Poems for tough times

Wed, 10/15/2008 - 9:38am by Maxine

As a response to the intensity of election season and current economic woes, the Academy of American Poets has compiled poems called "Poems for Times of Turmoil." Included in the list are poems by Gerard Manly Hopkins, Walt Whitman and Hart Crane. The Academy is a wonderful resource for finding poems from their vast archive, essays and reviews on poetry, occasional poems for that special day and poetry events. Following is one of my favorites from their current list, "Thing," by Rae Armantrout whose words are a voice of sanity amid the media frenzy:

We love our cat
for her self
regard is assiduous
and bland,

for she sits in the small
patch of sun on our rug
and licks her claws
from all angles

and it is far
superior
to "balanced reporting"

though, of course,
it is also
the very same thing.