lot of tee-hee's, a grouping of ha-ha's, some 'oh my's'.

Bring back the goose bumps?

Lee Bennett Hopkins

Visit my site at: _www.leebennetthopkins.com_ (http://www.leebennetthopkins.com/)
Received on Sun 22 Jul 2012 10:30:47 AM CDT